Visiting Butler: Sparking a Culture of Innovation

Hey, Michael. We got to take the campus tour to Butler University recently, and as we

head into this episode and what everyone's about to hear from, two really interesting conversations we wanted to give listeners. First, just a very quick bit of why for this episode and why Butler. We were excited to have them sponsor and bring us to their campus, which we recorded on September 26. And I say that because there are a few dated references that appear throughout it. But just to lay it out, Jeff, we were both interested in a president, right, who has had a tenure moving into the decade and a half mark and came in with an inaugural address that was super clear on some priorities for changes and strategy that they wanted to do at a time when they're launching a new strategy, actually at Butler now. And it goes to a theme, I think, Jeff, that we've sort of picked up on as we've gone through these episodes with each other over time, over, over the course of a decade, doing Future youe together, almost where we've seen that presidents, to create real, meaningful change, you need to be there for a while. And change is measured, really, once you get past that decade mark. But number two, it seems having priorities that are really spelled out clearly for people and so that the campus understands where you're going, why, how it fits into their mission, how it fits into who they are is really critical. We've both noted Michael Crowe, Rick Levin, folks we've had on their opening speeches were really revealing about where they intended to go and in some ways gave them license to do so. You see the same pattern here at Butler, but you've noted there's more to it than just that.

Yes. And you're going to hear from Butler's president, Jim Danko, in just a few minutes about that, right, where he did lay this out. But you can also lay it out in a different way. And there was another guest we had on Future youe a couple of years ago, Jason Wingard, former president of Temple, who lasted, what, less than two years, I think. And if we all recall, we actually had a clip from his inaugural address on Future you. And he laid out a vision that the body essentially rejected, that organ of his vision at Temple. And that's one of the reasons why he didn't last. And so I think a lot of this is about not only laying out that vision, but to make sure that vision is aligned, doesn't have to be perfectly aligned, but aligned with the mission and marginalization of that university.

And so that's a great place to set up a fascinating conversation we hope you enjoy this campus tour stop at Butler University.

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All righty. Welcome, everyone. It's so good to be in Indianapolis with all of you. And a huge thank you to Butler University for hosting us today. And we are incredibly lucky. President Danko, Jim, if we may, to have a conversation that will be focused on the future. But to start that out, I want to go back to the past, namely 2011. You come in as the president and you have this inaugural address, the theme of which was imagine the possibilities. In it, you announced a $5 million idea fund. You focused a lot on innovation, which we're going to get more into as we go throughout. But more broadly, you laid out a specific vision for where Butler would go under your leadership and just like, set the context of the big areas, the moment in time when you came in, just to ground us in that time at Butler so we can start to put in perspective all that you've done.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Michael and Jeff, for being here today. We're honored by your presence, and thanks for putting some focus on Butler. We're very proud of what has happened here. You know, you got to go back to 2011 and understand the context. And this was a very special moment in time and very unique. Something I don't think too many universities could claim. 2010, 2011, the Butler basketball team was in the championship game of the NCAA tournament. Right. I mean, I can't tell you the number of universities that want to mimic that playbook, and it's just really hard to do. So this is the David Goliath story, and I'm kind of coming in on the heels of that. In fact, when I was being interviewed in 2011, my first interview was when they made the Sweet Sixteen. And I'm thinking, do I want them to win? Because if they go all the way, they're going to want another president that has a higher profile. But it really, if you talk about vision, strategy, leadership, you just have to even dial Butler back to the late 80s. President Jeff Bannister at the time decided to go down that path. And it's not an easy path. You know, hired Barry Collier, did a great job of Being the architect of the basketball program. And then this guy by the name of Brad Stevens, another lightning in the bottle moment, joins Butler and just one of the best coaches of all history, quite frankly, and did a great job. And Butler, like it tends to do, punched above its weight. And I'm coming in at that time. So that's the context, right? And a little bit of me, too, coming from Villanova. I knew what it meant back then because in 85, that's all they talked about, is when they beat Georgetown. And that was a moment for Villanova. But much different era in 2011 versus 85. I don't think universities weren't thinking about marketing and branding. And we've got to. We could use this to leverage to rankings and all of that, but we had to think about it that way. And so as I come into that with my experience at other great universities like Michigan and Villanova and so forth, I had to either leverage that moment or fail. And that's really how I sold myself, I think, to the trustees at the time. And of course, you fall back on what you're used to, what you've learned. 40 years of management and leadership for myself going into that. You go to that toolbox of we've got to move fast, we've got to change, we've got to think differently than other universities. The context of higher ed, I think, really your book kind of points it out. It's amazing the things that have happened different even from the year 2000. You had to move forward or you were going to die. It's like the shark. I'm not a marine biologist like George Costanza, but I think that's an apt metaphor if it's true that if you don't move forward, you're going to die. So that's the context of 2011, and

you outline a bunch of principles around academic mission, diversity, being reflective of the larger world. A bunch of these things talk to us about the big priorities and the progress you all have made. You all in the audience know, but I think our listeners may not know all of the things that Butler has done and launched since 2011.

