DEPM 604 9020 2155

Transcript of Interview with Dr. John Ebersole, President, Excelsior College

6 July 2015
Jack Boeve: All right, so we have a series of questions as I indicated in the initial
email falling into some general topics.
Dr. John Ebersole: Sure.
Jack Boeve: So I guess I'll just get started. What do you see as the three biggest
challenges that distance education organizations and their leaders face in today's
ever-changing market. And how you think organizations and their leaders should
respond to those challenges?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, that is a tough question, but let me give it a shot.
Jack Boeve: Okay.
Dr. John Ebersole: Certainly, the pace of change is challenging all of us. Things
that we took for granted maybe even a year or two ago are questioned today. And
some of those questions are pretty fundamental, like, is there value to a degree?
Should we be continuing to focus on academic credit credentials, or should we be
paying more attention to vocational credit credentials? I dont want to go too far
into that but that is a type of question were asking ourselves right now of a
strategic nature. Do we invest in academic programs, or do we build more
infrastructure in the professional development area?
Jack Boeve: Okay.
Dr. John Ebersole: The second thing, of course, is always one of resource, and it is
not only resources come from, but its how we use the resources. So resource
allocation. We really have to, I think, change some of our basic models in terms of
where we look for financial support. Its a case where its not going to just be tuition
and philanthropy in higher education. I think we need to be more entrepreneurial in
terms of offering a broader array of services and support, some of which can be
purchased by those who those who need it and not by those who dont need it. It
needs to be a la carte if you will. So, and with resources comes the constant
criticism that were not doing enough to contain costs. And that has been a real
source of irritation for me. Were one of the cheapest, no wrong word one of the
least expensive institutions in the country when it comes to what our students
actually pay. You look at our credit hour cost, and it is right in there with everybody
elses, it is not appreciably different. But if you look at how many units we accept
for transfer that others dont, the cost for credentials, is infinitely less expensive
with Excelsior than most other places. Be that as it may, let me give you the third.
I think we have to really be worrying about the changing expectations of our various
constituencies. The public does not support or see value in an education to the

degree that it once did. The media is more critical of education than it once was.
The political community is responding to both of those, and weve seen a
predilection on the part of this administration particularly to intrude into areas that
have traditionally been reserved for higher education to deal with on its own. And I
only see that intensifying; I think that regulatory intrusion is on the ascent and I
think it is becoming a primary contributor to cost. But those would be my three:
basic change; resources how obtained and how allocated; and regulatory
environment. Its not just regulatory, its the way in which our various constituents
look at us. The students expect more, faculty expect more, everybody is expecting
more, but they also want it to cost less.
Jack Boeve: All right, so I guess how we respond or react to those challenges, so
that is going to vary across institutions perhaps.
Dr. John Ebersole: Yes indeed it will for a variety of reasons. Some of it has to do
with whether were profit or nonprofit, some of it has to do with whether were
private or public, some of it has to do with the economic profile of the communities
that were a part of. There are still very few institutions in the country, particularly
brick and mortar institutions, that see themselves as national institutions in terms of
doing business across the country. The institutions see themselves as national in
that they want to have a national or international reputation that draw students to
their campuses, but its rare to have institutions like Western Governors and
Excelsior, which see themselves not as state institutions but as national institutions
serving students wherever they are. Youve got that in the for-profit sector, for sure,
but very few of us in the nonprofit sector.
Jack Boeve: All right. And if you think about what lies ahead, what areas of
strategic research and innovation do you see being important or necessary in the
next few years so that institutions can remain abreast of the change and be
competitive? And I know you've done some work as well in terms of competencies
or CBE, and so how do you see CBE aligning with the future of DE as well as one of
those trends or one of those innovations thats currently in the forefront?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well I, if I can unpack that, Jack, I think I hear maybe three
questions there.
Jack Boeve: Sure.
Dr. John Ebersole: First, is where we focus from a disciplinary sense in terms of
offering programs just in time or in time to meet industry needs and certainly an
area were focusingweve got two that were focusing on, one we share with
UMUC, and that is cybersecurity. Were just starting to see the beginnings of a tidal
wave of need thats going to hit every sector of our society, and we even havent
eve scratched the surface yet in terms of whats going to be called upon for all of us
in cyber. Another area were looking at, and its more of a niche, is gaming and
simulation. We think that there is tremendous opportunity, and it relates directly to

