Jim Ver Steeg: You’re listening to QuadCast, the official podcast of the University of Rochester. I’m Jim Ver Steeg, your host. On July 1st of this year, Donald Hall became the University of Rochester’s Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences and Engineering. Dean Hall comes to us from Lehigh University where since 2011 he served as that institutions dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and professor of English. And he is credited with increasing the size and diversity of Lehigh’s faculty.
He earned his PhD in English from the University of Maryland, a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, and a Bachelor’s degree in German and Political Science from the University of Alabama. Dean Hall, thank you for joining us today.
Donald Hall: Thank you very much. I’m thrilled to be here.
Jim Ver Steeg: And welcome to Rochester.
Donald Hall: I’m happy to be in Rochester.
Jim Ver Steeg: That’s great.
Donald Hall: I’ve been here a little over a week and the weather has gone from blazing hot to acceptable.
Jim Ver Steeg: To moderately hot.
Donald Hall: To moderately hot. That’s correct.
Jim Ver Steeg: So, I want to start out by looking at some of your responsibilities and some of what your duties will be here at the University of Rochester. And I know that you’ll have academic, administrative, and financial responsibility for a unit that is home to more than 350 faculty members, over 5000 undergraduates, and over 1300 graduate students. And so, that involves budgeting, development, advancement. That’s a big job. So, what attracted you to this opportunity?
Donald Hall: Well, in many ways it’s a bigger version of what I did at Lehigh. What is different here at Rochester, of course, in the way this college is set up is it does have engineering in it, which is very different. I’ve been collaborating with my fellow faculty members and administrators in engineering for many years at Lehigh, so it’s not new terrain for me. But, it will be fun to work with them more closely.
It’s also a different sort of setup in the sense that the dean of faculty here at Rochester has athletics under her or his responsibility, student life, financial, aid admissions – all of those things are new. So, when I was looking at possibilities after having been at Lehigh for seven years, this was big and interesting, and the university, of course, has a stellar reputation. So, it seemed like a great fit for me and what I wanted to do. And then I met people here and they’ve been fabulous.
Jim Ver Steeg: Oh, that’s terrific. And I know that it’s a little bit early to talk about a grand vision for the future, but I know that you probably come to this role with some priorities. Can you share maybe what some of your priorities might be starting out?
Donald Hall: Well, I have been very transparent in the process of interviewing for the job and then talking with people as I was thinking about the position. And throughout my career – I’ve been in higher education since my first job, which was in 1991 – I really have developed a set of both skills, but also passionate commitment to several things. One is internationalization.
I’m a former Peace Corps volunteer. So, I know how – and also someone who was the first generation of my family to go to college, I know how world expanding, mid expanding that experience of going abroad for the first time or for an extended period of time can be. So, I have spent a lot of time working in universities on deepening international engagement. So, that is one key issue.
My own background, as you noted in terms of my educational background, but also my scholarly background is very interdisciplinary in nature. And so, both internationalization, but also interdisciplinary education has been key to what I have worked on in my career, but also that I feel is very important today in higher education, generally.
And the other thing – myself coming out of a background – I was born in the south in rural Alabama, and in an environment that was very fraught with racial tensions. And also as someone, myself, growing up as a gay kid in a very intolerant environment. That is the whole sort of movement toward embracing the real value of diversity in community. Not just tolerating diversity, but really loving diversity and respecting diversity, and really valuing it as a core principle of a vibrant community is something that I’ve brought to the work I’ve done in higher education.
So, as I look forward to the work I’ll be doing here in AS&E, I know that those touchstones of interdisciplinarity, internationalization, and diversity are gonna be ones that I go back to often.
Jim Ver Steeg: And that’s a very important topic here at the University of Rochester – is that interdisciplinary study. And I know that a lot of universities tout the specialness, the importance of interdisciplinary work. But, with a big medical center and so many other departments that support and work together, it’s an issue here and it’s a big – it’s a big opportunity for students to study interdisciplinary studies. So, how do you encourage students to do that? How do you encourage faculty to work together? What does that look like?
Donald Hall: Well, you know, I certainly think that the structure here really supports interdisciplinary work. I mean, the fact that we have an integrated College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering itself is fairly unique. At so many universities now these are fragmented, and they are really silos between those entities that make it very difficult for students to move across those boundaries and borders very easily or adeptly. Here, I think that is much lower, that barrier to exploration beyond the boundaries of whatever major you happen to choose or concentration you happen to choose to really explore eclectically.
