The Future of Higher Education w/ Kris Ropella & Tim Hanley

It’s been just over one year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and disrupted nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

One of the industries that has been most affected has been Education and more specifically Higher Education. Once the pandemic hit, every college and university was forced to move all classes online, seemingly overnight, and campus life, normally centered on close, personal interactions, became a socially distanced affair.

Beyond the challenges associated with transitioning everyone to a virtual world, Higher Ed was thrust into a financial crisis and forced to make tough decisions on its current and future business model. The question everyone is now asking: where does Higher Ed go from here?

Well on today’s episode, we have two college leaders who are trying to answer that question everyday:

Kris Ropella, who is the Dean of the College of Engineering at Marquette University and has had a decades long career inside Higher ED, and Tim Hanley, interim Dean of the College of Business, who spent a majority of his career outside of higher ed as a partner at Deloitte.

They share their insights on the structural barriers to change and how they’re working to build a new model that will thrive in the post-pandemic world.

Whether you are in Higher Education or not, this episode provides great insight on how the world is changing and what you can do to adapt, including this advice from Tim Hanley, on what a great leader of the future looks like

“The leaders of tomorrow are bold, they don’t follow all the rules, but they are also listening, getting feedback, and are open to change”

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!