Leaders on Leadership featuring Dr. Darrin S. Good, President of Nebraska Wesleyan University

Episode Transcript

Jay Lemons:

Hello and thank you for listening. I’m Jay Lemons. Welcome to Leaders on Leadership, brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. The purpose of our podcast is to share the stories of the people and the forces that have shaped leaders in higher education and to learn more about their thoughts on leadership in the academy. Today promises to be a really, really good program. It’s my happy pleasure to introduce you all to Dr. Darrin Good.

Darrin is the 17th president at Nebraska Wesleyan University. He arrived there in 2019. And in so many ways this is a special episode for me as Nebraska Wesleyan is my alma mater, and I’m so very proud that Darrin Good is our president. Prior to coming to Wesleyan, Darrin served as the vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Whittier College, which is located in Southern California, and he was associate provost and dean of science and education at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where I believe we first met when he was a cab driver for me.

As president at Nebraska Wesleyan, Darrin has championed initiatives to expand the university’s academic programs and has been instrumental in driving efforts to enhance student success and retention. Darrin truly lives out and brings a value-based leadership style. He’s got an enduring advocacy for the liberal arts and an extraordinary energy level and a great amount of enthusiasm for his work. He’s known for his commitment to consensus building, to shared governance, and also to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

He’s a product of the Midwest. He’s a product of a rural background. Maybe we’ll learn more about that as we go through this program. He took his BA in biology from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, where ironically, he returned later as a professor of biology for 17 years. And we Nebraskans are still trying to forgive him for taking his master’s and PhD in zoology and animal behavior from the University of Kansas. We get the animal behavior part of being a KU Jayhawk, but Darrin, what a happy, happy pleasure it is to welcome you to our program.

Darrin Good:

Thank you. Thanks for having me today.

Jay Lemons:

One of the goals that we have for the program is to really ask leaders to be reflective and to think about their own pathways to leadership with a hope that others might be inspired and lifted up. And Darrin, I’d love for you to just share your story and talk about some of the people, the events, the opportunities that really have forged you as a person and a leader and how it’s informed your journey through higher education.

Darrin Good:

Thank you. I’ll say as I reflected on a question like this, as probably all of us, there’s so many individuals and so many events and opportunities that it’s really hard to distill it down. And I would say there’s always those examples of leaders and things that were not positive that you want to avoid emulating.

I would say one, I just absolutely loved being a college professor at a small liberal arts college. I just loved teaching. I love mentoring students. I love working with my colleagues in shared governance, everything about it. I was a happy professor that was ruined when my colleagues convinced me to run for the division chair of the natural sciences, which meant I would also sit on the tenure and promotion committee.

That put me in the orbit of Jeff Abernathy, the current president at Alma College. He was our vice president and academic dean at the time. Not only did he help coordinate that tenure and promotion committee, he really utilized us as a kitchen cabinet, asking advice on decisions or policies or ideas that he wanted to think about implementing.

I think what was so profound about that is that I really started to see what I could do as a professor, what was impactful, and certainly was, and I imagined having a good academic administration. The deans and the vice presidents and a president that really ran an excellent university, helped provide the foundation for faculty, coaches, staff, everybody to do their jobs with excellence.

I use the analogy sometimes as I talk to my biology, pre-health students, the difference between being a physician, treating one patient or person at a time, versus being a public health professional where you do things that can impact thousands. So it’s magnifying that impact.

I wasn’t sure really, again, I was happy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an administrator. I started taking on some leadership roles. I was put in charge of recruiting for the admission office in biology and pre-Health. I got a chance to take over the summer programs for summer school, created an academic program for high school students, an enrichment program, and just really found I loved building programs and creating.

But then I thought as I’m being encouraged to maybe think about administrative work full time, it was suggested I go to a national AAC&U meeting. And when I got the program, I started looking at the different talks. I thought, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” I thought I’m either going to go there and really hate this or maybe I’ll like it. And I really was just energized and excited and thought of all these great ideas that were being implemented at other schools and how we could bring them back and apply the ones that made sense at our campus at Augustana College.

