E23
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[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: Welcome to the HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:10] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today we are going to discuss the topic of the importance of higher education associations and our guest is Mark Coldren.

Mark is currently the Associate Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, with overall responsibilities for all HR functions. Mark is also a past chair of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, CUPA-HR National Board of Directors.

Welcome, mark. Thanks for joining us today.

[00:00:40] Mark Coldren: Hi, Kelly. Pleasure to be here.

Andrew Hibel: Nice to have you, Mark.

[00:00:43] Kelly Cherwin: Okay, so let's start with our first question Mark looking ahead into 2023, what does the value associations can bring to higher ed professionals, both new and tenured?

[00:00:52] Mark Coldren: I think higher ed associations or any association that somebody can be part of really can offer a lot to folks, and I think of like three [00:01:00] things. First thing I think of is the word connection. The reason I think of connection is because most people use the word networking, and I hate that word. I think networking is kind of too small a word. There's been a couple of really good articles where people talk about that that's really just about making sure you have people on LinkedIn that you're connected with. Connecting is having a relationship, listening to someone, people you can call and you can get ideas from. So I think connection's really a big thing that a professional association can give you. Second thing that I found a lot, especially the last couple years, is that it provides you professional support, but it's almost an emotional support too.

People are going through the same things you are. They have the same kind of passion you do. They also run outta gas and they need a recharge. And associations are a terrific place to go and get that pick me up when you wanna try to come back to your day job when really figuring out what to do. And the third thing I always say [00:02:00] is that it's perspective.

It's a lens that you can have because it's other people, other experiences, other places, it makes you better because you can bring that perspective back to your job. In fact, if you are interviewing people and you see they're active in an association, I always wanna know more because if they really got some value out of it, they have a perspective that will really help on your own campus.

[00:02:25] Kelly Cherwin: I love that. And I couldn't agree more about, well, all three points, but the number two point. When I went to CUPA-HR, the conference last month, I felt that connection. I felt the emotional support, and I felt the energy and I, and I brought it back to HigherEdJobs. So I, I love the sentiments that you said.

[00:02:42] Andrew Hibel: I really like the idea that if you look forward to 2023 and professional associations, can we declare the word networking dead? I think the idea of connection and then adding the perspective and the professional and emotional support to it, it is about that connection. It is about having a [00:03:00] group of your peers that collaborate, and it's always exciting to me when we work with associations in higher ed, what other profession where a bunch of competitors have their professionals working with each other to do their jobs.

I don't think Coke, Pepsi and RC have their HR folks working together to see what their best practices are and comparing notes and that sort of collaboration that is just an absolute thread throughout Academia is looking to me at higher education at it’s best.

[00:03:32] Mark Coldren: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head Andy. You think about it this way, that if you worked for companies and I did, you know, and then I transitioned into higher ed.

The difference between getting together with other professionals. You started to say, okay, networking means we're going to try to trade best practices to a point, because I have to worry about the competition. I have to worry about what's my unique element that I probably can't share with people. Higher ed is [00:04:00] completely different.

And I'll say in the human resource field, it starts off what someone says, who has a good idea about what to do with compensation for adjunct professors. And 50 people will not just talk to you, they will send you their plan on a spreadsheet. It's a whole idea of I can pay it forward, and I do it openly, transparently, and I do it in a way that should make you wanna come back for more.

So, I agree with you, Andy. Let's kill that word. Networking doesn't work anymore because it implies that people are getting together for an advantage. And I think when I go to coup HR and some of the other associations, I get a different sense. It's about pay it forward. It's about listening. It's about what can I learn from you?

And then when someone asks you, all right, I can share what I'm doing, but I should stop somewhere along the line and say, now does that ring for you? And what should we do different based on that?

[00:04:59] Andrew Hibel: I think that's a great segue to [00:05:00] kind of the next direction we wanted to go, which is how do you encourage young professionals, generation Z and millennials to join an association?

[00:05:07] Mark Coldren: Well, one thing is if they go to one of these meetings or they do it even virtually, it's a way you're searching for your people. Some people call it your tribe, right? If you find others who have the same kind of passion for the work and the same kind of curiosity. There is an immediate value to you. So going there and getting beyond what's at your own place of work, which may be a supervisor that says, you need to learn and the way you're gonna learn is the way I learned, which means head down, doing these things, checking off to make sure they're okay.

