>> Well, this is part two of the interview with
Kennesaw State University President Kathy Swain.
And I wonder if we could start with
a question that goes to when you first came to Kennesaw.
>> Yeah.
>> And the question really may have
been something that I was surprised to find out.
What department were you in when you came here?
>> So I came to KSU,
and I joined the accounting department.
At that time, it was accounting and business law
and it was the Department of Accounting and Business Law.
And my discipline is information systems.
And information systems is
often found in a business school.
So my degree is from a business school
that has information systems discipline.
At this time in KSU's history,
which was 2002, the
IS discipline was not in the business school.
It was in the College of Science and Math.
So it was computer science and information systems
were together in the College of Science and Math.
But typically you have
a required course in most business curriculum,
a management information system course
in most business schools.
And so I was hired in to teach that particular course.
And there were a handful of us,
maybe three or four of us that were full time
IS faculty members in the business school,
and we were housed in the accounting department.
Not unusual. A lot of the IS programs that emerged.
So IS itself is a very young discipline.
It's only been around since really the '70s.
And a lot of the initial academic departments in
IS were in schools of
accounting departments of accounting.
So very typical where I was. Yeah.
>> So how many information systems people did
we have in the college of mathematics and science?
>> College of science, math.
So they had computer science
and they had information systems.
And I'm not going to get the exact number,
but I would have said maybe 10 or so.
Ten to 11 in that realm.
So they would have lecturers,
assistants associate and full professors as well.
>> It's interesting.
There was a time when we didn't have
computer science here way back.
>> Yeah.
>> And then a whole lot of
the math people reprogram themselves to
be able to teach computer science to begin
with before we hired a whole lot of people in that area.
I guess I was surprised that anybody in
information systems would have
been in the college of science and math at all.
>> Sometimes in this way
predates me so I coming here in 2002,
but sometimes decisions are
made where to locate a discipline,
perhaps based upon enrollment,
perhaps based upon discipline.
I think in that case, there were
some similarities between IS and
computer science and the way they built
the program was that there was
a lot of commonality in the degree programs,
and then at one point, the students would branch off.
They'd make a decision either to be an
IS major or computer science major.
And they're actually very different type of degrees.
The computer science is more math.
Whereas the IS has
a lot of the business components in it,
the outcomes, what students do
from those degrees are very different.
But there is some commonality.
But over time, it was
actually when I became interim dean a few years later.
So I became interim dean at KSU in 2008.
And at that time, Ron Matson was
interim dean in the College of Science and Math.
And he came to me and we
began having a conversation about moving
the IS faculty from
the College of Science and Math into
the business school, which ultimately we did.
And there is now a
Department of Information Systems in the business school.
I think they're knocking on having
about 30 faculty now as of today.
So that took that small group of
faculty that I was with in
the School of Accountancy and then we coupled
it with faculty from science
and math that had the IS background,
not the computer scientists, but the IS background,
and we created
this new Department of Information Systems.
>> So you did get a Department of Information Systems?
>> We absolutely did. Yeah.
>> Well, Ryan had said that the computer science people
all got their degrees in mathematics.
>> Correct.
>> Whereas the IS
people all got their degrees from a business.
>> Correct. Very different purpose.
So at KSU, you get an IS degree,
but it's in the BBA program.
So Bachelor of Business Administration,
so you take accounting and
economics and marketing and finance and
all those core business classes and
then you focus in on the IS as your major.
And so your position to be really somebody
in an organization that understands the business but also
understands the technology and
the computing capabilities.
Whereas in the computing is going to be much more
intensive in the technology area
or in the algorithm area, in the math area.
So there's a whole horizon
of different degrees across computing.
Even more so today than there was 20 years ago.
>> So how did you become interim chair of the department?
Was it Department of Accounting at that time?
>> It was. Correct. It was Department of Accounting.
And again, I was one of maybe three or four
IS folks within Department of Accounting
and business law faculty.
John McAllister, who was
the department chair and had been
a department chair for a long time in accounting
and he had hired me and
John left to go be
dean at the University of North Florida.
And so I was really
honored and somewhat taken
back that a couple of folks had said,
Hey, you know, Kat needs to be the interim.
And that's essentially how it played out.
And at that time, Tim Mescon
was the dean in the Coles College.
Tim and I didn't really know each other that much.
I was a faculty member in
the Department of Information
or excuse me, in the accounting department.
But I guess he listened to a couple folks who
said Kat could do this.
And so went in has served as an interim for that year.
>> You know which year that was?
>> I do. It was fall '05.
>> '05. And you've been here three years.
You're in your, I guess your fourth year.
>> Starting my fourth year. I never,
ever had any idea
or any inclination to be an administrator.
Nobody was more surprised that a few folks had
recommended me for the role than I
was because I just never really thought about it.
And so I served in that role for
the interim year and loved it.
I found out I liked the administrative part.
There's a lot of it that was challenging that I had never
understood having been a faculty before.
And so there's certainly different challenges and
different things that you deal with
that you might not think about when you're
a faculty member, but really enjoyed it.
And then that year, the department hired Ken Harmon.
Ken Harmon joined the departments
as a chair at that point in time,
and he was joining us from
Millsap College where he
had been the dean of business there.
>> So there wasn't
any great drama about
the accountants couldn't get along with each other,
so they wanted somebody from IS to head the department?
>> No. I don't think there was anything like that.
