Leaders on Leadership featuring a Dr. Zulma Toro, President of Central Connecticut State 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 forces that have shaped leaders in higher education and to learn more about their thoughts on leadership in the academy.

I am delighted today to be joined by Dr. Zulma Toro. Zulma began her presidency at Central Connecticut State in 2017, marking two historic milestones for her institution. She is the university’s first female president and its first Hispanic chief executive. Zulma has a PhD from Georgia Tech. She’s built a career centered on understanding and enhancing the human side of systems, a philosophy that she credits as being integral to effective leadership. We’ll learn more about that as we have our interview.

She has an amazing body of scholarship that reflects her passion for higher education, particularly her dedication to advancing equity and opportunity. Dr. Toro has conducted in-depth studies on the needs of underrepresented students, particularly young women pursuing careers in STEM fields, and has consistently advocated for preparation and support of women in science and technology.

Before joining Central Connecticut, Zulma served in leadership roles at several institutions, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Wichita State University, the University of New Haven, and, as I recall, your undergraduate alma mater, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, a place that she shares with our dear colleague and the president of AALI, our parent organization, Javier Cevallos.

And by the way, Zulma, I can’t remember whether I shared this with you or not, but at the AASCU annual meeting, which was held in your homeland, Javier was a wonderful guide and escort for my colleagues and I, including my wife, Marsha, and we visited your alma mater. So I have been to Mayagüez, and I want to just say welcome and thank you for joining us.

Zulma Toro:

Jay, thank you for the invitation to join you this morning. It’s a privilege to be able to have this conversation with you, and I am glad you visited my alma mater. It’s a beautiful campus. Definitely. People, including myself, we are very proud of that campus, and we are very proud of the contributions of that institution, not only in Puerto Rico, but in the whole Caribbean and Latin America.

Jay Lemons:

Well, there were so many aspects of that trip for a first-time visitor to Puerto Rico, but maybe most profoundly for me was there are, as I recall, the demographic numbers that people talked about, about 3 million Puerto Ricans living on the island, and about 3 million Puerto Ricans that are scattered across the mainland of the USA. 6 million people, a sizable population.

But who could have imagined or predicted the outsized influence that Puerto Ricans have on the American higher education landscape? The head of the California State University system, Milly García, has Puerto Rican roots. Félix Rodríguez, the head of CUNY, has Puerto Rican roots. John King, the president of the SUNY system, having Puerto Rican roots, let alone dozens of other Puerto Rican higher education leaders.

It was stunning to me, and what a source of pride. It also must say something about the place of higher education in Puerto Rican families, and I’d love you just to kind of react to that and know whether you… I mean, I felt the extraordinary pride of the Puerto Rican influence in higher education. I’d love to hear your thoughts about that.

Zulma Toro:

Well, I am very proud. I will share with you something that maybe nobody knows, but we’ll get to that. But you are correct. Higher education is a very important goal in the Puerto Rican families and for the Puerto Rican families. I come from a family, on my father’s side, a big family. And out of 13 siblings, including my father, 11 of them went to higher education.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Zulma Toro:

Sometimes as adult learners, as my father did after coming back from the military, that shows you how important higher education is for the families in Puerto Rico. And that was the story of my life. I always knew my mother is or was an elementary school teacher, my father a lawyer. And growing up, my sister and I always knew that we needed to go to college and get a college degree.

And that guided us through our early years in school, but also as we were identifying the path forward in higher education. As you said, I went to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, for my family, is a family affair, because my father got his undergraduate from there as an adult learner, but my sister, who is older than me, got her degrees from there and still teach there. She is a faculty member in math and computer science.

But the next generation, my niece also graduated from there. And in my father’s family, a number of his siblings went to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez as well. And I followed the footsteps of some of my uncles, if you will, and that’s how I ended up in engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. And then from there, I went to University of Michigan. And after finishing the degree at the University of Michigan, and I was working at that time for Bell Labs, I don’t know if you remember Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T many years ago, I went back to the University of Puerto Rico as an instructor after my master’s degree.

And when I was teaching there, I always had a mentor, a faculty member who was my mentor as an undergraduate. He was my mentor also when I joined the institution as an instructor, and he told me, “You need to go for the PhD, and I will guide you in that process.” And in fact, I went to Georgia Tech, following his advice, because of two things. He got his undergraduate from Georgia Tech, and he was still very supportive of Georgia Tech. But also, the research area in which the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez needed me to concentrate was very strong area at Georgia Tech.

