 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, which many people find inspiring and motivating, and helps you keep the right mindset and perspective in dealing with life's challenges. My special guest today is truly an extraordinary leader and the highly respected president of Creighton University. He is Father Daniel Hendrickson, and today we are going beyond higher education. Hey, Father Daniel, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Rusty. It's great to be here. Greetings to everyone from Omaha, Nebraska. Well, Aloha from Hawaii. Aloha. Father, I know you for a few years now since you became president in 2015, but can you tell me a little bit about your background, where you grew up at? Sure, I'd love to, Rusty, and let me just once again say thanks to everyone for having me on the show, and Rusty is a great alumnus of the class of 91. We're so proud of Rusty and his career and his leadership, and I hope we get to talk about some of that too as we move on in the show. I'm from Fremont, Nebraska, Rusty, and which is not here far from Omaha, and I went on to another Jesuit university in another state, and so being able to get to learn about Creighton and come back here is going to roll blessing in my life. I studied theology and psychology, and then entered the Jesuits a year after I graduated. So finished at Marquette in 1993, and then in 1994, I entered the Jesuits. Wow, Father. And I want to ask you this, what was the first job that you ever had that you got paid money for? First job was a fun job, Rusty. I was at a big swimming pool in our hometown, working as a lifeguard. I have an identical twin brother and an older brother, and with about 15 other friends and peers, we ran the city pool and taught swim lessons in the mornings, did private lessons in the afternoon, and then ran the pool through the afternoon and evening as, you know, sometimes 600 kids a day would come in for swimming. That sounds like a fun job for sure, and Father, I want to know, when did you decide that you wanted to join the Society of Jesus? You know, not unlike some of the things you yourself talk about, I met some great mentors when I was at Marquette University. One of them was the Jesuit priest who became, shortly after I got to know him, the executive vice president of the university, and then moved on to a different Jesuit university to be a president there. I've known this guy for over 30 years, and just to learn a lot from him. But it was during those years at Marquette, I never thought I'd become a priest and a Jesuit priest at that. But I watched him and I watched others around him, the Jesuits, have such a great impact on young people like myself. They were full of wisdom and stories and good advice and the right perspectives. Jesuits tend to have that great global vision and a sense of the way the world works. So I was really impressed by the way they were impacting young people. Oh, I like hearing that about the mentoring and just being inspired about that. And Father Daniel, you know, Creighton has such a beautiful campus, and I know that you were a professor some years ago. And then I want to know, what led you back to Creighton the second time? Right. Actually, I'm going to talk just for a minute about the first time I came here in the year 2000, and I taught in the Department of Philosophy. And those were, gosh, some of the best years of my life working with the undergrads here. And I actually wasn't much older than they were at the time. And it was that year when Father Schlegel came onto campus. He was the president then. Morrison had just retired after his great leadership. Then I came back as a trustee of the university back in about 2012 or 2013. And so I was, you know, be able to teach here. Be a member of the board of trustees. And then finally the trustees elected me as president in 2015. And Father Lanin was retiring, and he handed off university in a great perspective and a great position. And it was an honor to come in and take over as leader. Well, I mean, everyone that I know that's connected to Creighton, we're so proud to have you as our president of Creighton University. And I want to share my experience when I was at Creighton. I mean, I got recruited for tennis. And Coach Ed Hubs was such a great coach, a great mentor. He inspired us. He showed us that he cared about all of our well-being. He wanted to help us achieve our goals. And for us, when we went on the tennis court, we wanted to make him proud and play extra hard for him. I want to know, Father, what are you hoping students experience when they attend Creighton University? One of the things you yourself talk about in your books when you talk about leadership is about students making choices and embracing challenges and even adversity. And we actually, we try to do that at Creighton. So in many ways, we're following your good advice. Some of that comes from the wisdom and perspective of the Jesuits as well. But we want students to step beyond their comfort zones. We want them to work together, but to seek good mentoring, to ask important questions, and to embrace challenges by which let them grow. It's such an important part of their transformation at Creighton University. We do that in two interesting ways as well that I think would be meaningful to your