It's actually one of the most harmonious
departments I've ever been a part of.
Very hardworking individuals.
I love my time in the accounting department.
I love my time in that department.
And actually consider it one of my home departments,
even though now I'm technically in the IS department,
but I still feel a real strong connection to that unit.
>> Well, we've had some superior faculty members
that got out of the [OVERLAPPING]
>> Oh, sure. The Hermansons.
Great faculty in that area.
>> Good. Now, you were
also a chair of another department weren't you?
>> Yes I was.
>> So did you go from being interim to interim or did you
go back to full time faculty in 2006, I guess?
>> So '05,
'06, I was interim department chair.
And then the fall of '06,
I went back to faculty.
That was the year that Ken came by January,
so spring '07,
I became an associate dean within the college.
So Dean Mescon and I know began working together.
So that's where I really got a broader perspective.
And I was associate dean.
I was in charge of the academic portfolio.
So PNT dealt a lot with academic affairs,
with hiring and really I
guess essentially what we would call
a senior associate dean now.
I don't know that I had that title.
But moved into the Dean suite at that time
and just learned a lot
about what it means to lead a college,
which is different from what it means
to lead a department.
And so just a very different perspective at that level,
but worked closely with him.
>> How so is it different?
>> Well, I think any level that you,
have any position you have,
you deal with the constituents of that level mainly.
So when you're a department chair,
you're dealing face to face with your students
a lot with your faculty
and obviously the staff that support your programs.
And so it's very front line.
It's this class has to be staffed.
We've got to find faculty member
to fill this section of this course,
so are we going to hire a part timer?
And if that's the case, then we've got to
initiate that hiring process.
And there's the budget at the unit level.
And how do you allocate a certain amount of
limited operating budget across a unit.
And so it's really a perspective and almost a purview.
So at that point as a department chair,
you're working very closely with
your students and with your faculty.
In many cases, you're looking at your programs too.
So it's really the bread and butter of the university.
You've got your faculty, you've got your staff,
you've got your academic programs
and students are coming into those programs.
So you've got the curriculum piece
and navigating that and are you thinking
about developing new programs or
are there classes that need to be changed and evolved?
So that's very much what you're doing at that level.
When you come up to the dean's office,
certainly as an associate dean,
you're now managing or looking at or
overseeing a portfolio of programs.
In our case, in the business school,
at that time, there would have been four academic units,
I think, maybe there were five at that time.
I think there were five at that time.
Academic programs and each one is different.
Disciplines bring a lot of personality to them.
So now it's not just the discipline
of a unit you're most familiar with.
It's a broader perspective
of disciplines that you're navigating.
And now you're helping those chairs
and working with those department chairs and
helping them facilitate the work
that they're doing on the front line.
So I think with every level,
you also have a different constituencies.
So again, with the department chairs,
we're thinking about students, faculty, staff,
when you go up to the college level,
you have a broader base of faculty.
You have a broader base of
students that you're looking at,
and it's now a different resource perspective as well.
So it's not just these
are the funds I have at the department,
it's these are the funds that we have
a college. How do we allocate them?
What's the strategy, that type of thing.
And I think that's true when you go to dean,
to provost and certainly to this role.
There's just a different perspective.
>> Did you start teaching at that point or?
>> I taught in 2007.
I think it was one of the last times I taught.
So that year I was an associate dean and I was requested.
It was in probably about February
of 2007 to come and serve as
interim chair in the College of Science and Math.
And so that was the Department of
Computer Science and Information Systems.
>> [inaudible].
>> I did.
And I was just with him for about four or five months.
So they had a chair that stepped down and I went in
and led them and
the Dan wanted me there because of my IS background.
So we had IS faculty and computer science faculty,
so he asked me to come in for four or five months.
It was very short period of time.
And I got to work with that group
and we ran a search for chair,
really loved working with them in that capacity.
Larry Peterson. Yeah. So Larry had asked me to come
over and do that for
I guess about I think February to May,
February to June probably.
>> So February to June 2007.
And so let's see,
it's 2008 that Tim Mescon left, I believe.
>> Correct.
>> So you go back to being
associate dean for a little longer?
>> I stayed in both roles.
So I was an associate dean and an interim chair.
So I was still associate dean in business school.
>> So I guess it makes sense that you
would become interim dean
when Tim Mescon leaves to be president of Columbus State.
>> Yeah. So that was in summer of 2008 that
he left and I did assume that role at that time.
And I think the only associate dean
in the dean's office at that time.
I think Shef Tru if I remember this correctly,
was serving as our graduate dean as well.
I can't remember if we had another associate dean.
That's a long time ago, Tom.
>> Well, 14 years ago,
I guess. Time does pass.
>> Amazing.
>> That's for sure. So he
leaves and you become interim dean and let's see,
I guess Carmon Harmon is going to follow you again.
>> He is. Yeah. That's right.
>> So you're interim dean for about a year, I guess.
>> Yeah. So I was interim dean,
that would have been 2008, 2009.
And one of the things that was big part of
my learning curve that year was that was
our year record for our first accreditation visit
that I was affiliated with the AACSB.
So that's a big learning curve
when you're preparing for the visit.
The visit didn't happen until fall nine,
but we were preparing for that visit.
But yes, I was interim dean
during that time. Big learning curve.
Again, with every move that you make,
you get a different perspective and a different purview,
so when you're an associate dean or a chair,
you're mainly internal to the college.
