Transformational College Experiences with Dr. Jay Gatrell, President of Eastern Illinois University

Summary

In this conversation, Jay Gatrell, the president of Eastern Illinois University, shares insights on his transformational college experiences, leadership philosophy, community engagement, and the role of faith in education. He discusses the importance of truth in higher education, his proud achievements as president, and the challenges of aligning diverse perspectives within the university. Gatrell emphasizes the evolving student experience post-pandemic and the significance of building affinity for the university through relationships. He also addresses the critical issue of mental health in higher education and the initiatives in place to support students.

Takeaways

Transformational college experiences can shape one's future.
Leadership is about facilitating the success of others.
Community engagement fosters personal and professional growth.
Navigating faith in a secular education system is complex.
Truth in higher education is achieved through dialogue.
Creating a culture of value and respect is essential.
Aligning diverse perspectives requires champions within the organization.
The future vision includes stable enrollments and growth.
Student experiences must adapt to changing expectations.
Mental health support is crucial for student success.

Sound Bites

"Faith plays a role in my leadership style."
"Truth is found through dialogue and understanding."
"Aligning diverse perspectives is a complex challenge."

Chapters

00:00 The Journey to Higher Education
03:14 Leadership Philosophy and Style
05:42 Community Engagement and Service
07:06 Navigating Faith in a Secular Environment
11:37 Truth in Higher Education
18:00 Cultural Transformation in Leadership
21:05 Aligning a Complex Organization
24:37 Vision for the Future
24:51 Future Enrollment and Economic Challenges in Higher Education
30:02 The Evolving Student Experience Post-Pandemic
37:07 Building Relationships and Community on Campus
42:54 Mental Health Initiatives and Student Support

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Journey to Higher Education
• 3:14 Leadership Philosophy and Style
• 5:42 Community Engagement and Service
• 7:06 Navigating Faith in a Secular Environment
• 11:37 Truth in Higher Education
• 18:00 Cultural Transformation in Leadership
• 21:05 Aligning a Complex Organization
• 24:37 Vision for the Future
• 24:51 Future Enrollment and Economic Challenges in Higher Education
• 30:02 The Evolving Student Experience Post-Pandemic
• 37:07 Building Relationships and Community on Campus
• 42:54 Mental Health Initiatives and Student Support

Transcript

Christopher Swing (00:00)
Welcome to Faithful, the podcast where we explore the intersection of leadership, faith, and impact. I'm your host, Christopher Swing, president and CEO of Vantage Surgical Solutions. Through thoughtful conversations with business leaders, missionaries, and change makers, we uncover the principles that guide their work and connect them to timeless wisdom. In season one, we're diving into the foundational organizations and experiences that shape my own leadership journey. Whether you're a leader in business,

faith or your community, this conversation is packed with inspiration and practical wisdom. Thank you for joining me on this journey of discovering how faith and leadership intersect in meaningful ways. Let's dive into the episode.

Christopher Swing (00:43)
Hello, welcome back to Faithful. I'm Chris Forswing and I have the distinguished pleasure of hosting Dr. Jay Gaitrill, president of Eastern Illinois University today. Dr. Gaitrill is often referred to Jay primarily because he's very humble. And secondly, because he has one of the most mispronounced last names.

I've experienced on campus. So without further ado, Dr. Jay Gatriel. Jay.

How did you go from being a first generation student to having a path that leads you to become the president of Eastern Illinois University?

Jay Gatrell (01:32)
I was blessed to have a band director, Ralph Schweigert. I still remember it to this day, who invested in me and was really committed to seeing me grow as a whole person. I played tuba, I played baritone, I played trombone in the jazz band. But he took me to my first college campus. It Central Michigan University and Mount Pleasant, Michigan. I'd never been on a college campus before.

had driven by the exit. knew there were things called universities. We'd never in my entire life, and I'm in high school at this time, I'd never been on a college campus. being able to go and perform, I think at Warner Auditorium, it was the name of the venue, and be part of the Central Michigan University Honors Brass Choir as a sophomore in high school.

and then junior and senior, that was transformational. To be on a college campus, to be in an environment that was so foreign, relative to growing up in rural northern Michigan, I was just blown away by the buildings. I was blown away by the young people, the faculty who were investing in their time and energy to make me, some kid from Otsego County, a better tuba player. And they were giving of their own time.

They were committed to their discipline and committed to education. so that experience was really critical. Just being on a college campus, because when you're on a college campus, you know you're somewhere special. In Charleston, when you get on the side of Lincoln and see Old Main, you know you're in a place of import, a place that's special. unique and extraordinary things happen there. I didn't know what those things were.

when I was 16 and 15 and 17 and 18 years old, but I knew it was something I wanted to learn more about and be part of.

Christopher Swing (03:14)
So how would you describe your leadership style and philosophy?

