 Let me welcome everybody. Let me welcome you to this week's Future Trends Forum I'm your host the creator of the program as well as that's cat herder, Brian Alexander And I'm delighted to welcome you all here today on an incredibly stressful chaotic Fascinating and all too interesting time in higher education We have a terrific guest today, but before we plunge into that Let me explain how the program works where it comes from and then I'll introduce this week's guest So to begin with the Future Trends Forum is all about Conversation the whole purpose of the forum is to host discussions between all of you Including a spectacular guest this week. I want to hear from you your questions your examples your pushback your criticisms your Exemplifications all kinds of thoughts the whole idea here is to have a form of conversation and discussion We've been doing this for we're in our fifth year right now now the forum is Part of an overarching project called the Future Education Observatory and this is an ongoing multimedia Multimodal attempt to grapple with the future of higher education and includes a lot of different moving parts One is this our weekly program There's also a monthly trends analysis called the Future Trends and Technology and Education report This is a long-running trends analysis report which goes back almost ten years It's just head to future of education not us Now we can only do this kind of work if we have the support of some very generous folks And we want to thank them before we proceed to begin with in New York State We want to thank Nizer Net and that's a nonprofit that helps that state's colleges and universities get online and do great work With each other they have fantastic work with high-speed broadband and professional development and we're really really grateful to them for their support We're also grateful to Shindig because as you can tell Shindig makes available the technology We're using right now So let me just show you how this works if you're new to it or if you haven't been here for a while Where I am and my cat apparently and where the slide is just for a moment It's called the stage and we call it the stage because everybody can see and hear everything that goes on on the stage Now right below us you can see all around you a bunch of different Well, they're basically avatars You can see individual people there are live feeds like say Dennis Solnier You can see a few photos or silhouettes like I gave it wrong And each of those represents one or more people signed in from somewhere in the world Right now there are 42 of you and in fact one of the ways that Shindig works is that we break these into rooms So as people pile in they get segmented out into rooms of about 20 So if you want to jump around between rooms You can just hit these buttons on either side of the room screen and you can you know jump back and forth between rooms If you want to say hi to an individual just simply double click on their icon And if their audio visual systems are on and they want to talk to you there are two icons will click together like Legos You can have your own private audio visual conversation, which is pretty neat But how can you participate in the conversation that I just talked about a couple of minutes ago? There are two major ways and we draw your attention to them right now The bottom of the screen you should see a few different buttons lined up And one of those buttons is going to be a raised hand and one of them is a question mark The question mark is if you want to type in a question or a comment So it's really easy press the button typing your question or a comment hit send and I'll receive that and when the time is Right, I'll flash it on the screen so everyone can read it And I'll read it out loud so everyone can hear it Now people often do that if they don't have a camera microphone set up Or if they're in a space like a busy office where they can't talk out loud now If you have your microphone and camera on if you have a space where you can talk press that raised hand button That tells me you want to join us up here on stage. It's really easy I literally press a button that we don't up you appear on stage So if you want to have face-to-face conversation with myself and especially our guest, that's all it takes It's easier to do than it's for me to describe and I'll show you how that works Now if you want to also chat with everybody else, there's a chat box So take a look at the button there in fact I often ask people to type in where they are today geographically where they're coming from It's a good way to say hello, so you can do that So really the question mark and the raised hand are the best ways to participate You can do that all throughout the session and we're really grateful to Shindig for inventing this technology Now we're also grateful to our supporters on patreon And if you don't know patreon, it's a crowdfunding site like go start a Kickstarter or go fund me And it lets you collaboratively support someone who's doing work that you want to support in this case That's our work in the future of education So if you head to patreon.com slash Brian Alexander, you can find a lot of ways to support us The folks here contribute as much as ten dollars a month to support us, which is fantastic We're really really grateful to them for their support folks like Joanna Richardson Matthew train them Sean summer Jeannie Kim Han Lisa Prichard. We're really really grateful to them and you could join them Now before I get into this week's guest. I just want to put out one note It's obvious that right now the world is in a crisis mode. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic Recently declared pandemic and there's a lot to say about it And you can bring this up if you like today because I think you'll find our guest has some really interesting perspectives If you'd like to see more about that just head to this link tiny world comm slash COVID-edu That's where I have a few links to a resource page on how to track the spread of the pandemic as well as the world's biggest spreadsheet of colleges and universities that are closing or migrating online because the pandemic So just click on that link if you'd like to learn more and I hope that can be useful Now even more useful is this week's guest. So let me just introduce our Fantastic guest Bernard bull Bernard has been a guest before when he was in a previous position He is now in a really extraordinary position. He's the president of Goddard College up in Vermont And he was brought to Goddard to Goddard to save it from closing This is an unusual unusual perspective that you have very rarely Can you meet a college university president who is there when it's on the edge of existence? Who is right now taking steps to make sure it survives? So what I'd like to do is I would like to invite you all to ask questions of him I can assure you that Bernard is really really approachable and friendly Bernard you have time to disabuse us of