When you go to a dean's role,
obviously, you have to lead and shepherd the college,
but you're also external,
you're external to the community,
but you're also connected with the provost office.
The college has to be a part of
that strategy of the whole academic unit.
So that was a big part of it as well.
But we did do a dean search
and I did not apply for that position.
I did not feel like I was ready for
that position long term because really,
if you think about it, I had been
in administration only for about three years.
Lots of different interim roles at that time,
but only about three years.
And so I was thrilled
when Ken did apply and moved into that position.
>> So at that point,
I was doing some work.
Most of the work that I had done prior to my coming to
KSU was in the area of
privacy or in the area of IT outsourcing,
so I did some of that.
Here I continued both privacy and outsourcing,
but I also did some work in
project management so it was an area that I liked a lot.
So a paper or two in that space as well.
>> So when Ken Harmon
becomes the dean, what do you do at that time?
>> I go back to associate dean.
So I was the associate dean that next year.
Now, that would have been the year we had
that accreditation visit, which was a big deal.
That was a lot to prepare for.
And then we had to host the actual visits.
So Ken was in that role.
So then that would have been, where are we,
about '09, '10 at that point.
So I was his senior associate dean at that point.
>> August of 2010 was when [inaudible]
left who had been the provost?
And so that's when,
I guess, Ken Harmon becomes.
>> Interim provost.
>> Correct.
>> At that time.
>> That's right. So President Papp asked
Ken to serve in that interim provost role.
I think Ken, and I know you've talked to Ken,
but Ken was very excited about
being the Dan in the Coles College,
and I think that
was the main role that
he wanted to have and was very excited.
And so the idea of going to
the provost role for him was one of,
I'll go for a year, but then I'll come back.
It was he didn't plan out.
I don't think he applied for the provost position.
But then that search wasn't successful,
so he ended up staying another year.
But when he became provost,
I went back into the interim dean role again.
So now I'm in that role again.
And then eventually,
he does apply for the provost role.
And I stay interim dean,
I think, another year at least.
So I don't become dean until May of 2012,
I think. So lots of interim years.
>> But you really been dean for several years?
>> It was a lot of years of interim.
I think there were three interim years out of four.
>> So that really means that you've been
interim dean or you were dean
of Coles College for
half the time you've been at Kennesaw.
>> If you look like from 2008 to '19, yeah.
So that's true. So either interim or full time.
>> Well, so 2012,
you are permanent dean and until 2019, you're the dean.
And so let's get into that period and
talk about what was going on in that time.
And let me just start with the question of,
I guess, community outreach as dean.
I think maybe the Coles College
has a real advantage in that it's
a business school and work with the business community a
lot regardless of fundraising or anything else.
Well, let me ask you, first of all,
did you enjoy, I guess,
community outreach and what
Betty Siegel used to call friend raising.
>> I loved that part of the job.
Actually, now I hadn't done a lot of
it until I became dean,
both interim dean initially in '08 and then certainly
continuing that through the time
that I was a dean from 2012 on.
So I think it's incredibly important.
When you're in a dean role,
much like when you're in a president's role,
you become really the face of
that organization and it's important to
be in the community and to engage with people.
And there's a lot of different ways to do that.
We had a great advisory board
that Tim [inaudible] had established,
and then I nurtured it for
a number of years and we restructured it a little bit,
we got it down to a little bit smaller size.
I think it was around 40 when I first took over.
>> Really?
>> And I had somebody on that advisory board say,
hey, Kat, I know how I got on this board,
but I don't know how to get off this board.
[LAUGHTER] So we actually
put in some bylaws so that people
could rotate off and
that we could understand expectations.
But that's really where you start as a dean,
is really working with that board
and allowing them to connect you to people in
the community and just
engaging with them and having conversations.
Now I will also say,
being a business dean, you're right,
you have this natural connection
to the business community.
But when you have a business community like we have,
the Coles College sits in a wonderful business community,
with Atlanta, with
the Cobb community and this whole area.
[OVERLAPPING] It's a phenomenal area
from a lot of different reasons.
I'll tell you, we never had a challenge being able to
staff classes because we always had
folks from the business community.
If we needed some talent,
we always had some highly highly
qualified people who could step in.
So really engaging with
the business community in this area,
especially with Atlanta at our front door.
It was an honor, it was a privilege, it was fun.
It was always very exciting.
You have a lot of somebody who
comes from a technology background.
You have a lot of technology energy in Atlanta,
so it's always fun to engage with that.
So those partnerships and
relationships come very organically.
One of the things that we tried to do during the time,
it really started in that '08 time frame.
We did a strategic plan within the college
and working with members of
the college or what are some things that we wanted to do?
And one of the things was to raise our profile,
to elevate our profile.
And so very intensely began to
do things that would help us do that.
And one of them has to do
with branding and marketing and that type of thing.
We had a great group within
the college that understood how to do that,
much better than I understood that how to do it.
But we really focused on
elevating our brand and our recognition.
That has halo effects that last for a long time,
but it was very exciting.
The truth is, you've got
great faculty and that's the thing that I love about KSU,
and this is true across the campus
and I certainly experienced it while I was
in Coles that you have faculty that
are really passionate about what
they do and authentically so.
And so I think
the programs that we had in
the business school were excellent.
They were producing excellent graduates.
The faculty cared deeply about that.