Jay Gatrell (03:18)
Well, a lot of folks reflect on sort of their leadership style and they give names to it and, you know, servant leadership. There's all sorts of frameworks you can, and I've read Green Leaf and all that too. For me, and I really attribute this to my dad, I didn't know we were going get so personal here today, but my dad always said, if somebody asks you to do something, do it. Raise your hand.

and do your best job. And he might occasionally use more colorful language. But he was very adamant about raising your hand. Opportunities and serving others. He was in the Lions Club and a number of other service organizations in our home community. And I knew from a very young age that service was part of it. And you did things just because you wanted to help others and be in community.

because some of my fondest memories really of the summers growing up were selling ice cream sandwiches at Alpenfest at the parade with the Lions Club. And it sounds silly, but you look back on it, those were hard long days in the heat. mean, Northern Michigan's cool compared to where we live. But raise your hand and do a good job. And over the course of my career,

I've had the opportunity to raise my hand and whether it was serving on a committee or being a director, an interim director of something or interim associate dean, if you raise your hand, do a good job, respect others and realize that

in almost every role I've been in, I focus on facilitating others to reach their goal. If you focus on the folks, the stakeholders, I don't like that term, but the people and who they are and what their needs are and figure out a way to get those needs met, you're going to be a success. Because it really is about sort of human relations. Leadership is human relations 101.

get to know folks, find out their priorities, and try to align those with the work you have to do within any organization. But in the process, be mindful that you're really facilitating the success of others, because organizations succeed if people succeed. Institutions succeed if our students succeed, and faculty reach their goals, and staff have opportunities for growth, and so on.

Christopher Swing (05:31)
So I know when you first got here, I noticed that you had joined, I think it was the Rotary. And I didn't know the philosophy, but I assume that gets back to the same thing you just talked

Jay Gatrell (05:42)
Yeah, so one of the ways in which you learn about communities is you join. I was a Rotarian in Louisville, Kentucky before I came here. It was a great opportunity for me to meet leaders from across the community, but more importantly to give back.

I had the opportunity to work with the International Fellowship Program through Rotary there and here. was literally the first, one of the first emails I sent was to find out how do I transfer my membership from Louisville to Charleston. And you meet folks, it's a great way to connect. And I also think it's important to be, to have a social network outside of your organization. We have to be fuller human beings. You can't

I mean, I work a lot and I'm not complaining, but I also need to have relationships outside of that framework and provide opportunity to create other sorts of networks that nourish me as a person, but also provide me with some distance from the work I do every day. And I think leaders need to have those connections outside of their organization. So service organizations are one way to do that. Obviously, Rotary is one member.

organization I'm with. I have professional organizations as well as a faith-based organization, the Knights of Columbus, that I also am active in.

Christopher Swing (06:51)
You brought up the Knights. That's a very unique organization that I'm also extremely aware of. so tell me, what's your struggle that you have with running a secular organization while still being true to your faith?

Jay Gatrell (07:06)
Well, yeah, I think public higher education is secular. It makes total sense. But I think for people, know, if we're going to be mindful of sort of the entire sort of collection of ways in which people connect and so on, faith communities are one of them. And for me, that's been part of my identity. I did work at a private religious

institution before I arrived here. there is, irrespective of your own sort of worldview, we have to respect the dignity of every member of our community and the diversity of faith organizations. Here at Eastern, we have a real rich collection of faith-based student organizations that do tremendous work in our community, as well as Alternative Spring Break's not only

in the US but also abroad and they serve the community, they serve our neighbors, but they also serve each other through programming and resources. Obviously, as a secular organization, I don't often talk about faith and it wouldn't be appropriate in professional settings to do so in that respect. for me personally, it's sort of central to who I am and my connection to

whether it be my family or... I mean, not oddly, but my own family has a diverse sort of religious identity. so my children actually don't practice Catholicism. They were raised in the Jewish tradition of their mother. So, you know, I think it's important to have a collection of...

relationships outside of work and faith is one of those and we have to have space for it on in every public space to have to make room for people to to celebrate who they are in their identity. I had the privilege and honor of breaking the fast with our Muslim Student Association. You know I've celebrated events with Wesleyan student organization

I had the opportunity to meet with our students of the Jewish faith, It was just to sort of process that. So faith is part of the human experience and it's something that I recognize, I value, and it's certainly part of my identity.

Christopher Swing (09:13)
Well, no matter how much we desire to exclude, know, in a situation like this, and I appreciate your extreme professionalism, and to be honest, like, you are, I think you do a great job of balancing everybody's needs within this organization from a holistic perspective, right? Like, let's just talk about it the way it is, and that is that people need something to believe in.

whatever that is. And I don't know, you know, there's just an aspect of the human being that seeks something other than themselves. And some people that ends up in faith and some people that ends up in other places. But I think just being transparent in the sense that, you know, there's an important aspect to the kids and to the faculty's life, you know.

whether spoken or unspoken. And I think one of the benefits that the university plays is that it's an opportunity for people to see multiple avenues of faith and the opportunities for them to experience and figure out what's best for them.