Well, it very much was a undergrad residential university. That was where the money was coming. The tuition, the focus, all the faculty were built for that and did an incredible job. Butler was excellent at that. Small classes, intimate education, all the things that you'd want. But the world was changing and we had expand the number of programs that we had. We had to move. We had zero courses online. And so to me, that was opportunity. And I also knew from other places, Dartmouth and Villanova, they were reluctant. Universities in general are reluctant to make change. So the competitive advantage is the ability to convince a place. We've got to get ahead, we've got to break out from the pack, we've got to have the courage to change. And one of the early things was to try to convince the faculty and the academic side it's okay to try some online education. There was actually safe space. And that was when students would go away for the summer, they could take courses back in their hometowns and it would transfer into Butler. And we put the idea out there, well, why don't we own own that. Let's put some things online. And I had a million dollar gift that was not designated. I designated it to fuel our online education, to let faculty have some development dollars. And son of a gun, if we didn't Suddenly have some 20, 25 courses online in the summer, that just sparked people's recognition that, hey, this isn't so bad, we could do this. So that's just one of many examples. The Innovation Fund feud, a whole bunch of ideas as well. Some work, some didn't, but it just put into the bloodstream that thing.

So.

So, Jim, one of the interesting undercurrents there as you go back to history in 10, 2010 and 2011 is something that Michael and I have noticed is just time in the tenure of presidents, which we know is becoming much shorter. And that the ingredients we feel of the presidents and the institutions that we talk often about on the podcast is how long their presidential presidents have been in their tenure, whether it's 10 years, 15 years. We had a president a couple of years ago who had a 30 year tenure. There's just so much more that you can do in that time. So I want to drill a little bit into the how you've been able to do that, how you've been able to get the campus kind of rowing in the same direction, so to speak. I assume it wasn't as simple as outlining this vision which you just talked about and kind of hitting play and just letting it go. You know, what have been the key ingredients for our listeners in getting the faculty and staff to buy in, to focus and stay committed toward working towards that vision over the years. Because when we talk to presidents, that's the hardest thing. They might have a vision, but they just don't know how to get people to come along and they often don't have the patience. You seem to have some patience. Patience to let it play out. A little bit. So talk a little bit about the. How this has happened over that time, the 14 years.

Well, certainly tenure is important. I mean, the one thing that I found and I committed to coming in was this is where I'm going to succeed. This is where I'm going to be the president and I'm going to stay. I've also had good mentors over time that have made the point that you can't just lay a vision out there and then disappear. You got to be willing to commit. I used to think it was five years. I think it's 10 years. And now that I'm here for my 15th, I think it's 15 years is the right. But. But you have to sustain. You have to be tenacious, you have to be committed. So if people see that, that you're committed, that you're not. I think because I've had some other moves in my career, there might be a little tendency of thinking, oh, he's just going to leverage this for the next thing. But I never felt that way. And I think people see that authenticity. So you have to have a sustainable leadership at the top. The other thing that is really important and we needed to do was I remember people talking about some of the. Some of the leadership across campus was, hey, these are a lot of nice people. But that was how the trustees presented it. And a lot of positions had to be changed, and you had to move relatively quickly on that. And we have. And so I believe strongly in hiring great people. Work hard at it. You know, I have a thing about hire slowly, fire quickly. Right. So hire slowly, get the right people, don't sell yourself short. Then empower them, set them free. We have an amazing leadership team at Ballard. I think it's one of these things that stands out. So it's not just the president, but it's something that starts at the top. And you surround yourself with those good people and you support them and empower them. You don't second guess. You make the financial investments. And yes, there were a segment of faculty. They're true everywhere. 15% of them are going to always push back and resist. But you don't play to that audience. You play to the ones over here. And believe me, there were a lot of faculty here that were ready for change. Right. And so we were in a place that was ready for change. Another thing I firmly believe in, in my career, I've seen it, you know, when. When you're Myself, I started a business when I was 19, and people say, wow, you're really you're entrepreneurial, you're. And you start to believe what people tell you. Sometimes there's a self fulfilling prophecy. But I actually do believe and I found that in my management career. If I told somebody, wow, that was a really creative thing. I think that works organizationally too. Believe it or not. When you keep saying we're going to be innovative, you're innovative, hey, that's a great idea. Pursue it. It happens. So we've been hitting on this theme of innovation since the beginning and it does become a self fulfilling prophecy. I don't think it's just serendipitous or luck that U.S. news said for 11 years straight, this is one of the most innovative universities in the country. There's a lot of brick building is. So it gets, gets back to sustaining it, being tenacious. Continue to build, continue to move forward.

Jim, you mentioned the trustees. And one of the things that we see in themes in our episodes is often the relationship between presidents and trustees sour at some point because you might be committed to it, but they may not be or they're committed to it and you're not. So how did you kind of get on the same page? How did you kind of navigate through this time when things in some cases might not have been easy things? You were placing big bets on some things and you didn't know exactly how they were going to go. What advice would you give to other presidents? Because when we see presidencies fail, it's often because the trustees and the president cannot see eye to eye on something. So any advice you have for other leaders around how to navigate this.