Associations open that door wider, and it's not so much about the job you have, it's about the work you'd like to do. So let me talk a little bit about experience. All right, so that's a big thing. Early career professionals say, if I go to those [00:06:00] places, do I find others with experience and how can I gain that wisdom?

Well think about experience because it drives everything around how we look for jobs, and I'm gonna say right now, it is so not the first thing that we should have in every posting. We talk a lot about when you put five to seven years of experience. That you are narrowing an element that perhaps we don't necessarily need, and I'm gonna say one step further, in our industry, have a tough time affording. Early career professionals, when you post a job, zero to five years, you get a deeper pool and you then can interview for something different. Not the fact that you've done it before, but you're ready to do it. And how can I learn that? Well, I have to have a different kind of interviewing. It's a great quote I have it right on my desk here cause I always loved this one.

Jimmy Connors was a professional tennis player and he said about experience, he goes, “Experience is a great advantage, the problem is that when you get the [00:07:00] experience, you're too damn old to do anything about it.” And I think he's right. Everyone sees it as the panacea thing I've gotta have. But as an early career professional, you want it quicker, faster, better, and it's hard for you to wait.

And so we need to design a workplace that says experience is important, but getting there doesn't have to be a traditional, historical defined period of time.

[00:07:26] Andrew Hibel: I'm extremely fond of saying there's not many things in the nearly three decades of doing this, I can universally say about academia, that's an absolute fact.

But every person who works in academia at some point was hired in a job with no experience. That's starts that way for all of us.

[00:07:43] Mark Coldren: Yeah, but the postings don't reflect that Andy, and that's the hard part. Right. So the thing we're trying to, to really help with is the beginning of the design of a job. Why do you have to be so narrow, so specific?

And I would love to see an early career [00:08:00] professional who researched the kinds of things that they're interested in. They read, they go to a professional association. They say, Hey, not for nothing. I just went to a session and the University of Miami did this. I wonder how that could work here. Now you don't have to have 10 years experience to see a good idea and think you could apply it back where you are.

So, the challenge is everything we do is built on there that you have to have the requisite experience. And I'm thinking that we have to challenge ourselves. I'm gonna say you get into leadership positions further, deeper into a career, then it's about scope and context and maybe experience is gonna really give you an element of what to do.

But I'm gonna, I'll share it with you right now. I work with a ton of people who have years of experience, but I, I just find them lacking some of the elements I see in people who've been in a job two years and maybe cause they have a different kind of savvy. Have a different kind of interest level, they have a different kind of emotional [00:09:00] intelligence.

I mean, those are really key things.

[00:09:03] Kelly Cherwin: So Mark, I wanna talk a little bit about the, uh, associations in terms of retaining members. I know you said that you encourage people to kind of find their tribe and connect and make relationships. So how do you encourage people to maintain their involvement in associations?

[00:09:18] Mark Coldren: I'll tell you my experience through the ones I've been involved with, and I'll start with CUPA-HR is probably the greatest association I've ever really been part of. The one way that you get people, it's personal and individual outreach. It's inviting people in. You know, it's one of those things where you talk about what's the difference between how people feel welcome, how they feel engaged.

And it starts with that personal outreach. So for example, many times we'll say, let's run a report of all the people who work at a particular place who could be potential members to come to an event. And everyone feels really good about that list, that's accurate and has all the right [00:10:00] contact information.

We come up with these really cool emails and we blast it out to 200 people and we say, there we go. We've tried to invite and engage people. The difference is taking that same blast of 200, everybody who's on your committee, splitting it up and taking 15 or 20 and calling them after that message goes out, inviting them personally.

Let me tell you, I'm part of it. I'd love for you to be here as well. I can welcome you in. The other thing you can see, and I see this a lot at CUPA-HR events, is when newcomers come, they always have that first opening reception and people are supposed to come and they have a special tag and everyone says, oh, there's newcomers.

What do you do when you see three of them standing there or one person standing, and you're talking with a person you've known for 10 years? How do you pull them in? That to me is how people will come back to an association. They felt welcomed. They felt their opinion matters. They were immediately embraced into what's going on. [00:11:00]

That is how people stick in an organization, and I saw this in even groups like for example, my son used to be in marching band in high school and my wife got very involved with the parent support group and she kept coming home and she said, you know, I'm not sure what this group is really trying to do. And she and two others decided to change how they were going to recruit other parents into the group.

