Episode 51: Liesl Riddle on Academic Program Design, Curriculum Development, and Higher Education Administration
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How can academic programs evolve and innovate to meet student and employer needs? How can they build intellectual, human, and social capital? What can higher ed learn from other industries? We discuss these important questions with Liesl Riddle, Dean of George Washington University's College of Professional Studies.
In the current higher education landscape, the "silo" is the enemy of the student. We often talk about academic programs as a series of requirements to be checked off, but for students, these programs are the bedrock of their entire collegiate experience. To truly enable student success, we have to look past the syllabus and toward the broader ecosystem.
I recently sat down with Dr. Liesl Riddle, Dean of GW’s College of Professional Studies, to discuss how we can bust these silos and forge partnerships that connect students to their coursework, their community, and their future careers. Liesl brings a unique perspective, having transitioned from a traditional faculty role to a policy advisor and now a leader in professional studies. Her journey highlights a critical truth: innovation in higher education is about crossing borders—whether those are national boundaries or the rigid lines between academic departments.
Redefining Student Success: The Three Forms of Capital
When we ask what "student success" actually means, we often default to graduation rates or starting salaries. While important, Liesl suggests a more holistic approach based on a "threefold return on investment." To thrive, students need to build three distinct types of capital:
Intellectual Capital: The traditional "knowing things"—the mastery of ideas and theories.
Human Capital: The "doing things"—the specific skills and abilities that allow students to apply their knowledge.
Social and Psychological Capital: The "knowing people"—the professional networks, the confidence gained from being challenged, and the resilience to navigate a complex workforce.
Success isn't just about what is on the transcript; it’s about ensuring students come out of a program knowing more, being able to do more, and knowing more people than when they started.
The Academic Program as an Ecosystem
One of the most powerful metaphors Liesl uses is the "innovation ecosystem." Instead of seeing a course as a standalone unit, we should view the entire program as a value-added process. In this model, inputs (faculty, students, industry trends) are processed through a structure (the curriculum and co-curricular activities) to create value that is then "consumed" by the student and the workforce.
For this ecosystem to work, there must be interdependence. Industry partners must inform the curriculum with their needs, and the university must innovate its value-added processes to respond to new global challenges. When these parts move in sync, the program becomes more than just a list of classes—it becomes a launchpad.
Adapting to the Forces of Change: Online Learning and Stackable Credentials
The rise of online education and stackable credentials has fundamentally shifted how we design programs. Technology allows us to reach "enfranchised" learners—caregivers, military spouses, and full-time professionals who previously couldn't access a traditional campus. However, Liesl warns against focusing exclusively on convenience.
The "negative side" of the online shift is the potential loss of social and emotional interaction. If a program is entirely asynchronous, students may miss out on the social capital that comes from peer interaction and networking. Similarly, while "micro-credentials" are a fantastic way to meet industry needs for specific skills, we cannot devalue the underlying knowledge base. Without a strong foundation, students risk becoming formulaic executors rather than creative innovators.
Building the "Skunkworks" of Higher Ed
How do we move the needle on success without getting paralyzed by the rapid pace of change? Liesl recommends two key strategies:
Intentional Reflection: Using pre-tests and post-tests in experiential learning (like study abroad) to force students to reflect on their growth. This makes the "ROI" of their education visible to them in real-time.
Futuristic Thinking: Colleges should establish a "strategic group" tasked solely with looking 5 to 10 years ahead. While the rest of the administration handles the "here and now," this group explores the future of work and upcoming economic shifts.
By balancing immediate student needs with long-term visionary planning, we can create a connected college where every student is empowered to succeed.
Episode 51 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: Welcome to the Connected College Podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and how they're organized to enable student success. And if you're a leader in higher ed, and you think that the silos and separations get in the way of student success, then this podcast and my upcoming book, The Connected College, are for you. We're here to learn and work together to bust silos, question tradition, and forge partnerships so that students feel connected to their college, their community, their coursework and their careers.
Liesel Riddle: When I think about student success, I've always said, I think that it has three component parts. Maybe because I'm a business school professor and all I can think about are forms of capital. But when No matter where you are, whether you're in a business school or elsewhere, I think you want to get three types of returns on your investment for your education. I think you want, certainly, we all know, that you want to get added intellectual capital, right? You want to have new knowledge that you didn't have before, but you want to also have some kind of new human capital, to be able to do things you hadn't done before. And then I'll put the others as sort of a combination, social, psychological, capital.
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Liesel Riddle: Well, I'm going to tell you that I think it's more than just courses, right? You said programs, and when I think of programs, and I think about a student going through a program, I usually describe it in terms of the courses that you take, the people that you meet, and the co curricular experiences where you get to apply what you have learned inside the classroom, outside the classroom. And that maps very nicely back to those forms. And so, when you're building a program, there is this need to be very intentional about not just focusing on what are we going to teach them in terms of knowledge that they don't already have when they're coming into this program, but also mapping out. What are the specific skills that they're going to, by the end of this program, you should be able to do what you weren't able to do before.
Elliot Felix: I think that's great advice because a course is more than the coursework and a program is more than the courses. It is the people, it is the application.
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Liesel Riddle: I think there are a lot of different forces at play. Even before the pandemic, there was this big force and continues to grow bigger and louder. The industry is changing. Technology in particular is changing at such a rapid pace. It is actually very difficult for traditional academia to keep up. And make sure that we are teaching our learners the very latest in those fields most touched by technology. With the pandemic, we all learned about these wonderful tools, like Zoom, that can collapse a lot of time and space, and bring people together. But that convenience, that accessibility, makes it so salient in people's minds as a modality for learning and interaction. There's also a huge cry out for students and their families, as the cost of higher education has risen, talking about what is that ROI?
Elliot Felix: Changing student demographics and new kinds of learners are made accessible via new tools, and there are pros and cons of that. With new kinds of credentials to meet industry needs, you can weave all those together in one sentence, but on their own, they're all major forces reshaping things.
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Liesel Riddle: In the stackable case that we built in the School of Business, we sat down and we said, okay, let's do a big study of the future of work and what employers want. We surveyed our employment partners. We got this big list of the things that they were looking for, and we separated them to knowledge, skills, and abilities. We tried wherever we could to make sure there was a knowledge, skills, and ability kind of aspect woven into each one of these graduate certificates, and we built 27 of them. It did attract a very interesting market, many of whom were our alumni.
Liesel Riddle: We also have these roundtable experiences. We pick an expert in one of the many fields that we offer in our programs. We give the students the person's picture, bio, and the questions ahead of time. And tell the student, this is your opportunity to shine and really impress this person. It sparks a meaningful conversation from the get-go. Even nervous and shy students have their talking points in front of them. I've seen many students actually get jobs from these conversations or develop mentor relationships that are so impactful.
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Liesel Riddle: We as academic institutions need to start really leveraging our creative parts of our brains to come up with what's next, not just what everybody else is doing or what the latest fad is. I think charging a group that goes off to the side—really intentionally putting a strategic group aside to say your job is not to think about what we need to create in the next three years. Your job is to think beyond that. You need somebody looking ahead, reading the research on the future of work, looking at what companies are saying they envision the economy and society will be like five years from now.
Elliot Felix: In the early days of the pandemic, I was so impressed that Duke created two committees at the same time. One was the 2020 committee and the other was the 2030 committee. The 2020 was the immediate COVID response, but the 2030 was like, "Where's this headed? What should we be thinking about?" I love that SkunkWorks advice.