that notion It would be great to hear your thoughts about this. So to begin with let me just Let me just say first of all welcome. I'm really really glad you can make it today Thanks, it's great to be here and and I have to ask a question of someone in the North country Which is since its March, how's the weather there? Iran actually I'm in Wisconsin today, but I'm usually in Vermont I had lived in Wisconsin before we still have a house here and I'd come back my family splits their time between the two states So I don't actually know what the weather is like there all of our meetings have been on zoom And we'll talk about that just a minute But I when I asked guests to introduce themselves and I did this with you the last time you came on which is a few years ago I usually ask if you could just speak about what you're gonna be focused on for the next year And what I'm guessing you're gonna say is you're focused on making Goddard thrive Why why don't you dive into that and I actually tell you what better yet Why don't you introduce Goddard to us because it's an unusual institution. Sure So my kind of elevator pitch is that In the 1930s the world was pretty much on fire In many ways with the growth of fascism in the West. There were serious concerns about the environment Although not the same as today There was finding their way out of the all of the implications of the financial crisis of the that had happened prior Which I'm serious concern and a group of people in central Vermont gathered together and had this vision Inspired by John Dewey and other progressive educators of creating a very different kind of learning community a different kind of college It was not built upon the traditions of the past But was instead embedded in the experiences and the challenges going on in the world at that moment And so most colleges when they start they look at another college as an exemplar And then they try to build practices and models based upon that exemplar and then maybe they put their own their own twist to it Goddard was not it was launched in the 1930s with a completely radical different viewpoint. There were never letter grades There were no courses in the traditional sense every student designed their own personalized learning plan from the beginning in the original Charter in the 1930s. The vision was to be serving adult learners in addition to at the time traditional residential students And to have a radical approach to a democratic community where the learners have a voice equal to that of the faculty and others From the beginning there wasn't there weren't ranks and promotions of faculty and titles Very different model from there. The college grew and had many iterations. There was a dream that it would it would not be dependent upon An endowment but that it would be Tied to the needs in the world and if it was meeting those needs and it would do okay and if it wasn't then maybe it didn't deserve to exist and And that was Tim Pitkin the first president so they never spent a lot of time building an endowment although there were several Foundations that gave key gifts at times the Ford Foundation and others had had stepped in at different different times and and given money The college had a variety of iterations by the 60s Evelyn Bates Assistant to the president had gone to University of Chicago did some work came up with this completely new model for higher education Called a low residency program and the first low residency program in the nation was launched at Goddard College Where students would come for an intensive time and come back. It was a program one of the first programs in the nation specifically for single mothers trying to create that kind of flexibility and so That that was added to the repertoire the mix in the 60s and Later in the early 2000s the college was going through a crisis actually when it probably it's fourth or fifth financial crisis by that time and It decided that its best way to make it was to shut down its residential program and to focus entirely on Low residency which is what it is today and so students come for 10-day intensives And it's like a conference on steroids. I mean they're from wake up to falling asleep. Even if you do fall asleep I mean, it's it's non-stop, but we bring in world-class Authors and poets and activists and others who are part of the experience very interdisciplinary A student in a given semester will oftentimes work with a single faculty member So they they design their own learning plan and they say this is 12 or 15 credits worth of work And they're assigned an advisor who guides them in their learning plan and in their work throughout the semester So they propose that plan during their residency They leave for the semester and during that semester They send packets of work and they get really detailed rich narrative feedback Sometimes pages or dozens of pages of written narrative feedback from their advisor On their work through the semester and at the end of the semester they come back and it starts over So that's kind of that's a little glimpse of the Goddard experience One of the ways people like to talk about Goddard is many people who come to Goddard are In the mid 20s or older and they've heard no and can't a lot in the education system They've heard no you can't do it that way We have these rules and policies here and they get to Goddard and the shock is how many times they hear yes And can and it really is the learner is really in the driver seat They their voice choice ownership and agency are central to the model the faculty member really is a guide Truly it's not the faculty member doesn't dictate specific books or readings or anything That's all negotiated or proposed or in in a rich kind of Conversation with a democratic flair to it. Hmm. It's it's extraordinary. It really is I mean you've you've got a bunch of different strands of experimental learning from higher education the lack of grades the narrative feedback you have the Dis the democratic structure of organized in campus you have low residency requirement. I mean it's really extruded how many students Are there right now in your program currently serve about 350 students at Goddard's peak It was less than a thousand so it's never been a large school But but right now about 350 and it's been declining. In fact this current semester is The first semester in eight semesters that we will have met or exceeded our enrollment targets the way this semester meaning spring or fall No, this this we're actually our last residency because our students start So our last residency for the spring is on the 20th of this month Very good. Very good. Congratulations friends, I have all kinds of questions for president bull and I just want to start with one, but I really really want to hear from you I want to hear your questions about how how Goddard works about the problems facing and and what he's doing as you can tell President bull is very very direct the question I'll ask you and this is a kind of