So we did everything that we could to
elevate and to promote those programs.
>> Who chaired your community advisory board?
>> Lots of different people did.
So typically you would have a chair from
within the board so different members of the board.
So I'm trying to think of who specifically.
Each year, we would have a different board chair.
So I don't think I can pull out one,
but we would have different board chairs throughout time.
>> Let me ask the question maybe another way.
Well, let me just ask,
do you think that some colleges were
much more involved in community outreach than others?
>> Colleges?
>> Yeah.
>> I think, yeah.
To your point earlier, you said
sometimes it's easier for business school
because there's this natural
connection to the corporate world.
I think there's a natural
connection to the corporate world
with College of Humanities and Social Sciences as well.
You have a lot of disciplines that
engage and a lot of
those graduates go into corporate positions.
And so same thing with science and math,
where you're really feeding a lot of
scientific corporations with great talent.
So I think it's a more natural fit
because of the disciplines that are inherent there.
But I don't know.
I think any college can be intentional about it,
any dean can be intentional about it.
And I think we have our deans right
now are very intentional about it,
and that's core to what they do.
>> Today?
>> Absolutely.
>> But I just find it
hard to imagine Helen
[inaudible] doing a whole lot of that,
for instance, and some of the deans in
the past, Vengroff or whatever.
I just can't imagine them being out, doing much.
But [inaudible] Joe Meeks was certainly doing a lot.
>> Well, college of yours has
a different type because you want to
connect obviously to the arts community.
That interplay between the arts community
and the institution is so important.
Really the community wants that.
The community wants to be connected to
the talent that's here and vice versa.
I think to your point, Tom,
at different stages in an institution's history,
you have different priorities.
I didn't really know Helen.
I did know Dr. Vengroff.
But I think at different stages in
the institution's history at different times,
you have different focuses.
In any five year history of a college or a university,
there are going to be things that are compelling you at
that point in time that you're going to prioritize.
>> Linda Noble was another.
She probably be good at it,
but I don't remember her ever
getting out and doing much in the community.
Or Larry Peterson,
was he involved in the community at all?
>> I know he was involved with some corporations,
and Larry had a big passion for education.
He wanted to create science educators and math educators.
That was a real passion that he had.
So I can't really speak to
their exact engagement in that time frame.
>> And maybe another way to ask it,
those that I mentioned,
I don't remember them doing a lot of
fundraising, I could be wrong.
>> Right. Well, I also think,
again maybe the priority of
institution at the given point in time.
Now, when I was dean,
as dean I was never held accountable for fundraising.
So that wasn't something.
I was never told,
here, have this target.
You have this target.
You need to raise this amount of money per year.
And during my time as dean,
and it's really because I worked with
some great faculty and some great teammates,
we raised about $13 million during that time.
But there's a couple of things that have to happen,
that I think and this is where we are today.
And President Whitten put this structure in place.
She hired somebody who knows how to
really structure around and organize around fundraising,
and that's Lance Burchett.
So our deans all have targets on them.
So every year they are
asked to raise a certain amount of money.
And so I don't know that we had
a culture of fundraising really
until the past three or four years.
We had some success in fundraising,
but I think President Whitten
revolutionized what that means
at this institution because during her time,
during her short three years,
we have three of the largest gifts
ever given to this institution,
and she was here for three years.
>> So the [inaudible] gift,
was than one of that in that period?
>> It was. And I'm not going to get all three.
The other one would have been the Brown gift
and the Honors College, and I'm missing one.
I'm not sure what that one is.
The Bailey gift to name the School of Music.
So those are all
significant gifts and some of
the largest gifts that we've ever had.
>> So it's not part of the job description
until relatively recently.
>> It was part of the expectations,
and so I think it would have been
in the job descriptions.
But again, fundraising, you
have to have the infrastructure for fundraising.
You doesn't just go out.
It doesn't happen just because you have
a dinner with a potential donor.
And that's what I think Lance Burchett has brought to
the table is he's built
a whole infrastructure that is needed.
It's just like with research and what Dr.
Corso is doing as vice president of research.
She is building the infrastructure to help
support our faculty and being successful.
What Lance has done is,
he's got a very highly organized and accurate database
of donors and potential donors.
He has almost scientific methods
of what you do to raise money.
Part of that is having those targets,
not just for deans,
but for other leaders on campus
and just building a culture
of fundraising and a mindset of fundraising.
Giving on campus by staff and employees,
giving by alumni.
In some of those areas, we need to do
better than what we're doing right now,
but he's building that infrastructure.
It's not just saying,
we're going to do
this this year because we're going to ask for this money.
There's a way that you do it.
There's a way that you approach folks with it.
I think we have a better system now and a
better unit in that space now than we ever had before.
You have to look at
the numbers because the numbers
confirm that since he's been here.
So it's really what he and President Whitten did.
They created the foundation
for what I think
will be extraordinary fundraising going forward.
>> It's really interesting to see the evolution of
the foundation over the years when it first started.
If they raised $30,000 a year,
they thought they were having a good year.
>> Sure. And that's okay.
There should be an evolution of all of this,
and that really wasn't the focus of the institute.
We're trying to get our roots in the
ground at that point.
>> And then when they got a $1,000,000
from Michael Coles,
we named a school with the name which became a college.
>> That's right.
>> [LAUGHTER] Although I understand that
was controversial among some
of the business faculty that
they thought they sold it too cheap.