About that time, I was hoping to move up in administration at Augustana. It was our alma mater. My wife and I met there, dated, gotten married in the chapel. I never wanted to leave, but it wasn’t in the cards. It just didn’t look like the opportunities were going to be there. And another mentor of mine, Steve Bahls, about a 20-year president at Augustana, became a mentor, understood my interest in administration. And his advice was, “Sometimes, Darrin, you have to go to grow.” He goes, “I wouldn’t want to lose you at Augustana, but sometimes you grow exponentially when you go to another campus.” And that’s what led me to take a chance and go to Gustavus Adolphus as the associate provost. And again, it was phenomenal.

At the same time, I was chosen to be a part of the Thrivent Fellows Program. LECNA or all the Lutheran higher ed came together and had a training program, an intensive program to help develop leaders. And people like Steve Titus and Paul Dovre were hugely impactful at helping us think about our skills, our gifts, our talents, our passions. And using that deeply Lutheran reflection, that vocational reflection practice made me question, okay, do I really want to move on or is it just, boy, it’d be really cool if I could get that next job higher up?

But really each step I questioned, do I want the job for the sake of doing the work? And that was what they said, “You have to want to do the work, not just have the title.”

Jay Lemons:

That’s right.

Darrin Good:

And each step I went, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to that next step because I didn’t always see the joy in the people that were in that role above me or the success in them.

But fortunately, I did go on to Whittier College and another phenomenal mentor, Sharon Herzberger, an absolute joy of a president to mentor me and show me just a beautiful balanced way to run a college. So ethical leadership and a moral compass that was obvious and a gentle style. At Whittier also, the consensus building that they have at a historically Quaker school, that was a challenge as a leader. They didn’t take votes on anything, and so that was a really profound change in how I learned to be a different kind of leader.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you. I mean, I find it ironic to think about the intersections of our circles of colleagues and friends that we have both lived and worked with. Sharon Herzberger and Steve Titus are members of our team at Academic Search and doing great and important work. Jack Ohle is another one of those that you had time with at Gustavus. Steve and Jeff, both outstanding leaders and presidents. Yes, it’s a small world out there in so many ways and I really appreciate it. Even though we know each other, that’s the first time I’ve heard all of that put together in that fashion, Darrin.

I want to push you though a little further back. How in the world did you determine that you were going to be a professor? And some of that begs a little more about your deeper background. How’d a farm boy from somewhere in, what will we call that, southwest Illinois?

Darrin Good:

West Central, we call it.

Jay Lemons:

West Central, Illinois. How’d you find your way to Augustana and what was it about that experience?

Darrin Good:

Well, I was very fortunate. I had four older brothers and two of the four went to Augustana. So I nearly committed a family sin and was prepared to go to Illinois Wesleyan, this one rival of Augustana. I would’ve been abandoned and cursed by my siblings. Again, at the end, decided Augustana just felt like home. So it was just a great fit for me in many, many ways.

But how I became a professor is a much longer story and maybe we’ll touch on parts of it, but I grew up low income. My dad, I worked on farms, but we were town kids, lived in the small town of Aledo, Illinois. My dad was a junior high science teacher. He was first generation college. But a junior high science teacher in a small town with six kids, we did not have a lot of money.

So I was a Pell eligible kid going to college. And even though I wasn’t first generation, there were a lot of similarities. I worked a lot during college, loaded trucks for two years at UPS to pay for college. I went to college thinking I’m going to be a doctor, a dentist, a veterinarian, some health professional. So I majored in biology with the idea that I was going to be a professional, maybe in a small town, but I was going to earn some money.

Several things happened that really transformed my thinking. And a big part of it was my father passing away during my junior year of college and knowing his absolute love of teaching. And at about the same time, I applied and was accepted to dental school. It went fine, the interview, but I started chatting with the professor about his research on gingivitis and I walked out and realized I don’t really care about gingivitis.

And it struck me, “My God, I’m going to care about gum disease someday.” And I would’ve been absolutely happy as a dentist, but my brother and nephew, both dentists, my niece a hygienist, God’s sense of humor, I became pre-dental advisor at Augustana. But I really realized through a few profound things that happened around that time, junior and senior year of college, that I was chasing money rather than something I would love doing day in and day out. And so decided to go to graduate school and be a professor instead.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I grew up in a home of teachers as well and was also a Pell grant kid. And thanks to Nebraska Wesleyan and angels in my life and every form of student loan and work study and all of that, but I still have my dad. That had to have been a moment of real reflection. Where in the order of six are you?

Darrin Good:

I’m the fifth. I’m the last boy. And then I have a younger sister who is both a tomboy and spoiled as the only girl.

