Trustees and Presidents: A Podcast for University Leaders On College Athletics

Accelerating Change: Improving the Athlete Experience Through Active Athlete Involvement

Hello, and welcome to the 150th episode of Trustees and Presidents! I’m Karen Weaver.

Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s at the center of the storm in college athletics—change. Why is it so challenging for college athletics to adapt to this new era of likely revenue sharing, NIL, and its evolving role in campus life? Change has become the defining word for both higher education and college sports, and navigating it successfully requires innovative thinking and strategic leadership.

My guest today, Dr. Julie Wollman, President Emerita of Widener University, brings a wealth of experience and fresh insights to this conversation. A nationally recognized innovator in higher education strategy, Dr. Wollman has spent her career leading change. During her presidency at Widener University, she developed a forward-thinking approach to strategy that embraced scenarios and possibilities, focusing on strategic direction rather than outdated tactical plans—a method now recognized as an emerging best practice.

Dr. Wollman also launched the Common Ground initiative, fostering respectful dialogue on challenging topics, which aligns perfectly with today’s need for thoughtful leadership in higher education and athletics.

And by the way, Julie is a University of Pennsylvania “professor of practice” and she is my colleague!

As we explore how to embrace resistance, manage friction, and fuel progress, I’ll also share lessons from my own experience leading strategic planning for an athletic departments. This discussion will challenge us to rethink what qualities we should seek in leaders tasked with guiding our institutions—and college athletics—through this era of accelerated change.

Duration:: 35m
Broadcast on:: 06 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