Recruitment is you reach out. So, I think that's the way professional associations can retain, let alone get new members. You gotta reach out personally.

[00:11:33] Kelly Cherwin: So I have a question in terms of the employer, what responsibility do they have in encouraging their staff and faculty to be part of these associations?

[00:11:41] Mark Coldren: What's challenging sometimes at the smaller institutions is they look at it as dollars and cents to be part of that association, it's gonna cost X dollars to have the membership fee to go to that meeting. It's gonna be X dollars to go. We don't have the budget for it. And the challenge is in our industry, faculty have [00:12:00] always seen the value of that, and yet sometimes on the staff administrative side, it takes a backseat, we can't spend that money.

I think a few of leaders who understand that that connection, that perspective, is a huge commodity to be able to come back and make it better. It's worth the investment. One of the things we do is we start off, we don't have a big travel and living budget for professional development, but I do it over three years and I look and say, who has the opportunities you went two years ago?

Who can go this time? And then what positions? It's not just sending anybody to go to anything. You gotta sit down ahead of time. I want to hear why you want to go. I want to hear you saw the agenda ahead of time. What's your plan? When you're gonna be there, who you wanna meet? What is it that you wanna bring back before you ever go?

And people who have that kind of commitment, those are the folks that you wanna have involved. Those are the people that you wanna support to go. I think it's really shortsighted not to invest in professional development and letting people do [00:13:00] that.

[00:13:01] Andrew Hibel: I would absolutely fully concur with what you just said. I also think from the recruitment standpoint, if what you're trying to do is get the best possible talent, investing in professional development and participation in quality associations is gonna help get the candidates you also want to fill those positions.

If you do not feel like there's a good investment to be made in professional development, whatever the department or academic discipline is, that's gonna be a signal to talent that they aren't as serious as they should be about HR or fundraising or missions. They're gonna say, oh, uh, I, I can go find someplace else where they do reimburse for that.

I guess that would be one of the questions for you I'd have is if you're somebody who's in one of these fields and you're looking for a job, how do you make the case to potential employer that that's something that's important to you and and needs to be there? Particularly as seems since 2020 that so much has moved online and people feel like they can just [00:14:00] do stuff like this with a quick webinar here and there.

[00:14:02] Mark Coldren: It starts in the interview process handy and it starts with, they always at the end, they say, do you have any questions for us. One of the great questions to ask as a potential candidate is tell me what you believe or what you try to build into the position like I'm interviewing for in terms of professional development?

What's the value of it to you as an employer? And if I come there, will I have that opportunity? Most people will say yes, and then you can follow up. Well, I'm interested in this. Is that something that we see could be an investment in me? Which eventually becomes an investment in what you're doing. I think that's the right term.

If people do professional development, it is an investment in where you're gonna go and how strong the organization is. We're traditionally, historically, in higher education built on the search process, the national search, to find the best and the brightest all the time. And yet we [00:15:00] continue to say, we're having a tough time finding these leaders.

Where are they? So then you're like, well then that's gotta be about pipeline. Well, if we do a search and it's open and competitive, if they're the best, I kinda look at this as a balance. If you're gonna do a workforce plan and you got 10 openings, can you say seven and three or six and four are promotions versus bringing somebody from the outside?

I never wanna lose that outside perspective. That's where you get the really great backgrounds, the diversity of thought, the diversity of talent, background, passion. But at the same time, if I invest in folks. I wanna be able to show that they have some place to go and that they have a next step. I also need to be honest, when I don't, if I have an organization and I've got a lot of assistant director positions who want a director's job and their boss, the director isn't going anywhere.

They've been there, they've been committed. You can't say, okay, in 10 years you get that job. I have to say, you know what? Your [00:16:00] next step, you're ready for is to be a director. I don't have it here, but how can I help you get that someplace else? Which across my campus, people think that's the dumbest thing to do.

Oh, I'm gonna lose people. Somebody called up one of my people, they're poaching talent, and I'm like, no, that's called recruitment and they're ready for it. And if you don't have a next step for 'em, you can't stand in their way. If they stayed for five years, what a great five-year ride that was. Instead of looking at, I don't see them here 10 years from.