I remember going to the Harvard New President's program for one week and they brought somebody in to talk about trustee relationships and they say everything's going great, great with trustees until it's not. I keep waiting for that moment, but I've been very fortunate. Our trustees have really been very, very supportive. But one of the things that, I mean, I listened to what they were frustrated with. They didn't feel like they were engaged, they weren't communicated with, they didn't have a role. And I try to look at them as like, wow, you could be helpful to me. I don't know everything. I had a board chair who was fantastic in finances. He'd ask occasional finance questions. I said, go talk to our cfo, that's a great idea. You know, come back and let's talk about what we could do. So engaging them in the success, communicating is important. Building a relationship with each of those trustees, respecting them and so forth. And, you know, a bit of luck, you know, they really wanted me. I think I also recognize that my perceived business background differentiated me and I was more of them. They didn't realize that I'd been in the academic world for 30 years and actually I was very much of the academic side.

So that gave you an advantage up and down.

I think I was able to move both sides and if you didn't like what I was doing, you blamed it on me being a business guy or you're too academic. But for the most part, you have to kind of go down the middle, right. And you work both sides and you end up with a good result, hopefully. Right.

Okay. So innovation is a big theme that we want to explore today here on the podcast. And as you mentioned, it was a big part of your vision when you became president. But I want to talk a little bit about fit in alignment here because we see so often either presidents come in and they don't lay out a vision, they just kind of like keep the institution going. Or we've seen this very often, including somebody that was on our podcast a couple of years ago. They laid out a bold vision and it was totally rejected by the institution. So I want to talk a little bit about your bio because you've mentioned some things that really struck us when we were talking about this episode. One is you were an entrepreneur for nearly two decades before beginning your academic career. And two, you were part of leadership teams at very elite institutions, right? Michigan, Tuck, Dartmouth and Chapel Hill. That mindset, one, as a entrepreneur and then two, coming from these very well resourced institutions, they can cut both ways on a campus like this. What was your approach? When did you lean into your background either as an academic but at these institutions that people will say, well that's not Butler. Or when did you lean into your entrepreneurial background? And when did people say, yes, but this is not a business, right. It is a mission driven institutions. Like how do you figure out like when, when one thing takes the lead and when one thing should kind of sit back.

That's a great, great question. I probably, you know, success of leaders is just like there's so much that goes into it, right? One thing is self awareness, awareness of the atmosphere that you're in, right? And some places that entrepreneurial thing would work, some place it didn't. I was one of the first times I was at University of Washington and they had, you know, a bunch of furniture in the MBA office that was from the 1920s, I believe. And you know, they had the bureaucracy of Getting it. Well, one day I kind of gathered my team and we found some bank. And the bank said, well, we'll donate a bunch of this furniture if you come to the warehouse. We rented a truck. I show up at University of Washington, completely redid all the offices, had new furniture, and it looked great. And I got in a lot of trouble. So it was like, wait a minute. How do we. Is this thing tagged? And does this have the right. You know, this kind of that. And so you push it as much as you can. That's a small example. There's other places, you know, Chapel Hill, they didn't really. I think they called me a Tasmanian devil at one time. They did not like the constant motion in that. And he was kind of like, you know, this one isn't working out.

So does it work better at institutions that are striving, that are just like, places that are hungry for.

You have to be in a position. And Butler's been ideal for me. You know, it's a great fit in terms of size, scope and scale for, I think, my background, where you can actually shift a culture in an organization, that's very hard to do at a Mission, Michigan or Washington. So you're not going to change as easily there. I had a great boss at Tuck. He actually hired me at Michigan, Paul Danos, who kind of set me free at Tuck to do things. He was an academic. He thought in a certain way, I brought in another element. We were a great partnership, but I was free to do a lot of crazy things there, and that really helped. And, you know, Villanova, too. And again, the Augustinian priest sometimes didn't like my attitude about being too aggressive. But, you know, they like the Light under a Bush type thing, but. And they've done great things, too. But you've got to have a sense of what's around you and know what to push, when to push. It's so much better being in the presidency to be able to change a culture and to let those things play out.

I'm hearing Tasmanian Devil crazy. All these interesting descriptors.

Have I ruined this? I gotta look at my wife to make sure. All right. Cause sometimes I'll say things, you know, this is great.

Well, this is great. But it gets to the question I want to ask, which is, what's the why here behind innovation? Because innovation is a big deal. But, I mean, you've seen this. Innovation for its own sake is just innovation, theater. What's the why? The purpose behind.

Gets back to the change side. We cannot continue to operate anybody sitting around in 2011 that was looking or reading anything would realize, oh, my God, we're the next industry to fall. We talked about that a lot here. I remember talking about Blockbuster in one of my early speeches. Like, listen, they thought they were great until they weren't. And we are also heading for that. So we talked a lot about the forces of change happening out there. And you have to balance the. Don't scare everybody where, like, they can't move to. Here's the issue, here's a path forward. And the path forward is to have a place that's willing to take risk. Nobody was going to get in trouble here. We had that fund, I was drawing on money. We kept that fund alive for about six, seven years. And people had ideas and they needed 30,000. Here's 30,000. Run with it. I couldn't tell you today if any of that stuff worked or not, but I could tell you that it fueled a sense of innovation. So things are changing. We need to adapt. We need to find that path and we need to beat everybody else, too.

