Leaders on Leadership featuring Dr. Flora W. Tydings, Chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents

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.

I’m especially delighted today to be joined by Dr. Flora Tydings. Flora is the chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, where she provides strategic leadership for the system’s institutions. She’s the first woman to hold this post and was recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Year in 2023 for being a trailblazer in higher education.

She began her career as a professional educator in the Houston County, Georgia, school system. After working in the private sector, she returned to education as an apprenticeship director for four Georgia public school systems and also as an adjunct instructor at Middle Georgia College. Her career in higher education leadership began as director of curriculum and staff development at Macomb Technical Institute. Most recently, before joining the Tennessee Board of Regents, she was the president of Chattanooga State Community College.

At Chattanooga, she ushered in the history-making first class of Tennessee Promise students, which led to a 25% increase in first-time freshman enrollment, and led the campus in joining Achieving the Dream, the well-renowned, recognized national reform network to accelerate success among diverse student populations. Flora earned her Doctor of Education in Occupational Studies at the University of Georgia, Go Dawgs!, her Master’s of Education at Mercer, and her Bachelor of Science in Education at Georgia Southern. It is so fun to have you on and with us this afternoon, Flora, welcome.

Flora Tydings:

Thank you so much. It’s truly an honor for me to be here with you today.

Jay Lemons:

Well, we will look forward to the journey that’s ahead of us. One of the goals we have for the program is to ask leaders to do something that there’s not much time to do in higher education, and that’s to reflect. To think back, consider your own pathways to leadership, with the hope that others will be inspired.

Flora, you will have an opportunity to share your story with our listeners and talk about some of the people, the events, the opportunities that forged you, not only as a person but as a leader, as you became part of this great cause called higher education, having been rooted in the K-12 sector. So, I’m looking forward to hearing more about that. Flora, to you.

Flora Tydings:

Thank you so much, and as I said, I am honored to be here and to be able to talk to you today. I feel like my roles in higher education have been a blessing to me. I have had so many people along my path to help me along the way that have maybe seeing something in me that I didn’t even see in myself that said, “We think this would be a really good opportunity for you to look at.” And when people have said that to me, I felt like maybe the only thing I did right was to listen and to say, “Okay, I will look at that opportunity.”

And just, again, love the path that I’ve been on. When I was in the K-12 system, I loved what I was doing, and particularly when I was doing the apprenticeship coordination. That’s when I became really more engaged with working with the community and the technical colleges within the state of Georgia. I found out I just had a real passion for the mission of that sector of higher education and was blessed to hear of an opening at one of the community colleges in the area. I applied for that job and was so fortunate to receive it, and just quickly found out that that’s where my passion lie. And just, again, had people that were there all along the path to help me take a journey that led me to this position, to which I never thought I would be in and just am very grateful to be.

Jay Lemons:

That’s wonderful. It is interesting how the apprenticeship program and opportunity was your bridge. That’s really at the heart of how we better articulate the relationships between K-12 and higher education. How fitting, and how neat that that was your gateway.

Flora Tydings:

Oh, absolutely. I feel like what helped is the fact that I’d had that time out of education where I owned my own company for a while. About seven years, I ran a small company, and when somebody walked in and wanted to buy it, I said, “Sold.” Then I had to say, “Well, what is my next opportunity?” When I saw the apprenticeship opportunity, I thought, “Well, this sort of ties together my world of education and my business experience that I’d had.”

I was able to relate to companies and talk to them about what education could do to help their workforce, and I think that’s why I became so very passionate about it. Then, to realize that this was really the mission of the community and the technical college was to provide that trained workforce, it just got me very excited about higher education.

Jay Lemons:

Say more about the business that you owned and ran, and how that really informs you even today. I’m just thinking about, you can put yourself in the shoes of those business leaders in all the communities you serve, all the time, because you were one. So, talk a little bit more about that.

Flora Tydings:

Absolutely. When you come from education and you decide to open a business, there’s a lot you have to learn. I didn’t know about paying payroll taxes. I didn’t know much about the accounting side of that. My company was a China, crystal, and flatware store, that was a passion of mine, as well, because I loved that industry.

