What Will It Take to Change the Presidency?

In a room full of aspiring community-college presidents, Lynda Villanueva waits her turn; it’s the first day of leadership training, and each participant has been asked to pick a word that describes why they’re qualified for the top job.

“Visionary,” says one.

“Politically savvy,” says another.

“Cubs fan — eternally optimistic,” quips a third.

By the time the question gets to Ms. Villanueva, all the obvious answers have been taken. So she reaches for the noun that has driven her work as Brazosport College’s vice president for academic and student affairs: “Equity.”

“I’ve always viewed myself as the voice of the underserved,” Ms. Villanueva, 45, will later explain. She grew up poor herself, the daughter of a Korean mother and Mexican-American father who never considered going to college. “I’m your typical first-generation student.”

What Ms. Villanueva isn’t is your typical community-college president. Though minorities now make up a majority of students at two-year colleges, more than 70 percent of their leaders are white; close to two-thirds are men.

The Aspen Institute is trying to change those demographics — and the culture of community colleges — by cultivating a diverse pool of reform-minded risk takers. Ms. Villanueva and the 38 others in the lecture hall have come here to Stanford University as part of the think tank’s inaugural fellowship for would-be presidents.

For the program, the institute has selected a diverse group of people: 20 percent are black and 13 percent are Latino. Almost two-thirds of the fellows are women.

Over a 10-month period, the group will meet in different parts of the country to get career advice, build a case for institutional change, and role-play being a community-college president.

For Ms. Villanueva, the fellowship is an exciting opportunity to hone her skills and expand her professional network.

But at the opening of the program, in July 2016, she’s not sure she’s ready to run a college.

Among her concerns: Like many first-generation college students, she sometimes doesn’t feel as if she belongs among her accomplished peers. It’s a feeling that has dogged her for years despite her successful climb up the academic ladder. And it’s a feeling she’ll have to overcome if she wants to fulfill the potential the Aspen Institute sees in her.

“I feel like I’ve lived with impostor syndrome my whole life,” she’ll later tell a mentor during the program. “It’s driven me, but it’s exhausting.”

Aspen’s program is broken into four sessions, and the first one is all about “big ideas.” Over seven days, fellows get introduced to the institute’s framework for college excellence and its principles of “transformational leadership”; they’ll hear from presidents who have transformed their own institutions; and they’ll learn from Stanford professors how to use social psychology and marketing to bring about organizational change.

On Day 2, Ms. Villanueva hears about the role of neurochemicals in risk tolerance, and how leaders can overcome their own emotional biases (hint: seek the statistics) — or use others’ biases to sell an idea (start with a story). “The rational brain is slave to the emotional brain,” says Baba Shiv, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Ms. Villanueva listens, rapt, as Sanford C. Shugart, president of Valencia College and a poet and songwriter, dispenses aphorisms and advice in a Southern drawl: “People aren’t afraid of change, they’re afraid of loss,” he tells the fellows. And “the cocktail for change is one part despair, three parts hope.”

“I wish I could bottle up Sandy,” Ms. Villanueva says afterward.

Later she hears from Mr. Shugart and Steven Van Ausdle, president emeritus of Walla Walla Community College, about their own struggles to bring about change. The conversation is candid. Mr. Shugart speaks openly about the “evil” board member “who cost me a year of momentum”; Mr. Van Ausdle opens up about a dean who tried to get him fired. “You’re going to find it very satisfying but very lonely at times,” he says of the presidency.

At the end of the day, fellows are given an evaluation form that asks them to choose which adjectives describe their initial feelings about the program. Ms. Villanueva circles “inspired,” and writes in “validated.”

Still, her reservations about becoming a college president linger. She’s reluctant to trade her passion — improving student outcomes and increasing equity — for the many competing demands of the presidency, and she wants to give the student-success plan she created at Brazosport, a Hispanic-serving institution of about 4,000 students, 50 miles south of Houston, time to take root.

There’s an element of self-doubt in her hesitancy, too. The oldest child of a mother whose family survived the Korean War and who never finished junior high, and a father who was raised in the cotton fields of the Rio Grande Valley and chose the military over college, Ms. Villanueva spent her childhood in trailers, bouncing between states and countries. Her parents divorced when she was 8, and her mother remarried an abusive man. Ms. Villanueva struggled through high school and took eight years to finish college. Though she eventually earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology, she still struggles with the feeling that somehow, she doesn’t belong in the upper ranks of academe.