Super interesting, because it starts to create culture then in the university, and I'm curious if that purpose, almost existential, the shark metaphor that you gave before, we got to keep swimming forward, innovating, moving, otherwise we're going to be caught in the crosshairs. Some of these challenges coming for higher ed, how did that clarify the structures you needed to put in place to really solidify this culture of innovation? Like, what did you need to actually execute on the innovation and make it something that Butler could do as part of its everyday processes?

Well, you had to have a culture where it was okay to fail. You had to have a culture that wanted to change because they knew that was going to impress everyone, their bosses. Right. So if it's somebody in a division or even in a college, by the way, we had a great dean of our college of education here who I would say that you're going to hear more from, Catherine, on that. Instilled that spirit of, okay, let's do it wasn't prevalent necessarily across the university, but you needed to get the right leaders in place. You needed a balance of leaders and you had a kind of people needed to know, I'm not a micromanager and you shouldn't be a micromanager. Let people be free. We've got smart people here. Let them play to their strengths. And those people that weren't interested in change or were, whatever, resistant to it, they'll move on. But it starts really with a really strong, not only Just leadership team, but we even work on below that, what are the people that are reporting to the leaders that are. So all of those have to support innovation. If you're going to be standing over somebody like some 1920 manager, you're not going to fit in at the culture at Butler that we are developing. And I would, to a person across our cabinet and our deans, they all recognize that's the style of leadership and management that we have here. Right. Let people play to their strengths. They know better their area. If it's an academic discipline than us, how do you support them to achieve something new that nobody thought of before?

What's interesting about this, too, is that there's this culture of like, we want to win. Right. I think that's often missing on campuses. Right. They don't. They don't see themselves as a, you know, as you would in the corporate world or as you would in the sports world, where you're in this to win something at some point. Right. And I think that might be missing on some campuses in terms of their culture. I just want to stay with that for a moment, Jim, as we start to wrap up here and before we turn to the panel that is really going to be focused on how this vision was actually realized, because governance is something that's very different in higher ed compared to the rest of the world. You have trustees, we've talked a little bit about them. You have faculty. And my understanding is that the board was a big part of authorizing the initial innovation structures you put in place and what needed to be true for them to sign on from a funding perspective. For example, what kind of plans did you need to share with them in advance? Because again, we're going to have a lot of trustees and presidents listening to this, and they're going to want to know, okay, this all sounds great, but what do I. A lot of this is unknown. It's very ambiguous at some point, and you just need to say, we're going to make these bets, but we're not always going to know what the outcome is. We can't do a pro forma on everything. We can't know exactly how much this is going to cost and how much this is going to return. So what did you need to do to satisfy the trustees, and what did you need to do to satisfy the faculty, if anything?

Well, I just heard something. We did some alumni awards, and one of the recipients, they used some words, I won't get this exactly right. But it was kind of calm, collaborative integrity. And I think if People see that there is a calmness to this. You don't overreact to those people that are yelling and screaming, and you're always going to have those people out there. You're calm through those things. You deal with those things when you have to. You're collaborative. Like, listen, this is what we're thinking about doing. I do think our transparency is strong here at Butler. That's an important thing. So we might disagree. And eventually you have to say, at the end of the day, we hear you, but we have to move in this direction. I think over time, you build up integrity. Not just myself, but your leadership team, your deans, we have people that. One of our deans of Arts and sciences, which is the toughest job on campus. He's now our acting provost, has just been very steady. You know, our provost at the time that I hired, I pulled her off of out of the psychology department, where she was a department chair. I thought she was outstanding. We just gave her an award. She's president at St. Lawrence today. She was a very calming influence. And she would. She just mentioned this at this award ceremony. Like, she would be the person that would say, okay, we hear what you got. You guys are getting all crazy here. Here's how the faculty are going to view that. And, you know, we would decide which way to go, and then she would help make sure the path was paved. So it's that sense of collaboration. It's being consistent in the way you manage and lead, and it's respecting people. And don't let those loud voices override everyone else. Where you say, they're still here, by the way, the same people that were yelling me when I first showed up in 2011. Are any of them here? We could point them out. Actually, we all know who they are, and that's the point. You just don't play to that segment of the population.

It's interesting because I think collaboration sometimes in higher ed is seen as 100% agreement, which you're never going to get to. Right. And I think a lot of presidents get sidelined because of that. They kind of get stuck in place because they're waiting for that.

Well, you know. Yeah, I know a little bit was how long you've been doing this and you were entrepreneur. But listen, when you start to do things for 40, 50 years, you develop the kind of. The rhythm for how to do it. Some people are thrust into, I believe this in academic leadership that frankly, don't have that experience. They were a researcher. They did this. Not to say that that's inappropriate. There are great leaders that have come out of that too, but they might not have had 30 years of being yelled at or how to get something to be achieved. So there is something, I think about that, right?

Jim, thank you so much. This, I think is a perfect place to leave it. And when we come back, we're going to explore Butler's innovation efforts much more deeply with a panel that's participated in that work. We'll be right back on Future youe.