Jay Lemons:

And tough as nails would be my guess.

Darrin Good:

Yes, she still rides a Harley.

Jay Lemons:

I love it. Well, thank you for sharing more of that deep background. That meant you’re resilient too. We’ve just done a study around the competencies of presidents and that ability to be resilient is really important. Tough days prepare us for the challenges we’ll face in the future.

Darrin Good:

Absolutely.

Jay Lemons:

I ask every person this because I feel like I’m on my own one-person little crusade to reclaim the word good. Listen, I carried around the name Lemons all my life and I got all those kind of jokes. You on the other hand have carried around the name Good. But I ask all of our guests, tell us in your mind what makes a good leader. And I don’t mean by good, I’m grade B. I mean virtuous, effective, ability to inspire and to move people and organizations and ultimately to be successful. What’s a good leader in your mind?

Darrin Good:

That’s a great question. And again, it’s not one dimensional. I think that’s one of the areas of growth I had as a faculty member. As a professor, you could be a single operator. I mean, I often say faculty member struggled to move into administration because we’re not good at delegating or teamwork in that most of our success came from just doing the work ourselves. We wrote our dissertations, we write our syllabi, we teach our classes. Most of our success comes from doing solo gig. It’s on your own.

So there’s lots of things that go into being a good, virtuous leader and lots of things that can get in the way. But I think there’s so many ways to be a good leader, so many different leadership styles. But I think of my favorite professor, a guy named Ralph Troll who came from Germany out of the Holocaust, which I didn’t know until he retired and he told the story. But he was just a phenomenal person at Augustana. I was blessed to get to work with him as a new professor for a few years before he retired.

And his moral compass was something I always thought about when there was a challenging question that sort of what would Ralph do was what would often remind me to take the high road, do the right thing. So I think a leader has to hold onto their moral compass. There’s times when you want to be vindictive or you want to listen to those devils rather than the better angels on your shoulders. So maintaining your moral compass, but I’d also say then as a leader, maintaining your mission compass.

I think of, again, I don’t own this university. I’m leading it for a short time in its history. I’m borrowing it from the next president, so to speak, to use the Native American sort of analogy. So making sure that I maintain the mission compass of this university, being student-centered, understanding, and never forgetting that the faculty and staff have been here before me, they’ll be here after me. They are the heart and soul of this place. We don’t make widgets. We change lives. We mold young people mostly into phenomenal people who go on and make big differences in this world. So that mission compass to make sure we support the faculty and staff to be student-centered.

And then I’d say the leadership compass, making sure that I don’t lose sight and get too busy to do the things that I need to do. As I said, as a faculty member, I did all the things on my own, but really understanding I need to make sure I’m caring and nurturing and supporting my cabinet, my direct reports, making sure that I’m communicating to the community with honesty and transparency, but then also making sure I’m working well with my board.

I’ve been blessed to have three fantastic chairs of the board here and just a phenomenal board. The old adage, “You get the board that you inherit, but you create the board you deserve,” so to speak. I’m blessed that I inherited a great board and it continues to propagate a great leadership group that I can work well with. So that leadership compass is the third part.

Jay Lemons:

Well, thank you. And I know I’m speaking to a biologist, but I really appreciated your comments about heart and soul in terms of faculty and staff are the ones who make commitments, who come and stay in these places more often than not. For me, Darrin, I always thought about our faculty and staff as really the heart, the circulatory system of the institution, ultimately our students as the oxygen, the respiratory system. And you’ve got to have health on both of those major entities in our campuses.

Having the right supply of the right number of students is critical to keeping an institution healthy. And by golly, it is faculty and staff who through ups and downs and the ebbs and flows of institutional life, keep it on a steady. And I think I really appreciate so much your reflecting on the importance of having that north star around mission and purpose. So thank you very, very much.

When you are forming up a team of your own, what do you look for in your leaders?

Darrin Good:

That’s great. Again, I’m a big fan of Gallup StrengthsFinder and this idea that we tend to gravitate toward people that are like us and to fight the urge to hire a bunch of people that are just like you. The danger of that is pretty obvious to most of us, but having people who are complementary to each other, complementary with an E and with an I. But I’d say obviously when you look to hire, you want to have competent, experienced people of course. But I’d say that the collegial working relationship is so important.