But, beyond that, you know, I really – when I think about the broad challenges that we are faced with as a globe – whether these are environmental challenges, challenges around economic injustice, around just the spread of disease – something like Ebola, let’s say, in Central and Southern Africa. When you look at these sorts of issues that we have to grapple with, they have cultural, they have social, they have engineering, they have scientific, they have a whole host of components that if you approach them from only one of those you really are not seeing the big picture and you really are not dealing with the complexity of a problem. So, when I talk to researchers, when I talk to teams of faculty, when I talk to students it really is: How do we begin to approach the grand challenges that we are facing as citizens of the globe, and how do we begin to problem-solve those in a way that really does respect the complexity of the issues in front of us?
And I think that ability to move among those domains of the social sciences, the STEM fields, the humanities, the arts – that is critical to facing, you know, these grand, really global challenges that are life-and-death ones for us. Again, if you think about threats to the environment or health threats, these are life-and-death challenges that don’t only have scientific solutions, they don’t only have medical solutions, they also – you have to look at culture, you have to look at language, you have to look at socioeconomics – all of these play in. So, that’s how I carry this message of, you know, the importance of interdisciplinary education, research, and thinking to people.
Jim Ver Steeg: And that’s – I want to say that’s a uniquely humanitarian-humanities type approach, but I think what you’re saying is that you’re looking at it as a person who studies humanities, but also appreciates the hard sciences and what they can bring to solutions.
Donald Hall: Absolutely. Absolutely No, the humanities will not save us. Philosophy will not save us. Philosophy has something to say about an issue like injustice or an issue around, you know, cultural disagreements or cultural conflict, or around a threat such as a disease threat. We can understand those philosophically, but if you don’t understand the science behind it, you know, then you’re obviously not going to find a really comprehensive solution to an issue.
Jim Ver Steeg: Right. And I want to go back to a little bit about the importance of a global perspective and an international perspective in higher education. And if you cast yourself back to your first job in higher education and your early memories of that, how has our understanding of the importance or understanding of the need for a global perspective changed in that amount of time?
Donald Hall: Well, I don’t want to reduce everything to vocational appropriateness, however I do think in the past 26 or 7 years, since I first started in higher education, the job market for our graduates has changed significantly. When you as an exiting BABS student go out into the world, you are unlikely to remain employed only in a small geographical area with no contact to anyone else. It may have been still true in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but in the 2000s and going forward, students and graduates’ careers are gonna take them across the globe. And so, when I’m talking with my faculty members, with staff members, and with students about what they – what students need in order to be best equipped to go out into the job marketplace – that global perspective; that comfort at working with people from different cultures, at being able to talk outside your comfort zone is absolutely critical to employability.
And so, you know, whether you’re going to be an engineer, or you’re going to be working in the finance industry, or whether you’re going to work in PR, or whether you’re going to be a teacher after you leave, you’re still going to have to deal with cultural difference and global difference. And so, I think the best thing we can do is train students, help equip them to be productive citizens of the world, not just citizens of their local community or state or region.
Jim Ver Steeg: How does a liberal arts education factor into that preparation?
Donald Hall: Well, again, I think a liberal arts education – broadly defined, a liberal arts and sciences education – allows one to see the complexity of the world in front of you. It allows one to think about cultural difference, disciplinary difference. It allows one an understanding of languages, which I think is critical for students to have at least some awareness – not necessarily fluency, because fluency is a very difficult thing to achieve in a second or third language. But, at least a comfort with individuals who approach the world from a different linguistic standpoint as well as cultural epistemology.
I think that a liberal arts and sciences education, again, best equips one to think about complexity and difference. And I think that is critical right now, both in terms of individuals as citizens of the nation, but also citizens of the globe.
Jim Ver Steeg: When we think about critical differences, cultural differences, and we, in terms of diversity, consider the importance of representation in a lot of different levels of higher education, I’m wondering how you approach diversity to the faculty. And I know that that’s been sort of a charge, is making sure that we have adequate diversity on our faculty. So, what are your thoughts about the diversity here now and where do you see your efforts in the future?
Donald Hall: Well, I think that – you now, Rochester is making excellent progress. I believe, you know, the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering completed 18 or 20 searches this past year and over half of them were women, which is very good. It’s a record for the college. But, when I talk with faculty about the importance of diversity, you get at it from a – you can approach it from several angles. One is students, as we have an increasingly diverse and international student population.
Students have a base level right to see their own lives, their own backgrounds, their own cultures mirrored in the faculty. They really should have a university community that is as diverse as, you know, what they see around them among the student population. So, that is one practical aspect in terms of the sort of pedagogical effectiveness, I believe, of a university.