I learned a lot about how the business world operated. I became acquainted with a lot of people in the business world by joining Rotary and meeting people outside of the educational setting. I started listening to what their concerns were about running a small business, and it usually always boil down to having the right employees in your business to carry on that business. And so I, again, started seeing the educational component and help people that I employed, I had to work with, to give them those customer service skills and train them on the areas that we were working in.

It was during the period of computers just coming on the scene, so we had to do our own computer training for our employees as well, to help them understand how we were going to do inventory, and just small things that hadn’t thought about before.

Jay Lemons:

Was this a retail business, or was it at another level?

Flora Tydings:

It was a retail business. And again, it was one that I thoroughly enjoyed doing, and it worked out quite well. We did a lot of what I called Christmas corporate gift-giving opportunities, and that was sort of our niche market as well. We were able to go out and sell that to people all across our community and a little bit outside that, and it was something that I really enjoyed.

But there again, I just always knew that my passion was going to somehow lead me back into the educational arena because that was what the path kept saying. It kept taking me back in that direction. I didn’t even… And when I first went to college, education was not what I was signed up to do, but every course I kept taking, I enjoyed and loved my history, my psychology, and my sociology courses that I was taking. And I kept saying to myself, “These are great classes, but what are you going to do when you get out?”

And I kept thinking, “I need to have an education degree so that I can be a teacher, so that I can have a viable career when I get out.” I feel like my career has always been built upon looking at how did I need to prepare myself for the opportunities that might lie ahead, and that’s always been really important to me.

When I got my master’s degree, it was in reading because I had students in high school that couldn’t read, and I felt unprepared to be able to teach them how to read. So I went back and got a master’s degree in reading so that I could work with those students and those individuals. Then, when I got out for a while and then went back into this apprenticeship program, I decided that the occupational side, the technical college and community college side, is where I wanted to concentrate for my doctoral degree.

Jay Lemons:

That’s fabulous. So, when you look back, Flora, does it all make complete sense to you now in a way that, on the front end of your career, you wondered, “Oh, what’s next?”

Flora Tydings:

I would never say that it all makes sense. As I started off saying, I still wake up many days just being so thankful that I have the opportunity to have the job that I hold right now and I would have, as I said, never told my younger self that this is a job that I would ever have been aspire to. I just feel that I’ve been really fortunate. I feel like I didn’t have a great plan, and others have helped me plan to go along my path.

I think I met people that inspired me and that showed me what a leader could do, and then I wanted to emulate and do those things. I remember when I was working as a vice president for academic affairs, one of the presidents in our state system, we were at a meeting and we were just having a casual time together, and she made the comment to me. She said, “Being a president is the best job I’ve ever had in my entire life.” Well, when she said that, I was thinking, “Oh gosh, I think the job I have right now is the best job I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

So, I thought, “Well, maybe I should listen to her and look.” If she thinks hers is that great, maybe I should look and see what that’s about. And I was, again, very fortunate to have been selected to be the president of Athens Technical College in Georgia and served there for 13 years, and that just was an amazing opportunity.

Jay Lemons:

Well, good for you, and what a difference you’ve made. I really like to explore with people what makes a good leader. I am trying to reclaim the word “good.” I don’t mean “grade B,” I mean virtuous, effective, and successful. What does being a good leader mean to you?

Flora Tydings:

I think you have to have heart for that. I think you have to have the heart for being a leader. I think that there are four areas that I always come back to in my head. You have to respect people. You have to have a great deal of respect for the people that you work with, and not just saying that, but truly, truly respecting where they are and what they’re doing.

You have to be able to trust others. You have to place trust in other people. Then, you have to be optimistic and, I think, energetic in the job that you do, because other people are going to look at you and say, “Well, if that person’s Eeyore, I don’t particularly want to work or follow that person.” So, I think you have to truly believe and be optimistic about the jobs that you’re doing.

And then, be very intentional. I think we have to be intentional in our path and in what we’re trying to accomplish. I believe in setting goals. I’m very much a “make that list in the morning and check those things off during the day.” I like to see the check marks beside the list, and I like to do that with the people I’m allowed to work with. I like us to sit down and make that list together, and then come up with a timeline, “When are we going to check off the goals? What does this look like? What is it that we’re trying to build?”