CBE, is that we need to move beyond multiple choice questions on standardized

examinations as a way of determining whether someone has more than proficiency
or mastery in a particular subject area. If were going to be concerned about
determining real mastery or real competence, I should say. To me competency
means what you can do with what you know. We make up lots of instruments that
measure your knowledge; we dont have instruments that measure what you can do
with that knowledge. We have a capstone program in our associate degree nursing
program that is trying a competency assessment, but it is incredibly expensive and
difficult to administer. And it is not scalable. We do maybe 2000 assessment a
year, and were at our limits. To do the kind of competency assessment that were
going to see in a variety of fields, not just nursing, but certainly law enforcement,
business, social work--Im not sure what else--we need to be exploring the use of
simulations. Im talking about fairly sophisticated simulations that allow you to
demonstrate your ability to do things that you couldnt do in real life except under
extreme conditions. So those are a couple areas that we personally are interested
in. I certainly think Big Data, the whole field of data analysis; were drowning under
data or information. We have to make sense out of it. And its going to take new
skill sets and a variety, I think, of new procedures to allow us to use the capabilities
that we now have. It's a case for you, Im sure, as it is for most of us that there is so
much coming at you--hard copy, online, text, through the media, whatever, and to
try and make sense of all of that is a challenge for us, and I do think this is an area
where higher education can still make a contribution. I think we can be helping with
that.
Jack Boeve: Another set of questions, I guess, speaking directly to your vision for
Excelsior and perhaps more broadly, so how would you characterize your vision for
Excelsior and perhaps more broadly for DE as a profession?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, for Excelsior, we see ourselves as being an adult-serving
institution. Thats not changed. That doesnt mean a traditional-aged student
would not be served here, in fact weve had many who have been served here. And
obviously when you do what both Excelsior and UMUC do with the military, youve
got a lot of 18-year-olds that you are serving, but I consider them to be adult, in a
little different sense of the word than just chronology. So I use the term posttraditional student; we say post-traditional students in that were not using the
traditional methods, were not using traditional formats or tools. Weve gone
beyond the chalkboard in the classroom. So thats one. Two, we see the use of
technology, its online at the moment, but it may very well be something else soon,
but that is a part of our delivery methodology. We see ourselves as a national
institution, not a state of New York institution or even a regional institution. Weve
got 40,000 students and blessedly in all 54 of the jurisdictions that the department
of education lets us to register in. A, we of course have more military overseas. We
also want to be a comprehensive institution. We have the worlds largest school of
nursing with 18,000 aspiring RNs, but we dont see ourselves just as a health care