you know Fo question away. Well, given this this sounds really appealing. Why any why to Goddard run into financial problems? What's what brought you to the edge of the wolf? Yeah, it's a great question and I won't be able to give a full answer for that It's it's messy and it's hard to tell sometimes I think people speculate and they claim they understand what's happening in the current landscape of higher education and there are these larger macro trends that we can follow and we can understand how things are working, but There's a lot internal to this Conversation as well. I can say that in recent history. We haven't been the best with managing our resources I don't believe that the financial model at Goddard that we've been operating from in the past decade was sustainable it was it was highly susceptible to Fluctuations and enrollment that would jeopardize it the college doesn't has a less than a couple million dollars in an endowment so it's very tuition dependent and The enrollment office had kind of fallen apart over the last number of years Right before I arrived. I mean, this is the level of kind of where we were After several months they discovered that the lead form on the website was broken In other words when someone inquired to learn about the college It was going nowhere Fill out a form. So we're talking about some really kind of fundamental challenges The college had a couple million dollars in cash reserves in its annual budget is only seven and a half million dollars at this size So a couple million, you know at one point I had a couple million in cash reserves, which is okay Non-profit should have three to six months of its annual budget in cash reserves to be pretty stable That way it can handle a fluctuation in Enrollment and if a roof falls in and it's not covered by insurance things like that By the time when I arrived I took the job I actually thought that there were some cash reserves because I'd asked for financial documents But those documents were a year old by the time I arrived the college was actually in a 1.4 million dollar deficit With no cash reserves and no endowment. Oh, no seven consecutive semesters of declining enrollment I Mean when it comes down to it it really did come to the basics Did we have a viable financial model? and I believe the answer was no that we were operating from a deficit budget and that's part of why we were put on probation with the Accreditors because the accreditation agency looked at it and said, you know, you're you don't have a viable financial model and your board Should have been should not have been approving deficit spending like that the board should have have Demanded that you create a model where you operate consistently on a balanced budget Hopefully you give me a chance somewhere in this conversation to share what's happened between 12 months or 14 months ago and now because it's kind of it's kind of fun and exciting Although our chance of succeeding is still not guaranteed. I mean we could be in September October I could be sharing pretty somber news. I think I lost Brian. I don't know if others can see Brian But I just see a black box So I feel like I'm alone in the stage. Can all of you still hear me? You see you can hear me. I see you. Yes, fair back A glitch on my end here It's you've taken us like a good story teller right to the edge of the brink of a crisis I mean you're talking about taking over a college which has no cash reserves a big deficit a board being censured for making bad decisions no endowment and in Really really stressful moment for higher education as a whole So let me ask you the quick question and then I want to get out of the way and ask everybody else for their questions Which is what'd you do? Bring it back from the brink. What are I studied about a dozen or more Colleges that were struggling and that closed or that They tried to successfully turn around and I talked to a number of presidents and other individuals And I really wanted to understand what are the you know? What are the best practices and higher-ed turnarounds is a great little book on higher-ed turnarounds that if you search for it There's only one that you'll find there the In fact Goddard was mentioned in there as a successful turnaround story from past struggle and And so when I looked at it I realized that one of the things that we we needed to do is is We didn't have enough money to make it through the year and we had a staff that was the size for 600 students And we only had less than 400 at the time. So this is never popular. It's never fun But we had to align our staff size with the number of students that we have No, no institution unless it's highly endowed can operate unless it has some kind of variable Financial model meaning that the Expenses go up and down with the size of the enrollment if you have a fixed Cost for staff and faculty and everything and it stays there whether your enrollment goes up and down Only way you can operate that way is if you had a really, you know a really significant endowment that just insulated you from those things all the time so So one of the things we did is we had to reduce and we reduced our expenses by 30 percent That wasn't even enough though because we're a unionized organization. Did you think 30 percent 30 percent? unionized organization and There are severance agreements. So even with reducing that Some people were eligible for three up up to six months in severance in some cases So then when we made the decision we were still spending that money for three to six months in the future So we had to raise money in the short term We did a small campaign that raised like between six and seven hundred thousand dollars that addressed some of the gap But I was really committed to not doing a massive multi-million dollar campaign Until we stabilized things because I wanted to be able to go to major donors and say when you give your money We have a model that's sustainable and we're going to make good use of that money to Amplify the mission of Goddard and the world to serve students and support our faculty and and just really Turn this into the incubator for educational experimentation that it's always been in the past So we actually we balanced we finished last fiscal year then so within seven months We went from a 1.4 million dollar or 1.2 depending on how you count it Deficit to a balanced budget in seven months and then today we have a three hundred thousand dollar cash reserve Now I believe that our best chance we have to have two to four million dollars probably by By September October for our best chance for the accreditors to let us stick around or let us remain accredited Because that's our three to six month cash reserve so in January I launched a two to four million dollar a four million dollar campaign called together for Goddard and We didn't launch it though until almost a year into the turnaround because I mean major donors typically don't want to fund closing a college They're not going to