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Welcome back to the second half of our Future Ucampus Tour, which is being recorded before an audience of faculty, staff, leadership team and community members here at Butler University in Indianapolis. So we just talked with Jim Danko, the president of Butler, about kind of the how and the why of innovation. Now we're going to kind of get into the weeds a little bit more about exactly what happened here at Butler over the last decade plus and we're really pleased to welcome kind of a nice collection of experts to the stage today. We have Katherine Paynen, who's a professor in the College of Education, who was one of the first Innovation Fellows that helped inform the creation of Butler Ventures, which we're going to be talking about today, most specifically the Transformation Lab. We also have with us Melissa Beckwith, the Chief Strategy Officer at Butler University, who I got to meet was a member of one of the cohorts of the Arizona State Georgetown Innovation Academy for Innovation Higher Education Innovation. So thank you. It's great to see you again, Melissa. And we also have Chris Gall, who's a longtime board member at Butler, who currently serves as the Vice Chair of Butler's Board of Trustees. And in his day job, Chris is the EVP and Chief Marketing Officer. Visit Indy and so has gotten us to come here, gotten the future Ucampus tour. I know we're not as famous as, you know, the swimming and Olympics and the super bowl and everything else, but we're pleased to be here.

Thanks for visiting, bringing the tour here. It's a big deal.

We're honored. Thank You. It's great to be here.

Well, and we're honored to have all of you here.

But.

But as we dive in. And Melissa, I want to start with you because I remember I was telling you beforehand, I remember those drives on Route 2 in Massachusetts, where I live, around the time that you were starting to do a lot of this work and what I think of as Butler Ventures, but I know it was a journey to that point and that the entities have continued to evolve these structures that you've set up to really carry out the innovation here at Butler. And I would just love your version of the origin story. We heard some of Jim's rationale for why innovation and the mentality across the different people at the university. But I just love your sense of what this needs to look like, the origin story and the sense of what was success as you set this up.

Well, first of all, thanks for taking all of my phone calls six years ago. Those drive time conversations, I think, were both informative from your perspective and frankly, reassuring as we were setting out to do something that there wasn't a playbook for. And it was helpful to know we weren't crazy in what we were trying to do and that something like this was badly needed in higher ed. So thank you for that. I think a couple of things that are important about the origin story of this, again, dating back six, seven years ago, is that when obviously Jim was talking about innovation was a big part of his premise when he came in. But as we were launching the Butler beyond strategy many years ago, we had intentionally talked about the fact that in order for us to make the pivot we needed to make as part of that strategy, we were going to need different structures and different innovation, methods of innovation in order to make that happen. So, you know, the whole thought of setting up a separate entity, which is named Butler Ventures, wasn't something we decided to do because we thought it would be fun and exciting. I mean, it's been a lot of work. It was a very intentional decision in support of our core strategy. So I think that was a really important point of it wasn't something off to the side. It was something we had to do in order to live into dual transformation, which is what we were really wanting to do at that time, which was not only enhance the amazing undergraduate education we have, but also at the same time, broaden the learners that we serve in a way that we could scale broadly. And so we knew at the time that we needed separate structures, processes, capabilities, financial means, all of that, in order to pull this off. So that, I think, was a really important point. So coming out of a board of trustees meeting, we had the encouragement by the trustees to, at the point, I think the resolution said something as broad as set up a new structure to do new programs, entities and ventures. And that was about the direction.

That's simple.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was like that was, I think, the crux of the direction we were given, which in many ways it was great that it was that broad. In other ways it was okay, so what do we do now? Interestingly, at that same time or a similar time, not only did the trustees kind of feel that way, but we had been working as part of a faculty advisory group that Jim convened. We had a group of faculty that were saying, hey, we want to innovate. And they had actually come forward with an idea of could we set up a separate entity. So we had these things colliding from multiple stakeholder perspectives. Faculty, staff, administration, that all said, we want to live into our big new strategy and we need to figure out how to innovate quicker, faster, bigger. So that's a little bit of the context, I think, coming out of that trustee meeting. Then we had to figure out, okay, so what is this? What are we really doing? And how do we pull this together? So we spent about 18 months doing a lot of work. Some of that was we visited Google and Apple's headquarters. We spent a lot of time with those companies out in California, understanding how they did innovation. We met a number of times out of Arizona State with the ED plus team and looked at how some of the leading universities were doing innovation. So we were taking learnings from all of that and then brought in a group at the time that was nationally doing some work in looking at how different universities set up innovation structures with entangled. So for about seven or eight months, we interviewed and talked with a subgroup of faculty, with board members, with administrators, with our deans, and really talked about this concept of an innovation engine and how separate does it need to be? Or how much part of Butler does it need to be? I think the original working premise was this needs to be absolutely separate and it is a separate entity. Yet I remember a conversation that I had with the chair of the faculty Senate at that point in time and are then Provost. Going back to a comment Jim made earlier, it was a great conversation because the chair of the faculty Senate at that point said something similar to, you know, it's really easy to set up a separate entity to do innovation. Actually, what would be really innovative is if we. We set up an entity to achieve those same results, but did it in a way that invited collaboration and actually changed who Butler is. And that has stuck with us, I think, through the design of all of that. So a lot of work went into listening to what we were trying to do or trying to achieve, which was really two things. One, Butler Ventures at the time was focused on how do we develop new models of education beyond traditional undergraduate education that are moving us toward where the world of higher ed's going. And the second is how do we do that in a way that we are bringing new revenue into the institution so that we are reducing our full time undergraduate tuition dependency, which is key,

I think, for almost every other private institution and public institution out there these days. So, Kathryn, I want to get your perspective here and perhaps give us the faculty perspective, in particular, about what innovation looked like before Butler set up these structures in these entities. What was the state of play?