institution. We recently launched a new school of public service with a new Masters
degree in public administration. We want to follow that probably within the coming
year with a Masters in public policy and who knows what comes after that. We are
launching a Masters degree in gaming and simulations, which is a follow on to the
research thats being done by our center. We are even hoping to create some
incubators, some support centers where we can help entrepreneurs who may have
an interest of moving into that area. New York, you may not be aware of, has
something called startup New York and academic institutions can bring
entrepreneurs in to work with them and to nurture and mentor them and if they
create employment, not only does the enterprise earn freedom from New Yorks
infamous taxation but so do our employees. They have no income tax for 10 years.
If we can make this work, what I am calling my gaming and hacker schools, we want
to get the hackers doing this so we can be one step ahead of the unethical ones and
we want to be doing more with simulations and gaming. We are getting ready to
launch a major effort to provide training to the federal government. We have not
been in that market but weve been making inquiries and doing research. But we
think there's a significant opportunity in the training and development arena. And
interestingly so do a lot of other universities from what I'm hearing. Lastly a
fledgling international operation, which I hope to see that grow in the next year two.
Jack Boeve: And what role do you envision DE playing within the larger sphere of
education just in comparison or contrast to more traditional forms? I think you
touched on that a little bit already but is there anything else that you would add in
terms of how DE is going to continue to interact with the more traditional forms that
we might say?
Dr. John Ebersole: I dont think any institutionwere already seeing it--we had a
subsidiary called Educators Serving Educators that helps other institutions go
online, along with other services. Were the only nonprofit in that arena and thats a
decided advantage. And were seeing more and more of the small liberal arts
schools saying you know what, weve held out as long as we can. We need to
expand our service area beyond 50 miles. And so I see distance education being
absolutely essential to the degree completion of our adult learners, our posttraditional learners. I dont see the way I went to school being particularly efficient,
nights and weekends where I did the traveling. I also feel like at the graduate level,
at my level, it is going to be the only way to do it. Your time is too valuable; you
have too many other demands on your time. Its going to be front and center.
Anybody that thinks they can ignore technology and meet the needs of their various
constituent groups exclusively with traditional methods, thats not sustainable in my
judgment.
Jack Boeve: So whats one of the things that get you most excited about distance
education these days; what most excites you about DE and about your role within
the field?

Dr. John Ebersole: Well, I was at Boston University before I came here. And one of
the things, this refers more back to the last question than this one question. Forty
percent of the graduate education at Boston University is being delivered online
today. That actually was a few years ago; it may be higher than that today, and
that is all the way up to the doctoral level, by the way. In terms of what excites me,
is the ability to provide access to people who wouldnt otherwise be able to have
access to higher education. I was recently down at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa,
meeting with the people at the Joint Services Academy. These are the seals and the
green berets and the parajumpers. And I had one of these fellas telling me that he
was about ready to graduate and that I would see him this week as a matter of fact
at commencement. But he had to take his last class while in the jungles of Africa.
He parachuted into the place that they were, and took he took his laptop with him.
And he was doing his final class on his laptop sitting in the middle of the jungle
somewhere in Africa and carrying on a covert operation for the U.S. That excites
me.
Jack Boeve: Good, good, could you comment briefly on your own path into DE and
what experiences or individuals influenced you to enter DE as a field?
Dr. John Ebersole: I am a very, very post-traditional learner. I didn't enter the
collegiate classroom until eight years after high school, and that was a decidedly
unsuccessful venture, and I didnt get around to earning a degree until I had been
20 years out of high school. Thanks to the military of which I spent 20 some years, I
was able to go to the Naval Post Graduate, er, Naval War College rather, without
benefit of a bachelors degree. And then was fortunate enough to have an
institution accept that as equivalency for purposes of entry into a Masters in Public
Administration, which I did well in. I went on and did an MBA,ds still on active duty.
And then I didnt do anything for several years. After retiring from the Coast Guard,
I found myself offering some classes at night at the institution where I had
graduated and ultimately was offered a position as an assistant dean within the
school of management. That kind of led me on and in fact I got all the way into
Excelsior without a doctorate. And then my board said, you know, were a 40-yearold institution, and my predecessor didnt have a doctorate either, and they said
theyd really like to have a president with a doctorate. And so here I am at a very
advanced age going back and getting my doctorate at Northeastern. Prior to that I
had entered the doctoral program at George Washington back in 97 but came down
with lymphoma from my time in Vietnam ,and by the time we got on top of that and
had that behind us, I had pretty well exhausted the time limit for finishing a
doctorate. So I have an Ed.S., I have a consolation prize from George Washington.
In all that, my career and transition from being one of being one of training and
development in the military to being one of higher education, and I was fortunate in
that I was able to go to places like University of California Berkley where I chaired
their continuing education and business program. I went from there to Colorado
State where I was an associate Provost--and by the way, for those interested in