Jay Gatrell (10:20)
And obviously outside of sort of how one identifies as faith, there's also, you know, there's a number of ways in which we can know the world around us, right? And multiple ways of investigating and understanding truth, know, small T and big T. And for each of us, we bring our own value set. And in higher ed, there should be space. And I think there is space to have those conversations that are respectful, dignified, and

in no way minimizes anybody at the table. Because it does bring a richness because it provides that sense of, you know, I talk about people finding out what their needs are, right? That is for some folks, is not only a personal sort of priority, it's also something they need to feel that they're respected and valued. And so it is, you know, in a secular organization, it's tricky to of navigate that.

But if I'm true to myself as a person, right, you know, I do at the end of the day, go to the baccalaureate mass at Newman in the start of each semester. So it's just something I do. I want to be there in community with our fellow students and our faculty and staff when I can. mean, you know, and it really is, I think, important also as a leader for people to see.

me in spaces that they might not expect me to be in as well.

Christopher Swing (11:37)
So.

Not to get too deep here, but when you think about...

people's faith or people's religion or whatever you want to call it, no matter what you do, right, it's going to impact at some level your leadership style.

how do you navigate that process? Because obviously some people don't necessarily agree with, you know, even religion in general. And how do you...

approach your decision processes when you know that you're going to be challenged related to that, but it's really hard to eliminate something that's in your core belief system when you're trying to make those decisions. Like what does that look like?

Jay Gatrell (12:19)
Interestingly, because we are in a secular organization, some of those conflicts just are absent, right? But when we do have questions or concerns, I always try to think about it from the perspective of, you know, the person who's reaching out or has a question or a concern. Because if it wasn't important to them, they wouldn't have brought it to my attention. That's the same way I feel about email.

somebody emails me, I'm going to respond and I'm going to do so as quickly as I can out of respect for them, out of a care for them and their priorities. And so when I think about making decisions that impact people or programs or invest in this versus that, you know, it's going to be grounded in my understanding of not only the organization but

but how it impacts people. And I think for me, having my personal sort of faith background, it's consistent to think about the person, the whole person and whether it's a whole, and that's, mean, education should be a whole person experience, not just a classroom experience. And so I don't know if it makes me a better leader because I try to think about,

that sort of framework. But I do know it makes me reflect a bit more pause and make sure not only am I living up to my organization's objectives and goals, but am I living up to my own values and vision for what I think I should be as a leader.

Chris (13:43)
Faithful is proudly sponsored by Vantage Surgical Solutions, where excellence meets innovation in advanced healthcare solutions. With a foundation built on integrity, creativity, and commitment, Vantage empowers leaders to shape the future, just as we explore leadership through faith on the podcast. Vantage Surgical Solutions, standing for excellence, leading advanced healthcare solutions.

Christopher Swing (14:10)
so let's step back a second because you talked about little t truth and big t truth. And one of the things that I think people struggle with today and and I'm not giving my perspective in this. I just hear from lots of different people that universities don't truly seek truth.

like they were originally designed. This is my perspective. It's easy to sling mud, right? It's easy to stand on the outside and to throw darts when those same people have no engagement in the process. They are usually the people who aren't ever in a classroom,

Maybe if you could give your two cents on what it is that you think that you see within this university. And let's stay focused on this university because it's meaningful to me.

Jay Gatrell (15:03)
Well, when I think about definitions of, you know, truth, big T, little t, I think there is a certain situational and social context to East understanding of that. I'm fairly certain that we wouldn't want an institution today to reflect the same gestalt and values from the Middle Ages. So I do think there's some, you know, the way in which organizations, whether they're higher ed, they've changed over time.

And I think the way you get at truth, however you define that, is through dialogue, it's through discussion, and it's through coming to a common understanding. And sometimes it's a method, scientific method, is one way to do that. Sometimes it's about understanding each other and realizing we're not always going to agree and that's okay. And having universities be a place where disagreement is acceptable.

and disagreement is something that we do civilly, respectfully, and we're not all nor should we all have the same worldview. And you can read the newspapers, that's a contested concept today in higher ed. What a higher education institution should be doing, and I think we do extraordinarily well here at Eastern, and I'm sure other institutions do too, is provide a space for students to...

to have those dialogues about difficult questions and challenging issues. And we don't have to agree, but we have to be respectful and civil. And that's one way of getting at truth, right? Scientific method, dialogue, and discourse. And I don't think you want to, in a higher ed or any organization, or even in our society, privilege one or the other. Because what we know is,

whether it's from the scientific method is the data change over time. And so we want to be open to and skeptical. I think one of the best things about the scientific method is you should be skeptical and not have a sense of certainty about everything. You know, it really is a series of tests, retesting, and as the data changes, obviously the findings change over time. I think universities are a place where we do

that extraordinarily well and we equip students with the skills to be critical thinkers, to collect data and to analyze it and then at the end of it make their own decisions because when you leave, when you walk across the stage on graduation, you should be a qualitatively different human being than you came in to campus on orientation and that process, whether you want to call it a process of learning or

or formation or whatever adjective or framework you want to think about it as, you have developed skills, knowledge, and dispositional sort of context that has prepared you to enter a workforce or enter a vocation or go on to graduate school and do other things. So I think we try to come up with a framework for understanding what truth might be, but we don't necessarily define what truth is.