So when I’m hiring people, I want people who get along with people, love what they do and find passion in the work, the blessing of getting to work in higher ed. And so bringing a sense of humor to the work I think is important. Obviously integrity, creativity, being willing to get out of their comfort zone and do some things they’ve never done before.

And I’d say when I’m hiring, when I interview candidates for a vice president level that are going to be on my cabinet, I make it absolutely clear from that point on that there are presidents who want sycophants, they want just people to agree with them and can’t tolerate people who won’t go along with them.

And as I say to them from the interview process, and then just this summer when we had the new vice president join the group, and I reiterated my expectations of the group was to reiterate, I absolutely do not need six people around the table who think they need to agree with me. Not only is that not going to help this university, it’s really dangerous because I have a lot of bad ideas. And so I need them to speak truth to power and push back when they don’t agree with one of my ideas. They’ve been pushing back lately on one of my ideas that I want to go big on and they’re talking me away saying, “Let’s curb our enthusiasm a little.” And I respect that.

It also, though, reminds them they need to be able to disagree with each other. We need to have a healthy enough relationship among the team that they can disagree with civility, but we have to be honest with each other and not be afraid or have somebody that’s domineering that others are afraid to disagree with. And so I’ve been blessed. I not only inherited a great board at Nebraska Wesleyan, but I inherited a really terrific leadership team.

Now it’s turned over little by little. Fortunately it stayed solid through COVID and then as it’s turned out, one of those positions has retired or gone back to the faculty in one case each year since then. So it’s been a nice gradual transition, but continuing with a group of core individuals. So I’m really fortunate to have had that. And again, being able to start with a solid, very good team made it easier.

I’ve seen presidents who come in, by the end of the first year, the entire cabinet virtually is gone and from a distance, you don’t know why that is. Is it the president’s choice or is that president repelling people or a little bit of both? But I can’t imagine having gone through COVID with six new individuals that are just getting to know the university. Anyway, I have a great team. I inherited a great team and continue to have a phenomenal team. Again, they make me look like I’m competent.

Jay Lemons:

And I appreciate your emphasis on complementary with E and I, and then your reference to Gallup. I think one of the things that has been really impactful for me is this notion that the great leaders aren’t necessarily balanced across all the domains. They have the good sense to know and recognize that leadership is not just about who the leader is, but about the leadership team. And that’s where you build in the other strengths as the things that the other members of your team bring to you is really the quality of the leadership at the end of the day.

Thank you for reflecting and sharing all of that. I want to invite you, because a part of our audience is really folks who are thinking about careers or making the transitions like you made, from teaching to administrative work. What’s your advice for those who may aspire to leadership?

Darrin Good:

As I said, I was very fortunate to test the waters a little bit at Augustana, taking on some levels of leadership and some administrative duties. And by the end of my 17 years, I was at a 50% administrative contract, 50% faculty. Unfortunately it felt more like 75/75. After I left and I really was working full time as an administrator, I realized I really wasn’t doing everything I could have or should have done as the administrative side because I just couldn’t let go of all my faculty duties or the things I loved.

All that to say, testing the waters a little bit. If you can get some, ask for some administrative work with some course releases. As I said, I oversaw our summer programs. I did some admission recruiting. I ran our leadership program for a time at Augustana. Some schools often have a rotating dean position, that’s what I was hoping for at Augustana. It didn’t come to fruition. But our daughter had graduated high school and then we were an empty nest and my wife and I decided we could easily be a high school Spanish teacher and college professor that stayed here for 40 years and that would’ve been a good life, but we decided that we would roll the dice.

Anyway. So I’d say look for those opportunities. I’d say go to AAC&U or some of these other opportunities at these national meetings just to see if you’re energized by what deans and VPs do and talk about at these meetings. If I’d come back and I said, “Oh, good lord, my head will explode if I live in this world,” I would’ve gone back and just been a happy professor.

I’d say talking to the people that have those jobs that you’re interested in, and not just at your school, but if they can put you in touch with a couple others. I don’t think I did that as much as I could have or should have done, but I think that would really help with that discernment of what’s the job like? Steve Bahls was the first one to say, “Darrin, you’re a really social, gregarious guy. You’re hugely popular with faculty and students.” He said, “As you move up, you get lonelier and lonelier.” And he said, “It’s just a fact of what it’s like.”