give a million dollars for you to close elegantly and And so we've been doing a lot of that work and we have to build some trust because We've had these incidents in our past enough Some people are talking about give Goddard a second chance. This is probably fourth or fifth chance for us in some ways So we have a little bit of the Of that to to work through So it's been it's been really fascinating in some ways it really comes down to the basics though The parts that are going to be very hard is We're going to have to be taking a really deep close look at our academic model and determine Which aspects of it is which aspects are financially viable and which are not Because when you're a small college Um oftentimes say you have faculty and maybe there's a faculty member that's full time But half of their load is actually not working with students It's some other uh released for another project And we're going to have to look really closely at all those release times and things like that because sometimes those Those interfere with trying to get to a variable model versus a fixed a fixed model versus a variable model Uh, well, thank you for being so candid and and clear What a spectacular and and very very hard process to go through And you're just starting the process. You have this campaign to fulfill Let me let me ask everybody else, uh, please I'd love to hear from your questions and again If if your camera is on and your microphone is on and you'd like to join us appear on stage Just click the raised hand button and I'll beam you up And if you prefer to type in a question just type in the question mark and I'll be glad to hear from you again We've hit a bunch of different issues already everything from enrollment management to online presence to Union struggles to the basic math of a budget to dealing with an accreditor and the board We'd love to hear your questions and thoughts and if if your question is please tell me more That's a great question You want to come back to ask them about what particular point that's completely about it So while everybody's thinking about that while people are are are thinking and typing Getting ready to click the button so they can appear on the stage with us Look, let me let me ask you a related question, which is You're in a state that's a very rural state Um, and it's a state that has lost three colleges in the past in the five years Um, what's the how does the vermont situation impact you? I mean is the state government helpful if you partner with other colleges universities or nonprofits or towns? um We we do have some partnerships with organizations, uh, and we're going to be deepening that one the god the in some ways Goddard was it it's um, it grew in the soil new england soil. It was really um a heart a heartbeat of central vermont in some ways and um as it's kind of Become smaller over the years. It's residential program disappeared things like that There's been a more disengagement with the community But still the little town of plain field of a few thousand people probably a third of the the residents or goddard alums The fire station was started by goddard students I mean because we didn't believe in in uh, we didn't believe in extracurricular activities We thought that there should be no separation between life and learning So if you want to do something do it in the world so they start a fire station or a health clinic or something like that um So we need so we have some work but one of the things we actually just launched is um, one of the ways I was looking at addressing the financial issue is selling some of our assets our resources, but right before I arrived we had We had uh taken out a loan right before I started A two million dollar loan for a heating plant a wood chip heating plant It's pretty cool. I mean we heat the entire campus and it produces the same emissions as two homewood burning stoves And that's really neat and we were given a couple of awards for some of our work We have a negative carbon footprint campus But that's a loan and the one thing that happened is we got it with um the lender The entire campus was put as collateral for that loan Which meant that I couldn't sell a portion of the campus. Whoa So, um, uh, we did 75 acres We were looking at selling it to someone who wanted to put it in conservation with really fit with our values a lot But that option fell through and this is one of the lessons by the way of when you're in a turnaround Um, it is like playing a cosmic game of whack-a-mole I mean, there are things that pop up and disappear More quickly than you can imagine and if one comes in with a strict plan Uh, one has to be ready to revise that plan two to three times a week sometimes So what we did though is we switched to a rental strategy where we had a number of dorms back from our residential days That were unused and we just released About a few weeks ago an announcement of the god of what we're calling the goddard college village for learning initiative Which is an invitation for other like-minded progressive education organizations To come and rent space at a low reasonable price and to join us on campus So that we can build a synergy of like-minded groups And of course we get the benefit of sometimes people will start in one group and they'll transfer to us One example is the vermont center for integrative herbalism where a lot of people travel from around the world to become Herbalists they now can come on campus. They're going to be renting space They can get there that they're training as an herbalist and they can transfer right into our sustainability program if they want to So we we we've been looking at those kinds of efforts Well, that's great. The questions are floating in So let me just put in a couple of these to give you a sense of this and if friends if you're new to The forum, this is how the environment works So first of all, we have a good question from Jessica Surden who asks have you been approached by larger colleges to merge? We gotta do that Um, we have uh in my first four or five months. I spent a lot of time looking at merger options And uh, most of the colleges that successfully are acquired Um, and people use the word merger because it sounds more democratic, but it's almost always an acquisition um the the um There There was very little interest because we have no assets in many cases If you require a struggling college, you still get a 10 20 30 million dollar endowment that you get to bring along Or something else like that our whole um our entire campus is has an estimated value of about six million But in central vermont on the market it may sell for for half that who knows and uh, and so The the idea of someone acquiring us it would have to be done just out of this incredible sense of of Passion for our mission and wanting to see it live and and most colleges are interested And I mean they're not in a position to be able to do that right now But I have had conversations with about a half a dozen