distance education, Colorado State is deserving of special mention. They are one of
the earliest institutions in the country to use cable television to deliver education.
They spawned the National Technological University. They have really been a
pioneer in video-based education loosely based around being online, but even there
they spun off CSU Global, which is all online, which is an entirely separate institution
today. And from Colorado State, I went to Boston University and then to here. What
makes this a particularly good fit for me is not only have I been involved with online
education from its very beginnings, Ive also been a post-traditional student, I've
been in the military, I came back at an older age. So I identify with our students. In
reference to distance education specifically, Jack, the institution that I got my two
masters degrees with is John F. Kennedy University which is out in Orinda, California
or it was then, it is in Concorde, California, today. John F. Kennedy was approached,
the President was approached by a fellow by the name of--locked up here on his
name--but it will come to me but he was the former president of Atari and he had
this crazy idea, this was in the early 1980s, about delivering education online. He
had been a marketeer for much of his life and got 40 Fortune 100 companies to
agree to pay the cost of tuition for their employees to get a masters degree in
business online. And while he had a few individual institutions including Stanford
willing to offer a course, he had no one offering a curriculum. So my president said
well do that. This was 1984 or 1985. And so, it was my job, and then I was dean of
the school of management. It was my job to go to the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges and get their approval to offer an accredited masters program
in business administration online. Which to their credit, they gave us. They thought
it was a crazy idea, and frankly at that point so did I. But Kennedy offered the very
first accredited degree program, and Ive watched it since the 1980s as its gone
through various permeations, and frankly it wasnt until Colorado State that I
became an advocate. When I was at Berkley, we received a Sloan Foundation Grant
for $2.6 million to take the University of Californias correspondence course center,
and put the entire contents online. Which we did. And we created some of the best
online correspondence courses youve ever seen. And we didnt move the dial a
microsecond in terms of improvement in performance by the students. Fewer than
50% of the students completed in paper a discipline; fewer than 50% completed
online. What that did was get me to really start looking at what are the critical
variables that get someone engaged with material and want to complete it and it
has to be something other than just being able to give an email feedback in realtime. I think from that experience by others as well as us, weve seen the
emergence of the instructional design profession, and I think instructional design is
absolutely essential to differentiating in the marketplace today.
Jack Boeve: One of the textbooks that we have for this course is Leading Change
by John Kotter--if you're familiar with it. (Yup/JE). Okay and he outlines an eightstage process for transforming organizations and leading change. (Yup/JE) Could
you comment on your perspective on that process and how at Excelsior you achieve
some of the markers of effective leadership?

Dr. John Ebersole: Well, Im going to have to be able to accept failure. It doesnt
always work. And I admire those with the discipline and the belief that they can
write a recipe that we can all follow. It doesnt work that way. (Yeah/JB). Kotters
got some really good points, there's some good advice there, and I think it's
certainly material we should keep in mind but you can do everything he says to do
and still fall flat on your face. We got people involved, and I think the most
important part of change management is quality and frequency of communication
and the building of trust. If you try and snow someone, or only bring good news,
you never bring bad news, you never ask anything of anybody, its probably going
to ring hollow. So I really am an advocate of strong communications and Im not
always practicing what I preach. I dont know if youre familiar with Tom Peters, In
Search of Excellence. He wrote a book about innovation before Christensen and he
talked about sometimes you have to free your organizational structure of
bureaucracy in order to really tap to the creativity of your people, and really surface
the kind of change thats going to make a difference. When you run into too much
bureaucratic resistance to that, his suggestion was that you create a skunk works,
that you create a parallel organization. We did that. I would have to take issue with
Tom about the effectiveness of that. Unless that enterprise is free in every respect,
including resource allocation, it doesnt work. Because the people who arent part
of it subconsciously, undoubtedly, theyre not on board, they made an investment in
it, they oftentimes resent the fact that resources and attention are being taken
away from their pet projects, and so were not doing that anymore here. What
were doing is that were trying this initiative that I mentioned earlier about the
providing training for the federal government, thats going to be a really big effort
for us. And in doing that Im going to have to have teams of people meeting and
talking and being here in Albany, and have people meeting and talking in
Washington, D.C. I need for those two teams to talk to each other. And that's
something that were in the process of putting together right now. My Chief of Staff
is going to chair that so that it gets that command level of attention which I think its
going to require.
Jack Boeve: How would you define or describe your preferred leadership style, and
does it shift depending on the situation at all?
Dr. John Ebersole: It does. Im a big believer in--do you remember Hersey
Blanchards work on leadership perhaps? Ken Blanchard went on to create an
instrument on situational leadership, which I think has a tremendous amount of
validity. There are several variables in every situation. Whats the urgency of the
situation? How able and capable are the individuals that you are trying to direct in
that situation? He points out that if you have young, new recruits, you are going to
have a very authoritative directive style. If you got PhD professors on a research
project, youre going to have a very laissez faire style. And you need to be able to
know when to apply which style. I had a ships captain a few years ago when I was
still on active duty and he planned the ships party for the crew and we went to a