Hello and welcome to the 150th episode of Trustees and Presidents. I'm Karen Weaver. Today we're diving into a topic that is at the center of the Storm and College Athletics change. Why is it so challenging for college athletics to adapt to this new era of likely revenue sharing, name image and likeness, and its evolving role in campus life. Change has become the defining word for both higher education and college sports, and navigating it successfully requires innovative thinking and strategic leadership. My guest today, Dr. Julie Wollman, President Emerita of Widener University brings a wealth of experience and fresh insights into this conversation. She is a nationally recognized innovator in higher education strategy and she has spent her career leading change. During her presidency at Widener, she developed a forward thinking approach to strategy that embraced scenarios and possibilities focusing on strategic direction rather than outdated tactical plans. What a concept. A method now recognizes an emerging best practice. Most importantly, Dr. Wollman is my colleague at the University of Pennsylvania where she is a professor of practice and I enjoy working with her. As we explore how to embrace resistance, manage friction and fuel progress. I'll also share some lessons from my own experiences leading strategic planning for athletic departments. This discussion will challenge us to rethink what qualities we should seek in leaders, tasks with guiding our institutions and college athletics throughout this era of accelerated change. Julie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Karen. It's great to be here and on number 150. Yes, that's a that's a milestone. That's an important milestone. Absolutely. So at Penn, you talk a lot about change. You've talked a lot about change in your two presidencies. Give us an overview of how you anchor your practice in change management. So it starts with understanding why people resist change and thinking about their competing commitments. What's holding them back? What they're afraid of because it's natural to fear change. We are very comfortable with what we know. And so we begin there thinking about or a leader really needs to begin there thinking about how can I help people get past their fears, past their competing commitments, understand that they have more to gain than to lose in the change process. I think another key factor is transparency about why change is needed. So I think often people are afraid to talk about all of the challenges we're facing and to share that. But our constituents know there are challenges. I think we're better off sharing the data, sharing the challenges and helping them feel like they can be part of the solutions. They're aware of challenges. They often see things in a way that we may not even anticipate. They really understand the challenges more than we then we recognize. So I'd say transparency and then really understanding the resistance to change and how we can overcome it are two fundamental ways to start. Okay, so let's start with part one. Resistance to change. I can't imagine how many meetings you walked into with the Faculty Senate and other folks on your campuses talking about the need for change. How did you convey that sense of urgency to the group sitting in front of you? So you know first of all it has to be grounded in a good relationship already with those on your campus. So I think our respect for shared governance and respect for the faculty and the staff. And certainly as we talk about athletics we're talking about staff generally. So that there is trust built and there is a sense that what's going to be shared is accurate, transparent, authentic. And again I think it's about sharing data all the time so that people understand look this is where enrollment is. This is where finances are. This is what our challenges are. This is how it fits into the larger national and regional context in some cases. So you know we're not alone but we're a great place. Here's what we do really really well. Now we need to get over this challenge to continue to do that really really well. And we have all these brilliant minds in the room. Let's work together to figure this out. How do you tie it into the national dialogue and also the fears that people hear the rumors that people hear? How do you try to manage that as well as just deal with the facts? Right. So I mean part of that is you're thinking about the competing commitments that the fear that people have. So if we make a change, does that mean I lose my job? Does that mean I don't sit at the table anymore? Does that mean I won't have the same relationships I have working with people? So there's understanding that and reassuring people that they're going to have an important voice. Thinking about the the national dialogue, yes of course because people are hearing about institutions closing or merging which generally is not a merger but an acquisition mergers the nice term that people use but it's generally an acquisition and people lose jobs in those situations even when the goal is to retain as many jobs as possible. And of course in terms of athletics there's a lot of conversation about eliminating teams that aren't bringing in money and of course with NIL and the uncertainties about and and the increasing movement across athletic conferences and the transfer portal. There's just so many unknowns right now that I think we have to directly address it and say you know we're trying to get ahead of these problems so we're not getting ready to eliminate any sports. We're not in a place where we're going to but my job as your leader is to make sure we don't get anywhere near any of those things. So we're staying ahead of it and you can help us to stay ahead of it and we won't be part of that you know the news story about the the bad thing that happened we're not going to do that we're here together to avoid that and to get ahead of it and to be that positive news story about the school that that was successful. So how do you as a leader prepare yourself for that conversation let's talk about athletics because so many presidents don't know a whole lot other than a basic you know 30,000 foot level but you actually at Widener took the lead in making the change in the MAC conference in terms of strategy and change. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure yeah I mean again I think it is incredibly important for presidents to understand athletics deeply in part because it's an area where we're signing off every year on what's happening there and that should not be a rubber stamp and of course we know that when there's compliance issues many problems arise and we've seen that of course typically with Division I schools but not only with Division I schools so it's very important to understand that I think there's an expectation that presidents care about their athletic teams and that they are engaged with them and honestly athletics is a really important enrollment driver especially you know not so much for the most elite or the Division I schools but certainly for our D2 and D3 schools and even in D1 I think students want to go to a place often with vibrant athletics it makes a difference they want to be able to go to the game or the match or the meet or whatever on the weekends and feel like they have a winning team and there's a lot of spirits it's really central to our financial stability and I think it's honestly foolish not to really to be engaged and understand but I had the as you said I had the privilege to be part of the executive committee of our board in the Mac and which it actually is at the time was the largest Division III conference I don't know if that is the case now again there's so much moving around within the conference but within conferences generally and so when it came time to think about a new strategic plan when they were questioned about well who's gonna leave this I was like well I'll try this I'm interested in trying this with our athletic conference because I had just done this with our