What was.

How are the innovation efforts at Butler both viewed by faculty members? How were they done?

Sure. So I like to mark time with this experience as before Stephanie Hinshaw and after Stephanie Hinshaw. Thank you. So Stephanie Hinshaw is the associate vice president of Transformation and really transformed what we know as the Transformation Lab. But at that time, before Stephanie Hinshaw, another Innovation fellow, and I, Tom Hanson from Lacy School of Business, wrote this report called the Report of Ideas. It seems so funny now to look back at that, but that Report of Ideas had elements of change that we wanted to see as far as innovation. And it addressed things like duplication efforts and making sure funding was available. And ideas tended to follow people instead of being sustainable and well sourced. So that was an element. And then also kind of cross pollination efforts, really, people were really engaged in wanting to break down silos and that kind of thing, but getting more systems involved and departments and community partners. So people were ready to go. We just kind of needed the systems to make that happen. Yeah.

So, Chris, I want to turn to you because you were on the board in 2019 when the trustees approved that mandate that Melissa was describing earlier. And I'm just curious, like, how are you looking at this situation then? Right. What was the board perspective? What were the conversations you were all having? Why did you feel like you all needed something in place, like structurally like this, and give enough of a mandate.

Right.

That they could play with it and see what is the exact right fit for Butler and tailor it really to this circumstance?

Yeah, it's a great question. Again, welcome. We're so happy you're here. I remember I was going back prior to this podcast, thinking and going back into that room, into that retreat. And the challenge was there were all these external threats, non academic, non traditional higher education threats coming at us, new players entering the industry. I remember we were focused on adult learners, online learners, outside collaborators. How are we going to wrestle with this? What will Butler of the future look like? Of course, it's pre pandemic. One of the things President Danko does exceptionally well in the board of trustees meetings, and there are many things, is a 5050 rule. 50% of the time is presenting and having the faculty and the staff and the admin team present. And then 50% is trustee engagement.

That's nice.

And he holds that true, meeting after meeting after meeting. And so it gave us the breathing room to hear about some of these external threats and then to ide around. What pilot programs can we be thinking about and should we be focused on heading into the future? So for Those listening, the 5050 rule is something I've tried to implement in other boardrooms. It's hard to do. And at Butler, Jim does it exceptionally well.

That's a great rule that I think other trustees will want to pick up on. So, Melissa, we know Butler Ventures has evolved, and indeed, internally, you don't even call it that anymore. So can you share with us what that evolution has looked like and what comprises Butler Ventures today? What does that look like?

Absolutely. So the moniker of Butler Ventures is simply the name of the entity within which we intentionally designed three major units originally. One is the Transformation Lab, which is our R and D hub for future models of education, and the idea center, I would say, of Butler Ventures and now the university. The second was originally the Division of Professional Studies. So this was intended to be the delivery arm of new programs or new models that wouldn't necessarily fit in our traditional colleges. And then the third unit was our education venture investment arm, which was our way to partner with startup organizations that were solving higher ed challenges in very different, different ways than higher ed does, so that we could learn from those startups, but also contribute to those startups with our knowledge. So those three groups were intended to work together under Butler Ventures. I'd say where we are today is we have made a number of changes as we've, you know, what you design and you build is not always what you end up with. Right. And so I think the major changes that we, or what it looks like today is we dissolved the Division of Professional Studies over the last year. All of the online adult credit Bearing programs that were started and launched in division, professional studies have moved into our colleges. On the education venture side, we have a new venture mechanism for the entire university we're building. So any future work that's related to education ventures will move into that. But I think the biggest change is the evolution of the Transformation Lab. So what was started as the R D hub for things that would reside in ventures, really new models. Because of the amazing team that we have there and the trust and collaboration they built with the university, we now run the all new academic programs, even our traditional undergraduate programs do that. They're now, they stood up a continuous improvement arm for the university. They will be a helpful execution arm as we move into our next strategy, which we're launching later today. So they really have become not just an R and D hub that kind of sits off to the side, but they really have become the true innovation engine for the university.