So that’s why I ended getting my PhD from Georgia Tech, and it was a very good experience. Difficult, because at that time, Georgia Tech was very much a male-dominated institution. But that experience did prepare me for a lot of things in life. That started my career, in fact, and we can get to that in a moment. Going back to my first comment about the contributions of Puerto Ricans in higher education. Through my career, as you mentioned, I have served in multiple institutions, but I had the pleasure of serving as a faculty member and as an administrator at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.

In fact, I served as the first female chancellor there. And during my tenure there, I had very strong leaders as part of my cabinet. And including myself, out of that cabinet, we have had four university presidents in the United States.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Zulma Toro:

The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences under my administration there was Waded Cruzado. You may know her.

Jay Lemons:

Oh, yes, of course.

Zulma Toro:

And the president from Montana State.

Jay Lemons:

Great president of Montana State. Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

José Luis Cruz served as dean of academic affairs under my administration, and Havidán Rodríguez was part of my administration as well. So it’s unbelievable that, out of that group, four of us had the opportunity to serve as presidents in the United States.

Jay Lemons:

Amazing. That is quite a tree, and what a great group of leaders has emerged from your own leadership. I did not know that, so I appreciate your sharing. I’m curious about how being educated as an engineer has impacted how you lead, and just want to create a little space for you to share anything more about the forces or the people that might have helped forge you as the leader that you are in this journey.

Zulma Toro:

Let me start by saying that it was not until many years later that I realized how important my father had been in my life. He was a tough guy, and he taught me how to be tough, but also, he taught me how to negotiate. In my case, I had to negotiate with him, starting with my career. He wanted me to be a medical doctor, and I wanted to be a lawyer like him, and we reach a compromise. And that’s how I pursue engineering.

But I pursue engineering because one of his siblings, who was an engineer, then went to law school and finished his law degree. So I thought to myself, “I can follow those footsteps and get to law school.” However, I never did, and I am glad I never did because I continued to pursue degrees in industrial and systems engineering. And that discipline has helped me to be the leader I am today, and let me explain a little bit.

Industrial engineering is the only engineering discipline that explicitly considers the human being, the strength, weaknesses, characteristics, the behavior, and all those aspects of the human being that are important for the performance of a system. So that has helped me, because if I think about higher education and a higher education institution, it’s a system.

Jay Lemons:

Absolutely.

Zulma Toro:

And so, that background on the human being, but also in industrial engineering, requires or used to require courses and professional development in the finance, accounting, and those areas. So that is also very important as a leader in higher education, as the president, nowadays with all the financial challenges that institutions of higher education are facing.

So that has helped me. In fact, I think that my background has been very important in my development as a leader. Yes, I have the technical aspect of engineering that helped me, but being an industrial engineer has helped me also understand the human behavior. And that is very important as you lead nowadays, because you can have all the vision. You like all the ideas, but you need followers.

You need people who are willing to embrace your vision and make that vision their own, but it’s the leader’s responsibility to get people to that point. You need to work towards getting people to think that your vision is their vision. And for you to accomplish that, you need to understand human behavior.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you for sharing all of that, and thank you for demystifying engineering and particularly naming that industrial and systems engineering has a real component around… You are a near cousin to the org behaviorists in a way.

Zulma Toro:

Exactly.

Jay Lemons:

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I want to just ask you, did your father get to see you seated as a university president?

Zulma Toro:

No, he never did. The most he saw was me as a department chair. He did pass while I was department chair. And after serving as department chair, I served at the University of Puerto Rico as dean of the College of Engineering and then chancellor. No, he never got to see me. But he always told me that I had what it needed to be a higher education leader.

But at the same time, my father has been very influential in my career, but there has been other mentors. And I remember warmly the director of budget at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, and that individual, that eventually was my chief of staff, identified me as soon as I arrived as an assistant professor in Mayagüez, and he said, “She will be the first female chancellor here.” And since my arrival there, we worked together until I left the institution.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Wonderful. Zulma, what makes a good leader? And by good, I’m not talking about grade B. I’m talking about virtuous, effective, and successful in a sense of having moved an institution forward, having helped create systems for student success.