Jay Lemons:

Excellent, excellent. Well, it starts with heart, there’s no doubt about that. When you are creating a team, what do you look for in the leaders that are part of your teams?

Flora Tydings:

I really like people that have high energy. I want people that don’t think that the work we’re doing is a job, that they love and are passionate about the job. That comes across to me in interviews when you’re talking with people, you can tell if they truly, truly care about the job they’re doing.

I like people that have divergent thought for me. I want to know that maybe a path I’m looking at is not the right way, and that we need to talk about it. I want to hear different voices in the room. I want to know that we’ve brought those ideas to the table. I’ve always gone by that adage that if we’re all thinking the same way, some of us might not be needed at the table. So, I want people that are looking at things maybe a little differently but that are passionate about the way that they look at it.

Jay Lemons:

Excellent. Think about our listeners, very often, are people who are considering careers in higher education or moving from faculty roles to administrative leadership roles. What advice do you have for those people?

Flora Tydings:

I think, do the very best you can do at the job that you’re in. I think I’ve interviewed a lot of people for… I may hold the record for interviewing the most people for president’s positions within our system. I’ve always found there’s a difference in a person that’s just trying to be a president and a person that’s bringing great skill sets to the table. If you sit down one day and just say, “I’m going to go be a president,” but there’s nothing to back that up, that you haven’t really done the work to get to that point, there’s usually something lacking in those individuals.

Sometimes people become so focused on being a president, they really forget to do the job they have. Normally, I look at, what has this person done, what are they doing now, what do they care about, and what are they passionate about. Then, you look at what they’ve accomplished, and those two things going to usually be a lot.

Jay Lemons:

Well, that resonates so powerfully with me. I’m privileged to do a lot of work in professional development programs and so forth, and I often will comment on… I’m always a little bit skittish about people who have what I call the higher education version of Potomac Fever, “I won’t be complete unless…” A lot of times, I have given just the advice that you’ve given. People will say, “What do I need to do to be more competitive?” or “How am I ever going to get to that top post?” I’ll say, “Hey, it’s about making the biggest positive difference you can right where you are, in the post that you are.” That’s clearly among the most important things that people can do.

So, thank you. That really affirms much of what I’ve tried to share with people along the way. I think there is a place for wanting to make a difference, there’s a place for ambition. And yet, there’s also a place for not pushing too hard on some of this. Let it come. Let it come.

Flora Tydings:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jay Lemons:

Well, we live in a world filled with lots of challenges. What are the biggest ones that you are focused on? And this can be in Tennessee, but even on the national scale, what are our biggest challenges? I look back and think back to Tennessee Promise. It was a very different time and place, wasn’t it? And you made a huge difference then. I’m thinking about what we’ve seen with college-going rates over the last five years, and wow! What do we need to do to stem this tide? So, what are the big ones from your perspective?

Flora Tydings:

Well, I’m happy to say that we feel like that tide has turned, and that our college-going rate is up.

Jay Lemons:

Awesome.

Flora Tydings:

We never actually went down in Tennessee on our technical colleges. We continued to have really high enrollment, even during COVID.

Jay Lemons:

Awesome.

Flora Tydings:

But our community colleges are back up in enrollment, and they’re doing great. And I would say the challenges, the majority of the challenges there, are the same as they’ve always been, making sure that we’re doing everything we can on retention and graduation and helping our students be the best they can possibly be. Financially, again, Tennessee’s in an incredible position. We are very fortunate to be the state that we are. So right now, I don’t worry about finances the way some people might, but that is, again, because we are very blessed here.

I would say right now it’s a nuts-and-bolts issue that I find as our biggest concern, and that’s that of safety and security. It is one of the biggest things that we talk about among all of our campuses. We’ve all had some threats, some credible, some not, but they bring about the same amount of anxiety, whether they are or they aren’t. And every day, we’ve got our campus staff, our presidents, and our security that wake up and say, “What if today?” And so I think that that’s an area that we’re just trying to make sure there are no do-overs in that area. You’ve got to get it right, and you’ve got to always be doing the very best that you can.