But, beyond that, diverse groups, people who really come out of very different backgrounds, perspectives, belief systems really do function more productively in the long run. They generate better ideas. We don’t learn through encounters with sameness. We learn through encounters with difference. And so, groups that are inherently diverse are more dynamic, they’re more likely to challenge each other.
Preconceptions are challenged, because people come at the topic at hand from many different perspectives and groundings. And they are more generative over the long run in terms of leading to new knowledge, new discoveries, new innovation. So, I think that there is both a pedagogical aspect to this, but there’s also an aspect to this that really is generative of new research and better thinking.
Jim Ver Steeg: And you mentioned that you grew up as a gay kid in the south.
Donald Hall: Yes.
Jim Ver Steeg: And how did that shape your understanding or your appreciation – your own appreciation for diversity and inclusion?
Donald Hall: It really demonstrated to me, one, that students need role models. They need to see people like them in positions of authority, responsibility; who are respected and productive members of the higher education community or society as a whole. It really demonstrated to me what can go wrong. For instance, again, growing up in Alabama in the 1960s and 70s when there was so much polarization – and there still is in many ways in the south; along racial lines, along political lines, along class lines. And the violence that that lack of even ability to communicate across difference can generate.
And so, I really think that as I’m, again, thinking about how we best equip students to be successful in life, both vocationally, but also as citizens of the country and of the globe. It’s really that ability to speak across difference, to speak to people unlike yourself with respect, listening as much as you do sort of assert your own beliefs, and to come to an ability to appreciate and, as I said, value diversity as fundamental to a healthy society.
And so, I think that really – coming, again, out of an environment in which both from the standpoint of sexual orientation, but also very much race in the south, where that ability to see the other – the other person, the other group – as having intrinsic humanity, of having an intrinsic worth – where that broke down and is in many parts of this country still very broken. I think the best that we can do at a university is model the type of community we want our students to go out and create off campus.
Jim Ver Steeg: And so, your scholarship is around building those academic communities. So, what is your scholarship around that? What do you typically study? What do you look at in terms of academic communities?
Donald Hall: Well, I’ve written a couple of books on faculty development around higher education. One was called The Academic Self, and the other was called The Academic Community. And it really did go back to those core principles of being able to speak across differences, to understand the perspectives of others – even if you don’t agree with others. And this can work faculty to faculty, it can work across lines of faculty to administrator, or staff to staff. You know, faculty staff relations, et cetera play into this.
It really is, I think, critical for a higher education community to model the type of civic behavior that it wishes to instill in students. And, again, we should be – at a place like the University of Rochester, we should be a model for what we want American society to live up to. And I think that is – in the work that I’ve done around especially community building on campus, it really does go back to that valuing of diverse perspectives, finding ways to coexist with those – with whom you disagree, sometimes very deeply, but nevertheless respectfully. And come together around the common good, which in the case of a place like this really is around advancing research and advancing the education of students.
Jim Ver Steeg: And I know that you’re credited with increasing the size of the faculty at Lehigh, but also increasing the diversity of the faculty at Lehigh. So, how did you do that? What were your tactics? How did that come about?
Donald Hall: Some of it really does have to do with group efforts and working with other faculty who are very likeminded, and who, you know, really are committed to this project, who become the trainers of others, the trainers of their peers in terms of – because, I don’t – it’s very rare that in higher education you would find someone who is overtly opposed to the value of a diverse faculty, of being, you know, very proactive in searching for individuals from underrepresented groups. But, that doesn’t mean necessarily that they have the skills necessary to go out and make sure that faculty search pools are diverse as they should be or that the outreach efforts are as successful as they should be. So, what you want are individuals who are well-placed in units and departments to be trainers of others.
And then it’s a matter of critical mass, because it is very, very difficult – myself, knowing as the first out gay person in several units that I’ve joined over the years – it is difficult to be the first. That’s why at times in the past I’ve been a big proponent of cluster hiring, so that you bring in cohorts of individuals – at least groups of two, three, or more – so that people have a community where they really can share strategies, they can – where they’re not as likely to feel tokenized, because I think that is really destructive. If someone comes in and feels like she or he really is the first and perhaps only person who will represent that group and becomes the stand-in for all members of that group, the spokesperson for a race, a sexual orientation, a particular subset of our culture – I think that’s a recipe for disaster.
So, I really do see critical mass as important and oftentimes that can be achieved through cluster hiring. So, at my previous institution and over the years at even institutions before that, we really tried to bring in people – very thoughtfully, strategically, but in groups where we understand that they will need support systems. Because, it’s one thing to attract someone and it’s another thing to retain them. And retention becomes a real issue if someone is tokenized.