different colleges Um during the time that we're never got to a really serious stage Um and people were definitely happy to take all of our students if we close, but the idea of acquiring the college Um was of less interest to most of the people that we talked to I'll tell you for example with two presidents. I talked to They said we would actually be quite interested in this if you make it through these challenges In other words, we'd be interested in an acquisition, but you have to you have to survive for the next couple years first um So because I mean just that's just the reality of higher the higher ed landscape right now taking on a liability um And justifying that to your board. Why did you take on a Liability that might have millions of dollars of expenses rather than using those millions to invest in some new initiative at your college That's kind of a hard sell to many boards. That's a good point. Uh, jessica. Thank you for coming right up with that We have another question here. Uh, this is coming from cindy Important state who asks the big question. What impact do you think the current covet 19 crisis will have on goddard? Great question. We have um our last residency for this this semester Is scheduled to be and we have a um a couple of locations in washington state and one in seattle and one in fort warden in port um Um, uh fort warden in um port towns in washington And that was scheduled to start Uh on the 20th of this month. So we actually just made the announcement last night to our students that we were going to be Moving that residency online now our residencies again are more like a conference So it's going to be very different from other schools when they say they're moving their activities online All of our interactions with students post residency are already virtualized So we're already have all those systems in place But um, we are moving that residency to a virtual format So it's tough because it's our master of fine arts and interdisciplinary arts and they're into movement I mean, there are a lot of ballet dancers and people doing other things. So it's hard to do that on screen But um, if anyone can do it, it will be this group. It's an incredibly creative group of mixed uh media artists Um, so for us, um, I'm not sure about the long-term impact We'll be monitoring this over the upcoming weeks to determine what impact it is our next residency doesn't start until july So we have some time to organize our thinking about that in the meantime We actually had released an announcement to all of our staff encouraging them to work for home from home Expanding our remote working policy Most of our meetings are already via zoom or other video conferencing tools Um, and our faculty actually We don't have any faculty who are on campus all the time Most of them live on the west coast or east coast and fly in for residencies So we already have um quite a bit of experience working in a a virtualized environment in some ways This gives us evidence to prove How we can operate as a very completely different model of online learning in a sense Because in fact one of the things that i'm hoping to do granted that we make it through the immediate challenges I'm starting a digital futures Work group and we're researching. What does it look like to create a virtual or digital expression of a truly learner driven environment that's not course based or instructor driven and um, and so we're actually in some ways Going to be able to experiment with that a little bit in this crisis It sounds ironic Yeah, the best position the college of university to do this in the u.s Um, well, I don't know. I don't know about that, but we're gonna We're gonna do the best we can with it. Um, I the competition in the online space is interesting Most of the people who come to Goddard aren't interested in a fully online degree Um, the the population that we draw they want to have these intensive in-person connections with the freedom in between But uh, but that doesn't mean that there are plenty of people who probably are looking for what we have to offer And they end up going to an online school. We don't have a budget Uh that can compete directly in terms of the digital ad space So regardless of c o v i d 19 and and um, whether we're virtual or stay low residency I believe that our strategy for growth is really going to come through strategic partnerships That's where we we actually get over 10 of our students every semester come from our existing partnerships That's really important to see we're learning a great deal friends. Uh, but we have more questions that are coming in in effect, we have Uh, a great question coming in from uh, denis, uh, is it sone? Dennis? Yes, it is. Hi, brennan Great to see you Bernard really nice to see you So my question is I was reminded of this recently There was just a great future you podcast interview with the president of dominican university She talked about the role. Um Her accreditors Played in strategic and innovation being really supportive and collaborative Can can you say a little bit about the role? Accreditors are playing with you and that um, how good a partner they are with you? Yes, thank you. And um, and by the way, it's really good to see you denis I got to know denis at the little work at harvard business publishing back in your previous work. Um, but uh, um I I actually watched that episode as well. I I I loved it. In fact, I had to pull over and take some notes I thought it was a great great conversation um I would say that the new england commission on higher education is a completely different experience with accreditation from Where I came from the midwest with the higher learning commission Higher learning commission is very large and this is not meant to be a negative It's just it doesn't feel quite as personal or intimate But in the in the new england space I went to my first accreditation conference and I was I thought I was on a different planet because I started going to Sessions and I was used to sessions like how to fill out this portion of your self study I mean, that's what I'd experienced in the past and I got to to the new england commission meeting annual meeting and it was about college mergers and future innovations and practices and there's very forward thinking and collaborative and um, and it truly is Is a collective so the commission doesn't feel like just this oversight body. It's a collection of of colleges and people reach out and they help each other and Certainly the vermont colleges separate from the the creditors have been very helpful and supportive Um, we were a recent crisis. We had even in our our records System a bunch of the presidents volunteer different personnel that came in to help us solve a problem The I will say the president the current president of the new england commission on higher education Barbara brittingham who's retiring is incredible. She has been an amazing, uh supporter They give rough draft feedback. I'm not used to that. I'm used to