And that's where the data and the analytical and the thinking sort of comes in.

Christopher Swing (17:52)
I'm going to throw an easier one at you. What is the one change you've made since becoming the president of this university that you're most proud of?

Jay Gatrell (18:00)
Well, I think that since assuming the presidency back in June 23, it? It's kind of all blurred together after a while. I've put a lot of emphasis on building culture and creating, you know, we get a strategic plan. Everybody does strategic plan.

It has four themes, right? Achieve, make sure students achieve in the classroom and achieve degrees and we have the resources to support that. Engage the community, part of my commitment to giving back, but also engage their disciplines. And then create, a campus that meets our needs, but also is consistent with our aspirations, who we want to be. But under create is a critical one.

create a culture that reflects our values and our mission. And that for me is, you know, making sure people feel valued, heard, and are part of our story and our future and are part of building that. you know, over the past year, the thing I'm most proud of is, you know, we've instituted two series of campus updates instead of a mega lengthy state of the university address to bring people together in communities to have coffee and donuts and

and share campus updates. We've tried to focus on making this a place you want to walk around. I can tell you, one of the things I'm most proud of is our facilities team and what they have done over the past year to improve the campus landscaping. it's a level of pride and a connection. And I've heard from more alums how beautiful the campus looks and how it has changed, but it's changed because people

who work every day and care about the work they do feel empowered to make a difference and to build something. I'm not saying that hasn't always happened, right? But we're at a unique sort of point in our history, like all organizations are, and you got to sort of meet us where we are, but how do we become better? So we focused on grounds. We focused on improving this room we're in right now was really sort of what became our hub initiative, which we've expanded over the sort of started when I was a provost.

and we expanded it to include, we opened this year a family hub for parents who are also students to have a resource for them and their children if they have to bring them to campus to study and research. so trying to be thinking about ways to make campus more welcoming and create a culture where everyone knows they're valued and where everyone understands what a special place this is. And it begins literally with the flowers.

at the Old Main Gate, right? mean, it's a symbolic but important piece. And I'm just so grateful that the facilities team and the grounds team care so deeply because they've done amazing work over the last 18 months. But culture is something that's critical. And I'm really proud of the time and effort we've put in across the entire campus to invest in our people. And of course, the fourth thing on the strategic plan, I have to say, because

Christopher Swing (20:26)
culture is something that's critical.

Jay Gatrell (20:38)
It's a plan is resource. How are we going to pay for all this?

Christopher Swing (20:42)
that's interesting. So as I'm thinking through, you're in a very multi-layered organization. And multi-layered is probably the nice way to put it. It's very complex with lots of, not even just layers, but silos. And how do you get people aligned to where we're all rowing in the same direction?

And to be honest, mean, you have lots of different personalities and perspectives and focuses and agendas, let's say.

Jay Gatrell (21:15)
Well, I think you have to find champions and elevate them and celebrate them. One of the great examples, I think, around student achievement and student success this year has been our, what we call the DWF initiative, to essentially increase the number of students who are earning academic credit for gateway courses or general education courses. And that program was really about centering the student in the work we do.

in terms of the classroom and making sure our pedagogies are inclusive, that they're relevant and that they're engaging in a way that students want to learn. We keep hearing that, you know, this generation is different. I suspect they said that about my generation, which is, I assume, we're the same generation. So it's not a new phrase, right? But, you know, find champions who really want to innovate and create and empower them to go out and do cool things. If you do that and you resource it, because you can't ask people to do more with less.

But if you resource the things that will allow you to be a next level organization and you celebrate it and highlight it, folks will want to be champions. They will find their initiative and or align something that they have a passion with with the strategic plan or whatever the priority might be. So yeah, no organization are you ever going to get 100 % buy in. But I think if you get seven or eight out of 10 folks who are passionate about

sort of our students, they're going to see the value in investing in new initiatives that advance their success. I would hope and believe, I that, you know, I got into this because I thought it was cool to work with students. that was a cool concept. And I genuinely, and I know our faculty genuinely want to see them succeed. So if we can find ways for faculty to do that more effectively to provide resources,

and align those with strategic objectives of the institution, I think that's a win. But yeah, it is a complex organization. You've got, you know, have president divisions, other divisions, you've got deans and departments, and sometimes you have schools with other sub pieces. But like all organizations, just people. I mean, I walk around, I get to meet folks. It's a little harder to get out of Old Main now than it was two years ago. But

You know, walking around and finding out and hearing, you know, what their priorities are critical. And even finding out what doesn't work. mean, sometime in December. You know, someone complained about just a light switch and we got it fixed. I mean, and being responsive when, and cutting through the bureaucracy and facilitating something as simple as that is critical. And those are the types of wins you look for.

They're tiny wins, but the DWF thing, we're gonna report some data from the pilot programs, but, 60 % of the faculty who participated in this project, who taught a section, 60 % of the sections improved their credit no credit functionally rate compared to the prior three year mean, 60%.