country club where we had essentially ballroom dancing. Virtually nobody in the
ships crew showed up other than the married officers who felt like they had to be
there. Well, recognizing that that didnt work very well, we had another ships party
some time later, and we let the crew plan it for themselves and it was a wild
success. The difference of course being was that there was participation. People
had an opportunity to feel like they had been heard in that participation. Thats my
preferred style. I cant always do it. As they say, if a mans overboard, we not
going to get everybody together and take a vote.
Jack Boeve: Youve alluded a little bit to your service in the military. (Yeah/JE).
Thank you very much. How has your service affected your leadership in higher
education?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, I have to say that it has required modifying my style to a
very significant degree. I grew up, I came up through the enlisted ranks and then
was an officer at the time of retirement. I have never been a strict authoritarian
type of leader I don't believe. On the other hand, I have come to admire
decisiveness. And I have a bias for action. That has resided with some discomfort
in higher education. Sometimes Ive been decisive when those who were with me
wanted to talk about it and have much more discussion. My bias for action, you
know, Ive shot myself in the foot a time or two. But I would prefer to do that than
continue to revisit an issue time after time after time and not move toward
resolution and action. I think that now as I am in the twilight of my professional life,
Ive got some uneasy alliance between the military side of me and the academic
side of me. Ive come to appreciate both by the way.
Jack Boeve: What is one of the hardest things with dealing with change in the DE
environment for you.
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, initially it was hard for me continually to be told that what I
was dedicating my life to was second class and not worth much. Ive lived long
enough now that I've watched others have to eat those words. And I feel like
traditional education is the one that is now disadvantaged. We have more analytics,
we have more support services. You would not believe--oh yes, you would, because
youre seeing it at your own institution--the level of sophistication with which we are
trying to make our students successful I have never seen at a brick-and-mortar
institution, and I have been from Oxford to Berkeley. And I can tell you were when it
comes to actually measuring learning outcomes, I am waiting for the day when the
big guys are willing to put their test scores where their mouth is. I think were
achieving superior learning outcomes, and weve got the courage to actually
administer the assessments to find out whether we're getting the learning
outcomes. Ive got 93% of my online students are now completing their courses.
You didnt have that in the classroom. The other thing that I think around change in
distance education is the organization that is continually trying to reinvent itself.
You have to say goodbye to practices and people; that sometimes comes hard.