Over dinner she asks Mr. Shugart how she’ll know when it’s time to take the next step. He responds with a metaphor: “I like to say that the job is a vessel and your work is the wine,” he says. “When the wine overflows the vessel, it’s time to leave.”

Still, he advises Ms. Villanueva not to wait too long. “You need eight years to make mistakes, and eight years to put in place your vision” he tells her.

Ms. Villanueva says she feels valued and stretched in her current role, and is learning a lot from her own mentor and president, Millicent Valek. But by the end of the conversation, she’s weighing his words.

“Maybe I am ready to go out and make my own mistakes,” she says.

Aspen’s program comes at a time of tightening budgets and rising expectations, as many states cut spending on public colleges and demand better outcomes for taxpayer dollars. It also comes at the beginning of a retirement wave, with 80 percent of sitting presidents planning to retire in the next decade, according to a 2015 survey by the American Association of Community Colleges.

To the institute, this confluence represents an unprecedented opportunity to alter the way community colleges pick their presidents and, in turn, to change the institutions’ priorities.

Whether it succeeds will depend on whether the boards of trustees that hire community-college presidents are willing to embrace a new kind of leader. Traditionally, boards have tended to favor fund-raising and communication skills over a willingness to take risks, choosing charismatic, politically connected leaders over reformers.

But Josh Wyner, executive director of Aspen’s College Excellence Program, says that’s starting to change, particularly as more states link aid to student outcomes like graduation rates and job placements. He says recruiters began calling the fellows the day they were announced, a sign of trustees’ shifting priorities.

“There’s a recognition that if they want different outcomes, they need a different hiring process,” he says.

On Day 3, the fellows break into small groups to compare mock memos they’ve written to an imaginary board of regents arguing the need for change. Ms. Villanueva has avoided using “I” as much as possible, aiming for a collaborative tone, as the program has taught.

But she’s ignored Mr. Shiv’s advice to “start with a story,” deciding that statistics would be likelier to get the board’s attention.

There are a couple other workshops during the first session, but much of it is devoted to lectures by Stanford faculty members. At times it feels like the first year of business school — fast-paced and fascinating and a bit overwhelming, too.

“I can’t absorb it all,” Ms. Villanueva laments over lunch. Still, she says, there are some lessons in the case studies of Fortune 500 companies like Apple and Blockbuster — lessons like “simplicity sells”; confidence is critical, and companies — or colleges — that don’t adapt will die.

Not every speaker is a hit. Some fellows find the sessions on student success too elementary, and more than a few are appalled by the suggestion that they emulate Keith Ferrazzi, an author and relentless networker who has written books on how to get ahead in the corporate world. They bristle at the idea that Mr. Ferrazzi’s “selfishly driven” tactics could work in a “mission driven” environment like academe. “Machiavelli for dummies,” one fellow grumbles after the lecture.

But Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior in Stanford’s business school, who began the session warning that he was “going to talk about a subject that makes people uncomfortable: power,” urges the group to set aside their outrage for a minute and consider whether Mr. Ferrazzi’s tactics, however repulsive, could be used for good. He reminds them of the adage to “be curious, not judgmental.”

“This is a very judgmental group, and it doesn’t do you any good,” he said. “The only judgment you have to make is, ‘Is this a critical relationship?’ Your job is to get things done, not win popularity contests.”

Afterward, Ms. Villanueva says she wasn’t offended by the session. She sees no shame in networking up — it’s something she’s done for years, and one of the reasons she’s gone from being “the child on the free-lunch program” to a high-achieving woman on the brink of becoming a college president.

“We all want to think we get what we deserve for working hard, but that’s not how the world works,” she says. “You have to play the game.”

Many higher-education organizations offer programs to prepare administrators for the presidency. While they touch on many topics, they typically emphasize governance and finance — areas in which many midlevel administrators have little experience, and the ones most likely to trip up new presidents.

The Aspen fellowship, which is funded by several foundations, is focused squarely on student success. It teaches fellows how to communicate with the faculty and build ties with school systems, employers, and lawmakers — lessons the institute says are lacking in many programs. And it shows them how to leverage those relationships to improve transfer and graduation rates and labor-market outcomes.

Aspen picked Stanford as a partner for the program because of its top-notch faculty and its power to “convene” — foundationspeak for bringing people together. With its golden-sandstone buildings, immaculate lawns, and outdoor cafes, it’s a beautiful location for the first meeting, and one the fellows will return to in seven months for the fellowship’s third session, on teaching and learning.

