Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Southern Fried Podcast, a production of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I'm Rex Nelson, Democrat Gazette senior editor, and it's my pleasure to have on the podcast the president of Hendricks College in Conway, Dr. Karen Peterson.
About three years into this now, but welcome back. I know we've had you before, but it's great to have you back on the show again.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Always a pleasure to speak with you.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Well, we've probably waited too long because you've got so much going on now. For those of us who are listening to this podcast, I will tell you like I did the last time. I think my bias is right, right off the top. My oldest son is a proud Hendricks College graduate. In fact, he just arrived.
He spent part of the summer with us and just arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, where he's going to be a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, and arrived there yesterday, actually.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: How terrific. You must be so proud of him.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Getting set up in his new house today. So I've got a Hendricks graduate in the family, and I spent five years in my career as head of the association of all our private colleges and universities in Arkansas, including Hendrix. I'm a huge Hendrix fan. So you're not going to get Mike Wallace here doing a mean interview, but there really seriously is a lot to talk about and I want to start big picture and then we will come down to Hendricks. I mean, we look around the country right now.
We've heard so much for years now about the coming enrollment cliff as the number of students decline. And indeed, we have seen in the last decade a number of small, like you, private liberal arts institutions close.
What is the answer to that for institutions like Hendricks? How do you survive the coming years? And then I'm going to get into specific, some specifics later that you're doing, but big picture.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I think there are a couple of things at play for institutions like Hendricks College, which is a national liberal arts college. It's residential. It is undergraduate focused. It is rare to find an institution that still maintains that undergraduate residential experience as its primary and almost for Hendricks exclusive mission.
The key for us is to distinguish our value proposition.
We have to have something that students can't get somewhere else. And we have that in via Hendricks, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, as one of the major initiatives of the last three years at the college.
It is a tough marketplace. But, you know, because you just mentioned your son and you know, from working with leaders all over Arkansas, that Hendricks produces outstanding graduates who lead in just about every sector in the state.
And so there's a lot of value there. It's conveying that value to the average family, the parents of incoming students, and helping them understand why that educational experience, what it does, we educate the whole person.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: We are not transactional.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: When I was at Arkansas independent colleges, universities, I always used to say, we don't prepare students for a job, we prepare them for life.
And it really is. I mean, again, my bias. I'm a graduate of. I'm a watchdog graduate. I'm a graduate of a private four year liberal arts school. So.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And a job is part of a life.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: There's nothing wrong with preparing someone to have a meaningful career, but it can't. It has to encompass more than that because, you know, the economy's changing. It has been changing our entire lives.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Oh, very much.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: It's changing at a rapid rate. And so preparing students for a technical career doesn't make a lot of sense in this economy.
Preparing them to at least be comfortable with change and with some uncertainty is a far more valuable skill than a technical skill, which will be obsolete within a couple of years.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
You have announced what I consider a pretty dramatic change in how students earn their bachelor's degree at Hendricks.
Let's talk about that and what problems you see this change as addressing for the school.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: So what you're referencing is via Hendricks, and it is a complete overhaul of the academic curriculum to include both the breadth of the liberal arts. So the things that we know really help shape the whole person and prepare students for a successful life and a full time work placement, full time, full semester work placement for every student so that they can see how those things that they're learning in their English class or their history class actually benefit them when they're out in the working world and then come back and finish their senior year and really reflect on that as they finish out that coursework and think about their vocation and their calling. The problem we're trying to address is the anxiety. There's this enormous anxiety that families have with the investment in higher education because they've been misinformed, frankly, about the payoff of higher education. It's clear, empirically, the data are absolutely clear. If you start and finish your college degree, you are far better off on every measure, including income. But we have to tangibly and tactically address that for families. And via Hendricks is our way of putting our money where our mouth Is,
[00:05:58] Speaker A: you know, one of the things that I had to deal with when I was representing all 11 of our private colleges and universities is that people would read, read these stories about, you know, student X living in New York city who has $400,000 in student Deb and can't find a job. And I would have to explain to people, look, that's a different world. That's not the case on the ground in a place like Arkansas, where all of our private universities. And I want you to talk about Hendricks specifically, but have all kinds of financial aid programs and very few students come out of there after four or five years with a huge debt. Yeah.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I mean, the cost of college is not actually increasing astronomically, despite the media attempts to lead parents to believe that we have very generous financial aid. And I imagine all of our private institutions do. But Hendricks awards 100% of our students financial aid because of our endowment. Our donors make that possible.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Because they have that experience and they want to make sure that other bright students have it as well.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I want to go back to Via Hendricks, though, because we talk so much about workforce development, career preparation, and a lot of parents I know, and you touched on this, are automatically thinking job placement. So to you, what does success look like for a Hendricks graduate?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: It's so varied. When I think about the success of Hendricks graduates, I'm often speaking to people who graduated 30 or 40 years ago because a big part of my job is fundraising and that's the people I spend time with. And there's no one thing that is a marker of that success other than the fact that these are people who have that liberal arts education and that ability to learn and shift and live with some uncertainty, with some comfort. Those skills are transferable across any industry. So what does success look like for Via Hendricks? We keep doing that.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: And our students have an earlier built in network with our alums because a lot of their co op placements are going to be in places where we have people already working who are alums of Hendricks College. So they'll have that network before they leave college. They don't have to try to build it after they leave. And for some of them, that opportunity will redirect their life.