Zulma Toro:

Well, I will say humility is the first one, because you don’t know it all, and you have to understand that. And you have to acknowledge also that in this type of work, there will be successes, but there will be failures as well, and you need to embrace those and take ownership of those, even more than the successes. That’s one.

But the other one is a very strong team. I have a strong team, second to none, and it has taken me a long time to enjoy having a very strong team. But that’s very, very important. The other thing that it’s very important is to understand why you are doing what you are doing. You cannot be in the position because of the position itself. You have to be in the position because something within the position make you passionate about.

You have to have passion, and maybe I have too much passion as a Hispanic leader, and we can talk about that later. But the point is that it’s not about you. It’s about the opportunity to transform lives, transform the student’s life, but also transform staff and faculty lives and administrators, and develop these individuals for them to be able to accomplish their full potential and reach their full potential.

So it’s a very, I will say, unique opportunity that you have as a leader. And sometimes, honestly, Jay, I wonder, “Why me?” Because I have to confess, I feel blessed. The opportunities life has provided me are unique and have been unique. “Why I have been afforded those opportunities, and other people, who have worked hard as well, has not been afforded those opportunities?”

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yup.

Zulma Toro:

And that’s the last thing I want to say. Hard work is very important, because you cannot ask people to work hard if you are not leading by example, and my team knows that. We lead by example.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

When the pandemic happened, we were the first institution, public institution of higher education in Connecticut to bring back people. We did that the fall of 2020, and people were not happy with me. People were not happy with my team, but we said, “We need to lead by example.” And we were here, and that’s what happened. If you lead by example, then people will say, “I would be willing to follow that.”

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. I really appreciate every bit of that. And you very early on described a good leader as someone who has a strong team, and I could not agree more. It’s right back to Ed Penson and John Moore’s notion of the president and the presidency, and that strand of the administrative team is an essential strand for having a presidential run. So when you’re creating teams, what is it that you look for in your leaders?

Zulma Toro:

I look for some evidence that they are dedicated to what they’re supposed to be doing, that they are somehow interested in the same things that I am interested in. They don’t need to have all the leadership qualities that make a strong leader. They have to be willing to learn, and that is very important. And the other thing they need to embrace, and I need to see something that tells me they will embrace the culture of the organization, because the culture at Central is very, very different from the culture at UConn, for example.

We serve a student population that is very different to the student population served by other institutions. We don’t have the same amount of resources that other institutions may have. So that is extremely important. And they need to be willing to challenge me, and they need to be willing to have the difficult conversations. And this is the philosophy we follow here.

And they know that because they have a document with 14 expectations, and they know that. We go over those every year. The point is that they can disagree with me, and we can have very passionate debates, respectful but passionate debates behind closed doors. And I have a provost that I think she’s very strong. I think she’s very good, but people outside of our circle may believe that she is quiet and even shy. She’s not like that in private, and I like that.

She challenged me, and we have difficult conversations, and sometimes she is on one side of the issue. I am on the other side of the issue, but she has the confidence in herself and the working relationship with me to have those debates, and then we will sometimes meet in the middle. Sometimes she move me to her side. Sometimes I move her to my side. But those are the type of individuals I have in my team and I hire.

Jay Lemons:

I really appreciate what you just said, and I think it was important. There are lots of different ways to lead, and you have someone who others may perceive as more introverted, and yet there is a powerful place of influence on your team and in your life and at your institution that is leading in a different way than you lead. That’s good.

Zulma Toro:

Yes.

Jay Lemons:

That’s good.

Zulma Toro:

So not everyone has to be as outspoken and as passionate as I am, because people see me and they know I am passionate because of my body language and so forth. But that doesn’t say that somebody else is not as passionate as I am.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

That person could be in a different way, and I need to appreciate that, and I need to understand that. The other thing that I am not concerned about are very strong leaders. If I can hire very strong leaders, I will hire very strong leaders, as it was the case at the University of Puerto Rico that then led to all those individuals becoming presidents.

Jay Lemons:

I love that. Yeah. We don’t need to replicate ourselves. In fact, that would be a disservice to the organization. There’s a really important place for that capacity for those who work for you being able to use their voice, their agency, their expertise. And yeah, we find our way forward to the best decisions through that exercise. Yeah.

