Episode 70: Bonus: Keynote Talk on The Connected College
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What are the big ideas in The Connected College? What are the barriers to collaboration for student success and how do you get over or around them? I recently had the chance to give a keynote talk at the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities where I answered these questions and more. I talked about strategy, structure, and culture as barriers and went through case studies on how to address each while responding to trends reshaping higher ed.
In the current landscape of higher education, many institutions are struggling with a persistent problem: silos. Whether it’s a writing center and a writing lab doing the same work in different buildings or departments that never speak to one another, these separations aren't just an administrative headache—they are a direct barrier to student success. To thrive in an era of financial uncertainty and shifting demographics, we must move toward the model of the "Connected College."
A connected college isn't just about efficiency; it's about creating an ecosystem where students feel a sense of belonging, have seamless access to support, and see a clear path from their coursework to their future careers. By addressing barriers in strategy, structure, and culture, leaders can transform their campuses into porous, agile hubs of innovation.
Rethinking Strategy: From Inward-Facing Plans to Outward-Focused Impact
Most institutions have a strategic plan, but few have a true strategy. A real strategy requires making hard choices about where to play and how to win. It means having the courage to say "no" to certain programs so you can do more with the resources you have.
Beyond internal focus, a connected strategy must look outward. How is your institution serving the needs of the local community and regional companies? We are seeing a shift where colleges act as catalysts for workforce and economic development. By partnering with industry on research and experiential learning, institutions can create a measurable economic impact, such as the health innovation district in Charlotte, which is projected to return billions to the region while training the next generation of medical professionals.
Addressing Structure: Consolidating for Sustainability and Synergy
The era of "build it and they will come" is over. With enrollment numbers shifting and many campuses overbuilt for a previous era, the focus must move to "growing in place." This requires a structural shift toward consolidation and shared services.
When we look at the internal structure of a college, we often find redundant support services—HR, finance, or event planning—tucked away in every tiny institute or center. By moving to a shared services model, institutions can reinvest those savings into the student experience. Modernizing legacy structures into "centers of centers" allows for better space utilization and fosters an environment where disparate groups can share ideas and resources under one roof.
Shifting Culture: Creating a Porous and Interconnected Campus
Culture is often the most significant barrier because it is rooted in tradition. While tradition provides durability, it can also breed insularity. The connected college requires a culture of "porosity," where the campus is a welcoming space for the community, local businesses, and students alike.
A prime example is shifting the perception of a specialized building—like a business school—from an elite, walled-off space to a university-wide asset. When a building includes a welcome center, a center for teaching and learning, and dining facilities open to everyone, it encourages "socializing architecture." This approach breaks down the "stay in your lane" mentality and encourages the cross-disciplinary collaboration necessary to solve the complex problems of the future.
Moving Beyond Conventional Wisdom to Enable Student Success
To truly support our students, we must flip the script on the "organizational sabotage" that often slows down higher education. Instead of arguing over minutiae or making every committee large and slow, leaders must focus on the big picture.
Success in the modern era comes from agility and differentiation. By focusing on niche communities and making bold decisions rather than waiting for perfect consensus, we create institutions where students feel connected to their college, their community, and their careers. The journey to becoming a connected college is a transition from doing more with less to doing less with more—focusing our impact where it matters most.
Episode 70 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: This is a really exciting bonus episode for me. I'm sharing the keynote I gave at the Association of Jesuit College's University's annual meeting, where I had the opportunity to share some of the big ideas in the connected college, and then talk about three big barriers that folks face as they enable student success, strategy, structure, and culture, and dive into some case studies on how to get over around those barriers while adapting to trends that are reshaping higher ed, like catalyzing workforce and economic development, consolidating functions to create a more seamless, sustainable experience for students and staff, and creating shared spaces on more porous campuses that welcome community and companies. Let's dive in.
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.
