Episode 81: Greg Pillar on Rewiring the Academy by Leading with Hope
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How can you get beyond the doom and gloom headlines to talk through how institutions can be more hopeful about their futures? How to build trust in those futures? What role can pilot programs and projects can play? We discuss these with Greg Pillar, Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs at Gardner-Webb University and author of the white paper “Rewiring the Academy: Leading with Hope in an Age of Chaos” and the "Field Notes from the Academic Edge" Newsletter
In the current landscape of higher education, the headlines are often dominated by "doom and gloom." We hear about the "demographic cliff," the questioning of the degree's value, and the increasing silos that prevent students from reaching their full potential. However, Greg Pillar, Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs at Gardner-Webb University, argues that the antidote to this chaos isn't just a new policy or a bigger budget—it’s a fundamental shift in mindset. It’s about leading with hope.
In a recent conversation on the Connected College Podcast, Pillar discussed the concepts within his white paper, "Rewiring the Academy." By using the metaphor of rewiring rather than total renovation, institutions can find tangible ways to connect existing services, empower faculty, and ultimately foster a growth mindset in students that carries them far beyond graduation.
Defining Student Success Beyond the Degree
In academia, "student success" is a term thrown around constantly, yet it rarely carries a universal definition. For Pillar, success must be viewed holistically. It isn't just about earning a degree or maintaining a high GPA; it’s about helping students become confident, curious, and capable individuals prepared to navigate a complex society.
When we focus solely on academic benchmarks, we miss the "why" behind the education. True success means a student leaves an institution with a sense of purpose and the ability to contribute meaningfully to the world. To achieve this, colleges must look at the factors outside the classroom—personal support, career guidance, and mental resilience—that dictate how a student performs within it.
Hope as a Strategy for the Modern Learner
There is a common adage that "hope is not a strategy," but in an era of constant disruption, hope might be the most critical strategy we have. Drawing inspiration from authors like Dr. Kevin Gannon and Dr. Jessica Riddell, Pillar views hope not as a "mere fantasy" or the opposite of a crisis, but as the vehicle to get through it.
For students to be hopeful, they must develop a growth mindset. This involves seeing challenges and failures not as endpoints, but as opportunities to grow. Higher education leaders have a responsibility to model this vulnerability. By being transparent about what works and what doesn't, institutions build trust. When students see their college adapting and persevering, they learn to apply that same resilience to their own journeys.
Rewiring vs. Reinventing: A Tangible Approach to Change
One of the biggest barriers to innovation in higher education is the sheer scale of the task. If leaders feel they must completely reinvent their systems and traditions, they often become paralyzed. The "rewiring" metaphor offers a more manageable path forward.
Rewiring is about moving, extending, or rerouting the "wires" that already exist within an institution to create better connections. A prime example is the relationship between faculty and academic services like career centers. In many colleges, these functions operate in silos. Faculty teach the curriculum, while career services handle job placement, often with very little overlap.
By "rewiring" these connections—such as having career services lead a module in a classroom when a professor is away at a conference—the institution creates a "win-win." Students receive professional development within their credit-bearing time, and the silos begin to break down without requiring a monumental overhaul of the university structure.
The Power of Pilot Programs and Small Wins
How do you build momentum for change in a tradition-bound environment? Pillar suggests the use of pilot programs and prototypes. Testing ideas on a small scale allows for continuous improvement and helps win over skeptics.
Pillar shares the example of developing Quality Enhancement Plans (QEP) for accreditation. By piloting specific portions of these plans—such as exploration seminars for first-year students—institutions can gather data on what works before a full-scale rollout. Even when a pilot "fails," it provides invaluable lessons. The key is to communicate these outcomes with transparency. Sharing the story of a pivot or an adjustment does more to build a culture of trust than pretending every initiative is a "unicorn and rainbow" success.
Creating a Connected, Hopeful Future
Ultimately, rewiring the academy is about communication and connection. It requires a shift in language—moving from "I can't do that" to "I can't do that yet." When faculty, staff, and administrators work together to knit academic and career support into the fabric of the student experience, the entire ecosystem becomes more resilient.
By focusing on small wins, building trust through transparency, and maintaining a steadfast commitment to student purpose, higher education can move beyond the "age of chaos" into a future defined by hope.
Episode 81 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 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. Welcome, Greg. I'm so excited for today's conversation.
Greg Pillar: Thank you. Thank you, Elliot. Thank you for having me here.
Elliot Felix: Nice. Given that, connection to students, focus on students' interest in student experience, student success I'd love to hear how you define student success.
Greg Pillar: I think that's a great question, not a trick question, no, but it is something that, but a typical one. Yeah. We all, in academia we use that term, we toss that term around, but I'm not convinced that necessarily, even when speaking within an institution, that everyone is running with the same, definition in mind. But what student success means to me is it means helping students not just earn a degree, but becoming confident curious capable individuals who are prepared to, to navigate and contribute to society and leave a live life of purpose. I think at times we focus heavily absolutely on the academic endeavor and, being successful in classes. But it definitely means going beyond that because there's so many factors that can contribute to how a student performs in class and how they learn and retain information and how they develop skills that you definitely have to think holistically when you look at student success.