>> That predates me.
>> At any rate, the $13 million sounds
fantastic to raise in philanthropic gifts,
I guess that's over the seven years?
>> It is. But a lot of it,
again, it has to do with working with folks.
So some of those were some big gifts
that were given to some of
the institutes within the college,
some of the centers within the college.
There were some individual gifts as well.
So fundraising is a team effort,
but you've got to prioritize it.
You've got to make sure it's a focal point.
>> Well, you've already mentioned
the accreditation and I
think you had to go through a second accreditation with,
what is it, AACSB.
>> Correct.
>> For your dean.
>> Correct.
>> And that was a big deal, I guess.
I'm trying to think now.
Was the first accreditation in the "90s?
I know Tim Mescon wasn't [inaudible].
>> Yeah. Yes.
>> And that was a really big deal
when it first got accredited.
>> Yes. Well, it is a big deal.
It's a big deal for a lot of reasons.
A small percentage of schools
worldwide have
business and accounting accreditation by ACSB.
So it's a very small percentage of business schools.
So it is the gold standard in business education.
So that's important to have.
It also helps you to structure and organize
so that everybody's not just going in one direction.
So these business educators from across the world get
together and establish
these principles for accreditation.
That say, hey, this is what we
feel business education should
be about for the next decade or so.
So you use those guidelines then to
structure what business education means at KSU.
I learned a lot in those accreditation processes.
They're challenging.
For us, they involve making
sure you have a good strong strategic plan,
making sure that you're doing
a good assessment of learning from your students,
and then making sure that
both your curriculum and your faculty are
qualified, that it's solid.
And so those assessments,
I think, are really important.
>> Well, there's also a lot of national rankings that
US News and World report for different programs
in the business, Nichols College.
Would you like to talk about some of those?
>> So that kind of ties
back to the comment I made earlier,
is that when you're doing good work,
you want to do what you can to get that recognition.
And so rankings are
always based upon a perspective
of whoever's doing the ranking,
and so you want to understand
what it is that they value and they care about,
and then you assess, do we meet those qualifications?
And you want to present yourself that way.
So some people don't like rankings,
some people say, why don't you get more rankings?
And so I think it's most often people doing good work,
and it either naturally gets recognized or you
put yourself in a place where
you can get them recognized.
So that's important.
I think it's very important.
And I think one thing that certainly we
did in Nichols College was think
about how can we elevate our programs?
That recognition matters.
I think it's something we need to do
more of here at KSU,
because people are doing a lot of great work.
Whether it's through a ranking or some type
of publicity or whatever,
it could be an interview of faculty that
are doing great work and that gets promoted,
we've got to do a better job of telling
the story of what's happening here.
>> Maybe just one last question on telling the story.
There's been a lot of controversy in Georgia
and elsewhere on such things,
and particularly in the public schools
on just teaching Black History.
>> Sure.
>> And I guess
there's a certain balance between being community
oriented and yet protecting faculty right
to say what they want to say in their area of expertise.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
>> Sure. So a lot of concern that has come about has been
because there are a lot of complaints from students
that feel like their rights are being violated.
When we talk about academic freedom,
we have to remember that academic freedom is
not pure freedom to
say what you want to say in a classroom.
It's got to be in line with the curriculum.
But also students also have academic freedom as well,
and it's balancing that
right and balancing those conversations.
You certainly don't want to set up
a situation where students are
being coddled and they're not being
taught and challenged in the classroom.
At the same time, they should not be
purely penalized for having
a viewpoint different from the faculty member.
Now, where that gets tricky is if there's an assessment
that's happening and the faculty member
says that's not the right view.
Does the faculty member have the right to grade
that paper in a certain way? Of course.
It's not an easy topic to just come out with
something simple and formulaic to address.But I think it
is important and what it's doing for us is it's
actually having us examine what academic freedom is.
So academic freedom is not
the freedom to say
whatever you want to say in a classroom.
You're supposed to be teaching a
curriculum and you're supposed to
be creating environments where
students can learn and grow and be challenged,
be all perspectives on what that means.
>> But we also, I guess, while you were Dean,
had that controversy with the dreamer that
got arrested in the west parking deck,
and it turned out that she came here as a child,
and not here legally.
And Dan Papp supported her
vigorously and got repped
over the cause in the newspapers.
>> Sure. So part of what we have to
realize is the context
in which we lead in which we serve,
and we have to be very
intentional about understanding what that context is.
So we're a state institution,
and we're part of a state system.
And so we have to be just very
clear about what it means to lead in that context.
And so these are never easy issues,
and I think they get characterized
probably too simplistically most of the time.
>> When did we move from the DBA
to the PhD in business administration?
I know somewhere along the line we
dropped the DBA and started the PhD.
Were you involved in that too?
>> I was involved in that, and I may get this wrong,
but I believe our first PhD in business was granted
in 2018, December of 2018.
So what happened with the DBA program.
So the DBA program was approved at
the Board of Regents in 2008.
Soon as Tim Mescon got that approved,
he said, Kat, this is something I wanted to do.
I'm excited, but I'm going to go be president now.
So he was very excited to get
that doctoral degree in
the college and we were excited too.
And so that was really something that
my whole time as Dean,
is something that I just know
the arc of the evolution of that program very
well and worked with
the leadership of the faculty
in that program during that time.