And so that weighed on me and it’s been true. It has been part of the loss, leaving our great friendships back in Rock Island, Illinois, friends who raised their children alongside us, learning things like that and deciding are those pitfalls or the downsides of that career change going to fit with what you’re excited about?

I’d say the final thing is what I would always say to my students, advising pre-health students who want to go on to vet school or dental school or med school, many of them are whip smart. They could easily get into these, and I had to remind them, just because you can get the job or get into the school, you got to make sure that you really want the job. I think those of us who are competitive often get pulled into wanting to win, could I really get this job if I compete for it? The danger of getting something that you won’t be good at or won’t enjoy is real.

I tell the story, I won’t name his name, but phenomenal, one of my favorite students was a four-year starter on Augustana’s football team as a safety, went to vet school, four years, 4.0 or nearly, a four-year class president at University of Illinois’ Veterinary School. Two years out of vet school, he comes to me and says, “I don’t want to be a veterinarian.” And this story that nobody ever said, are you sure you want to do this? Because if you’re good at science and get the grades, society kind of says, “Yeah, you should be a doctor or a vet.”

And so it’s reminding all of us, you really got to want to do the job. And I’d say to the students, most of your waking hours are going to be at work. And I almost made the mistake of saying I want to be a dentist to make the money so that I had all these fun things to do when I wasn’t at work when I realized, wow, most of your waking hours are going to be at work. I’d rather earn less and do something I love.

Jay Lemons:

I appreciate that. I really hear you echoing a good bit of that enduring contribution of Lutheran higher ed around the importance of vocation, call, who am I, what are my gifts, discernment, really discerning. And absolutely one of those most important questions is there is a difference between wanting to be someone or something and doing the work of that position. And that mismatch is almost never helpful or good for one’s health or success in the job. So very, very good advice.

I’m going to move us into the lightning round, Darrin.

Darrin Good:

Okay.

Jay Lemons:

It means shorter questions from me. You can answer with all the length that you want.

Darrin Good:

That’s dangerous to an old professor.

Jay Lemons:

I really appreciate it so much. You’re generously raising up Jeff Abernathy and Steve Bahls and Sharon and Steve Titus and Paul Dovre and wonderful people that I have known as well and have had an influence on me. I want to ask you to step back and think about who’s had the most influence on you.

Darrin Good:

That’s a really hard one in that I can’t think of one person in my professional life that I could point to that had that much impact.

Jay Lemons:

I mean just in Darrin Good, the person. And you can strip it back and if there’s more than one, that’s okay too. Who have been the greatest influences on you?

Darrin Good:

I think I’d probably go back to my dad, even though again, he wasn’t a perfect person. He had his flaws, certainly. He lived a life that was full of joy. Again, our summers, we didn’t have money, but our summers we worked and rather than take on extra jobs, which probably would’ve helped the family, he worked on his craft. He would work on what he was going to teach the next year or develop teaching seminars for other junior high and high school teachers. But we also always would take two three-week-long vacations. Camping and collecting fossils was our family trips, which when you’re 13 and your friends are going to Disney World, it wasn’t cool to go camping and collecting rocks, but in retrospect it really was.

But I think he had a strong work ethic. He had a passion for life. He was at every sporting event, all six of his kids did. He and mom, again, I don’t know how they did it. And sometimes it was, okay, they could only come to home games because six kids all in sports. I don’t know how they did it without going insane.

But I think he did leave teaching for a few years and sold insurance because he got bitter that it didn’t matter how hard he worked and how good he was, the teachers were all on the same pay scale. He just got frustrated and saw his brother making good money selling insurance. He got into it and it was fine, but he then went back to teaching for just a matter of months and just his joy and passion coming back to something he loved that was going to make less money. And then he passed away four months into that.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Wow. Wow. That’s a phenomenal story. Thank you for sharing. I think joy and passion are the signs of discernment that has been done well, or I might say, done good.

Darrin Good:

Yeah. It planted a seed that money’s not going to be the root of happiness. That was my junior year as I was discerning, am I going to go to dental school, and that was one of the three really impactful events that happened that made me really question what direction I should go.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, yeah. Is there a book that’s had profound influence on you?

