Episode 100: Brian Rosenberg on Overcoming Resistance to Experiential Learning
How can you make experiential learning not just something your college does but part of who you are? As you move from doing it ad hoc to integrating at scale, how can you overcome resistance to change? What's the right mix of communications, incentives, and training? On a special 100th episode, we dive into these questions with Brian Rosenberg, author of "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It", Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and former President of Macalester College.
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In a rapidly shifting landscape, higher education is facing a crisis of confidence. To bridge the gap between classroom theory and real-world success, leaders are increasingly looking toward experiential learning. But shifting a millennium-old model of "passive listening" is no small feat.
In this episode of the Connected College Podcast, host Elliot Felix sits down with Brian Rosenberg, President Emeritus of Macalester College and author of Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education. They discuss why experiential learning is essential for student success, the institutional silos that stand in the way, and the "carrots" leaders can use to drive authentic change.
The Human Side of Leadership
Brian Rosenberg’s perspective is deeply rooted in his background as an English professor, specifically his love for 19th-century novels. He notes that Charles Dickens often explored how institutions dehumanize individuals—a theme that heavily influenced his presidency.
"I was determined not to stop being a human being. Leadership is not dominance or ordering people around; it’s setting the right example and inspiring people to bring out the best of themselves."
Redefining Student Success: From "Learned" to "Learner"
Success in college is often measured by the accumulation of information. However, Rosenberg argues that information is fleeting. True student success is equipping students with the mindset and skillset to be lifelong learners.
Experiential learning—or "learning through doing"—is the primary vehicle for this. It builds:
Resilience and Grit: Much like tackling an 800-page Dickens novel, experiential projects require determination.
Agency: Students move from being passive recipients of knowledge to active owners of their educational journey.
Collective Success: While the "Ivy League" model often rewards individual performance, the workplace rewards collective success. Group work teaches students to navigate different levels of dedication and quality—a mirror of real life.
Four Ingredients for Accelerating Change
If experiential learning is so effective, why is it so hard to scale? Rosenberg identifies four critical areas where leaders must intervene to overcome institutional resistance:
1. Center the Student, Not the Faculty The traditional model centers on the faculty member pouring knowledge into heads. Shifting to a student-centered model requires a massive cultural and intellectual shift away from the "sage on the stage."
2. Change the Incentive Structure Faculty are often rewarded for narrow, discipline-specific scholarship. To encourage experiential learning, institutions must broaden the definition of excellence to include community engagement, public-facing work, and innovative teaching.
3. Use Carrots, Not Sticks Rosenberg found that "presidential discretionary grants" worked better than mandates. By offering course development grants for those who included community engagement, he increased the number of courses without forcing anyone’s hand. "Begin with the believers," he suggests.
4. Address Graduate Education Faculty teach the way they were taught. Until graduate programs prioritize the art of facilitating teamwork and active learning, new professors will continue to default to the lecture hall.
Managing the "Messy" Middle: Silos and Scale
A common pitfall in experiential learning is the "unmanaged relationship." When the Alumni Office, the Career Center, and individual faculty members all reach out to the same local business, it creates confusion and damages the college's reputation.
Rosenberg emphasizes that budgets are expressions of values. If an institution is serious about experiential learning at scale, it must invest in a supportive structure to manage these external relationships. "The only thing worse than not reaching out," says Rosenberg, "is reaching out and screwing it up."
Key Takeaways for Leaders
Focus on Impact: Value scholarship that reaches 100,000 readers or helps a community organization over a journal article read by a dozen peers.
Embrace Constraint: Use the current challenges facing higher ed as a catalyst for innovation.
Model Vulnerability: Leaders should speak as humans, not as PR messages, to build the trust necessary for change.
Episode 101 Transcript
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Brian Rosenberg: When you're working in a group or a team, you have to give up a certain amount of agency. That is your success becomes dependent, not just on your own effort and ability, but on other people. And that's really hard. \ That involves a level of trust and vulnerability that work simply working on your own. Doesn't. Inevitably in a group or a team, there are gonna be different levels of quality work. There's gonna be different levels of dedication, but we both know that's life, right? It's, that's the way being in a workplace is, then you have to take all that at mass. And succeed at something
that was Brian Rosenberg, past president of McAllister College an author of the book, whatever it is, I'm against it. Resistance to change in higher education. We had a great conversation about how to enable experiential learning and the skills, the mindsets, the relationship it builds, and we dive into how to deal with the resistance you might face trying to adopt and accelerate experiential learning with better communication techniques, incentive structures, and ways of developing people. I think you're really gonna enjoy this, so let's dive in.
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 The Connected College, are for you.
Elliot Felix: 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.
Elliot Felix: Welcome Brian. I'm so excited for our conversation about experiential learning and are the. that people face, the resistance they face and how they can get over, around and through them.
Brian Rosenberg: I'm pleased to be here, Elliot, I've been looking forward to this.
Elliot Felix: Awesome. And I should say this is our hundredth episode of the Connected College podcast. And I could think of no, no better person, with no better perspective. So I'm I'm excited too. And maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself. How you got started in higher ed, what you're up to today.
Brian Rosenberg: I fell in love with with being an English professor in college and I was fortunate enough to be able to do that for 15 years. And then for some crazy reason, I moved into administration. I became a dean of the faculty for five years and then spent 17 years as president of McAllister College in your neck of the woods. Decided 17 years was enough. And since I left McAllister I've been doing a variety of things. I teach in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I've been working with the African Leadership University. I'm chair of the board now, the Tegel Foundation and I like to write. So yeah, I've totally failed retirement.
Elliot Felix: Nice. I, it seems like you're failing up. Or it, it seems to be quite positive and. It's interesting, like tying it all back to english professor roots. What was your favorite class that you taught as an English professor?
Brian Rosenberg: I loved teaching 19th century European novels. That's what got me interested in the first place, a freshman seminar on that. And so I. It didn't always delight my students, but I loved teaching these big, long book, bookend kind of books. Dickens was my particular interest, but Dickens George, Elliot, Jay and Austin Henry, James, Charlotte Bronte. I just love that stuff.
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