Of that 60%, 75 % improved the credit no credit sort of DWF framework by more than 7.5%. In general chemistry or introductory gen ed program, we saw a double digit improvement over the pilot because faculty innovative and were creative with that class. Still the same standards, still the same content, still the same expectations. But we got some amazing faculty across campus who just committed

to innovating. And once others see the success of that, they're going want to be part of that too.

Christopher Swing (24:38)
when you look forward five years from now, what do you hope to see? And maybe secondarily to that, along the way, how do you determine are we making strides forwards towards what our vision is?

Jay Gatrell (24:51)
Well, I would say in five years, obviously, we want to address a significant number of sort of projects around campus. So there's the physical piece. But conceptually, and from an organization, we need to have stable enrollments and stable revenue and have a mix of students that meets those needs. I think I confidently say, just because of the ecosystem in higher ed today, that

the notion of 12,000 students at an institution like Eastern or any regional comprehensive institution, we're not gonna see the numbers of the record numbers that most regional saw between 2008, 2012, 13. Since then, the entire sort of economics of the system has changed, flagships have grown at the expense of regionals, and that's in every state. There's a wonderful series of...

papers and articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education that really details the ways in which regional comprehensives have changed over the past decade in the enrollment challenges. But I do know there's always going to be a place for Eastern Illinois University. It fills a critical role in our economic development, in our community, and for the entire state of Illinois. In five years, we're going to be looking to be stable at somewhere between

8750 and 9000 enrolled degree seeking students. That's where we really need to be. And you know, that's still a heavy lift for us. That's about 1000 1500 additional degree seeking students. And we need to do that in a way that's sustainable and and affordable. We continue to be the most affordable option in the state of Illinois. We're committed to maintaining that. But it's it's hard. It's hard in an environment where costs are outpacing revenue gains.

Chris (26:43)
Faithful is brought to you by Vantage Surgical Solutions, where we believe in progress through passion. If you're inspired by innovation and excellence in healthcare, we invite you to join our team. At Vantage, we're not just shaping the future of healthcare. We're empowering individuals to make a difference. Visit our careers page to explore opportunities and see if your journey aligns with ours. Vantage Surgical Solutions, where passion meets purpose.

Christopher Swing (27:12)
Yeah, it's a that's true everywhere. So I can only imagine that it's true here. I mean, I just walk around and look at the fixed costs that exist everywhere. And there are there are massive amounts of it.

Jay Gatrell (27:27)
Well, in addition to fixed costs, some of those changes we've seen in the ecosystem has really been associated with the cost of higher ed. Most people think higher ed is very expensive, and I'm not going to disagree. It costs a lot of money to educate students and learners in a face-to-face environment. Literally, I talked about those cool buildings when I was in high school. They were cool because I'd never seen buildings like that before.

And that's we need to continue to invest in the physical infrastructure, but we also need to have outstanding faculty and staff and compensation becomes an issue as well as well as energy costs. But it's happening within a competitive environment in higher ed where fewer students are going to college. I mean, the state of Illinois saw a 12.1 % decrease in high school graduates going to college in fall 24 compared to fall 23. That is probably one of the largest shifts

I've ever seen year over year and was 5 % nationally according to the National Clearinghouse data that was released in October. So Illinois performed more than almost 230%, 240 % worse than the rest of the nation. Part of that was FAFSA, but part of it is also a narrative around higher ed being too costly and return on investment. So in that environment where you have increased competition, what results in is reduced net revenue through scholarshiping.

tuition waivers and the like and one of the ways in which regional comprehensive institutions have been somewhat disadvantaged in this market place is because we don't have huge endowments to offset revenue, more to provide scholarships to students. I would love to have more folks give scholarships, but the higher ed economics just makes that a challenge. what results is, what's called the waiver rate goes up.

or the tuition scholarship, is really a revenue offset, right? That goes up. And today, today's students pay about $500 less than they did in 2012 in terms of net revenue per average student. And if you think about the additional resources we have in the higher ed system, increased Pell since 2012, increased.

map which is the monetary assistance program i think it's what it stands for in the state of illinois those of all grown pretty significantly over the past decade students are paying substantially less today for tuition and fees than they would have in in two thousand twelve out-of-pocket admittedly right we still have to do housing and dining and and all that but that cost as has gone down functionally across the ecosystem which means it's so critical that we have

stable enrollments going forward.

Christopher Swing (30:02)
So let's change gears a little bit and talk a little bit about the student experience. Just because we're on campus, it's hard for me not to think about the student experience when I come here because I had a great experience here. you know, we're now post pandemic. Most of the kids who were here when the pandemic hit have now transitioned out, What does the on-campus experience look like?

comparatively and then, and do you anticipate that to continue to shift? And is it based upon, the expectations that today's kids have and is it significantly different than maybe what we expected when we were here?

So this is where.