So let's say you're a student who is absolutely certain that you want to be an accountant and you go through some of your coursework and you go do a placement in an accounting firm and you love it and you do well because you're a Hendrick students. And our students are terrific. And you march across the stage, you grab your degree and you go work in that field. Or the same student perhaps gets that co op and decides, you know, this is not, this is not what I thought it would be. This is not really what I want to do. They have another year to a year and a half to adjust their academic program to try something else. They don't have to go out into the world and make that decision. And it feels so permanent.
That's invaluable for young people to be able to experiment a little bit in the workplace before they graduate. That's something that's really hard to do with a part time internship or a summer internship.
It almost requires you to have that
[00:09:26] Speaker A: full time experience when you were, excuse me, first on our show. You're three years into this job as president of Hendricks, so it's been a couple of years since I had you on, but I'm not going to assume that anybody remembers every word of that. And I know we discussed this, but you yourself kind of had an. You talk about changing and maybe not what you expected.
You had an unusual path for a university president.
Talk about that a little bit. Your personal path.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, higher education changed my life.
I did not know anyone who went to college growing up. No one in my family went to college. We didn't know people who attended college. I didn't even finish high school.
And I remember this moment, which I've written about elsewhere, where I was washing a car in the snow because I had this job in the auto body industry. And I was, I don't know how old I was. I was late teens, early 20s. And I remember thinking in that moment, I can't do this for the rest of my life.
I will get old and this will not be a good path for me. I need education.
And so I landed in a community college, which is a great place to start for someone like me. And I remember that first English class. And I remember it was the first time in my life I felt like I belonged in a space and I never left. I bounced around, I think, three different colleges before I finally graduated. But I knew that was where I needed to be. And I had a professor who encouraged me to go to graduate school, which I also did not understand.
And I thought, I can do this. I could be like you and I could change other people's lives the way you've changed mine. Absolutely. Sign me up. And I never look back. I never thought I would be an administrator because I love teaching so much. I love being in the classroom, and I Just love working with students.
But I found out I was good at this kind of work and that if I did this work well, other people could change the lives of even more students.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: So I would take it that your personal experience in life really kind of helped you design via Hendricks.
Would that be a safe assumption?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I worked full time while I was in college.
I lived on my own. I had no family support. I had to pay my tuition and all of that. So it never. I never even understood that you could. You could have the life that our students have the luxury of having. But I made sure that my son got it right because I see the value in it. So did it inspire me? I think the opportunity to be in the workforce in a safe way, in a way that doesn't feel so high stakes for these young people is really powerful. I didn't have that. It was high stakes. I had to pay the rent and pay the tuition for them. They can do this and they can experiment, and I think that's terrific. So maybe there is maybe in the back of my mind somewhere that was an inspiration.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
We read so much about, you know, this generation, like every generation is different than the ones that came before it.
Are there major things you notice in the students that are coming to Hendrickson these days that their desires are different? What they want out of life is different than when you were in college, working full time to put yourself through school?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I am one of those people who.
I love this generation. And I recognize for all of the faults, every generation has critics. I'm Gen X. People had lots of things to say about us and how terrible we were.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: I'm an old baby boomer, so we're really terrible.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: You really get that. Bear the brunt of it. But these young people, they care about each other in a way that we never did. And again, as a Gen X person, the world was a little tougher back then.