At times, though, Stanford seems a strange setting for a conversation about achieving equity at underresourced institutions.

On a tour of the campus, the fellows joke about what they’d do with a multibillion-dollar endowment. When the guide mentions that the campus spans 8,000 acres, one fellow remarks, “I’ve got four buildings.”

A few find the vivid reminder of institutional inequality hard to bear. “The contrast between what we’re discussing and what we’re seeing makes me nauseous,” one says.

“I think I’ve figured out our problem,” he adds, with a note of sarcasm. “We need more money.”

Later, Ms. Villanueva will say that the privileged setting awakened her old insecurities and doubts about belonging.

Still, the chasm between Stanford’s resources and their own campuses’ relative poverty has united the fellows, too, creating camaraderie and a sense of shared mission. Back home in Lake Jackson, Tex., a few days after the first session, Ms. Villanueva says she felt “supported and cared for.”

“I felt like I became part of a community,” she says.

In October, the group heads to the institute’s Wye River Conference Center, a former slave plantation on the Eastern shore of Maryland. The irony doesn’t escape the fellows, but they don’t have much time to dwell on their surroundings, as they’re in for another packed week.

Some of the participants had grumbled that the first session was too theoretical, so the second has been structured to be more practical and hands-on. There are role-playing exercises, data dives, and case studies — many based on the experiences of fellows and current and former presidents.

In one case study, an unnamed college president grapples with statistics showing that students who transfer to a four-year institution with 30 or more credit hours but no degree do better than students who earn an associate degree before leaving.

“Maybe the associate degree isn’t as valuable as I thought,” the unnamed president concludes.

Ms. Villanueva isn’t afraid to speak her mind, even if it occasionally gets her in trouble. So, when she reads that last line, she doesn’t disguise her dismay.

“If the college president doesn’t know the value of an associate degree — if they haven’t looked at labor-market outcomes — we have a problem,” she says, in a group discussion led by Robert G. Templin Jr., president emeritus of Northern Virginia Community College. “Maybe they’re not good for the role.”

“You’re looking at the president who had that dilemma,” Mr. Templin responds, to laughter from the group.

“Bob, can I buy you a drink?” Ms. Villanueva asks, to even more laughter.

Later the fellows are forced to face some of the challenges confronting their own campuses. Aspen has calculated average transfer and graduation rates for a subset of their institutions, and the statistics are sobering.

According to the institute, just 12 percent of students who started at the fellows’ institutions in 2010-11 graduated from those colleges within three years. An additional 10 percent made it through in six years.

Similar shares of students transferred to a four-year institution in those time frames. But only 9 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree six years out.

The numbers are not far off from national averages for community colleges, but even so, the data are discouraging.

“It’s hard to look at these data and know that every number is a person,” Ms. Villaneuva says. “But we can’t get discouraged or lose focus and motivation. We have to build on the foundation.”

Brazosport College has already taken several steps to improve its retention rates. The college has adopted holistic advising, assigning students to class levels based on multiple factors, not just placement-test scores; it’s embraced the “guided pathways” model, creating course sequences and “meta-majors” designed to keep students on track and reduce unnecessary credit accumulation; and it’s eliminated algebra, a stumbling block for many students, as a requirement for graduation in many majors.

But one of the college’s biggest efforts — and the one that has earned the most recognition from the Aspen Institute and others — has been a student-success course that Ms. Villanueva designed in 2006. The course, which all first-time students must take, has led to sweeping improvements in retention among remedial-education students, and has eliminated the achievement gap between the college’s white and Latino students.

Still, Brazosport’s completion statistics show that a majority of students still aren’t graduating on time — if at all. That troubles Ms. Villanueva.

“The data are showing we still have a long way to go,” she says.

The next day, Ms. Villanueva gets some more personal advice from her mentor, Charles (Chick) Dassance, president emeritus of the College of Central Florida. She tells him that the fellowship has “cemented that I’ve chosen the right path,” but that she’s still not sure she’s ready to take it.

“It’s a bit intimidating to be around somebody like Sandy” Shugart, she confides. “There have been moments during the last couple days when I’ve thought, ‘My God, will I ever be able to fill this role?’ "

“I don’t know if you will ever feel ready,” Mr. Dassance tells her. “You’re never going to know everything.”