We had some good times, we had some hard times,
tough conversations, good conversations.
But essentially what happened is the DBA was
designed really to be an executive doctorate,
but our faculty who were great researchers that
were teaching in it really taught
it more as a research degree.
So we were able to
really look at the output and what was happening.
A lot of our graduates were going on to getting
tenure track positions in universities.
It was more indicative
of the degree being recognized as a research doctorate.
So we wanted that name to be put on the degree.
And Board of Regents agreed.
I believe it happened that fall of
2018 and the first graduates of December 2018.
So it happened immediately.
>> Well, was there any controversy over the switch?
Was Georgia State opposed to it or anything?
>> No. And Georgia State has,
I think they now called their doctorate a DBA. I say no.
To my knowledge, there wasn't controversy.
There wasn't a battle or anything like that.
This wasn't something that had to go
through a curriculum process or anything like that,
I don't believe, and I may be wrong about that.
But Georgia State has had a PhD and
an executive doctorate and
they still have those two degrees.
I believe their executive doctorate's now called the DBA.
>> Well, I know Information Systems is
one of the concentrations in PhD.
>> Yeah. It sure is.
>> While you were Dean,
we went through the consolidation with
Southern Polytechnic State University.
That was announced in November of 2013
and became official,
I guess, in January of 2015.
And I remember, I think there was
81 different operational work
groups or whatever we called them.
>> OWGs, yeah.
>> How did that affect you as Dean?
>> Sure. Obviously,
that was quite a journey, I think,
for our faculty and staff at Southern Poly,
as well as here at KSU.
And I remember sitting around this board table and
President Papp making that announcement to us.
All the Deans were in the room
as well as the cabinet that morning,
and then I think it was announced momentarily after that.
I think it was on November 1st of that year,
if I remember correctly.
>> It was amazing that was kept such top secret.
>> Sure. Yeah.
>> If I remember correctly,
Dan found out the day before.
>> Yeah.
>> And so the Deans found out that morning.
>> It was announced,
and I think there was a meeting that was
scheduled on the Southern Poly Canvas as well. So yeah.
So anytime you bring
together two separate cultures, it's a challenge.
So I was a Dean of business at that time.
Southern Poly had a business program.
And so we began to work immediately with
how we were going to bring these programs together.
We had an ACSB accredited program, business program.
Southern Polys had a different accreditation.
So ultimately what happened,
what we ultimately did was
we closed all of those programs,
transitioned students out of them,
and then moved those faculty into
the departments in Nichols College that were existing.
And so there was really no reason
to run two separate programs,
it wouldn't have made any sense.
They were structured differently.
And so we had a teach out of
the programs from Southern Poly.
So it's a tough time. It's a tough time,
and then I think we had about 18 or 19 faculty members
from Southern Poly that moved into Nichols College.
So you're finding, they're getting
their academic homes there, different culture,
different tenure standards,
so you just have to work through it,
and ultimately work through it almost one on one.
The department chairs are having to look at
the portfolio that those faculty have
and where they fit into what we're doing,
or do they allow us to do
some things we haven't done in the past.
>> Yeah. So did they all
move over to the [inaudible] campus?
Did we continue to teach
any courses down there in business?
>> We taught some,
and I think we still have,
maybe one or two of those faculty are
still down on the Southern Poly campus.
For example, we have economics,
which is a general education course,
but also we have students on the Marietta campus,
oftentimes will take economics or other business classes.
So we do offer courses down there,
and then we offer some marketing classes
down there as well,
because those students can
take those classes as part of their degree program.
So I don't believe we offer
a full business degree on the Marietta campus,
but we do have classes and
some faculty that are still on the Marietta campus.
>> And we think this would have been very time consuming
for a couple of years, at least.
>> But I think it was for everybody.
It's just figuring out all the nuance.
It's just like anything like this.
The complexity of it is more than
you can imagine until you start walking through it.
So when you start talking
about degrees being discontinued,
there's a whole process to that,
and then obviously you have
folks that are not thrilled about this decision,
whether that be current students or alumni.
There was a timing on when students would stop
getting a diploma that said Southern Poly on it
versus when they would start getting
a degree with KSU on it.
Some of those students, I didn't go to KSU,
I'm Southern Poly, I want this degree.
So obviously, there's just a lot of complexity,
a lot of emotion,
a lot of things to work through.
>> Yeah. And they had some faculty that were doing
some fabulous research at Southern Poly.
>> Yeah. Of course.
>> But a lot others
who really didn't want to do research.
>> Yeah, different type of institution.
We would have the same thing at KSU.
We would have faculty that came at a time
when research was not a priority of the institution,
and so they have more passion for the classroom,
and where we've had some where we've hired,
especially in the last 10,
15 years that are more interested in the research side.
So I think that's just a typical tension that you have,
is reconciling the mission.
>> Well, I know business college was ahead of
everybody else on campus,
and going to the different tracks where you have
a teaching track or
a research track or a blend of the two.
>> Right.
>> Do you still do that [inaudible]?
>> They do, and I think
it's a real foundation to the college.
Oftentimes you'll talk about,
well, how much research do you want me to do?
How much teaching do you want me to do?
It's very clear in the track system,
and everybody is in some track with them.
So it's very clear how many classes
you're going to teach and if you're going
to have some release time for research,
the quality and the
quantity of research that you need to do.
So it's very clear.