Darrin Good:

I can’t think of one book. Again, I think I read a lot, again, almost religiously, The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed. I love picking up books on human psychology and motivation and even some business type leadership books and biology books. And so I grab nuggets from lots of them, but I can’t say there’s a single book that I feel like, oh boy, that was transformative to me. There were certainly gems and nuggets.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, I appreciate that very much. When you look back at Augustana College, what’s your fondest memory?

Darrin Good:

Oh, wow. I think I had that quintessential college experience that I love to make sure we can emulate for students here at Nebraska Wesleyan. I was a biology major, but I was in a fraternity. I was on the track team for a couple years, met the love of my life, Diana, in my junior year when she started as a first year and dating during college and getting married in the college chapel, growing up in a very small homogenous town.

I think one of the most joyful and transformative parts of college that I didn’t recognize at the time, but now I see the value is being in a first year residence hall or a dorm for all three years, really with people that were different than me, whether they were wealthy. One of my best friends, Sunder Subbaroyan from India. First Jewish friend, gay friends. Best friend of my life, grew up in Batavia, Illinois, still talk to him every other week at the least. Again, grew up, a working class family like me, and now is a physician in the Twin Cities.

I’d say if there was one, again, professors that just changed my worldview. I’d say the one experience though, I borrowed money and worked at UPS and studied abroad in Asia my senior year, mind-blowing. That was one of the other reasons I didn’t become a dentist. I came back from that experience and my head was just opened up. We were there for 11 weeks, 75 Augustana students with four of our professors. This is a kid who had never been on a plane before, never been on a train. I’d never seen the ocean. And so this was absolutely life-altering and not overstating that at all.

Seeing people in China that we expected to be downtrodden and unhappy, joyful. And then I get home from that trip and we went to Hiroshima as well as Pearl Harbor at the end, getting home and the first headline I see in the newspaper, dentistry, highest suicide rate of any profession. So I say, “God, what are you saying to me? People in China are happy and dentists in the US are committing suicide. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think you’re trying to tell me something.”

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Wow. I’m going to ask an even more personal question because I am just curious. I have very, very dear friends who are Augie products, and one of the great joys of my life was being on the Augie campus for a gathering around vocation, a Lilly grant many years ago that brought us all together, and learning the exact spot where my dear buddy first kissed his wife. And can you tell me where that spot was?

Darrin Good:

Not where your buddy got kissed, but I can tell you where I first kissed Diana.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, I’m guessing it might be the same spot.

Darrin Good:

It might be. Well, there is a great tradition of a bell tower kiss. There’s the old bell tower. Tradition is if you kiss somebody under the bell tower, I should say, you will marry them. Now I joke and say Diana kissed a dozen of us, one of us were bound to be. Totally not true, she was not that girl. She’ll hear this and kill me for that one. Her sorority sisters will probably send me hate mail.

No, I remember I was at a fraternity party that was off campus, a kegger at Augustana, those good Lutherans. It wasn’t my fraternity, but I told Diana and her friends they should come. And after spending some time there, I offered to walk her back to her residence hall. We stopped on the front steps of Sorensen Hall, a academic and administrative building, and that’s where our first kiss was.

Jay Lemons:

Very good. Well, it seems like it was a sign that was even more powerful and certain than the bell tower, so famed at Aug.

Darrin Good:

It worked for us 40 years later, approximately.

Jay Lemons:

There you go. Well, that takes me to where I want to go. The next question is, is there a favorite campus tradition at some place that you’ve attended or served? I mean, these rituals that connect across the generations are just so fundamental to giving our institutions color and flavor and life.

Darrin Good:

That’s a great question. I hadn’t thought of the bell tower kiss, but that might be one that I really like that has gone back generations. Others that I think of are more new. I mean, there’s a giant boulder at Whittier that students paint, and there’s one actually at Gustavus. It was right outside my office. Those are fun traditions. Again, at Augustana, they have a, they call it the Library Pond now, but most students still call it the Slough, which is not very attractive. But when you get engaged or pinned, they would take the guy and carry him down and throw him in the slough, which my fraternity brothers were happy to do with me.

A more recent tradition at Augustana that I really love, was is that called? Last Lecture? And again, named for the book, but seniors would choose three of their favorite professors to give a last lecture. And so I was blessed to be asked to do it several times. And it was just really fun for professors from different areas, just being able to share some stories and kernels of wisdom. I don’t know how wise they were, but at least to have some fun as well as pass on some words of wisdom.