It's not now. And I, and some people bemoan that. And certainly there are some downs, Downside consequences of that, but there are a lot of upsides to it, too. There are a lot of upsides to watching young people care for each other in a meaningful way and treat each other with respect in a way that, you know, maybe we didn't do when we were younger. I like that. And there are just as many of them that will work just as hard. I got to spend a lot of time with them a couple of weeks ago, and they are impressive. Yeah, I just, I love working with
[00:13:52] Speaker A: young people, you know, and you mentioned that all important word change earlier
[00:14:00] Speaker B: and
[00:14:00] Speaker A: you touched on something again that I often say, and that is we can teach some student how to operate, let's call it Widget X, how to operate Widget X. But technology changes so fast that that's going to be a new way of building Widget X. Maybe in a year, maybe in five years from now. So when I talk to business leaders around the state, what they certainly said is, and again, you touched on this. We need people who can handle change, we need people who can think. We need people who are problem solvers and they're in lies the good in a liberal arts education.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you hire someone. When I hire someone, I want them to come and see things that I don't see and help me solve problems without me needing to tell them every step of the way what has to be done.
And the liberal arts prepares you to do that. You may not do it in your first job, but you'll pick it up pretty quickly.
There's nothing wrong with learning to code, for example. It helps your brain to learn some of those technical skills. There's not a problem with that. But that can't be the point of your education because if it is, you will be that next displaced worker. I think the liberal arts is the, is almost bulletproof in that sense.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: I have done so many different things in my life, same here.
And I love it. Like, I get a charge out of letters.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: I don't just write for a newspaper. I do a podcast. You know, I do radio.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: And you weren't, you didn't go to college to learn how to do podcasts?
[00:15:35] Speaker A: No, no, not at all. They didn't exist. Yeah, right. Yeah.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: So that's what we do. And that's why you see so many successful people around the state who have that background from Hendricks, that we have been focused on that liberal arts curriculum and that liberal arts experience for almost the entirety of the 150 year existence of the college. And it pays tremendous dividends, not just for individuals, but for the, for the state. I mean, this higher education is over a $5 billion economy in the state.
It is a significant contributor to the economic growth and development and the civic infrastructure of the state.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: But back to via Hendricks. Are you finding, because it is a big change.
Are you finding that your alumni, your donors are embracing this idea of experiential learning that you're doing?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: They love it. I mean, this is the easiest thing to sell because they already understand the value of it, having been out of college and in the workforce.
And when I talk to potential alumni partners for the co op itself, it does not take long to sell it to them. Here's the deal. There are fewer young people every year from now until, I don't know. I mean, as long as we have data, there'll be fewer young people every year. So the demographic cliff is here this year for colleges. In four years, it'll be here for anyone who's leading a company. And if you want a talent pipeline and you want access to strong talent, this is a way to establish it, this co op program. I say that and a light bulb goes off because I think a lot of people who are leading in business haven't had time to think about the demographics and what that will mean for their businesses.
This gives them access to young talent early on, and that is incredibly valuable for them.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
I'm going to have you walk me through an example. Let's say I'm 18 years old. I'm showing up as a freshman at Hendricks, and I'm thinking back to when I was 18 year old eons ago. But I've got this vague idea that I do love media, but I'm not sure if I want to be a television anchorman or if I want to work for a public relations agency or if I want to be a digital designer or I like sports. I'd love being a PR man for an NFL team. All those things floating around in my head.
What would my Hendrix journey now look like for the next four years?
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Well, you're going to come in, in that freshman year and you're going to have this team of advisors. So this is a. Via Hendricks is holistic. The co op program is one part of it. So you'll have this group of advisors that includes faculty and career advisors and maybe your coach if you're, if you're playing football. And they will start helping you with the courses that you need to take, including some courses in your second year that will prep you for that co op, like how to be a professional, how to show up in the workspace.
You know, just how do you present yourself well, when you do that co op, and then you will work with that career organization, the Via Hendricks career piece of it, to find that co op. So I might say to you, based on what you just told me, you know what would be a great opportunity? Go up and spend your semester in St. Paul, Minnesota with the Minnesota Wild hockey team.