I think most faculty in that college absolutely love it.
It's a recruiting tool.
People say, we love this.
This is great clarity.
There's not a lot of ambiguity.
You see what the standards are
and that's what you need to meet.
>> And I guess as more graduate programs develop,
a certain part of the faculty
really don't teach undergraduates much anymore, do they?
>> Was in Coles College?
>> Yes. Sometimes you're hiring faculty
to teach in a specific program.
So when we started that doctoral program in '08,
we needed to hire more faculty
that could teach in the doctoral program.
So that was certainly a focus
that I would ask all the chairs to look at,
especially if it was a department that had
a concentration in the DBA or the PhD program.
And so over time, you hire
faculty that are focused in that area,
which are going to be more research-oriented faculty.
Most of the time, though,
you can't guarantee that a faculty member,
well, you'll never teach an undergrad class.
But oftentimes you're hiring
faculty based upon a need that you might
have and a high-demand master's course or program.
>> I can't imagine anybody who enjoys teaching
that doesn't want to teach an undergraduate class.
>> Agreed. Yeah.
>> Well, in 2013,
you received an award from the COP Chamber of Commerce,
called the Executive Women Glass Ceiling Award.
>> Yeah, it was so nice of them.
>> Nowadays, they call it
the Women of Distinction Award.
I know Lisa Cupid,
our Commission Chair got it this past year.
Can you talk a little bit about that award?
I know it goes back to 1991,
that they were giving that award in the community.
And I guess there is just one a year that they give.
>> I believe so.
>> Can you talk about that?
>> Yeah. It's one of these things that your people,
so some staff and folks within
the college nominated me for that award.
So I was very gracious and very
surprised when I got the award.
So it's not anything that as a recipient,
you seek out to apply for,
but somebody applies on your behalf for.
So I was very appreciative of it and very surprised.
So at a COP Chamber breakfast and received the award.
So obviously they're talking
about individuals who've had an impact in the community
and are doing things certainly to
help other women be
successful and move forward in leadership positions,
but also that have an impact in the community.
>> I was just wondering if it was tied
in with I think when you were dean,
you launched a Women's Leadership Institute.
>> We did.
>> Was that related to the award or [OVERLAPPING]?
>> No. Well,
I don't know if it was related or not.
There are two very, very separate things.
One is run by
the COP Chamber and by the COP Executive Women,
which is an independent organization from the university.
>> So when did
the Women's Leadership Institute [inaudible]?
>> So we began a program,
that was pretty soon after I
became dean, and I don't know.
I can't remember exactly if I was in interim at the time.
I think I may have still been interim,
but we did begin an a center.
Women's Leadership Center was mainly
community-focused, externally-focused,
and we were building
executive education-type programs that
help corporations
develop young talent within their corporation.
So at that time, we were talking a lot about, young,
high-potential women that would come up
into a corporation and they
would be very, very successful.
The corporation would be very much about trying
to keep them in the company and keep them going.
I guess the big problem that was
trying to be addressed was this issue that
there are very few women on corporate boards.
So very few women are on corporate boards.
>> That's still true, I guess, isn't it?
>> What's that?
>> Is it true?
>> It's still true. And, of course, the idea is,
you got to keep them in the organization
long enough that they build
the skill and the talent and
the know-how to be in those types of positions.
And so That's really what we were trying to look at
is how do you help women
navigate certain points in their lives,
oftentimes when they choose not to stay in
the workforce and they maybe
decide to go home and raise children,
or go on a different path.
And so the corporations were wanting to
have a program that would help in that space.
So really what we did is we created
a consortium of companies that came together
and it was the leaders of
the Women's Affinity Programs and
these corporations that came together,
probably about 12 different programs,
and they would fund
these workshops and these training sessions.
And so it was a lot of fun.
I guess the center remained
active for probably eight or nine years.
We did some executive education programs in the summer.
>> So that was a center [inaudible]?
Who headed the center?
>> Her name was Erin Wolf.
So Erin had been an executive in the Atlanta community,
lots of different industries.
She'd been in investment banking and several other areas.
And so she really had that expertise
and really coordinated and led the programming.
>> Well, we've talked
about a lot of strategic planning already, I guess,
but maybe could we talk a little bit about
your philosophy of what a college
of business should be doing?
We've talked about it with regard to the community.
What about student success?
I guess we've talked about research a little bit too.
>> Sure.
>> But at any rate,
I guess if anybody does strategic planning,
it ought to be a business college.
>> I hope it would be any organization actually.
So I think that's really important.
Obviously, a business school should be
about excellence
in business education and what that means.
And it can mean different things at
different times and different points in history.
And it certainly has a difference
across disciplines within the college.
So if you take accounting,
for example, in the area of accounting,
you want graduates who are
technically good at accounting,
but also, you want accounting graduates.
So they've got the technical acumen,
they know how to do accounting,
but you also want them to be great communicators,
you want them to be able to
ascend the management hierarchy within an organization.
And so not only do they
need to be technically good at accounting
and know how to do that
work from a technical perspective,
they also need to be well-rounded in terms of
communications and just overall business acumen.
That might look different if you go into the IS program,
which would be a different career path.
And so I think
great business education looks to see how we
can equip our students to
have the knowledge in the domain that they need,
but also how can they navigate changes
throughout the business community
year after year and decade after decade.