Jim Ver Steeg: Did you get a sense that the cluster hiring resulted in a better sense of community for the new-hires?
Donald Hall: Oh, absolutely. No, over the years that I was at Lehigh, from 2011 to this past year, we really built a nationally recognized Africana studies program. And it was through a cluster hiring process, so that you really were bringing in individuals, not in groups of one at a time, but – or not at one at a time, but in groups of two, three, more, so that they did have that sense of community. A couple of years ago we started something very similar with our Latin American and Latino studies program, and that is ongoing and is still resulting in hires every year, and in groups sometimes of two or three.
So, I think that – I’ve seen it work. I really have seen it work. But, it’s critical, I think, for not only changing the initial numbers in terms of the way that a given year looks, demographically, but also in terms of retention and making sure that these sorts of successes are not lost after a couple of years.
Jim Ver Steeg: Right. I’ll give you the famous two-part question.
Donald Hall: Sure.
Jim Ver Steeg: So, coming to Rochester, what do you see as perhaps one of the greatest opportunities here, and maybe what do you see as maybe one of the greatest challenges here?
Donald Hall: Well, I think the opportunity, of course, is that – and this was clear to me from the very beginning. You know, I’ve said to you that I’ve been very transparent about who I am, what I stand for, my values, my priorities, and my track record. That has been actively sought after and has been – it’s why I was hired here. So, the will is there, the intentions are there. There are many people at the University of Rochester and in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering who are completely onboard with these priorities that I’ve articulated to you.
The challenge is always one that, you know – there has been, of course, news in the past year about the University of Rochester that’s not always been positive. So, there’s the immediate sort of getting past the history, the recent history in terms of the media coverage of the university. But, beyond that, it’s the same as every university experiences. We’re in Rochester, New York. We’re not in Manhattan. We’re not in Los Angeles.
We have to attract people to a particular place and that is – if you’re not in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, it can be very difficult, because people are looking to come here and join not only a university community, but a broader community outside the university. And I find it’s lovely here. It’s absolutely wonderful. But, you know, when you talk to people about Rochester it’s – you know, it’s like you’re talking about Greenland. It’s like it’s all snow and ice, and polar bears are wondering around. I mean, it really is – you know, it’s like you’re going off to the Yukon.
It’s like, “Do you have your prospector’s helmet, and your ice pick with you?” You know? So, there’s that perception. And we talked – I talked about that with the committee as I was interviewing here. And this was as much coming from them as it was from me. That you really do have to actively recruit people here. And I think that’s fine.
I mean, I was at West Virginia University for seven years. So, you know, we did some wonderful things at West Virginia, but you have to convince people to want to come to a place like West Virginia. Some places that people don’t automatically, you know, sort of think of when they think of, “This is where I want to go and join a vibrant and diverse community.” Which we have here and I think – you know, I think we can meet that challenge.
Jim Ver Steeg: And as a student myself of queer theory, I do want to talk a little bit about your scholarship in that area. And I know that you talked to – wrote about this in a book, but I was asking – I’m gonna ask you about queer studies and about queer agency, and what that means to you, and what you share as far as improving a sense of agency for queer students, and if that translates to other marginalized populations?
Donald Hall: You know, I really think it does, because, you know, that whole concept of queer, you know, in the way that it was sort of – became very popular and popularized especially in the 1990s, but, you know, certainly has persisted for, you know, 20-soemthing years – really is about – to go back to something I said before – about valuing difference. The reason that term ‘queer’ became re-appropriated by Queer Nation and other activist groups was because it really was – had been used as a slur, as you know, for decades. Calling someone different and, you know, stigmatizing them for being different. Whereas the reclamation of that term really was to say, “Yes. We are different. We are proud of being different. And difference is important.”
So, in that way, I think that that idea of queerness, of valuing difference, of valuing people who think outside the normal routine ways of thinking is very generative and it really does, I think, say a lot about what society itself – as I indicated before – should value. In terms of valuing the differences of perspective, the differences of backgrounds, the differences of – you know, of ways of living one’s life that I think finally allows growth and change. And so, queer agency I think really is about carrying that message that – you know, to repeat something that I said a few minutes ago – that we only learn through encounters with those unlike ourselves.
And by learning to respect – to hear their perspectives, to respect their perspectives, and to use those outside perspectives to question what we think and the way that we’ve been approaching things I think really does lead to social progress, scientific progress, research progress, et cetera.
Jim Ver Steeg: Is Lehigh University a decentralized university?
Donald Hall: No.