Jay Lemons:

No question about it. Yeah, but for the grace, we all go. And the other component related to that, in so many instances, is mental health and trying to protect it. We used to be focused almost exclusively, it seems to me, as educational institutions, upon the needs of our students, but it’s also the critical needs and vulnerabilities of staff and faculty these days. Are you all seeing that as well?

Flora Tydings:

We are. I do believe that we live in very interesting times, and these times are stressful for a lot of people. One of the things that we have been working on, and we’ve had a very intentional path, is bringing together all of the other agencies in our state that provide mental health for individuals within the state and how our colleges and our staff can coexist and work within those agencies. We know that we don’t have the resources to replicate, nor do I think we should. I think we need to take advantage of strong skill sets in the trained professionals to use them within our arena.

And we, again, are very fortunate in Tennessee that we’ve got some great partners in that area that come to our need and are working side by side with us to try and implement practices that will benefit everyone.

Jay Lemons:

That’s tremendous. Let’s wallow in the success that you just touted a few moments ago in terms of enrollment. To what do you attribute the successes?

Flora Tydings:

Well, again, you mentioned Tennessee Promise, and we are so proud of the fact that we were the first state in the nation to offer free tuition to high school graduates. We also have Tennessee Reconnect for any adult in the state of Tennessee that doesn’t already have a higher education degree, they can come back for free at our community and technical colleges.

We’re also extremely proud of the fact that over the last two years, our governor and our legislator have put $1.5 billion toward the infrastructure of our system. It is an incredible opportunity for us. Buildings that we’ve had that were 60 years old, we are razing many of those. We are building new buildings. A couple of our campuses, we’re completely moving the campus to a different location. We have 37 colleges across the state and 180 teaching locations. So we cover the state, and now we’re going to do that in a way that benefits the level of the education that our students are seeking.

Jay Lemons:

That’s fantastic. Those 60-year-old buildings were no doubt the originals on many of those campuses. And they have lived a good life, but they need some help.

Flora Tydings:

They have, and many of them were never built with the intention of housing the programs that they house. The mission statement for TBR is very succinct and simple. It is student success and workforce development, and that’s what we work on every single day. And these new buildings are going to make workforce development just the premier institutions for the nation. And I’m just very, very proud of our governor and our legislators who voted for this with no hesitation.

Jay Lemons:

Well, bless them. Congratulations to you and to the Board of Regents. This is an amazing accomplishment. And as you know, there are way too many parts of our country where enrollments are still flagging. So you are really running counter to the trends, and some of that is demographics in a way that is helpful, no doubt, but some of that’s a consequence of some of these important decisions that you were just talking about. So, well done. Well, I want to move to a little bit of what I call lightning round, where the questions may be a little shorter. You can answer with as much length as you’d like. Are you ready?

Flora Tydings:

I’m ready.

Jay Lemons:

All right, Flora, who most influenced you?

Flora Tydings:

That question has many, many answers to it. There are so many people that I feel like have just been pivotal at different moments in my life. People that I have admired and respected and looked up to that have held positions and that have, again, leaned into me to help me along the way. So I don’t want to name any one person because I might leave one of them out. And there have been many, many. But then I also have to say my family, my children, and my husband that have just gone with whatever I have decided to do, and they have supported me and just helped me. And that you have to have that.

You have to have a family of whatever description it is that grounds you and keeps you rooted and brings you back to reality when you’re just so stressed out about something that you might not come up from it for a while until they say to you, “Now, this is going to be okay. You need to just calm down for a minute, and let’s think about it.” And I have a family that does that for me. And so, I’m so fortunate.

Jay Lemons:

Absolutely. Is there a book that’s had the most influence on you, or are there a series of books?

Flora Tydings:

There are, and I’ll tell you, I’ll name three. And the first one is really just a daily devotional, and it’s called Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. And I’ve had that book for probably 15, 17 years now. And, of course, you read the same daily devotional, it’s for a year. And you read that one over and over again. And every time I get to that day, it just seems like no matter what is going on, there will be something in it that is relevant to what I’m thinking about that day. And so that has always been sort of a guiding stone for me. I may have to go a day or two, and I don’t get a chance to read them, but then something will be happening, and I’ll pick the book up and look again at that date, and there will just be something that speaks to me. And so that has been an important book to me for a long time.