Jay Lemons:

Absolutely. Well, thank you for reflecting and sharing on all of this. One of our traditions here, I like to have the final question be one that invites our guests to share the distinctive qualities or, if you will, the organizational DNA that makes Nebraska Wesleyan a special place that has a call on your heart and that you serve today.

Darrin Good:

Wow. Boy, that’s setting a president up for going on and on and on. I think, again, Nebraska Wesleyan’s the only four-year Methodist school here in the state, 137 years old. It’s just got a long storied history. And again, I think the foundational DNA is still there. It’s just a deep commitment to that personalized education, deeply, completely rooted in the liberal arts.

But I would say even at the beginning, there was career readiness, whether they’re going on to be pastors or teachers. And I think unlike some liberal arts colleges that feel the purity of a liberal arts, you shouldn’t have pre-professional or professional programs. And I’m happy having grown up in more of a working class environment that Nebraska Wesleyan, before I arrived, had really embraced the success of the professional and pre-professional programs. So have excellent success in the health professions or accounting and graduate programs such as MBA and nursing and athletic training.

So again, all of it though, rooted in a liberal arts core. We have a nationally recognized undergraduate curriculum that the faculty believe in and I think is transformative. Things like not only just speaking and writing across the curriculum, but we have discourse required courses. So what many colleges with a lot of the conflicts and culture wars that are happening and the inability for people to have disagreements without losing their cool, we build it into the curriculum and it’s been that way for 15 years.

Jay Lemons:

Fabulous.

Darrin Good:

I’d say athletics has long been a core part of our DNA, long history, even though we’ve changed mascots a few times. We emphasize the student in student-athlete. So we’re successful on the field, on the courts, on the track, but we’re the only Division III NCAA School in the state of Nebraska. So we’re the only school. That means that does not give scholarships, which I think emphasizes why we focus and can focus on the academics.

We’re 12th in the country for NCAA All-Americans. That’s all divisions, all 1100 schools, Division I, II, or III. We’re 7th in the country for NCAA postgraduate scholarships, 8th for NCAA Division III Elite 90 winners. We’ve had an Academic All-American every year for 40 years. And so we’re incredibly proud of the academics first and foremost. We also have great academics, and again, nationally recognized theater, one of the top schools in the country for Gilman scholarships for low-income students to study abroad.

And finally, I’d say what’s unique and special is that we’re located in Lincoln, Nebraska. We have an incredible city here to live and learn and get internships and jobs. Again, I’ll admit, I did not know Lincoln, Nebraska until I was nominated for the job. When I started doing my research and learned 300,000 people, but the highest per capita refugee resettlement city, and it has been for decades. So a huge diversity of ethnicities and cultures in the city, more than 75 different languages spoken in the public schools here, blows people away.

And so it’s an amazingly diverse small city, top 10 lists of many best places to live in the country. So for our students that means, and our faculty and our staff, it is a personalized education, but you have a city that’s full of the vibe of the big flagship university that brings to the city. It’s the capital of the state. So the political science students have that. But great opportunities for internships and jobs, and it’s just a joyful, healthy place to live with good cost of living.

Jay Lemons:

Amen, and a hay market and other great educational institution in the town and let alone, Tico’s, Runza and Valentino’s Pizza. Where else can you find all that?

Darrin Good:

That’s right.

Jay Lemons:

Darrin, thank you so much for joining us on Leaders on Leadership. We’re really grateful for your generosity and sharing and reflecting and thinking back, and allowing yourself the vulnerability to realize you’ve never been alone. All along the way, there have been people who have helped to shape you into the really gifted, talented, just superb person that you are. And I really appreciate your sharing your insights and wisdom with our listeners.

Darrin Good:

Well, thank you. It’s been a joy to be with you.

Jay Lemons:

Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for others we might feature in upcoming segments. You can send those suggestions to leadershippodcast@academicsearch.org. You can find our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It’s also available on the Academic Search website.

Leaders on Leadership is brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. Together, our mission is to support colleges and universities during times of transition and through leadership development activities that develop current and future generations of leaders in the academy. What a special joy it’s been for a Nebraska Wesleyan alum to thank and have with us Dr. Darrin Good on our show today. Darrin, thank you for joining us today. And thank you for stewarding and helming and leading an institution that’s near and dear to my heart.

Darrin Good:

That’s my joy. Thank you.