That is an opportunity for you to Figure out whether you're really interested in sports media, which is a huge part of the economy and a growing.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: It really is. Yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: And so you go do that and you. You love it. And of course, everyone loves you because you're a Hendricks grad and you have to decide whether you want to move to Minnesota when they offer you a job. After you graduate, you come back and you're enrolled in a course at the same time that you're in your co op. It's an on for you. It would be online because you're in St. Paul, Minnesota, and each week you're meeting with a professor and some other students who are in different co op placements, and you're reflecting on that. Like, what are you doing?
That surprised you? What's going right? What's going wrong?
How do you adapt to the workforce you're in? In that moment, you come back, you have your senior year, you take what we call integrative capstone experience, where you take all the things you've done in that four years and you reflect on that, and that prepares you to walk across the stage in May with your diploma and go out into the world understanding the value of that education. So, via Hendricks is more than the co op. It's that integrated advising piece. It's those curricul pieces that go alongside that work experience that really allow you to have some confidence and a little bit more certainty about what you want to do when you graduate, which answers some of the concerns that parents and students have and allows us to demonstrate clearly the value of that liberal arts education.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: And you would have so much fun working in St. Paul with the Minnesota Wild.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to say this is an aside, but such a small world. I love the fact that out of the blue, you pick the wild, because in 2008, I was working in the George W. Bush administration. I took time off to volunteer for the Republican National Convention, which was in that arena by all my.
I worked out of that arena for a week doing meteor relations.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: It's a great city. It's a lot of fun.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: It was a lot of fun. That makes a lot of sense to me. I want to change gears because we're going to run out of time for just a second. But a few weeks ago, my son, the Hendricks graduate, my wife and I had been up to northwest Arkansas, and we're coming back and it's about supper time, and my son said, let's have supper in Conway and let's drive through campus. I hadn't been on campus in a while. So I said, I'm driving. I said, I'd love to do that.
So I pull off.
I can't drive through campus.
Every entrance is blocked. Every sidewalk even has a barricade on it. And I said, what's happening? Is the president here? So then we circle around, we come back out, there's this giant police presence that makes me think the president is here.
And so we give up. We cross over to the Village, and we're big Purple Cow fans in our family. So we go to Purple Cow, and a young waiter comes over.
What's going on across the street? Oh, man. It's Streamer U.
So for those that don't know, you did get a lot of media. But for those who don't know, tell us what the heck is Streamer U and why was it on the Hendricks campus this past summer?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Well, I didn't know either until last year when they reached out to us to see if we would be willing to host the second year of Streamr University. And this is Kai Sonet's attempt to help young creators understand the economy they're operating in. Now, if you watch for folks my
[00:22:11] Speaker A: age, who is Kai Sinette?
[00:22:12] Speaker B: So he's the most famous live streamer in the world. He has about 20 million followers.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: And I did not have a clue, so that.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Nor did I, because this is not my world. But apparently this is how young people get their entertainment. And it is entertainment, and it is not my kind of entertainment. It's probably not your kind of entertainment, but it is a massive enterprise, and he has completely reshaped that economy turn. Streaming. Streaming, I guess at some point was just people playing video games live and letting other people watch is not even the most dominant form of it now. So people are live streaming all kinds of things, including there was a woman doing crossword. I mean, not crossword. Jigsaw puzzles.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: In our library. Live streaming. I mean, so it's a really diverse entertainment enterprise.
I don't know exactly how they heard about Hendrix, but he reached out, his team reached out. And I didn't say no right away. I said, okay, this is interesting. Let's talk more. And put him in touch with someone on my team, and they took it from there. And his team visited campus, I think, once or twice. Maybe they loved it because it's beautiful. They fell in love with it.
And then we made it happen and we kept it quiet, which is one of the things we could do as a small college until the day before when it broke. And so that's why the fencing was up. Because these people, not just the, you know, not just the lead person, but even the streamers, the 120 streamers they brought, they're very popular.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: A million people applied to be part of this.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Exactly. I read about that after the fact. Yeah.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: So, you know, is it normal? No. Is it typical of a place like Hendricks? No, but we're not going to do normal and we're not going to do typical. If we do normal and we do typical, we're not going to survive.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: As going back to the beginning of this conversation.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: And so it gave us an opportunity for millions and I mean literally the
[00:24:03] Speaker A: national name ID that this gave you among young people.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: International.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah. International. Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: So a million people watched him live stream his opening ceremony. In the beginning, he drove across our campus on a golf cart, just. Just extolling the beauty of the campus.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: I can't buy that kind of.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah, okay.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't afford it, and I don't think I could buy it because it wouldn't be genuine anyway.