with wider university where we had a process that involved a strategy core team a team of people from across the university very representative of different areas and we spent months really doing some creative thinking looking at data and then really doing some creative thinking getting ourselves out of this box of well this is the way we do it so strategic planning is just how do we do the same thing a little bit better that doesn't work anymore in this environment of constant change and so you know doing a lot of design thinking a lot of creative thinking activities bring this group it was a commitment they had to be together and meet every two weeks on a Friday morning and they were committed to doing that and it was fun because we were doing a lot of creative thinking it was really interesting people were able to sort of imagine and dream and and and and got better at that as we went along so I very carefully planned the activities and to engage people in the kind of design thinking a creative thinking that we wanted to do and as we built new ideas there is even more excitement and then periodically we would bring some of these ideas out to build everyone on campus so that everyone was engaged and knew what was going on but it's extremely difficult to move strategy process forward with a very very large group and with a group of people who are all trying to just hold on to their turf figure the way things are so the idea was we're not holding on to turf here we're open to change and to really rethinking so when I offered to lead this for our athletic conference I felt well let's try some of the same things let's get this small group that's working on it to and we did include members of the board but also students in the group and that was exceptionally important also some of our you know athletic leaders and athletic staff so it was the various constituents starting to think about okay if we could dream like what would be some of the things we were doing in the conference that would make us much better and different would be differentiators and that students really wanted you know that they felt would be a value added yes they want to play or compete they want to win they want to you know have opportunities to be part of a vibrant team because that's exceptionally important to their experience in college but they also recognized other possibilities for the conference that the board didn't always think about the presidents didn't always think about the presidents like anyone else you know this is one of many many things we're concerned about if everything's going okay and the teams are doing well and some of them are getting to the playoffs and you know like okay we're good we're good and they're making it the enrollment they're meeting their enrollment target right right all good so we didn't take this was a chance actually with this strategy thinking to step back and think about what else could we do that would make all of our institutions more attractive because students would be saying I want to go to that conference that's where I want to because they not only have a great team but they also have some other things that are really important to me so with this small group as we had it at my university we really did a lot of creative thinking about what matters what would we want what what if we could dream that the conference would do things what are things that have happened or that they've talked about and you know they've seen in other conferences and building on that we moved to something that we did it wider that worked really well which is we developed scenarios and we made small teams of people who were interested in writing the scenarios that built on what students told us really mattered to them in addition to the competition so and I'll give you an example of some of those some of those things so students wanted to do activities and projects across the conference they wanted more interaction with student athletes at other campuses not just a competition but doing projects that would make a difference in the world whether it was a community engagement project or leadership development or whatever they wanted to do more together outside of athletic competition they felt like there were opportunities to get to know their peers across the conference we really never thought about that we thought you know we think about doing that on our own campus right we have community engagement opportunities we have leadership opportunity but we never thought that the students would be that driven to do this across the whole conference and if they wanted to get together regularly across the conference not for competition of course they did want to get together but also for other activities where they could get to know each other and do things collaboratively and as a collective they were also not surprisingly deeply interested in more work on physical and mental wellness and we often think about well mental health we know that's an issue they wanted that but they also wanted more attention to physical wellness to nutrition to you know taking care of their bodies in a way beyond like really learning more than just having what was needed done with them so yes they'd have their great trainers they'd have all the other support but they wanted to learn more and they wanted to do that together they wanted opportunities to grow and they really wanted cross-conference leadership opportunities they felt like that was really value-added that would help them because most of them are not going to continue as athletes after they graduate from a Division III school they may certainly continue to compete in teams and activities but not in not in professional competition and but they wanted to be leaders in whatever jobs they achieved and they knew that would help them when they when they came out as an addition to what they were doing in their majors and minors and activities on their campuses so knowing that we developed a couple scenarios of what the future could look like for the conference and one of them was in your stories their narratives narrative engages people and helps them see the way things could be so these scenarios are written as narratives and they're realistic so they have to incorporate aspects of things that we know so using the schools that are in the conference recognizing the geography of the conference naming some of the people that are familiar in the conference the names of the current athletic director or the leader of the conference are you know part of it and so they seem very realistic but they describe a situation where you know the conference is the top one for leadership opportunities and there's all kinds of opportunities and the way that story was told by the group that wrote that scenario was visiting a family where they're trying to recruit and how they spoke to the potential athlete and how they spoke to the mother of the potential athlete who was worried about sending her child that far away to college and just really through this conversation laying out all the opportunities that now 10 years from now you know we were looking 10 years out what would the conference look like you know we did that we did the same thing with the idea of these collaborative joint activities we have another scenario that that looked at at that and then one that looked at a real focus on wellness and nutrition and in the end so we have three scenarios in the end we're going to narrow down to one focus that we want to use but we could take these out then to all of the student athletes and all of the athletic staff coaches assistant coaches far's assistant athletic directors athletic directors everyone we had a number of town halls or joint meetings we did them on a Sunday each time because that's when students were most of it we asked them what would be the best time for for a couple of us we were doing a lot of Sunday things and a lot of input on what do you think about the scenario what do you think about these ideas students would say like I like this I like that