kind of submitting work It's like a final assignment and then you just wait to see what the grade is But they'll actually work with you and say, hey, I think you need to beef this up Even if it's just you need more numbers here or something um I can reach out to the president of the new england commission and um, I've never it has never taken more than two hours For me to get a reply from the president of the commission when I've had a question or a concern She's been a thought partner in times of of challenge Now there are limits to this, of course. I mean, uh, they're looking out for the best interest of the students And as a result, uh, I came in and I was really wanting to be able to launch new initiatives and new programs and grow enrollment quickly And there wasn't strong support for that In fact, the goal was that the interest was more Proved that you can be stable with your current enrollment and your current programs before There's going to be greater comfort seeing you step into the innovation space Um, and that some people see that as having your hands tied behind your back I actually saw it as a pretty responsible stance or position Why would we because because there are plenty of colleges that grow their way into financial crisis That they grow their enrollment rapidly and they do it through discounting and other unsustainable strategies only to find that their enrollment's twice as large and their deficit is twice as big Um, and um, and so the creditors have have held a firm hand where I think they should but they've also been a great thought partner Um, I I don't know if it was quite as deep of it's been as quite as deep of a partnership Is what I heard in that interview the way it was described, but maybe we're just at a different stage in our turnaround work Thank you so much, uh, then that's a great question and uh friends if you're new to the forum That's how video question works. It's really really easy to do And we can please join us with with more such questions Over on twitter. There are a couple of notes. Um, you have a few different fans We have one from uh, let's see Online course lady said, uh, thank you to bernard for being one of the world's most awesome bloggers and for sharing the web in all the different spaces She'd be glad to talk to you in here and learn more about you Um, and also people are fond of your comment that campuses have lots of ways to grow into financial crises Uh, we have more questions that have come in on text and we just put a couple of these Dr. Schlosser asks are you open to external folks supporting your digital futures research? Absolutely. I um, obviously Managing our budget and coming in below budget is critical for us every year. So, um, We don't have the resources currently to pay for people to step in But I actually had one structural design firm reach out and say hey, I'd love to help and do it pro bono Even be a part of this because I think it's a fascinating work And maybe it can be a synergy because the what we get to because most people haven't had a chance to work And a truly learner driven environment and we are that um So yeah, definitely openness to that and I'm that that work group is going to be gaining traction in april So it's good timing to pose that question Well, exactly Great. Well, I'm glad you guys could connect That's one of the things that we do in the future transform is that we we bring people together And I'm really glad to see that happen We have more questions coming in and this is one from a Nate, uh, so conic Who asks a kind of general question about strategy administration How best can administrators in colleges work with professors to better manage and plan a budget for the classroom? And what you've learned is really primal for this It's interesting. I don't know about the classroom part that that last part of the question throws me a little bit because this environment is so different We don't have classrooms um so, um I do think this is actually an area where we have some room for growth and improvement One of the things that is tricky about a turnaround effort I'm sure everyone would expect is You have to make decisions really quickly and yet we're a community that has a strong democratic value background I've made some missteps where I've had to move too quickly And I wanted to be able to engage people more We had to build a street a new strategic plan when I arrived. There was no strategic plan in place We had to build a strategic plan in less than three months. Um, so there's only so much input that you can get Um, we did get some input The spending part is tricky. Um in some ways I don't know if I if I think it's Ideal for faculty to have to be thinking about the expense side all the time And in some ways, I'd rather there be a healthy respectful tension Where faculty are pushing for what they believe is most important. Um, apart from finances Although there's out has to be some kind of sense of realism. What's what's possible? Um, and that there are others that are also saying yes We agree with this academic quality and and creating the best possible experiment experience But we have to do it within certain parameters in order to be um, uh in order to continue to be able to operate and Um, what I what I most value about our context right now And this doesn't it's not an answer that's as generalized as the question was is in our context We've made a lot of missteps And people have called administration out on it and I will step up and say i'm sorry. I messed up. How do we fix this? How do we move forward? um And and yet what I love about it is this is a community where no one's running out of the room Like we're actually Staying in and we're disagreeing with each other and we're persisting until we can find some answers So to me that is a really beautiful and important part of the process is The fact that we're sticking with each other. We don't have to turn everything into a personal attack We understand that there can be differences and tensions and we keep We keep moving through it. I will say that We are exploring a variety of work groups though to help address some of these one of the innovations That's really intriguing to me that came from the faculty the faculty came together and said How do we do this in a way that's sustainable financially? But really fits our values and one idea that came up was we have all of these these different programs But oftentimes our faculty have qualifications to advise across disciplines So what if we move to an all college faculty? Where students where you you don't have faculty just hidden within individual divisional departments as much And that way if enrollments high in one program and low in another you don't have to lay off a faculty member You can kind of just shift some roles and responsibilities And at the same time it creates some really cool synergies for interdisciplinary projects across across programs So I I think I maybe went off on a little aside with that question, but