Jay Gatrell (30:42)
So this is where

I'm going to sound like an old person, right? Well, I can tell you this is really the first year where we've seen student engagement look more pre-pandemic than post-pandemic. So the student engagement numbers were down pretty significantly. And so I'm very pleased to say we have more students engaged. We had something we call Panther Palooza, which is a student org, sort of fair. It was amazing in the fall.

mean, tons of people and hundreds and hundreds of students interacting and joining student organizations. But I do worry that students aren't as engaged as they used to be and live in a bit more of a virtual world than maybe you and I would have been accustomed to. We just didn't have those tools, right? We didn't have those opportunities to live in a digital sort of environment and be a digital native.

So how we engage students has to change a bit. And that's not easy because so much of the work we do has to be face to face. We can zoom all day long, we can be on a podcast and we can share our thoughts, but getting to know someone in a truly authentic way is, you got to see the body language. You have to see the whole piece, right? And you have to authentically convey that you care for that person.

whether they're a student in your classroom or a student walking on the quad, you have to connect in a very material way, not virtual way. And so we're seeing that. you know, campus today is finally getting back to more of the face-to-face and the engagement. Students are in the coffee shop more than they were two years ago. They're joining organizations at a higher rate than they were two years ago. But the student experience

You know, has to be one that constantly evolves. It's not going to the student experience I I had or you had and what I think is is probably the cool thing is I'm sure is not cool nowadays. But you know, if you look around just even the room we're in today, it doesn't look like classroom. Any of us. You or I would have. Participated in there aren't desks, there aren't rows.

It's much more flexible and nimble in the sense of design, but also how students can engage with each other and define really their own sort of environment for learning. And it provides faculty with a lot of freedom too to do that. We just opened a classroom like this over in our sincere building, which has individual pods around it so students can plug their laptops in. This is what students expect.

My hope is five years from now, part of that future story, What we want is more opportunities for students to have these sorts of spaces where they can be together and learn together. But the key on engagement is, and this is where I'm going to sound old, you got to get students off their devices. And I'm heartened to see that we're now seeing movements in K-12 to meaningfully tackle that question.

Hopefully it'll have benefits for us two or three years down the road because it is a distraction. I I know I'm distracted when that thing beeps. I can't imagine, you know, trying to, I mean, I don't even get notifications from all the various apps I have because I don't want the beeps. But, you know, I look at students coming to my office with a concern and they got, their phone starts blowing up with 20,000 notifications. That can't, that can't be conducive towards being present, right? And being present is something

You know that takes effort. It has to be intentional and it can't be incidental. Although college campuses also are incidental. I mean some of the coolest people I met in college and one of the reasons I'm probably in grad school is because I met a professor Aldridge outside of a building one day. He bumped into me and he said, hey kid, you ever thought about going to grad school? I don't know. I don't know what that is so you know incidental.

opportunities interact to is something universities provide but not if you don't get out of your residence hall room and not if you don't get your face out of a phone right that's really critical

Christopher Swing (34:22)
Yeah. and you know, judgment aside, mean, let's be honest, like how many of us struggle with the same thing as an adult who is intentional, who, you know, comes to an event with the right intentions and things like that. So I can't imagine what it's like to have an 18, 19, 20 year old child and I'll call them child. Not that they are, but their mind is still growing and evolving and it's not.

developed according to the current science that we have. I think they say it's 25. And so, you know, who doesn't like a dopamine shot? We didn't have that. And thankfully for multiple reasons, like we also didn't have videos or any of this social media pressure or any of that stuff. there are some negatives that come along with us being older, but there's some positives that came along with it too.

Jay Gatrell (35:13)
Well, I can tell you I've looked at a lot of the, you know, one of the things I do every now and then is look at sort of our archives. And I'm amazed at sort of, you know, memos that former presidents would send. And there would be these great elaborate typed memos with white out. Remember white out? they were literally we have things in the archives with white out and someone like.

tried to line it up and it didn't work. I'm convinced that the technology is resulting in a higher quality of work and more frequent communication and more direct and transparent communication. So there are benefits to it, but it does become a distraction at some level. And, you I'm as guilty as an 18 or not, but I think the difference is as adults, we understand the importance of sort of trying to put a wall up,

we've all been in meetings with a peer and there's nothing more disrespectful than letting this, sort of drive the conversation or prevent you from having a conversation,

Christopher Swing (36:14)
So the other thing that I think is important and you kind of hit on it in your expectations or explanation around the student experience today is that my student experience isn't relevant to their student experience. What's important is that they have the same affinity that I have for this university when they come back 20, 30, or 40 years from now. And so I think

You know, it's easy for us to sit on the outside and say, well, man, it sure isn't the experience that, you know, we remember. But to be honest, you know, we've slept a few nights since then and experienced a lot of life since then. And, you know, some of the things that have changed will make the organization significantly better, which will cause them to have a significantly better experience here.

and may cause them to have a greater affinity for this organization than we have.