I don't understand like well this is an important so with all that input pulled together we were then able to refine to a vision you know a strategic vision that we could see through this a narrative that we were able to put together so that's really the process everyone was involved but not sort of work on that this you've got to do some work on imagination and creativity to come up with these scenarios but then once they're developed you get the small group that's really been led through how to do that once they're developed you could bring them out to everyone and get the response and they were very engaging because they are stories that are fun to read and kind of they're they're familiar with familiar names and places but there's something really new so you did that on your campus that how does that work on all the other campuses in the conference do that yeah good yeah so that's that's what I'm sort of describing was these meetings this the meetings on Sunday those were conference meetings so I think I made a shift because I was talking they're sorry that wasn't clear but yeah so that's at least we did that on our campus but then moved to the athletic you know these concerns you know having this group of core team of athletic staff the presidents the board members who were involved in this strategy and then some of the students we built those scenarios and then we brought them out to all the campus so when we had those Sunday meetings they were for students across the conference and it was surprising how many I mean how many you know how often can you get students to join a meeting anyway that they don't have to come to the end that you know was on a Sunday late morning that was the time they chose athletic staff also yeah separate meetings for students and staff so because their interests are different we didn't want the students to voices to be tamped down in any way by the staff especially their own coaches you know if they're saying like wow I really like this kind of opportunity and we don't have it it's uncomfortable when you're that is also something I did on my own campus when we did these groups we didn't have supervisors in the groups when people were responding to the scenarios but yeah that's what we did we did it across the conference everyone was invited we got for each and there were several meetings and they were for different groups but we would get you know 75 students in a in a focus group which is amazing we did it by soon because they're all over that you know okay place on Sunday mornings and it worked it worked really well we got some great feedback we took a lot of notes and then we were able to go back to the group and refine and and refine it a strategy that incorporated the best of each of them and what really resonated for everyone involved so how did you manage the room in terms of the power positions on a team are the coach the assistant coach that type of thing were those folks in the room or not we actually had they weren't there with the students okay they were you know in this small strategy team it was a mix of people so we had some coaches we had some ADs we had some a couple presidents and we had students and I make it clear from the beginning with these a great question because I did this on my campus as well in this space we are all equals we are all equals everyone's voice is equal you are making that commitment if you want to be part of this group and that it works I mean people respect that obviously you pick people for these groups that are going to be open to that and open to creative thinking when we did the focus groups on campus as I said no supervisors in the same groups responding to the scenarios so it would be just staff then we have the more senior people we have students we have faculty separate from staff because sometimes there were issues there so it's really to allow people to speak openly when we did it with the athletic conference it was students were one set we have set of meetings for them and then the coaches and far's were another and then the athletic directors were okay another group and there we also included if their supervisors were so many other than a president we put those into the group with the athletic director they work so closely together but they invite somebody's presidents there yeah so you're absolutely right because it is important to get honest feedback and to avoid that power dynamic really to have those groups separately so there were a lot of meetings a commitment to a lot of meetings and yet it was really worth it to help us get the feedback it sounds like it and as I kept as I was listening I kept thinking to myself this is so different than the way athletic departments in particular but universities in general have solved problems they say oh now we got to find two million dollars for name image and likeness or five million how do we do that they identify the problem and they say go about saw it you went to the students and said what would make this a better experience right that is remarkable right and I'm curious as to how it panned out what kinds of things did you end up resolving and doing for the conference so that is a great question it was at the end of this process at the point of leaving I had announced that I was gonna resign from my presidency and come to Penn and so because I would my dream my my lifelong dream was to go back to teaching and writing and research you know before my career was over so I was on my way back to Penn you know that I left that with our conference executive director and there were a number of activities that were planned to bring the students together but I can't say you know I wasn't in that and you know one of the challenges I think with our ball of the turnover in presidents now so we know now that you know the average 10 years is under six years which is a significant drop over the past 10 years for a president and that's average so we're breathing every day in the higher education news about presidents who leave after a year or two years there's not a there's not a lot of continuity it takes a long time to put something in place and so I think what we end up doing here and this is really important for our athletic departments is our athletic directors and the directors of our conferences with their commissioners or executive directors however that structure is in the conference very incredibly important on carrying this work through and honestly they're gonna be incredibly important anyway because they're going to be the ones who are planning the activities who are making this happen and so they have to I mean they have to have full buy-in to this change process and that's why it was so important to engage them at every step of the process and of course leading this process I worked so closely with our conference executive director I mean it was we were in conversation multiple times a week about this and you know she was very very committed so I think those are the people who were going to carry the work forward really and it's really exciting for them if they're interested in any role including athletic director and conference director even though there's a lot going on in athletics right now so we could say yeah we don't need anything new but it can get you know routine in some ways and it's really exciting to be able to be part of doing something that's new and different and that our student athletes are really excited about and gain a lot from and that when you're recruiting and this was our vision students are saying yes I want to play for that conference because they have these opportunities that no other conference does yeah that's something I hear a lot about in the division one space when schools looked at transfer conferences change conferences they often talk a really good game of well particularly at school conferences like the big 10 oh they had the big 10 academic alliance oh they have all this research but what do they do for the athletes and I think that's what you all have targeted is saying then we're gonna