Again, a lot of our focus in
the initial strategic planning
that we did in the college was
creating a higher profile for the college,
which we also hope that should benefit the students,
give them greater opportunity for greater positions,
better positions in the marketplace as well.
Another big thing that we were doing during that time,
which I mentioned from a research point of view,
was hiring faculty that
could teach in the doctoral program.
So that changes the profile of
your faculty over time because you're
hiring them to teach within that program.
I think what's important with strategic planning,
whether it being a college or university is
that it be substantive and
not something that is
just the mechanics of a strategic plan.
What is it that you're really trying to do?
And oftentimes, you can get
metrics-driven in that, and that's great,
but metrics are not the end be all.
We all have metrics that we need
to go after we need to move,
but I think the biggest tool for a biggest benefit
of a good strategic plan is it
helps you allocate resources,
it helps you say this is our priority at this moment in
time so that we're
not just trying to be everything to everybody.
Because an organization will pull you to try to
have them be a priority.
But if everything is a priority,
you're probably not picking any.
>> Maybe some several brief programs
before we get into another really major area.
And I guess should ask.
It's 3:05, when do I need to stop.
>> Probably another 10 minutes.
>> Ten minutes?
>> Yeah.
>> I just wanted to ask you, first of all,
there was an interesting award you
received from Morris Brown College,
the Oscar Burnett Award
for Distinguished Achievement Business.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
>> Sure. So I think I mentioned maybe in
our last conversation that
I got to have dinner that night with Betty Siegel.
So Betty Siegel and
her husband was there with her as well,
was honored that night as well.
So there was a colleague that I
knew who was an alum of
Morris Brown and served on their Advisory Board,
and he and I had just worked together.
He was also on my advisory board
and he and I worked closely together.
And so I believe he nominated me for that award,
so I was honored to receive it.
>> And then there was
a Women Making a Mark Award
from Atlanta Magazine in 2015.
A nice article about you
in Atlanta Magazine at that time.
>> So, again, your people sometimes,
they submit applications on
your behalf and you don't know that they're doing this.
So this was done from
some of the staff members in the Coles College.
>> That was nice.
>> It was very nice of them and I
very much appreciate that they did.
And I got to more recently since I've become president,
I got to attend the luncheon of Women Making the Marks.
They still give this award every year and was able to
introduce the governor's wife who was being recognized.
So that was fun. So as an alum of the award,
but still able to be in that role. And it was fun.
>> The Dinos Eminent Scholar Chair,
did that go automatically with being dean?
>> It is an automatic thing.
If you sit in the dean's chair,
that's the title that you get.
And these are wonderful programs.
Jack Dinos was a prominent donor
within the Coles College,
and just a lovely man.
Visited with him a number of times
at his home in South Georgia.
And just a gracious man.
And he had been
a good friend of Tim Mescons, the previous Dean,
and Jack put that chair on the Dean's position,
which our current dean,
Robin Cheramie is in that chair right now.
So it's just an honor to have Jack's name on that chair.
We lost Jack probably about four or five years ago.
Just a kind man.
>> Well, we're
about to get into some controversy, I guess.
And it might be a good time to stop at this point.
But 2016 is when Dan Papp
announces his retirement and things
become pretty topsy-turvy at the top for a while,
I guess, at Kennesaw.
Let me just ask you,
I guess you were over at
the Convocation Center when he
made his surprise announcement.
>> I was in the room.
So prior to a graduation,
typically the platform party gathers upstairs,
and that's where we put on our graduation regalia, etc.
And what I remember, and I'll tell you this,
is I remember Ken Harmon walking into the room,
and as he went in the room,
he reached behind him and he closed the doors.
>> Ken Harmon did?
>> Ken Harmon did. And I thought,
well, that's that's different.
[LAUGHTER] That's not normally what happens.
And so I thought to myself then something was up.
So then Dan just very graciously communicates
that he'll be stepping down.
And he was very gracious as he always is with that.
And obviously, that sends tension through the room and
everybody's mind lights up with questions, obviously.
But yeah, it was a very tough time.
We all want stability,
we all want to understand where we're going.
And so I think in that moment,
you realize it's not going to be stable for a while.
>> I heard from some other deans
that for the next several years, it was really very,
very frustrating that just as soon as they've
explained their programs to one president,
somebody else was coming in.
>> Sure.
>> Did you experience that?
>> To some extent, I will tell you the business school,
it was very fortunate.
Business school was stable,
and it's always been a pretty stable college,
and certainly, the context in which we exist,
the institution, the university matters a great deal.
I don't want to infer that it doesn't.
But also the programs,
they've had steady growth in enrollment,
they have pretty steady group of faculty,
there's a good solid internal culture.
I will just say it wasn't overly
disruptive in terms of the operations of the college.
I think it just creates
where's the university going, right?
Questions about where are we
going? What are we going to be?
And that's why, I think, people want to have
leadership that will communicate
that and be clear about it.
So it wasn't great disruption internally.
Some of the other colleges,
there was also a time when we were growing a lot.
And so colleges like science and math and
humanities and social sciences,
when we have a huge growth in the number of students,
they immediately feel that impact,
and so I know there was a lot of
stress and tension because
those colleges are having to
staff that demand immediately.
Whereas for the business school,
it's dispersed demand that comes a couple of years later,
so we have some time to absorb it.
So I think everybody craves
some stability and knowing where we were going.
And those years we were
just confusing in that way for everybody, I think.