And then there are a couple of books on leadership that have just always been my go-to book whenever anybody’s asked me to talk to others about leadership. The first one is a book by Dr. Purkey and Dr. Betty Siegel, and it’s called Becoming an Invitational Leader. And I’ve always thought that that was just a really good approach to, we want to invite people in to be leaders alongside of us. And so I’ve always held that book with great regard, and that’s been one that I do go back and look at when I’m speaking to student groups or maybe trying to come up with a new graduation theme to talk about. That’s one that’s always there for me.

And then one other one I’ll just mention real quickly, there is a gentleman in Nashville by the name of Derek Young who does a lot of motivational speaking for us at different events that we hold. And he wrote a book called Make My Hindsight Be Your 20/20. And he really wrote it for millennials that are working with baby boomers and how those translations might vary at times. And so he has always been a great motivational inspiration to me as well. So those are just three that I kind of keep handy.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you for raising up Betty Siegel, one of those truly impactful leaders. I, so well, recall hearing Betty on many occasions. And as you know, I spent time in Southwest Virginia, and she’s from just over the Kentucky border. And so I had some affinity for her, but I remember her saying, “I never stopped teaching. I might’ve been called an administrator, but my classroom just got bigger.”

Flora Tydings:

And in later years, she took that classroom to the Waffle House and met students for breakfast every morning, and just somebody that I have admired forever.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you for that. Do you have a fondest memory of your undergraduate experience?

Flora Tydings:

Oh my. That I can share?

Jay Lemons:

Yes.

Flora Tydings:

Oh, goodness. Of course, undergraduate studies are always fun. There are a couple of fond memories. I think back when I was an undergraduate, we certainly didn’t have online registration. Registration-

Jay Lemons:

Oh, it was lines, wasn’t it?

Flora Tydings:

It was a challenge. And I remember I became a little sister for a fraternity at the college, and one of my fondest memories is how the older brothers in the fraternity taught the younger ones of us as freshmen how to go in and get our cards in registration.

A lot of it had to do with them going in early and got them for us. After that first traumatic registration event of not knowing how to get them, and then the next term, them showing me how to do it, that’s always stuck in my mind as something I never wanted anybody to have to go through. So I’ve always worked on making registration better for students because it was just one of those things that was traumatic.

But I think probably, again, another fond memory is student teaching. I think that that helped me to really see that I had made the right decision, that education was a place that I wanted to be. I student-taught about an hour away from the college, so every morning I had to get up and drive to the high school. There were a group of us that drove together, and I do have very fond memories of that group because we were all in different areas in the high school. We just learned so much from each other. And having that time, that hour going and that hour coming back home to debrief about what we were doing, I probably learned more from my carpool group than from anyone else because we were all going through it.

Jay Lemons:

That’s what it means to be a reflective practitioner, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s no doubt, there’s nothing also like testing your mettle of what you’ve been learning in the classroom actually being out in the real live laboratory called the school, huh?

Flora Tydings:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jay Lemons:

Hey, if you hadn’t worked in higher education and you took a turn outside of higher ed, were there other things that tempted you, different forks in the road that you left unexplored?

Flora Tydings:

There are, and again, this is one area where my children, they just thought I was going to go to school forever. They really didn’t think I would ever quit getting a degree. And when I finished my doctoral degree, the very next thing my daughter said to me was, “Well, are you starting your law degree now?” There are many times I wished I had that it would’ve served me well to have had that law degree.

But probably, if I started today, knowing what I know about the world, my passion is I’d be an architect. I love the planning and the designing and the development of that aspect, and that’s the world I probably would have gone into if I had known anything about it at that point in my life.

Jay Lemons:

Well, let’s take stock here, $1.5 billion. I know you said infrastructure, but no doubt some of that’s going to be attractive, beautiful new things coming out of the ground. And you get to do that.

Flora Tydings:

I do. I do. My facilities team knows. They know me well because I’m in there all the time, looking at the plans and the designs and having a lot of say in how that looks.

Jay Lemons:

I love it. I love it. Well, so you’re kind of living that one out in not more than a vicarious way, but in a real way that will impact the whole state of Tennessee. Hey, is there a favorite campus tradition at a place you’ve attended or served that you would hold up?