um, I was I was inspired by the question to at least answer the way I did That's a good aside and thank you Nate for that. It's a good question. Um, Bring more depth a lot of depth to be plumbed here Speaking of which we have a question from Let's see. This is from freedom Chattani who asks what is the future vr in education? We're seeing vr high schools in california Yeah, we certainly have not ventured into that at Goddard. That's not that's not really a Technology at my prior work. We actually had a little work team that got into vr a little bit And we had some people working on it, but haven't done much Much with it here. I do think there could be some really interesting possibilities for The way that we host residences because it's not really in a course environment. It's much more of Like I said more of a conference kind of feel and virtual reality could really lend itself toward creating some really rich multisensory interactions We have a lot of people in our community who are into embodiment studies and this understanding that we learn through our bodies not just through kind of what's behind our between our ears and And so physical movement is a really important piece of the experience And that's going to be a fascinating conversation as we as we think about the possibility what that looks like in a virtualized environment Great question. Freedom. Do you want to say more about that? Yeah so I think I think if you look at, you know, what's happening today Vr is is the future really in terms of, you know, being able to Maintain that social interaction the social aspect of education. I mean if you think about Everyone went online today, you know, we're struggling about our own evolution and existence I feel like we are on the precipice of our own evolution in the species, you know, where mobile devices are a natural extension of ourselves But with VR The only difference now is that You are interacting with avatars But the technology is only going to get better and better and with the with a rival of 5g And the conversions of all these other technologies We will not be able to separate, you know, reality from The virtual world And so I think we need to prepare for that. I think the the kovat 19 Is almost an awakening To a species because we talked about it that someday we're going to wake up and we have not trained Our students and our kids for the future It just happened faster than I thought I love your perspective freedom. That's fantastic Thank you Bernard, do you want to make the leap from talking about budgets to the Species and how we train our students and perform a massive civilization shift Well, I will say and this is not speaking directly to virtual reality, but it's something that that I'll get just a little background here last time I was on the on this forum was actually Two months before I started the job at goddard or maybe it was three months before And if you actually go back and look at the recording brian I made a reference to a school that intrigued me called goddard college It was because I had just been given the offer and I couldn't publicly say where I was in the decision But it was it was literally at that time A lot of my work has been around What it means to create deeply human learning environments And by deeply human what I mean by that are Um environments that really tap into the values that resonate across time and culture In terms of the human experience For example a sense of adventure being on a quest. It's something that transcends We see that in narratives across Time and culture a sense of meaning and purpose a sense of agency a sense of wonder Mystery this this kind of being drawn to a sense of mystery The desire to see some kind of growth or progress Happening in our lives or in that around us that these are these are these really deeply human centered principles I actually believe that part of the way that our contemporary education system has started to go off track Is that we have set aside those deeply human values For technical values Values that are celebrated in the machine world and these are values like mass production and mechanization And I mean there are there are series of them and I I'm not I did write a little book about this But I don't like pitching specific things, but um, I I use this example though of Oxygen of breathing that if you look at the symptoms of oxygen deficiency They're almost identical to the The characteristics of a disengaged group of students in a classroom They have difficulty managing their emotions difficulty regulating their emotions They get bored easily they get irritable They fall asleep It's literally the kind of thing that we see in some disengaged learning environments And I would argue that's because we built the environment around Values that are good for machines, but not good for humans And so to me what intrigues me about a technology like virtual reality is that perhaps it's a way for us to Bring those together in some in some new pieces We can create some environment We can leverage the technology to do new things But we can build it in such a way that it taps into those really deeply human yearnings Like a sense of adventure and meaning and purpose and wonder and mystery and growth and those sorts of things Part of the reason I mention this is Goddard is actually a place that that majors in those human values It's a community. That's why we don't have letter grades letter grades are largely a mechanized approach to assessing learning And grade doesn't really tell you much nor does a number And we are more interested. I'm far more interested in measuring the amount of seconds that a hug Takes place in our graduate ceremony Because it demonstrates a little connection Then I you know in some of those other measures So I think VR could be a really a humanizing and empowering tool. I think it also could be a dehumanizing Force if we allow it as well Yeah, I believe that it's a it's a humanizing technology I think if you can humanize technology And integrate it, you know into the values and the things that make us Who we are as human beings? And I think there has to be a responsible design of these technologies If you think about the industrial model of education, what we had was We were preparing factory workers. It was that age, but now we are in this autonomous age In the personalized age, you know, like where your device alone Knows exactly where you're going and when because it's looking at all those parents So the convergence of artificial intelligence Virtual reality and blockchain is going to bring us all Into this phase of this singularity if you may say Where there is a period of hyper connectivity I mean, I believe that you know in the next 15 years We know we'll be having, you know, the brain to brain communication Where our brain is effectively connected to the cloud You know the computers that we have today the phones that we have today, there will be dematerialized Learning will be happening anywhere anytime and everywhere To be a situation where you put essentially, you know, if You know, if it was looking if you're looking at let's say ar You could you could just say Take me onto this Tourist mode and then that will guide show up And then this buildings build their history and things like that take me to education mode Then, you know, you're able to map those standards and the skills that are personalized to you Um, so you can switch into all these different modes And it's intricately integrated into your life. So there is no longer um a separation of Your personal life and your academic life and your work life is all happening together Freedom I believe that's the future with a fantastic vision. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing it I would love to hear more about this. We're we're appreciate. We're approaching the end of the hour So, and I of another fellow I want to bring up on stage. Thank you so much freedom. Thank you Thank you for for envisioning that together We have bill Hughes as well from open for learning Will Hey, brian hi benard. Thank you so much. This has been a delight to listen to um I'm curious benard. Maybe it's the last question for running out of time Where do you see Goddard in five years and how do you feel like you have to get there? And you talked a little bit about stabilizing first and then moving I'd love to understand where you're going and also how you're going to navigate the covet um Landline standing right in front of you right now Right. Thank you. So um right now We have the I believe we've we've done all the things we need to do to have a successful turnaround With a couple of exceptions one is we still need some tweaking to Our academic model and the financial model just to make to make sure that it's uh, We don't need to reduce our expenses as much as we need them to be more predictable Um and manageable so that we know what's coming so we we're not surprised by expenses And that's a common problem in many higher ed landscapes. It's just whenever you're in a situation like ours There is no room for That kind of messiness. You have to have a detailed understanding of each piece, right? So for for us, that's a real critical immediate piece and then I ultimately need to build the cash reserves If we don't build the cash reserves, I don't think I have a very good chance with the accreditors come september We have a 20 a site visit and if that goes well, um, I think the best that could happen is I mean if I get a $2 million gift tomorrow, um, maybe you I don't know how many millionaires you have in here, brian If I get a $2 million gift tomorrow, I feel really confident about our future I feel like and we've done everything we need to do and so let's assume that that happens because I should say this I would feel guilty if I didn't say this I feel really proud of the work that we've done as a community but it's a high risk and there is I took this job knowing that it may I may succeed or fail and And uh, there's it's definitely not a 90 chance of success yet This fundraising is so key But if we make it through this piece and we hit that financial target and the accreditors agree with the model that we've created We have April 20th visit. We'll probably hear from them by september october I've already talked to the community and I'm asking that every year We're going to have a series of three to five key new initiatives experiments proposals around new innovations One of them is a dream that goddard college will become the uh the hub for integrative medicine in new england and beyond We already have a lot of interesting background in that and i'm expecting to see some proposals in areas Tie that into the national health care conversations It's a part of the conversation that's really not as central as it could be and it could be a way of reducing costs while improving well-being and outcomes If it's a new set of an alternative perspectives I do believe and I want to be part of the first truly learner driven digital learning platform in existence because I haven't seen one yet Um in a formal higher ed environment at least and so i'm hoping that we will be able to have the resources and the time To launch that and to tell the truth. I want to do it at goddard But even if it doesn't happen at goddard, um, I don't think I could let go of that one I feel like sometime in my lifetime. I want to be part of the movement that builds the first truly learner driven digital learning platform Um, those those are two key pieces. The third is this village of learning that we're launching I believe that the the strongest organizations of the future will be blurring the lines between Organizations that there will be a kind of synergy and interacting with and supporting one another such that You sometimes don't even know when one organization begins and another one ends And that's kind of the vision between behind our village of learning is bringing this community of different organizations together Where we can amplify one another's works in ways that none of us expected or anticipated Thank you so much. That's because I hope you get there. Thank you And I hope they give you some uh, some grace in april too if you've got interest Um pointing to successful, uh summer Fundraising then I think you're in a going to be in a good situation Thanks. Thanks Great question. And uh, what a great visionary answer bernard. Um, I I hate to say it, but we're we're right the end of the hour Um, the let me ask you two two parting questions. Uh, one is um What note do you want to leave this on is this this is a hopeful note about a College in the brink that is just turn itself around and aim to the bright future Um, I I'd like to actually, uh, offer, uh, uh, less pleasant Closing remark. Um, which is I I believe so strongly in what we're doing I mean, I left a really nice Roll and really safe kind of place in my lifestyle was working on my next three books One of the downsides of this is I have a book that's due to the publisher And I've never missed a publishing deadline and I've missed the deadline twice on a book My well, I knew I'll learn to be on letter grades. It's a critique of the letter grade system Um, so yeah, there are some sacrifices here I've been apart from my family a lot that there've been some huge sacrifices And I would encourage people to count the costs before they step into a role like this. It's amazing. It's life changing I'm so honored to be part of it But it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life And I can't emphasize that enough and I've been through some pretty major issues in my life And I will say that if we don't make it I don't have a great plan And I think that's a that's an important part I arrived realizing that there was no elegant way to close this college That really the best way for the best interest of everyone students and everyone involved Is to actually be successful that we don't have cash reserves. We don't have an endowment. We don't