[00:16:30] Andrew Hibel: That's a wonderful perspective, and I think it really goes to, if you're confident in the pipeline that's still out there because you've built it, that you should be able to find somebody qualified to do that. Which kind of is a good segue to our next question, which really is about pipeline. Globally, I know the profession I entered higher education with, which is planned giving.

It's really hard to start seeing a pipeline for planned giving in millennials and, and GenZers. Grant you, [00:17:00] that's been traditional for planned giving, but it's hard. I also know in some academic, particularly some of the academic medical professions, things like neuro-ophthalmology aren't specialties that people are going into.

Finding the pipeline for faculty members in that area is more and more difficult. With that, we kind of wanna discuss one of the things I think CUPA-HR is doing pretty amazingly, which is the CUPA-HR Wildfire program, which you were a part of developing I understand. What would your advice be for those other parts of academia who are also interested in developing a similar young professional program that helps really what I'd like to call, make the front door of the profession very, very visible and very, very welcoming.

[00:17:46] Mark Coldren: I think the Wildfire Program is one of the best things I've ever been part of. It was built on a premise of how can we get more early career professionals involved in the association? And ultimately we need to go beyond that and say, how can we [00:18:00] help them take the higher ed human resource profession stronger in the future?

And a lot of people say, Hey, well that's a mentoring program, so let's put a mentoring program together. Now, mentoring programs can be very successful, but I always find a challenge with him in a couple ways. One to say, I'm a mentor for somebody. I've always felt that was a little, uh, pretentious, right? If I come to you and I ask you to mentor me that, okay, that's a gift.

Somebody came and asked you that you should be pretty flattered, but to build a program and say, here are the 10 mentors over here and here, and I hate the phrase, the mentees over here, and how do we put them together? A lot of times mentoring programs become dating services, right? So how can we make a relationship and then hopefully it blossoms.

CUPA-HR struggled with that for a number of years. We had a lot of wisdom, a lot of experience, and we were trying to draw other folks in, and so the thought was, let's have a session at an annual conference and invite people in the room. [00:19:00] It started off with, here are 10 people who've been around like me for a while, the veterans, the, you know, grizzled.

We've been here for awhile and we are in the room, and then we put a big call out to, if you're earlier in your career, zero to five years or whatever, come to this session and let's talk about your future. We did more listening that day than saying anything, and that was the best part of it. If you listened well, out of that first session we did I connected with three people, and to this day I still get text messages from them, and that was 12 years ago.

I think if you, uh, listen and try to say, what can I do? How can I help you? How can I be of service? They'll tell you things that maybe they can't tell their supervisor or their boss. So that was a pretty successful session. We said, how do we operationalize that? So we came up with the idea that we would ask people to apply.

We put some criteria together and we'll put the call up and we'll say what we're trying to do and we'll support a number of [00:20:00] people. And we really believed we would do a cohort. And it started off with six, it's now 12 each year, but it started with six. And the thought was that cohort, besides all the people we could help develop, the six would get a lot from each other.

And we thought that was a big value for what we were trying to do. And then the other thing which I would suggest for any other association is back it up. In other words, don't charge them to be in it. You pay for it. That's what you're trying to carve outta your budget to say the experience that you're gonna put together is free of charge if they're selected.

That was a huge deal because you're saying in our program, go to the annual conference, fully paid. You take care of it. Travel living, conference fee the whole shebang. Two, you go to the association leadership program. Every leader from every chapter, every region, every committee is in one place at one time.

Talk about a place where you can help 'em drink the Kool-Aid. It's the leadership program, and that's where we, we bring them in and they're a big part of it, and then we give [00:21:00] them an onsite visit somewhere around the country as a shadow visit for two days to go anywhere. We just kind of match 'em up, and then we do monthly calls with them.

We started to use Go-to meeting way back when, moved into Zoom and Teams and all that kind of stuff. But we did those monthly meetings in order to give them exposure and then we added other things, a project they could do. It just became a very invested, intentional pipeline kind of effort. And the great thing is we look at it every year, over half the group is then within two years on a chapter or region board. Mission accomplished.

And then I like to see someday we're all gonna work for 'em because they're gonna be that next great wave of leaders.

[00:21:46] Kelly Cherwin: Well, Mark, I, I remember seeing you a couple months ago at the conference, and I asked you about Wildfire and I said something about other associations doing programs like this, and I loved your response.