So, Chris, there's a lot of change from what was originally approved, it sounds like from what Melissa just described. And I think one of the challenges in higher ed, as we were talking with Jim earlier, is the relationship with the board and the president. And I know we keep kind of coming back to this, but in the nine years of doing this podcast, the leadership stories we continue to hear is that tension between the board and the president. Somebody always wants to move faster, somebody always wants to move slower. Usually there's alums on the board who say, well, it's not the way it was when I was here. Or there's business people on the board who say, I don't understand this thing called shared governance. Why can't we just do things? I don't have to do this in my day job, right? So, you know, it takes a great deal in our opinion of kind of courage, trust and risk tolerance for a board to support information, to support innovation. So I think it would be helpful for our listeners to understand, you know, what type of dynamics must be present in a board to successfully achieve what Butler has. Like, even as these things were shifting over the years, what's your view as a trustee? What are the conversations you're having with the president, with people like Melissa to understand this? Is it always happening just in a formal board meetings, like, how are you understanding what's happening here so that the board could kind of get behind it? Because I think one of the things boards hate, one of the things presidents hate, are surprises, right? So how are you constantly of not micromanaging, not managing the situation, but governing the situation?

Another great question I was Driving on campus. By the way, it's homecoming this week, weekend, I should say. So it's timely. You're here. And I bumped into another Butler trustee and I shared with her that I was heading here. And it made me think about three kind of ideas in this dynamic piece. One is diversity of thought. Our trustees are incredibly diverse. We lean into the abolitionists who helped found Butler University. We have former Fortune 200 CFO, we have a federal judge who has served in the past. We have community activists and entrepreneurs. It's just very eclectic. And so is there a diversity of thought around the boardroom and in the trustee table? And I can tell you, yes, there is honesty of approaching innovation and threats on the horizon. Are we being honest as trustees of what is coming at us? And President Danko and Melissa do an excellent job proposing these threats and listening to the threats and having honest discourse and conversation around the threats on the horizon. So diversity of thought around the table, honesty of approaching threats. And then the third is community minded. We have neighborhoods in a city in Indianapolis that are surrounding us and so does the innovation. Do the innovation, the programs and the piloting, will that benefit the community? Will we get buy in? If not, then how successful will we be? So I think we've seen fruits of this innovation play off very quickly. And Dean's sharing that Eli Lilly, one of the largest global foundations on planet Earth, is here in Indianapolis about 10 minutes from here. And they have given generously to our innovation programs and pilots. And we've seen Fruit of the Founders College, we've seen with a two year startup. We've seen Butler Overseas, which we're launching in 2027, which is part of this innovation discussion that the trustees said, yes, six semesters, six continents let students go out and get degrees in business and environmental studies. And so we have just been listened to, engaged authentically and given a Runway to have healthy discussion in the trustee table. And it's not just, just plop in for that quarterly meeting or zoom in for that committee meeting with your camera off. Like it's really actively listening. And that's what Jim has fostered here on campus.

Katherine, I want to turn to you because the Transformation Lab has been mentioned a few times. You've launched initiatives within the Transformation Lab, this innovation arm. And I would love to make it more real for our listeners. Like, what does the work look like, the experience of working in the transformation look like? How's it staffed? You know, how as a faculty member you got a teaching load? How do you interact with it? And how it changes then, how your own time is allocated when you're working on a project there versus, you know, sort of the day to day teaching load and so forth.

Right. So I've been here for about 18 years and I can say the Transformation Lab is one of the best entities on campus, hands down. They make innovation accessible for professors who might not know how to get started or things like that. But right now, like Butler Overseas was mentioned, I'm running the Butler Lifelong Learning Collaborative, which is a kind of an educational initiative for lifelong learners and older adult senior citizens. And I've helped advise with Imagi, which is a Swedish ed tech company. So all sorts of really great projects going on that kind of fulfill that professional need. And also as someone who is a seasoned professor who is not drawn traditionally to administrative collegiate roles, this really gives professors a creative outlet and a leadership outlet that is different, I think, than other kind of pathways of next steps.

So I want to stay there for a moment because I think it's interesting when you say it gives that creative outlet. You're advising an ed tech company, you're doing all these things that you wouldn't normally get to do. Presumably. How has it changed the conversation among faculty around what innovation at Butler means? Like, you know, do faculty. It seems very different from what you were describing, you know, 15 years ago.

Right. It's doable. And like Jim said, we had a former dean who would always suggest, yes. So it was always, yes, let's figure it out. And now I feel like that's the culture of the entire university. Like, let's try it. We know who to go to. We know that the team is such a high quality, joyful team that we can enjoy the experience of working on a project. So I think that completely changed the culture of getting things done.

So, Melissa, we're at a university, people get graded all the time. So I'm kind of curious about how would you grade yourself? Right. What's worked well, what hasn't? What would you do differently? And then just in terms of numbers and initiatives, give us some context, like what are the results?