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Elliot Felix: I love that definition and you're moving beyond graduation to think about competence and curiosity and capability to what end. So that they can have a purpose, make an impact. And I know there's a lot of doom and gloom these days. Fewer students, fewer of them opting to enroll, opting to go to college, public sentiment, questioning the value of higher ed, like in that kind of environment, like with those headwinds. How can students be hopeful about their, about their futures, about their the investments they're making to succeed?
Greg Pillar: I think one, one way for students to be hopeful is to develop the right mindset. As they pursue their education and, and that, that starts probably with a growth mindset, but it's realizing that, for all the chaos, for all the doom and gloom that, that may be out there and the challenges that they may be facing. I think, the key with hope is that I view it as not the like opposite of a crisis or the opposite of chaos. But it can be the way to get through it and so it, whatever institution a student, decides to pursue or advance their education, whether it's a four year college, a two year community college, a trade school or some other type of professional development training. Just having the mindset that, they're starting a journey and that, the challenges and tribulations that they're gonna endeavor as they go on it, while may set them back, may, lead to experiencing a failure or or some other challenge when they come out on the other end, it's gonna help them persevere through what they may encounter in the future. And so I think that's one of the things that can really help a student navigate the current climate that we're in is to go into it with that mindset and that takes some vulnerability. That takes some, no doubt stepping outside the comfort zone. Willing to accept and acknowledge that you're going to fumble, you're going to, hit a failure here or something there. But I think that's real important.
Elliot Felix: It is for sure. And it sounds like a foundational concept is the growth mindset. So you're seeing challenges as opportunities to grow. And and with that kind of reframe, students can be more hopeful about the future. And I was really struck by this, recent white paper rewiring academy, the central role that you think hope should play in student success.
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Greg Pillar: Yeah. And I have to say and in my white paper, two authors who I was heavily inspired by with my view and attaching hope to this effort to rewire institutions. One is Dr. Kevin Gannon, who, wrote the book, radical Hope, a Teaching Manifesto which focuses heavily on, on incorporating hope into teaching pedagogy and how faculty approach it with students. But then Jessica Riddell and her recent book on Hope Circuits. And that was where, she definitely inspired me Dr. Riddell on thinking about approaching how we in higher ed and academia pursue these current challenges. More so as rewiring universities. I think at times, you know what's tough is, it's higher ed has persevered all this time because they're built for structure there. Tradition. Yeah. Tradition. Yeah. Many authors talk about that. And you've noted that before. And I think too often if we approach it, like trying to completely renovate completely reinvent what these are, that, that is just too big and too difficult of a, of endeavor. But to me, rewiring, which is still, if you think about it in terms of, as a former architect rewiring whether it's a house or whether it's a, some other kind of electrical system or device can have a huge impact on how that, that functions and the properties and features that it has. And realizing that, that may be a more tangible way to approach how we make some necessary changes in higher ed without having to, reinvent the systems, the processes, the services, the offices that we have within higher ed.
Elliot Felix: As someone whose mission is to create better connected colleges and universities, obviously the rewiring metaphor resonates with me and I would love to hear what are some of the, what are some of the wires that we need to move around or extend or reroute? What's an example of, functions within a university that we don't have to totally throw out. We just need them to better connect or collaborate for students to be more hopeful and more successful.
Greg Pillar: I would say with just within Academic Affairs as a, first example the important role that faculty play in teaching courses, developing curriculum whether you want to use the term that they're often siloed. The way they are structured and the way they're, I feel wired at times is completely separate from the academic services that we have. And that's one area where I've definitely seen at the institutions I've been at, where it's not that it's necessarily duplication of effort, but it's similar types of functions being performed where in one hand the faculty may see it as this is additional work that they're being expected to do or that they're performing. And whereas then on the student services side or the academic services side, sometimes those folks feel like their expertise, their experience isn't near as valued or that they're facing an uphill challenge trying to work with students and I think, there could be some rewiring done with how faculty, work with those offices and centers. For example, career services. At my previous institution, we had a very robust career services center, which had a required a course that students were required to take for graduation. But every single one of those sections was taught by adjunct faculty, which in many ways was great because they come in with some real world experience and skills that they can work with students. But there was very little interaction with the full-time faculty, and I think there was definitely opportunities to, to maximize what full-time faculty in their courses and even other adjuncts in their courses incorporate and vice versa. And how they can help feed into, the career center to, to, further improve their services and improve their knowledge base to, to help students. And so there, that's something I think that doesn't require monumental, overhauling of the center or anything like that. I think it's just rewiring.