You're like, but no one does it as well as CUPA and I, I can see your passion, and it [00:22:00] definitely sounds like it's such a great program. And I was fortunate to meet a lot of the cohort this year, so that was exciting.

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[00:22:50] Mark Coldren: I guess I would just add what we've seen in this connection of a cohort. You can take 12 individuals from all around the country, bring 'em together, [00:23:00] introduce them via video conferencing one time, bring them in a room, explain to them the possibilities, and they come with their own excitement and passion.

And in two hours they've developed these relationships that are unbelievably deep and it just gets deeper. Some of these folks, they have touch chains and been to each other's weddings. I think CUPA has that kind of really deep relationship possibility. Wildfire helps that. And I know we're, we've talked a lot about how we're gonna rebrand the program and all that kind of stuff, which I think might be a good idea.

But the whole intent was really to create this kind of next wave of leaders. I think it's been going really well. One thing that's happened, a whole bunch of the folks in the cohort a year ago now work in private industry. They left, but it was right in the middle of a lot of flexible conversations.

[00:24:00] People wanted to work remote, they got promotions, but those folks still reach out and connect even though they work for companies. And I think we'll bring 'em back and I think we'll bring 'em back because I don't think they want to leave, but at the same time, if you have a career trajectory, somebody offered you more money, more scope, and you could do it remotely.

I think that's what they wanted to do in another year, we'll see that it isn't about working a hundred percent remote. That is not what everyone wants. You're gonna lose something. You're gonna lose the emotional connection to people. You're gonna feel isolated, hybrids the way to go, and I think that's probably where it's gonna end up, even though right now everyone runs around saying if we don't hire from 50 states, we're gonna be behind in the talent game. And my answer is that's a tough lift. But if you're at Stanford, they try to register as an employer and they put that in all their postings. We are a 50 state employer. That's great. [00:25:00] Duke wants to do that, but you know all the top tens.

That's great. I still think at the end of the day, it is a place that you make and it is where magic happens and you have to have some physical presence that goes with that.

[00:25:13] Kelly Cherwin: I love that how you summarize. It's where the magic happens. Thank you so much for explaining the Wildfire program and, and how special it is.

We enjoyed our conversation.

[00:25:22] Andrew Hibel: So Mark, we have one last question for you. We have a Spotify playlist for the podcast that we ask our guest to add a song to because every job search deserves a soundtrack and we've had folks over the year contribute various songs to what they think either fits within a, a good song for doing a job search or possibly for working in general.

And we were wondering if you might be interested in adding a song to the Spotify playlist.

[00:25:49] Mark Coldren: Two come to mind Andy. As a lifelong Beatles fan, a Hard Day's Night always jumps out for me. And then, this past summer, I was reminded how [00:26:00] much I love this song when I took my kids to this outdoor show by the Dropkick Murphy's and it's a song called The Worker Song.

And he actually went into a whole thing about why he felt the song was important cause he wrote it about people in Boston who work really hard. And I just, I enjoyed that. So I would throw those two on. Those are two that are our favorites of mine.

[00:26:21] Andrew Hibel: Those are great additions. Thank you. Was that the show? I think that show was at Fenway, wasn't it?

[00:26:25] Mark Coldren: They do a summer circuit and they always come through New York. Oh, do they? Okay. We saw 'em here. They've come a couple years in a row. They're like one of my favorite band. What's great is I can take my 20 year olds to shows and say, yeah, these are things I played when you were kids. You remember? And they're like, oh yeah, yeah.

I remember. Because we would travel. My kids knew Beatles songs before they knew Disney songs, so it was pretty cool to take them to Paul McCartney. That was something they got to see a Beatle.

[00:26:53] Andrew Hibel: I've always had a lot of respect for you in many other ways, mark, but now I have an even newfound respect for you. [00:27:00] Well, Mark, thank you very much for joining us today.

We look forward to having you on again. This was a wonderful chance to learn more about associations and look a little bit on the HR side of higher education. Just wanna remind people if you have questions or thoughts that you'd like to offer, please feel free to email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or feel free to tweet us at HigherEdJobs.

And uh, thanks again, Mark. It's good to have you here.

[00:27:26] Mark Coldren: My pleasure. Thanks Andy. Thanks, Kelly. HigherEdJobs is a terrific partner to work with, both through CUPA-HR and also on our campus, so I'll just thrilled to help out.

[00:27:36] Andrew Hibel: Thanks, Mark.