One of the audiences that we have is we work hardest, I should say perhaps, at making these podcasts available to participants in our AALI leadership programs, programs that Javier Cevallos leads. And so, I always want to ask our guests, what advice do you have for those who aspire to leadership?

Zulma Toro:

Well, as I mentioned, they need to understand what is the driving force for them for leadership, why they want to be in a leadership position. The other thing that they need to understand, and I am going to date myself. When I started in higher education in a leadership position, the expectations and demands on a leader were completely different.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

Completely different. At that time, budgets were not as tight as they are now. At that time, the divide in our society was not what it is today. People respected the position. People were less inclined to challenge the leader. And the expectations, in the case of public education, the expectations of elected officials were completely different.

The president of an institution was not expected to be out there serving the community, not only the internal community, but the external community, establishing partnerships, establishing relationships that will benefit the students and the institution financially. That is an expectation now. But one expectation that is very important, people look now at the leader to contribute to close and help that divide that we have in society.

And as a leader, you need to be careful in deciding when you are going to be part of that conversation or not, because it is a very risky situation for people to see you supporting one side of that divide and not the other side of that divide. So you need to serve as that unifying force. That was not the case even 20 years ago.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

So all those things have to be considered, and these positions are 24 hours, seven days a week.

Jay Lemons:

Yup.

Zulma Toro:

If something happened with a student, you get a call in the middle of the night. In the case of Central, even when we have snowstorms, I have to make decisions very early in the morning that will affect all the students, the faculty, and the staff. So you are making decisions all the time that impact thousands of people, and you have to keep that in mind. And the other thing you have to keep in mind is, sometimes you have to make controversial decisions, because maybe nobody else will make those, and you have to be prepared to be in the front page of the newspaper or in the newspaper in a less-than-positive way.

Jay Lemons:

So true. One of the great lines was I think Rusty Martin, who was a longtime president, who said, “If you want somebody who will love you all the time, get a dog.”

Zulma Toro:

Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And the other thing that you have to keep in mind: People, many, many times, in many, many occasions, won’t give you the benefit of the doubt. They won’t.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

They will start by assuming that you are not correct. They will start by assuming that you have a hidden agenda or something like that.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. I do think you put your finger on, there are some shifts, and I don’t know whether that is something that’s unleashed or whether this is on a continuum, whether there will be a time where there’s greater trust in institutions, where there’s less divisiveness. I hope and pray there can be some return to some of those norms.

I’m going to move us into a little bit of a lightning round, where the questions are shorter. You can answer with as much length as you would want. And the first of those, you may have already talked about, and that’s, who most influenced you? And you’ve already raised up your dad.

Zulma Toro:

My dad, but also my granddad on my mother’s side. I spent quite a bit of time with him when I was growing up. And physically, I think that I look more like him than my father.

Jay Lemons:

Isn’t that interesting, how physical resemblance can have an effect on who we are and how we think about ourselves and those who influence us? That’s a really interesting point. Is there a book or a few books that have had the greatest influence on you?

Zulma Toro:

Don Quixote by Cervantes.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. I love it.

Zulma Toro:

It’s a complex book.

Jay Lemons:

It is. It is. I love that. All right. You didn’t hesitate for a second on that one. What about your fondest memory of your undergraduate experience and days?

Zulma Toro:

Well, there were many, but my times in the lab doing research with my mentor.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Excellent. That is way more profoundly meaningful and lasting than when I think back to maybe some of my own. So that’s more purposeful. So, Zulma, is there a road not taken? If you hadn’t worked in higher education, where would you imagine your life would have played itself out?

Zulma Toro:

I would have been a farmer.

Jay Lemons:

Really? Do you have agrarian roots?

Zulma Toro:

Going back, my granddad, grandfather that I mentioned, he was a businessperson and a farmer, and he owned a farm, and he used to take me quite a bit to the farm. And Jay, sometimes I and my family think sometimes that I’m out of my mind, because I have told them, “Maybe I will retire, and I will have my own farm.”

Jay Lemons:

I love it. Would you want that farm to be back in Puerto Rico?