Jim Ver Steeg: Okay.
Donald Hall: This is that one extreme of a kind of decentralization. Lehigh was somewhere in the middle. And then I’ve been in very centralized environments before. But, no, it was – we were a very hybrid university in the sense that we had certain aspects that were highly decentralized and then others that were very centralized.
Jim Ver Steeg: So, what do you think about coming to a more decentralized place?
Donald Hall: I think that it is both very empowering when you’re, you know, in a position – in a college position. Where, again, there’s a lot of responsibility, but also a lot of opportunity that occurs within units, a college unit. What I think that it – what I think the university still will need to think about – and certainly we’ll have a new president, you know, who will be joining us in a year or so – is: How does that decentralized model – which is very engrained here and is not likely to change – how does it also dovetail with the desire to build a university brand? That, I think, is the real challenge. It’s easy enough within a unit to build a brand.
But, if we have, you know, the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering; we have the Simon School; we have the Warner; we have Eastman; we have the medical center; and then we have a president sitting over all of this. How does she or he think about what holds it all together? And what advances the institution as a whole? I think that’s the challenge.
In the unit perspective, like I said, it’s very liberating in a sense that you really – you know, deans of the units, the sort of executive dean of the unit really is almost like a university president or a college president. Which is – again, attracted me to the job. But, I think from really the university president at the University of Rochester, that president is gonna have to think about how to move the institution as a collective and as a cohesive unit forward. And I think that’s the challenge and opportunity.
Jim Ver Steeg: Sure. And you hear a lot of talk about challenges to the value of higher education. If it’s challenges from technology or if it’s challenges from the cost of higher education. So, how do you communicate, in essence, the value of higher education?
Donald Hall: You have to look at what students get when they – the lives they lead afterwards. You know, there are very cheap educations at institutions in which students have no employability after they graduate. Then you look at the very high-quality institutions like Rochester, like Lehigh was, where students almost uniformly succeed after graduating, they enter successful careers, they have lives that, you know, are models in many ways. And the investment up front is well worth it in terms of the return on that investment.
You know, there was a piece in a national publication a few weeks ago, really, that talked about the winners and the losers. And Rochester is very much on the side of the winners in the sense that we have a track record to build on. We have proof in terms of the employability of our graduates, the success of our graduates, to say that, “Yes. The sticker price going in is very high. But, for that investment you really have a path forward that is remarkable.” And I don’t think that many, you know, less expensive institutions can say that.
So, while, yes, we’re very conscious of and we should all be very conscious of cost containment. But, we’re not funded by the State of New York, we’re not funded by the federal government. We are internally self-funding. And much of that is through tuition dollars, and the rest is through endowment and gifts, et cetera. But, for that price, students really do get an extraordinary education here.
Jim Ver Steeg: And I see a sort of continuum from the academic community, particularly for students, developing into that alumni network. That continued connection.
Donald Hall: That’s right. That’s absolutely right. What you want is for students to have the type of experience here that will make them want to stay connected to this university for their lives, their entire lives. Because, those alumni going out are gonna be the ones that are the potential employers of the new graduates. They’re gonna be the supporters of this university, that will ensure the financial health of the university.
They’ll be the ones on the outside who are promoting this university, not just nationally but internationally. And so, the type of experience that they have here for their four years – or if they’re a graduate student; two, or six, or whatever – really should connect them to this university, you know, throughout their lives.
Jim Ver Steeg: So, we’ve talked a bit about some broader perspectives, some goals and some visions for down the road. Is there anything that you want to accomplish or anything you’re looking forward to in the near future? Is it unpacking your boxes or –?
Donald Hall: Well, part of it is unpacking my boxes. Part of it simply is learning all about people’s aspirations here. You know? I mean, summer is a wonderful time to start, because, you know, it’s relatively – not slow, but relatively slower during the summer. But, once we get to August and the students are coming back and the faculty are coming back, you know, I look forward to starting to visit departments, programs, units; talking with the communities within those units, talking to staff, talking to students, and hearing about their real aspirations for this university and for the college.
So, I – you know, I’m in learning mode right now, and unpacking mode. But, you know, the movers will be here probably sometime around August 1. So, before the work floods in around the middle of August, I hope to have a lot of boxes unpacked.
Jim Ver Steeg: Dean Hall, thank you so much for joining us today.
Donald Hall: I’m thrilled to be here. No, thank you very much. And, you know, I look forward to working with everyone here.
Jim Ver Steeg: Thanks to our sound engineer, Joe Hagen. For the University of Rochester’s QuadCast, this is Jim Ver Steeg.
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