Flora Tydings:

Oh, well, I mean, this is probably the same answer you’ll get from any college president or chancellor, and that is graduation. I mean, that is the end-all, be-all for us. When you are at graduation and you get to see the fruits of the year and all that those students have been through… When the first time somebody yells out, “Go, Grandma!” in the back of the room that you just… Those are the highlights. That’s what we live for, is to have those people walk across that stage and know that they have fulfilled a dream. And you just played a small part of it.

Jay Lemons:

You are so right. I’ve been privileged to be a part of a number of community and technical college graduations, and there’s a quality of real life in those instances and of generations being connected in those celebrations that I think is really rare and really, really beautiful. So, how many of them do you do each spring? With 37 campuses, you probably can’t get to all of them, although your cup would run over if you did.

Flora Tydings:

It would. I try to do at least three or four in the spring, and we have some graduations in December, so I try to do maybe one or two then as well. But it is such an honor when they ask me to be a part of that because I do absolutely love it. I’ve always… I know I’ve had presidents that I’ve known in the past that get so upset when there’s cheering and loud noises going on. And I’ve never been that way.

I’ve always thought, oh, why would you want to inhibit any of this? It is just such an incredible time that I want them to all be happy. So I’ve never felt that that was a solemn occasion.

Jay Lemons:

I’m right there with you. It’s really about joy on those days, not only for those graduates but to see the joy in their loved ones is equally rewarding. Well, one of our traditions here on Leaders on Leadership is we like to close by asking our guest to talk a little bit about the qualities that make the Tennessee Board of Regents and your institutions so very special. So, what’s the organizational DNA that makes TBR so distinctive and special?

Flora Tydings:

Well, and that’s such a great question because, to me, we are so special. I love everybody that we get to work with. And it starts all the way from the past governor to the governor that we have now, to all of the legislators that we work with. We have an incredible Board of Regents. Every single one of the individuals that’s been appointed to our board has a passion for education.

They don’t just come to those meetings, they come prepared, and they truly care about our students. They speak at our graduations, they attend these events, and that brings an energy and just a synergy to what we do that I think holds us all together. I have, and I shared with you before we started, that we’ve just finished a day and a half of a president’s retreat. I have 37 of the most incredible presidents just from all across this country that truly are the best of the best. I’m just so proud of the job that each and every one of them do every single day.

And then I also feel like the staff that we have here at the system office, these are people that could be doing anything, anywhere in this country, and I’m so blessed to be allowed to work with them here. I’ve got some of the best people with data and statistics, and our financial end, and our legal team. I mean, we just have the cream of the crop here. Again, I just cannot say enough good things.

It’s about the people. It’s about the people that I’m allowed to work with every day in the state. And I do say, coming from Georgia, I am a Georgia girl, but when I moved to Tennessee, I learned what the word “volunteer” meant. And it’s true. This is a volunteer state, and people step up, they help each other. We’ve just gone through the floods up in Northeast Tennessee, and there wasn’t a single person across our system that didn’t step up to help, to do what we could do there. So again, I’m blessed, just very blessed to be in a great, great state with a great system.

Jay Lemons:

It is about people, and it’s also about clarity of mission. I think that you might have articulated in the most concise way with the fewest number of words: student success, workforce development. Right?

Flora Tydings:

That’s what it is. If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our job.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Well, what a special calling, and what a special leader you are. Flora, thank you for joining us on Leaders on Leadership. We’re really grateful to have had you and to hold you and your system up as a real model for others across the country in terms of increasing enrollments and really doing all that you’ve done to have developed the support that is leading you to work on a $1.5 billion infrastructure and capital improvement program, because that says others believe in what you’re doing. So thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us today.

Flora Tydings:

Thank you so much for allowing me to be here.

Jay Lemons:

Well, it’s been a pleasure.

Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for leaders we should feature in upcoming segments. You can send those suggestions to leadershippodcast@academicsearch.org. You can find our podcasts wherever 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 serve current and future generations of leaders in the academy.

It’s been a special pleasure again today to have been joined by Dr. Flora Tydings. And Flora, one last thank you for joining us.

Flora Tydings:

Thank you.