audience. We create a lot of hands-on experience for our students. And we get national recognition for this. One of them is through internships. So plugging students in coast to coast and out in Hawaii in different important internships in their lives as young people. It gives them that hands-on experience working in courts and corporations and clinics and such. And then the other place that we do a really good job with that is right in our own laboratories and libraries. We get national recognition for undergraduate research. And that leads our students into graduate and professional programs generally of their first choice. Oh, I like that. And Father Daniel, I want to, I mean, your last trip to Hawaii, I was able to talk with you. And let's talk about my books. You have my first one. I need to get you my second one. And as you know, it's all about creating that superior culture of excellence. And that's what you and Creighton University is about. And it's also about leadership. And I want to ask you, what do you feel the best leaders do? I think the leaders keep challenging their people to grow. And that's been interesting during this pandemic as we're in a lot of Zoom meetings with the university, my own cabinet, my own president's council. It actually becomes a bit more of a challenge to see how they're growing and moving on in their positions. We've been able to be very productive. But I've noticed that interpersonal reaction and engagement is so essential in leadership. But creating a culture, too, of self-awareness and thinking critically about the decisions we're making, about the opportunities in front of us, about the way we're working collegially and getting good advice and diversity of perspectives, I think that's important, too, in leadership. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And, Father, the other thing that I loved about Creighton was the class size. I mean, it was such a great ratio of students to teacher. And oftentimes, the professors were very open to meeting outside of class and their student aides as well, the teaching aides. And is that still happening at Creighton as well? Rusty, one of the special features of an education at Creighton is that we have a teacher-scholar model with our faculty. So some of the best researchers are still working hand-on-hand in the classroom with the youngest of our students. That is what's helped create also this culture of productivity and undergraduate research, where our young students are brought into the passions and the productivity of faculty right at hand and watching them work and publish, show results. And that really inspires the students. But you're right about those connections that happen in our classrooms. We keep small class size. And then those professors offer that one-on-one individual mentoring. And our professors, too, they're just genuinely invested in the success of our students. It's kind of the stuff you talk about in your own books about challenging people and bringing them along. Yeah, and I felt that the professors care about what they're doing in their classes and the students that they're trying to impact in a positive way. And one more thing about leadership, Father. How do you see Creighton's role in developing and enhancing leadership among their students? We do that in a number of ways. One of the ways is that hands-on experience we were just talking about, but also creating the kinds of positions here on campus where they assume different responsibilities and they're held accountable. They get out and speak with their peers and try and exact projects for the good of the university or for their own academics. And so we see our students time and again stepping up. As leader myself, I like to meet every Monday with a group of students. It's a different group of students week by week. And we're going to try and figure out how to do that during this pandemic. But I asked two questions to begin with as they introduced themselves. One is all the basics. Where are you from? Where are you living on campus? What do you study? We get all that done. And then for the second round, I say, what organizations are you involved with? And where and how do you embrace leadership in those organizations? And I'm impressed week by week how really truly engaged our students are in these different organizations on campus. The Greek system, student athletes, campus ministry, service and justice. You just go down the list, Russ, and you see our students engage working with people, working with one another and creating a lot of great impact around them. I love hearing that, Father Daniel. And one of the things you just mentioned was Creighton Athletics. And when I was there, Creighton was with the Missouri Valley Conference. And then now we're with the Big East. And being a part of the Big East, what do you see the big benefits of that move from Missouri Valley to the Big East? One of the things that Creighton and other schools like us, when we went into the Big East, especially schools in the Midwest, we all assumed that we'd have an uptick of enrollment from East Coast states. And that didn't happen for any of us, for Marquette University, for Xavier, for DePaul, for Creighton. What it did, Rusty, is it created coast to coast and out in Hawaii and around us this great