Yeah. So I think I'm going to talk to outcomes first. So you've heard a couple of examples already. Because of the Transformation Lab and because of Butler Ventures, we launched Founders College, a two year college, welcomed our first cohort this fall that we're very excited about for, for students that are Pell eligible in our own community. Right. So that was a big deal. We launched and are launching Butler Overseas that Chris just talked about, modeled a little bit after Minerva, but with a very different twist and a Butler twist to that. So those are just two examples. Other, you know, other metrics that are important to us is, if you think about it, in the last Butler Ventures has been operational about four years. We've launched over 35 new programs. And those are only. Those aren't undergrad programs. Those are adult online credential training programs. We've served over 5,500 new learners, generated additional millions in revenue. And I think the most exciting is through that, We've engaged over 600 faculty, staff and community partners in that work. So those, yeah, Those metrics are pretty awesome. I think the outcomes, the models, not just programs, but these new models that we're developing that are. We're one of a handful of universities doing some of these models. In that way, I think we have done a tremendous amount. We have had changes along the way. And I think I mentioned that when we realized something wasn't working, we made changes. I had a hard time sitting here and saying, gosh, what would I do differently? Because I think we've been doing things differently when we realized they did didn't work along the way. So in terms of a grade, because you're going to force me to do that, I'd give us a solid A minus. And here's why I'd say that is we are incredibly proud of the work we've done, and it is transformative. And at Butler, there's also this just this sense of, like, restless ambition that we're never happy and we're never, you know, we always want things bigger, faster, better, and I think that's a good thing. And so I keep the AA sitting out there because it's something to strive for.

Great.

I mean, you feel this energy here on campus. It's infectious among all of you. And so as we wrap up here, Chris, I'm just curious. Your perception, the board's perception of innovation efforts here, and maybe we'll play off that. A minus. The best is yet to come is what I'm hearing. So what do you think the next phase of innovation efforts for Butler looks like? I know you're launching the strategic plan and so forth.

AI. We've not addressed the acronym in the room. And to speak of innovation as we sit here today with homecoming and the pomp and circumstance and Founders College and all of these ventures that we've gone through as AI. And so Jim and Melissa and I were even talking this week about the integration and the innovation around AI for our students. You mentioned my hats that I have on today. One is, I'm also my wife and I, who we met here. We have a student here, we have a freshman here. And so when I.

You're really wearing every hat. That's right.

And so I'm emotionally invested in Butler. I'm financially invested in Butler. And so with these trustee hat. With the trustee hat on, I also need to know that AI is part of the discussion. You know, we're also very competitive here at Butler. I don't want you to think that we're nice because we are. And we're hospitable. And you have nice socks on. I saw those. But both of you, you know, if I asked you both your football allegiances, you would say probably Commanders.

I'm the Commanders fan, believe it or not.

He grew up in. He grew up in D.C. our Colts

are 3, 0, right?

The Colts are great. I mean, it's. Yeah.

The fever in the playoffs as we're discussing now. So we're competitive, and Jim leads that with his entrepreneurial spirit. So don't think the next iteration of Butler innovation won't be competitive, because it will here in Indianapolis.

Great. Well, terrific. We're going to leave it there then. Michael, any closing reactions?

Normally we do one or two, but I have to have three quickly, I promise, just because this has been exciting and I've been enthused by it. But first, I'll start with the people, not just, you know, on the basketball team. And if Gordon Hayward had made that last second shot, I would have been happy, too. But what I heard from Jim, not just getting the right people in the leadership team, but the next rungs down and how important that is seems just really, really critical. The second one, I'll just say fitting the right structure and being malleable to getting the right structure for the strategy and knowing whatever you come out with in plans, it's always going to be part wrong. That's innovation. You never get it right. Right. 100%. And you get it right by having that piece of. Of iteration. But also, I heard it a lot and I just. I didn't get it when Jim first said it. But when you said it, Chris, also the external threats. How much of higher ed dismisses when people say external threats instead? When times were still solid here, in fact, when they were great coming off those runs, you all looked soberly at those threats and said, okay, how do we flip them into opportunities? That's the essence of dual transformation, and it's huge. And then I guess just the last thing, how Many boards have you been a part of where you get 50, 50 ideation.

I love this 50. I'll leave it there. I'll leave it there.

I would love that as a board member.

No, I love you. Well, thank you. A couple of thoughts here. Culture. Culture has come up so many times here and one of the things, one of the failures of leadership that we see and we just did this paper on this is just mapping your culture as a president or as a leader, when you come in, really understanding it. Because I think a lot of leaders come in and think I'm going to change the culture without even understanding what's there to begin with. So I know we've been trying to encourage people to map that culture. I think this idea of who does the innovation on campus, is it an internal entity, is it an external entry? I think some of the examples you've seen in higher ed, it's sometimes just people think it's easier just to do it externally. Like we're just going to set up a separate skunk works shop and just let them do it because they don't want to deal with the governance. And that may not be the best option all the time. Or if it is, eventually maybe you do move it in. But I think we just see sometimes, let's just do the separate piece of it. I think the different perspectives on the board is really important. I think boards are becoming too focused on philanthropy, which is important. But often when you tie board membership to of philanthropy, there's a sense in the room that the only reason that person's in the room is for their philanthropy. And having different perspectives where people could honestly disagree and discuss, I think is going to be critically important, especially right now, given the threats facing higher education. So I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you again to Butler University. And. Thank you again to Butler University for sponsoring this stop on the Future you campus tour in the great city of Indianapolis, Which by the way, should be a city known more for higher education than it is. And so we should talk about how to change that maybe at some point. But thank you to President Danko and all of our panelists. Melissa Craig, Catherine, thank you. And thank you to our audience for being here and joining us today on this live recording of Future youe.