I

Jay Gatrell (37:07)
that's

a great point. I I was just having a conversation with colleagues today about AI and the ways in which, you know, you can literally, you we have, you used to have to write code in SQL to do report writing. So I was just playing with a tool that allowed me to say, students with a GPA of X in this major, and all of a sudden, the AI produced the prompt that then pulled the report. I mean, that is a...

something that is amazing. So students have access to tools today, we certainly didn't. But I do think, you know, it is critical that students connect with someone and making that, I think what, when we look back on our four years in undergrad or three or five or six, Because a lot of students now are graduating in three years. And they're four, because they have dual credit in high school. And so they graduate in three years, the fifth year they get their master's

or their fourth year, which would have been their fifth year, they get their master's degree because they've taken some graduate courses in their senior year here. So we literally have students who will leave here in four years with a master's degree So it's a very different environment and it's accelerated in ways. But what brings value to the university experience are the relationships. mean, we don't, while I may have been in awe of Warner,

Auditorium at Central Michigan when I was a sophomore what was more mind-blowing were how the people inside that building mentored me and Provided me with an opportunity. I didn't know I needed or I didn't understand was possible or as Transformational at the time. I was like wow I got to learn this right slur right in terms of you you had to you know As a tuba player you're at you slur between notes or or this staccato and

You know, at the time was just like, man, it's a bummer, but I look back on it and someone giving that amount time and effort to invest in me with really no ROI other than like an emotional sort of commitment to serve others, that was mind blowing. And it's the relationships, you know, whether it was my fraternity brothers or whomever, you know, from undergrad, those are the connections that I think add value to and build affinity for organizations and universities.

Christopher Swing (39:15)
So I want to talk about something that's a little funny to me first before we kind of wrap this up. And that is that you like to be known as the 12th sitting president at Eastern Illinois University. And that is completely true. I'm not in any way arguing with the statement whatsoever. But I will say that when I was, when I Googled your name this week, the student newspaper,

stated you were the 13th president. And so kind of clear that up,

Jay Gatrell (39:44)
Well, what's interesting is this issue has long plagued campus and I believe my predecessor was the first one who embraced the notion of which resulted in my being the 12th. Apparently there's been a debate on this campus. There was a president who was selected but was not seated, passed away before he was able to assume the position and so Lord became.

Livingston Lord became our first president and he is recognized as the first president. And if you then go from Livingston Lord to me, it's 12. And so everyone will tell you Livingston Lord is the first president. Nobody argues that. But somewhere along the line, somebody made the argument that, technically there was actually another one. And that is technically true. But I mean, if

If you don't show up or receive a paycheck, I think it's hard to argue. So that's where it all stems. And so I have no concerns about being the 13th or the 17th, right? But I want to be chronologically correct. We can't at one point say, Lord is first, which everyone does. And if you actually go out into Old Main and look at the portraits and you count them, it ends up with David being the 11th.

So, yeah, that is why the 12th president and just because I don't know how it got introduced about a decade ago as a debate, but it did. And apparently Bill Perry encountered it too, but I don't think it dissuaded him from selecting his preferred number.

Christopher Swing (41:08)
that's funny. So there you go. We cleared it up. when one of the unique things is you're probably the youngest president ever at Eastern, right? Or really close to it, I would guess. I don't know. That's a great question. I have no idea. mean, my suspicion is Lord would have been younger. OK, I don't know. But she was here for a very long time. I he was here for a long time, but. Yeah.

Jay Gatrell (41:21)
I don't know. That's a great question. I have no idea. mean, my suspicion is Lorde would have been younger. Okay, I don't Because he was here for very long time. knew he was here for a long time.

Christopher Swing (41:33)
Anyways, I guess the point is, is that you're going to have a career filled with opportunity

Jay Gatrell (41:34)
Anyways, guess the point is that you're going to have a career with opportunities.

Christopher Swing (41:39)
to have impact here. Significant. I mean, you're not planning on going anywhere soon. And so it's not that often that someone who's in the senior leadership role of a, you know, major regional university would have an extended period of time to have impact. And when you think about

what you're trying to do, yes, obviously you have to have short term impact just like all of us do, and you have to have, you know, medium term impact. But the reality is, that you're going to be here similarly to President Lord in a time period that could give you significant impact over this university. And that should come with some weight to you. I mean, my hope is, is that someone who

values this university a lot that that there's some Thought that goes into you know Not everything can be a three or a five-year plan, and so You know what comes to mind is like what do want people to To think about your time frame leading this organization

after you've retired? Like what is it that looks like success for you in that sense?

Jay Gatrell (42:54)
Well, I'm not interested in buildings. But I think the most important thing for me in every organization I've ever been to and over my career is that I want people to see that I spent a lot of time investing in relationships.

and creating opportunities for others to develop relationships. I think 30 years from now, you know, I know everyone, we have a spirit rock, which I love the spirit rock and it brings people together to share. I mean, it has its potential problems too, like everything else. But one of the things I've tried to do throughout, really since day one, is create spaces for students to interact with one another,

whether it's Adirondack chairs on the quad, or it's a spirit rock, or it's creating coffee and donuts for this fall chat and the spring chat with faculty and staff, creating opportunities for people to interact with one another and see that we are a human-scaled institution that can make a difference in people's lives. And to really embrace the human scale, you know,

I don't know if we were an amazing institution at 12,500 students. What I know is we're an amazing institution at 8,600. And I know we can be an amazing institution going forward.