recognition of who and what Creighton is and where we are. And so we're in exponential more households, millions of more households, four months of the year through the winter with our media contract, the exposure on men's basketball, and then through that other programs, which is getting notoriety, we do a great job in tennis. One of our program you were involved with years ago, one of our students there got the academic championship for the Big East recognition, not only a great tennis player, but awarded for the best GPA for the Big East male athlete. So it was terrific. Volleyball, those women are terrific. They take on a big 10 schools. So we have a great program. Creighton was really able to step up into a new and different competitive arena. Again, something you would coach yourself for good leadership is being able to embrace different kinds of challenges and take the next step. And Father, going beyond that now, like you mentioned, there's so many Creighton sports teams that are having some major success. How is the Creighton sports experience, the athletic experience, such a key part for all students now? I think our leadership in athletics with our athletic director, Bruce Rasmussen, he's been with us for decades and our coaches. I think one of the things they bring to the job is they remember that our athletes are student athletes, and they're an important part of this community. So we work hard not only for their competition on the court and the playing field, but also to be strong and engaged in the classroom. When I was teaching here, Rusty, gosh, over 20 years ago, some of the best students in my classes were student athletes. It's because they had this structure of time and organization. They knew their priorities. They had to get to practice. They did their homework. They prepared for tests. When our student athletes were traveling, they'd come in a couple of weeks in advance and they said, I need to line up. What's going to be the homework and how can I be prepared and how can I catch up when I get back? So I'm just consistently impressed with the athletic program here and the achievement, the focus, the sense of priority in their lives. It's painful, Rusty, that we just announced last week that we have to cancel because of this pandemic, our full sports programs. So men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross-country. My niece, by the way, I'm gonna give a shout out. She's a cross-country runner with us this year. And she was looking forward to a great season. And the other sport is volleyball. So we'll hopefully be able to play those competitions in the springtime. Yeah, you know, in my second book, Father, I talk about that life doesn't happen to you. Life happens for you. And I think if everyone just, you know, as disappointing as that is, I mean, if they try to see, you know, what are the positives that's gonna come out of it? What's the silver linings and really have the right mindset and perspective? What are your thoughts? Rusty, I like that a lot because, you know, things do happen in life and we have to step up and embrace them and keep adjusting and moving on. We're asking our campus community, I just welcomed 1,000 new freshmen. And by the way, 6% of our class of 1,000 are from Hawaii. So once again, in another year, year after year, we have a great contingent coming from your state, Rusty. And a lot of them come right from Honolulu. It's so impressive. So about 60 kids from Hawaii this year, 6% of that freshman class. But I told them, I said, you know, you're coming onto a campus that looks and feels a bit different than usual. We have to embrace ways to negotiate the classrooms, to do this safely, to recognize the protocols and policies of this pandemic and we'll get back to a new normal of some other time. Right now we've really got to be careful and protect one another. Part of my message too as leader of the university was to be very intentional about the kind of community we're forming here, how we can care for one another and support one another. So Father Daniel, let's talk a little bit more about the coronavirus pandemic and how you've had to adjust and adapt to the situation. And I know that you started classes today and there's spacing among students in the classroom. What else are you doing? This has taken months and months with a lot of moving targets and uncertainty, but we have created like you've got a picture there in front of us is this spacing in the classrooms. We've decreased density in the dormitories, our residence halls by 18%. We've put a plexiglass in spaces where there's a lot of interaction for kind of the customer service operations of the university. We've put up barriers and other situations and spacing in our laboratories where students stand side by side and work on projects. We've got a program every day where we begin with a campus app check-in. So we're on our own mobile devices indicating if we have any symptoms or not, we report to a screening check-in spot. At least we're into that for the first 30 days whereby we get our temperature taken and get screened in that regard. So there's just a lot going on. We had a mass last night, Rusty, down, it was called Mass at Morrison, Morrison Stadium where we play soccer. And we had about 800 kids come and they were all spaced out