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Elliot Felix: I think that's a great example. And it makes me think of a more, of a, maybe a more established or more accepted, relationship which is with the library, right? A faculty member wouldn't think it's crazy to bring their class to the library. But how many faculty are bringing a class to the career center or to the advising center, or to the writing center, or to the math lab, or to the media lab. And and I think, knitting together the academic and personal and career support services with classes I think is just such a great idea because so many of these things are stuck in the old model. I know you're one of the other passions of yours is designing for the modern learner. And I think so many of our support services are stuck in the old paradigm of this is an extra thing that students will do in spare time that they don't have. But if you actually knit them together, if you bring career exploration as a course, for instance, or into a course, then you get such great benefit.
Greg Pillar: That's a great question and I think, it gets to where I think for many people, they attach hope to a dream or they attach hope to results that are just, they're daunting or difficult to attain. And it's definitely not necessarily to say that it's always a case of where it's going to be, easy or things like that. But I think that barrier, just like with so many other things that we deal with in life is and if I'm not mistaken, I think Kevin Gannon speaks about this in his book radical Hope that, it's something along the lines of, hope without action, it's just mere fantasy and it's making that next step into actually starting to work, towards that goal, keeping hope in mind. And so it requires buy-in, it requires perhaps a paradigm shift for some faculty or for some staff. And I think that's the biggest barrier is how do you start to do that and navigate that so that folks are in it for the long haul. And it doesn't mean that every single time, whatever that endeavor is it's gonna take years and years. But it, you go into it sometimes without knowing what is that timeline gonna be? And it's having some, faith and confidence. And your peers and the leaders of your institution that, we're working together and we're gonna get there. And that's where I do think trust and transparency is so important and without it's difficult to get, make much traction in hope.
Elliot Felix: That's such a good point. The trust and the transparency is where people can find that courage, and the common goals to get them, pointed in the same direction back to our whole institutional definition of student success. One of my favorite tactics or tips that I put in my first book, How to Get The Most Outta College is just how important the word yet is to the growth mindset, right? Instead of saying, I can't do that, I can't do that yet, and one word, totally reframes things.
Greg Pillar: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think as part of that, I think there's a lot of hesitation at times when things don't work to put that positive spin on it, and there's a place for that. There there's a place to do that. But sometimes though, that gets interpreted as, lack of transparency or lack of willingness to accept the fact that something didn't work. It's tough when something doesn't work to say, you know what? We tried this and it did not work, we need to shift and adjust and there'll be a lot of, I told you souls or there may be, some folks very upset. But I think in the long run that does more for helping to build that culture and understanding that down the road when you try to take that approach with hope and paint that picture that they'll buy into it because they'll realize if this doesn't work or that there's the possibility to pivot, adjust as opposed to yeah, no, this is gonna have a foregone conclusion and it's gonna be, a difficult ride. And do I really wanna, withstand that?
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Elliot Felix: It can't be all unicorns and rainbows, you don't build the, you don't build the transparency and trust if you're not talking about where things have failed and what you've learned from it, and modeling the idea that challenges and failures are opportunities to grow. The other thing that, that strikes me as a way to couple hope and action, like you're saying, is pilots and prototypes and other ways of experimenting with things. Because I, I feel like, at least in my experience, those are some of the ways that you you generate hope because you try something out and you learn something from it, and you get people excited. How have you incorporated that into your work? Testing things out, piloting, prototyping, continuous improvement.
Greg Pillar: One of the areas that in particular where I've been able to apply a pilot approach. I have a, strong background in accreditation and in the southeast. Most schools are accredited by SACSCOC. Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. And as part of the decennial reaffirmation, you have to develop a QEP, a Quality Enhancement Plan, which is an initiative that, shows the institution is driven and committed to continuous improvement. I've been, I'm now currently a part of my third QEP development and with the other two, and I'm sure we'll do this with the current one is we, once we develop a topic, we, definitely didn't do the pilot for the entire QEP, but took a portion of it and tried it out to see how it would go. The first one was dealing around faculty student interaction. And so the thing that we piloted were these exploration seminars for first year students that would be taught by faculty as an opportunity to help students for a one credit course. So it's something that doesn't, weigh heavily onto their schedule, but give them the opportunity to explore disciplines or topics that, they, they might be interested in, but not sure if they wanna pursue it. And that was one that there was both successes and things that didn't go so well with that. That one both informed the final QEP and made some changes to it. But then two, some stuff that we didn't continue doing because it didn't work out that well.
Elliot Felix: All starts with trust and I love that example. It also reminds me I took a kind of an exploration seminar my first year at UVA and I still remember it. The idea of first year students being able to explore a topic early on and find a mentor and have some time with senior faculty, I think is is one of those great durable strategies. And, thanks for a great conversation, Greg, about hope and the growth mindset and the communications and the connections and the pilots to make it happen. Appreciate it.
Greg Pillar: No, thank you. And, again I appreciate your work, your writings have definitely influenced my mind frame as well. It's an honor to be on the podcast and add my thoughts.