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Elliot Felix: I'm really excited to be here with all of you to talk about how we can create better connected colleges and universities that better support our students. I've had the good fortune of working with well over a hundred colleges and universities over the last 20 years. And my work with them has really been about understanding their students and then improving their experience, thinking through the spaces that students live and learn in the services that support them, the technology systems they use, and the staff that use those systems and provide the services. And then of course, the strategy that drives all that. And in doing so, I've been lucky enough to help more than a million students.
Elliot Felix: So as we think about creating better connected colleges, I wanna start with a story of silos, which I think is gonna sound familiar, unfortunately familiar to many of you. I was working years ago on a project to create a student success hub. And at the kickoff meeting, we had all the different services, all the different offices gathered together around the table. We had the math center, we had the library, we had it, we had the tutoring center, we had the writing center. We had the writing lab. Now, did you catch that they have a writing center and a writing lab? Two basically identical services in two different buildings, doing more or less the same thing. Students were confused. Instead of working better together, they were kind of working in silos. It was really the job to bring them together under one roof.
Elliot Felix: There are probably some things that you're offering that are redundant, that could be combined, because silos and separations don't support students or staff or faculty, they get in the way. If you get these things right, then you're creating five key connections. The first is students feeling like they belong to a community. The second is connecting students to the support they need to succeed. We also want courses to connect to careers. To make that happen, we need internal connections between disciplines and external collaborations with community groups or companies.
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Elliot Felix: Unfortunately, a lot of our conventional wisdom in higher ed has held us back. We've been seeing it's kind of about staying in your lane. Don't upset the apple cart. Our strength is tradition. We need to create broad appeal. But at connected colleges, strength is really found in agility and differentiation. Finding a strategy that helps you focus. Partnering with industry on research, on experiential learning. Instead of getting spread thin, you have a strategy that helps you focus so you can actually do less with more.
Elliot Felix: We're going to talk about three big trends. First, strategy as a barrier and how it can be more outward focused to catalyze workforce and economic development. Second, structure as a barrier and how legacy structures can get in the way. We need to think about how things can be co-located, coordinated, and consolidated. Growing in place before you build more space. Finally, culture as a barrier. How sometimes we're bound by tradition and things are a bit insular instead of being interconnected. That gets in the way of creating more porous campuses where we're mixing uses and users.
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Elliot Felix: Strategy is maybe the first big barrier. Every college or university has a strategic plan, but very few have an actual strategy where you're making choices about where to play and how to win. Good strategy looks outward as well as inward. It looks to where the community and local companies have need. I had the good fortune of working with Wake Forest University and Atrium Health on a project in Charlotte. They partnered a health system and a university to anchor a new innovation district. It was a highly collaborative way to mix live, learn, and workspaces.
Elliot Felix: Then there is structure. We have about 4,000 degree granting institutions and we have fewer students attending them. It's time to think about using what we have better. At the University of Michigan in Wiser Hall, the charge was to bring together a bunch of disparate institutes and centers. We moved to a shared services model. Instead of everyone having their own HR or finance person, they shared support services. We programmed the building with flexibility and used change management to help people transition. We actually saved the occupants an average of 4.26 hours a week. My favorite principle in change management is: before you ask someone to let go of something, you have to give them the new thing to hold onto.
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Elliot Felix: Our last barrier is culture. We're often relying on tradition. But our campuses need to be more porous and our spaces more shared. At the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, the vision was to define a business school based on its interconnections, not its insularity. We thought of the building as a university building with a business school in it. Two-thirds of the building is the business school, but the other third serves the campus and community with a welcome center, dining, and fitness. This required a mental shift and building relationships across departments.
Elliot Felix: I want to leave you with one final thought. 80 years ago, the OSS created a simple sabotage field manual. It was a playbook for spies to disrupt organizations. They used tactics like arguing over minutiae, bringing up past decisions, and making all committees large. In higher ed, these probably sound familiar. If we want to create connected colleges, it's about flipping the script. It's about keeping the big picture in mind and asking: not what do I have to stop to manage risk, but what can I say yes to to make progress? We can create colleges that draw strength from agility and make bold decisions to help students succeed.