I can. And it's hard for me to explain to people who only saw the silliness, which is a nice way of saying some of the things that were out there. It's hard for me to explain to them what was actually happening behind the scenes. About 50 of our students worked.
They worked to help set up this incredible network that they used for streaming. They didn't use our network. They had to build their own. They helped broadcast an NBA broadcast basketball game out of our gym. I mean, they did all kinds of really incredible work. They would never have a chance to do otherwise. So it lined up nicely with the idea of putting your liberal arts education into practice and just working really hard for a week.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: But, yeah, it was an interesting opportunity. They don't go to the same place twice. And so I wish them luck and wherever the next location. And I want everyone to know we're open for business. If you want to film a movie or something a little bit more normal.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Exactly. Neat. Neat. Well, now I know, and I want you to know my firsthand experience. But we'll. We'll get him back. Yeah, you come back when he's back next summer, we'll get him back on campus. But that was well worth it. It sounds like, like you said, for the millions of viewers that you had during that week. So you're three years into your presidency now.
Can you point to two or three things you're most proud of that is that have happened over those three years.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm proud of Via Hendricks and I'm proud of Via Hendricks for reasons that aren't obvious from the outside. I'm proud of what our community does.
I mean, our faculty, our board of trustees, our staff, everyone came together to create this new curriculum and to help move this forward and get it launched.
It was shared governance in its finest. I've never seen anything like it in my 25 plus years of higher ed experience. And it was the perfect example of how that should work. I am really proud of our community for that. I am proud of our renovation of Galloway hall where we raised all of the funds to restore a historic building in about four months time and that that hall will reopen in August. And it's stunningly beautiful. You know, that's a major achievement in fundraising and we've had really, really great fundraising success in that first three years as we prepare for a comprehensive campaign that will be important.
And I'm proud of our students and just the amazing things that I see them do on campus as part of their routine educational experience and then the things they do after, after they graduate. I'm proud of the way that we make Arkansas better. Yeah, we make it a better state.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I'm so proud to be a part of that. And as someone who was born in Arkansas, I mean, that's special to me to be able to do something that makes this state better.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Conway, of course, has three four year institutions of higher learning. And just been incredible to me as an Arkansas native to watch the growth there now more than 70,000 residents.
And Hendricks has played such a role in Conway and its evolution itself. But a thriving downtown now, arts community, I mean, Conway has blossomed into quite a little city, hasn't it?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Oh, it's absolutely terrific place to live.
And the relationship between the city government, the business leaders, and the educational and social institutions, and even the relationship between the educational institutions is so strong. I mean, we're all working together for the greater good of the city.
And it's a great, It's a privilege to be a part of that. I love my community.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good place. And I do, you know, occasional Conway related shows on here, we try to cover, we focus this podcast on central Arkansas, but we try to cover the whole state. And always, like when I do a Conway centered show, I did one talking about a thriving arts community on Create Conway. We had several of their people on and how they have Friday night events that bring people downtown. And that's the kind of thing you usually think of happening in a much larger city?
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Frankly, no, it's terrific.
And the business community has just been so supportive of the city as well.
It's just, it is a unique place. And I think the higher education ecosystem as part of the foundation of the city is really important.
It just gives the city a different character than it would otherwise have.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So how about the next three to five years? What are some of the things you want to see happen at Hendricks?
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Well, via Hendricks launches with this first class that's coming in this fall. So, you know, I want to see that thriving and successful with really great partnerships, not just in Arkansas, I mean, a lot in Arkansas, but also in our surrounding states and as I said earlier, even in far flung regions like Minnesota.
So thriving via Hendricks, thriving faculty and staff and student body, and a really strong campaign we have to strengthen our endowment to ensure the future of the college. And those are the things that are on my mind for the next three to five years.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Gotcha. Well, I'm not going to wait three to five years to have you back, I promise you. There's too much going on at Hendricks, and it's such a. Such an important part of who we are as Arkansans. I think all of our colleges and universities are, but certainly Hendricks with its nationwide reputation. Dr. Karen Peterson is the 13th president of Hendricks College. Thanks for coming back and joining us.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Southern Fried Podcast, a production of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