Zulma Toro:

Could be, but I am not sure.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that really distinguishes institutions of higher learning, which are our most enduring institutions beyond the church, is a sense of ritual and tradition, and I’d love to ask people if there’s been a favorite tradition at a place that you’ve attended or served or admired from afar.

Zulma Toro:

Well, I think that honestly, our commencement ceremonies here are unique, because of the type of students we educate, and when you see their families. And it’s a family important milestone when they get a degree, and we go to the reception after the ceremony. You feel that sense of pride from the families, but you also see the impact that a degree from Central will have in that family.

Jay Lemons:

Isn’t that the truth?

Zulma Toro:

And that is very fresh in my mind, because we had the winter commencement ceremony this past Saturday. And the other thing is that when I arrived here, we didn’t have a winter ceremony. We only had a spring ceremony. And so, I started looking at the situation, and I said, “We need to have a winter ceremony in such a way that these individuals who had completed a degree at the end of the summer or fall can move to the next chapter in their lives, and we are not stopping them from doing that, that these type of events, in some instances, give closure to a chapter in their life.”

Jay Lemons:

And then beginning something new, commencing. Yeah. You’re so right. I am deeply grateful for your talking about that as an example of a way that you’ve got an impact. It is truly the case that commencements are magical. And thinking back to some of the changes that we have talked about in this conversation, Zulma, I kind of think the world would be a lot better place if every citizen went to a graduation each year, or once every five years even. It is just something that lifts everyone who’s in the presence of those accomplishments.

Zulma Toro:

Yes. I mean, it’s a very unique experience, Jay, and that reminds me why I am doing what I am doing.

Jay Lemons:

So true. One of the traditions that I like to hold up here on Leaders on Leadership is we like to close our conversations by inviting our special guests to share with our listeners the distinctive qualities or, if you will, organizational DNA that makes Central Connecticut State such a very special place to you and to those you serve, and to keep a hold on you and your energies.

Zulma Toro:

Well, first of all, Central Connecticut State University just turned 175 years old.

Jay Lemons:

Fantastic.

Zulma Toro:

We are the first publicly funded institution of higher education, and we are very proud of that.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

We started as a normal school, and we started in 1849. And in 1853, we graduated the first African American individual.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Zulma Toro:

So that shows the impact of this institution. I mentioned already the profile of our student population, 20%, 21 from Hispanic origin, almost 40% underserved population. Over 50% of our students, first-gen college students, and our location.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

We are in a city, New Britain, where the K-12 student population is 68%, at least, from Hispanic origin or Hispanics. It’s a city where a significant population is under the poverty level, and they don’t even have a primary care physician.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Zulma Toro:

So that is who Central is. That’s who we serve, and we are very, very proud of that. At the same time, we have graduated very influential individuals, like the secretary of education, Miguel Cardona. He’s a graduate from here, like Representative Larson.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

And so, like even the mayor of our city, Erin Stewart. She has been mayor for over 11 years. And when she was elected, she was the youngest mayor elected in the United States. So we have a graduate from us who was a justice in our Supreme Court in Connecticut. So we have educated not only the working class of this state, but we have educated very influential leaders in Connecticut and beyond.

Jay Lemons:

Well, a powerful vehicle for social mobility at Central Connecticut. Yeah.

Zulma Toro:

Indeed. Indeed.

Jay Lemons:

Well, Zulma, thank you so much for joining us on Leaders on Leadership. We really appreciate you and especially appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts, your insight, and your wisdom about leadership, and I’d love to have you make a final comment.

Zulma Toro:

Well, thank you for the opportunity. And the other thing that I want the aspiring leaders to know, it’s difficult, but it is a blessing, as I mentioned, and it gives you a level of satisfaction that I don’t know you can get anywhere else.

Jay Lemons:

Far greater than you could have imagined is my expectation. Right?

Zulma Toro:

Definitely. No other job, I think, will give you that level of satisfaction.

Jay Lemons:

Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for leaders we might feature in upcoming segments. You can send those suggestions to leadershippodcast@academicsearch.org. You can find our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you might 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 has been a special joy, a pleasure, and, may I say it, a blessing to have Dr. Zulma Toro on our show today. Zulma, thank you once again for joining us, and every good wish to you. Thank you for your example and for sharing so generously your story.

Zulma Toro:

Thank you very much, Jay. It has been a pleasure.