I think if people embrace who we are and interact in a way that's meaningful and intentional, that's the value. Because I really believe it's relationships that build affinity. It's the relationships that pertain people in organizations. And if a student knows, and one of reasons I've invested so much into the Greek Life Initiative is because if a

Student knows there was someone who cares about them whether that's a faculty member who's mentoring their research or in a studio for art or in this practice room for music or just a cool history professor or if it's an advisor who's connected or an office assistant if if they know someone cares about them or even a person in fraternity or sorority right with what they've joined they're gonna come back because that relationship is gonna have value And I know if students come back after the first year, they're more likely to graduate

and they're going to earn that degree. And if we can focus on that human-scale experience and create a culture that sort of embraces who we are, that's what I would like to see the people would say about my leadership five, 10, 20 years from now. part of that's also going to be compacting the footprint to the campus and all these other, mean, there are some physical aspects of it, but really it's about the human scale and connection.

Christopher Swing (45:27)
So that brings a great question to mind and that is, you know, one of, in my opinion, one of the biggest struggles that we have in this country right now is mental health. And that human connection, in my opinion, is nearly the cure. And granted, it's probably not for everyone, but I can tell you that, you know, so often when we're at our highest stress levels or we're

Jay Gatrell (45:27)
So.

Christopher Swing (45:53)
struggling with whatever is going on in our world. the initial reaction is always like, I just need time to myself. And so very often that is absolutely the opposite of what we truly need. And I think, you you bring a lot of great points to that. What are we doing here to help these students beyond the connection and having someone who cares about them, which I think

is really the answer to a lot of the problems that we're seeing in our country, whether that be mass violence or things like that. really comes down to there's people that sneak through the cracks and they think that they're on an island all by themselves and nobody cares. And I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true of people in our country. I don't think that's true of people in this community. And so I'd just be intrigued to know how you guys are dealing with that kind of on the campus.

Jay Gatrell (46:45)
Well, we've gotten much more aggressive with sort of intrusive advising, going out and finding students who need help because they didn't show up to class or throughout what's called our early alert system. So really going to the student in their residence hall or wherever and getting them out of the space. That's one piece is early alerts.

having our residence hall team, our advisors, our instructors, all part of that sort of frontline, if you will. Over the past couple of years, we've been able to get a $200,000 grant to expand mental health services. when I arrived here as provost, we were primarily focused on a single mode of counseling, individualized counseling.

We've now sort of taken a tiered approach or a stepped approach. We have group, small group, large group, as well as individual counseling sessions through that $200,000 grant, as well as some online apps, because students live in the digital space and an opportunity for them to share if they have concerns or worry about self harm. And we have AI bots and those things to provide access to students. we obviously that's something that in higher ed,

safety and wellness of our students, it doesn't matter what happens in the classroom. What matters are they cared for, are they well as a parent. If I'm a parent, yes, I want my kid to do A's and B's and earn credit, but I also want them to come back.

And as an administrator, those are the hardest days when you have something bad happen. The most impactful thing I've ever done as an administrator is have those mental health days after a student committed suicide.

so, you know, it is a pandemic literally across our society, loneliness, anxiety. and so, you know, we're trying everything we can to connect with students, to build multiple levels of care. and, and you do your level best, but the reality is it's tough, To, to connect with every person.

But we have to be open to that possibility as an organization to make those connections because there's so many organizations that just want the transaction. How many? mean, and universities can't be transactional. We have to be highly relational. And that's the difference we make, to our society are those relationships we build. Yeah, anybody can deliver knowledge.

online. I mean, that's why online learning is right. You can deliver knowledge all day long, But it's those relationships that really are the value add to the campus experience and the university experience. But that's a great question. And it's presidents often talk about. If there is one number one thing that we talk about at conferences, it's mental health.

Christopher Swing (49:07)
That's a great.

Yeah, I mean, all of us that run organizations know it. We see it, we struggle with it. know, I actually just got back from Houston from a visitation from a 46 year old employee who's passed away and he didn't commit suicide, but you know, he didn't take care of himself. And I think a lot of the issues revolved around the same mental health issues or stress issues. And he was a great guy.

And so I failed to understand, it's important and it's relevant. And I hope that people are taking it seriously because it's a serious problem that we're dealing with in this country right now. President Gatriel, your time is super valuable. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. Thank you for your honest and open perspectives. Since you joined

you know, as the provost quite a few years ago. I can't even remember, do you remember what year you came in? 2017. So in 2017 I got to meet President, well I guess at the time I was provost Gatriel, but President Gatriel and you know I just loved the amount of energy and emphasis on students and it was right from the very first presentation which of course he

Jay Gatrell (50:15)
2017.

Christopher Swing (50:34)
presented a PowerPoint presentation, which was kind of unique to all of us at the time, because most of the time we just sat around and talked in the Alumni Association. And I knew you had something special. And when you became a candidate for the presidency, I know there were many of us that were heavily rooting for you. And now, a year and a half post you being in the role, you've just been a blessing to this university.

Super thankful for your contributions and for your focus on the students. And I think it will carry us into the next generation.