go listen to the athletes to make their experience better right as we begin to wind down the conversation what advice do you have for campus and university leaders about trying to do something like this kind of management on campus yeah I mean I think it's about listening to the constituents like they and part of this part of the we're going back to the resistance and the and the friction that gets in the way of change is that we come down from on high with these ideas about what should change without asking the people who probably know better about what needs to change because they're doing it they're doing the work day-to-day they're on the front lines they see where the points of friction are they see what could relieve those points of friction they see what our students and faculty and staff are really asking for but we often don't don't ask them and when we don't ask them and we bring these new ideas forward or basically no new ideas and just say we're going to do the same thing but do it a little better which is the typical strategic planning they're the ones who are going to have to implement these new ideas if they're not on board it's not going to work you're going to have the traditional strategic plan that gets put on a shelf because we said we did the process we made a strategic plan put it on a shelf collect dust as people say and nothing happens because people have not bought into it and they don't see what how it's going to happen what's going to change one of the things that we did at Weiner and this would be the same thing with sort of handing this now to you know in the conference to left lighting directors is after the strategy was developed and there was buy-in and we all agreed on it was we created a group that was really the implementer group that would be able to think about what would be some things we could change or do that would be aligned with our strategy that would move us forward and those were more sort of the mid-level manager people and some a little bit more senior and students because in a campus setting you know one of the most interesting things this is like asking the athletes what would make it better students will tell you things that nobody knows because if there's a glitch in how you register and we wonder why do these students pick courses but they put them in their cart but then don't register for them what's going on here they're not they're just they just don't follow through well students can tell you why that problem happens and you can fix it very easily but nobody in the registrar's office or in the senior leadership or anyone else frankly ever tries to register and runs into this problem right only students know this problem and so if we're not asking the user I mean I think about the user experience that's really what we're trying to improve on our campuses the user experience the small experience of registering for a class or you know getting the assistance you need as an athlete with tutoring or training or whatever it might need and the big things that you need like I need to know that I'm developing something beyond just my athletic skills to be successful beyond beyond this you know this experience here in college we don't really know what the problems are and what people are looking for until we ask them we do a lot of guessing and then we wonder why nothing changes when we implement a strategy that's developed just by the senior leadership the senior leadership as much as we try to spend time with our students and engage with them and go to their athletic competitions etc we are as far from them as possible really in terms of what their day-to-day experiences is like we've got to ask them we've got to ask our constituents you know it's the same thing with faculty right I mean you go from being at the president of university back to because I started my career as a as a tenured full professor so as a faculty member I'm back to the faculty and you're like wow I didn't realize how hard this thing was to do or now I understand why the faculty complain about it and so you just don't know if you don't ask the person who's who's involved who's trying to do it and you don't know what their what their dreams and hopes are to make it better yeah and and I think one of the things that I have seen consistently over my 30 plus years in athletics was the answer was always more money right that's what will fix everything was more money and what you're saying is no it may not be more money it may be a a reframing of their experience and I would think a lot of presidents and athletic directors would be chopping at the bit to try to understand that because for most places there is no more money it's such a good point and that's true in athletics and it's true generally in higher education often when when I'm talking with my classes about leading change like what we need to think about changes we can make that aren't going to cost any more money they're going we're going to have to reallocate in some cases but there is so much we can do to make the experience better for our students our faculty and our staff by just changing the processes that we use by eliminating processes that don't work but they're the way we've always done it which is you know very problematic issue um without any additional cost in fact you may save money eliminating certain processes and then have more resources to do something else that's more meaningful and more impactful one of the things I like to say is why do we make it so hard we seem to have a commitment in higher education not intentionally but because of our processes being so opaque for students and faculty and staff we really make it hard without intending to but we make it hard to do almost anything and you know this is where we um I mean think about it a student athlete who's not happy with their major yeah it is so difficult to change your major on most of our campuses and you know very you need this approval and not approval and you have to go talk to this person and go talk to that person and you need a certain GPA well sometimes what we find is students GPA and the major they want to change to is great their overall GPA isn't as great because they don't do well in the courses in what their current major is they don't like it they chose the wrong major we know they didn't know and yet we make it so hard to make a change and then we often will lose those students yeah or you know well the student athlete says it's easier for me to go into a transfer portal and go somewhere else I have a different major than just stay here because they make it so hard yeah so thinking that's part of our strategy I think is how do we improve the user experience so the quality of what we're doing overall is better and we're not getting stuck with these little glitches along the way that just suck the energy out of everyone and are discouraging rather than encouraging and create excitement and fuel Julie you've brought up so many good points and one thing I'd like to say is a value add to this whole discussion is that the students are happy they'll tell a lot of people right and that enhances your conversation about your campus about their experience and they're the best customers we have right they are they're our best recruiters they're yes absolutely and I mean we don't realize how much they're on social media saying yes yes all kinds of things tick-tock whatever this has been a fantastic discussion I'm really hoping that the presidents and senior leaders who listen to this podcast will take an opportunity to try something different and involve the students and their voices I think that's really important yeah thank you so much for joining me I really appreciate it it was such a pleasure and I feel like we could talk forever about this but it's fun and and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you

Hello, and welcome to the 150th episode of Trustees and Presidents! I’m Karen Weaver.

And by the way, Julie is a University of Pennsylvania “professor of practice” and she is my colleague!