“When you get to the point where you think you can make the most difference in another job, that’s the time,” he says.

Several of the fellows have already reached that point. Three were new presidents when the program began, and seven more became presidents by mid-May (an eighth has become a vice chancellor). Another half-dozen are seeking posts, and all are being actively pursued by recruiters.

Mr. Wyner, of the Aspen Institute, predicts that the program will far exceed its goal of seating 20 new presidents within three years.

During the program’s final four days, in Aspen, Colo., in April, the fellows reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as leaders, sharpen their cases for change, and make mock presentations to mentors and fellows playing the roles of trustees, superintendents, and other stakeholders.

They also get tips on navigating the presidential-search process, courtesy of Ericka Miller, a search consultant at Isaacson, Miller. In a question-and-answer session, she offers advice on finding a good “fit,” competing against sitting presidents, and differentiating yourself as an internal candidate.

“You are going to be competing with something shiny and new,” she says. “Make sure you are articulating a forward-looking vision.”

Others in the room chime in: One mentor, a current college president, says it “can be harder to be an internal candidate because they have you in a box.” Another mentor and former president talks about the “stress” of an internal search and advises fellows to “stay as far away from the gossip as you can.” And one of the fellows describes the internal search process simply as “hell.”

This talk troubles Ms. Villanueva, who would prefer to stay at Brazosport if the presidency opens up in the next few years. After the session, she nervously texts Ms. Valek, the current president: “Is being an internal candidate as bad as everyone says?”

Ms. Valek responds quickly, telling her it depends on the board of trustees and the campus culture. She offers to discuss the topic further when Ms. Villanueva returns, and ends with an affirmation: “You can do it!” followed by a star.

If Ms. Villanueva does eventually become a college president, she’ll be something of a rarity. Only a third of community-college presidents are women, just 5 percent are Latino, and only 2 percent are Asian-American.

That’s not due to any lack of preparation on the part of women or minorities, says Lynn Gangone, vice present for leadership at the American Council on Education. Women have earned more than half of all doctoral degrees for more than a decade, and minorities are getting more doctoral degrees — a fact that belies the “pipeline myth.”

The gender and racial disparity, she says, may have more to do with the composition of boards of trustees, which tend to be predominantly male and white. “Unintentionally, boards tend to look for people that look like them,” Ms. Gangone says. “It’s implicit bias.”

At the same time, some qualified women may not apply because of family responsibilities. According to the council, female presidents are less likely to be married and to have children than male presidents are.

Ms. Villanueva, who has a 7-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, has an advantage that most would-be female presidents don’t: Her husband is a stay-at-home dad.

Still, there are moments when she wonders whether she’s pouring too much of herself into her work — like the time she had pneumonia and ran a conference call from her hospital bed, or the time her son took her face in his hand and demanded, “Look at me, Mama!”

In a mentoring session with Mr. Dassance and three other fellows, she talks about feeling constantly driven to prove herself, and asks how she can “calm the nerves in my head and stomach.”

Mr. Dassance reminds the fellows to “focus on your core” — to find whatever it is that centers and balances them.

“The president’s role is to be the quiet at the eye of the storm,” he says.

As the fellowship winds down, Ms. Villanueva gets to put into practice her mentor’s advice. The capstone of the Aspen program is a series of mock presentations, and Ms. Villanueva has chosen to make hers to a roomful of administrators from local school districts.

She starts with the successes — dual-enrollment numbers are way up, labor-market returns look good — then turns to a “troubling statistic": most low-income students still aren’t completing their degrees.

“Are those who need upward mobility the most making it?” she asks. “Are we breaking the cycle of poverty or perpetuating it?”

As she flips through the slides with their slick graphics, she seems confident, authoritative, and poised. She closes with a call for closer collaboration between the school district and the college, asking, “How can our partnership be deepened and expanded?”

Afterward, in the feedback period, Mr. Shugart says Ms. Villanueva was “really engaging.” Mr. Dassance says her “comfort and command of the data were great.”

“You were so calm — the eye of the storm,” he tells her.

“That wasn’t how I felt,” she admits.

“Well, that’s how you looked,” he says.

“And that’s what counts,” she says, finishing the thought.

Gaps in Community-College Leadership, by the Numbers

Women and minorities are underrepresented as community-college presidents. But with almost 80 percent of current leaders saying they will retire in the next decade, the Aspen Institute and other groups are trying to develop a more-diverse pool to fill those positions.

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