over the field. And we tried to get it done in about a quick hour, but it was a great experience of bringing people together, talking about the importance of the university about being a community, just doing around the faith perspective of our lives. Well, I like hearing all of that, Father. And through these years, Creighton has consistently is ranked among the top colleges in the United States. And what do you feel is the big difference between a Creighton education versus some other universities? That's a great question. One of the first things that comes to mind is the fact that we are Jesuit and Catholic. And so we bring with us 500 years of excellence, the kinds of excellence you talk about in your books when you talk about a culture of leadership. But it's that Jesuit perspective of education grounded in the core curricular studies of the humanities which ask our students to matter what they're studying, ask them to think deeply and broadly about themselves and the world around them. Rusty, the second thing that comes to mind is the graduate and professional programs of this campus. I would say that of the Jesuit universities around us in the United States and the world, Creighton University is one of the most complex in regard to how many programs we offer. So we've got all the health sciences programs which a lot of students from Hawaii come here to engage. We've got medicine and nursing and dentistry, the therapies, pharmacy, a new physician assistant program. We just opened that too here in the city of Phoenix which I hope we can talk about in a minute. But we've got business and law. So we've got not only the questions of philosophy, theology, language, literature and history, but then all of these graduate and professional programs through health sciences, business and law. And that makes this a real stand out. These are difficult years, Rusty, for colleges, universities. And the pandemic has really created the situation that creates very focused leadership, responsible budgeting, strategic recruitment efforts and Creighton is really poised well for a strong future. And Father, like you mentioned Phoenix, Arizona, most schools are getting smaller, yet Creighton University is expanding and about into the health sciences in Arizona. Why did you choose Phoenix as the campus expansion? I remember you approached me and back in January and we were together in Honolulu for a Creighton event. We had, I think we had 300 or 400 people come out for that event and you were so excited about Phoenix. You're like, Father, this is a great move for Creighton. In fact, I like to talk about Creighton going to Phoenix as kind of another big East moment for us that we're stepping up and we keep nationalizing this university in interesting ways. So interestingly, our going to Phoenix is a little bit less about us deciding to go there and more about being called to be there. Health sciences and healthcare professionals in Phoenix knew about the range of programs at Creighton University and our identity and our mission is Catholic and Jesuit. They said they wanted to work with us. So we started way back in 2005 with on the ground engagements with medical students, clinical rotations just in the summers. And look what years later, 15 and 20 years later what that's becoming is we will open next year. I was just looking at some of the building projections, a new health sciences campus with a four year medical school in the city of Phoenix. It's gonna be a campus that houses about 900 students and it gives us the ability to expand almost quickly. So we can keep being creative and innovative about the other kinds of programs. And I think too, being, gosh, what is that? A couple of thousand miles away is that our Phoenix campus is gonna be good for Omaha. So as I'm proud of this pipeline of undergraduates coming from Hawaii to Omaha, our numbers are up in Arizona. And in Phoenix in particular, those kids coming here, probably with the hope to get back to our graduate and professional programs in Phoenix. Oh, that's absolutely terrific, Father Daniel. And let's talk more about our Creighton Hawaii connection now. And it's, I totally look forward to your visits to Hawaii and this was a picture of the year prior when we were watching the, with our alumni in Hawaii and watching the March Madness basketball cheering Creighton on. And, you know, all of my friends and people that I know from Creighton who graduated, they're all successful for some reason. And there's no, I mean, it's, when I look back at why, it's just everything that you said about the Jesuit values and just the difference about how Creighton does create that superior culture of excellence. What are your thoughts about this Creighton Hawaii connection? I'll say this that time and again, when people come to learn about Creighton and they come and visit us, they're just flabbergasted of how we have all these kids from Hawaii in cold Omaha trying to negotiate what the winter is. And it's really a remarkable story to tell about this relationship that's going on for decades and even longer. And you're right too about the success of our alumni and our alums back in Hawaii in the health sciences and in business and in media. It's really impressive. You know, part of it is that we've, we're able to attract a high quality student from Hawaii. And that just has maintained, you know, momentum for year after year. It's really quite a story to celebrate. And father, when I was at Creighton and I know it continues to today, there's such a great, I mean, group of different ethnicities among students that attend Creighton. I mean, just like how we live in Hawaii. I mean, we have basically everybody of every ethnicity here and Creighton has a reputation of inclusiveness. And what are your thoughts about that? You're absolutely right. I look at the statistics each year, especially when we bring in a new class of freshmen, how do we compare that with years prior? We've been hovering around 25, 26, 27% diversity within a freshman class. And that's remarkable, Rusty. I look at some peer institutions in the Midwest, they're 10% down, they're about 15% diversity. So we're able to bring in people from around the United States and, you know, the nation and even from around the world represent different customs and cultures, languages, cuisines. One of the best events year after year on the Creighton campus is the great event run by the students from Hawaii. And last year was, I think it was its 60th anniversary. There's like 1,200 people who come in for this great event. Yeah, the Creighton luau. The luau is terrific. It's a big springtime event. We had to cancel it this year with the pandemic as we did everything else. So next year, I hope it's bigger and better and even stronger. Now, Rusty, with the diversity at Creighton University, when I got here in 2015, I launched what we call the Creighton Global Initiative. And then I had one of my first alumni events in Hawaii of January of that year. And the Creighton alumni in Hawaii were so excited about this global expansion, global vision, global outreach of Creighton. Creighton's been great on the global stage anyway. Long time relationship in the Dominican Republic and all these other engagements around Western Europe and Asia and even in Africa. But we really stepped up to celebrate who we are around the world, where alumni are plugged in around the world. It's been fun to see our faculty, staff and students energized by a new global vision. No, I love that. And I know that you've traveled the world to many countries and you love traveling. So tell me how many countries have you visited so far? Rusty, I think I'm up to about 35, maybe 40 actually. Just as we got into 2020, which has been a heck of a year, I was able to tour the old Jesuit missions from the 17th century in South America. And it was actually from there that I traveled out to Hawaii to see you guys for our alumni trip. That was my last big travel event is coming back from Hawaii. And then we got into February and the pandemic slowed us all down. Well, if that's how you came to Hawaii, I want you to keep traveling to different countries so that you'll come to Hawaii along the way. But no, that's great because it just adds more publicity and global awareness about Creighton University and the goals that you want to really have people achieve. That's also one of the things you highlight in your own good wisdom about effective leadership and a culture of excellence is that diversity of perspectives and being challenged by new ideas and other people and cultures and customs. So I think that's a really important thing about cultivating leadership. And to get our students to negotiate those realities is not insignificant. Father, before we wrap up, I want to ask you one more question. What's a valuable lesson you learned in life so far? I think one of my most important lessons is to keep asking questions and keep getting good advice and consultation. In some ways, it goes way back to me celebrating the mentors in my life who were teaching me a lot when I was a young student in my own undergraduate years. And I really push our own students. I see seek out mentors, seek out advice, ask questions, because that just pays so many dividends. Even if the advice ends up not being the path any of us choose, you're still learning about different ideas and ways forward. So I would say I've really tried to apply that in my leadership, too, is keep asking those around me. Is this the right step to take? Ultimately, it's the decision I'm going to make. But that sense of collegiality, of collaboration, of teamwork, it's something you demonstrate in your own life as a co-trustee and is your career creating as a impressive student-athlete? And I just think bringing that into our lives and our workplaces is so important. No, I love hearing that because the greatest leaders, like yourself, you're always open to new solutions and different possibilities. And Father, I really want to thank you for taking time in your schedule and to share your insights on Beyond the Lines today. I mean, you definitely go beyond the lines. And I feel so proud to know you and call you a friend. And just wanted to thank you for joining me on the show today. Likewise, Rusty. And don't send me that second book of yours because I want to come to Hawaii and get it from you in person. OK, deal. Thank you and aloha, Father. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKomori.com. And my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Father Daniel and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.