There are some people that cant move with the new requirements and you have to
help them along. I try to do that with humanity and a sense of almost familial
sensitivity but ultimately they have to accept the fact that they are getting in the
way and that the institutional mission is going to be compromised if were not
successful in making change and everybodys employment and economic future is
going to be put at risk. So in my judgment if someone is risking an initiative,
putting an initiative at risk because of their own discomfort, we either have to find
another place for them to put their talents to work internal to the organization,
which is certainly first or we have to help them leave. And thats hard.
Jack Boeve: How do you encourage and motivate others when there is that
resistance to change or I guess just in the regular course of operations? How are
you finding the most effective encouragement and motivation of people involved in
your organization?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, rather than use my own organization, Im going to give you
an example from Boston University because it is probably more applicable to the
kinds of situations you and your classmates may find yourselves in. I am going to
assume you are enrolled in this program with the intent of administering or growing
distance education programs within the higher education settings, is that fair?
(Yeah, there is a teaching and training side of the degree, there is a policy and
management side, and there is also becoming more technical and IT side /JB). (I'm
sorry, in higher education/JE). (In distance education generally but I think for a lot of
students it probably is focusing on higher education but not exclusively/JB). Well
one of the things I'm sure youve heard and maybe even had experience with, is the
reluctance on the part of faculty, traditional tenured faculty, to embrace online
learning. If you are familiar with the annual longitudinal study Sloan has sponsored
and that Babson carries out, I think it is in its eleventh or twelfth year. Youll see in
there that every year there's been increased acceptance of online education by
every group except faculty and last year you even saw a regression in the progress
that had been made by faculty. I think it went from like a 30% or 33% belief that
online learning could achieve the same objectives as in the classroom. I think it
actually went down. I believe it went down because faculty were hearing so much
about MOOCs and could not distinguish betweenwho would have thought that we
would ever use the term--traditional online learning and MOOCs, but I think that the
MOOC mania took a cost or imposed a cost upon online acceptance. To your
question, at Boston University, after not having had a particularly great run at
Colorado State, getting faculty to give up their video methodologies, which did not
require any special preparation, they could get up in front of a classroom, deliver a
lecture with the same set of notes, whether they were teaching in Fort Collins or
whether they were teaching the students overseas. To say that now were going to
subject all of this to instructional design, were going to disaggregate the lecture,
and were going to make this interactive, and were going to include various types
of exercises and activities--lots of resistance, lots of resistance to that. At Boston

University which had more prior history, which was a benefit, I didnt have to
unlearn the faculty in terms of other methods, other technical technologies, but
there did have to be something in it for them. There needed to be a benefit to
them. They could see how the student could benefit; they could see how the
institution could benefit. What they couldnt see was how do I benefit, the faculty.
So we had to really work to build incentives in that said, you know, you are
absolutely essential to the success of this effort, and were going to interact with
you as if we really mean that. So not only did we provide compensation, but we
also gave their departments the credit accumulation that went with that. The DE
unit didnt keep any of the credit, so to speak; the outreach side of the house was
just a facilitator. So Id go in and I would, lets say it was the entrepreneurship
program at the business school at the institution--they collected all the money, they
kept all the money, and they got all the credits, and they were able to compensate
their faculty accordingly. Well, guess what, faculty didnt have a problem with that.
The provost recognized that the money is all coming back centrally. Ill collect it all
from the schools, and Ill allocate it out to you as a budget, and then youre
providing them with all the technical support, staffing, training, and promotion that
they look for. It was a model that worked very, very well for that institution.
Jack Boeve: So are there particular strategies that you are pursuing for effective
organizational change at Excelsior?
Dr. John Ebersole: Yes. Theres no secret to it. I have to say unlike Kotter, I dont
think its a science. I think it is an art form. And there are certain principles that we
have certainly embraced, some of which I have shared. I think the challenge we
have is we have to do a lot of things simultaneously. Its not a case where we can
announce one major initiative and get it up and running and smoothed out before
embracing another. Those days are over. Weve got to do multiple things
simultaneously. What Im trying to do is to create a sense of excitement and
movement around that so people want to feel a part of it. I want to make sure that
they're working with accurate information, which means that we have to be
proactive in terms of keeping everybody up to speed in terms of what our priorities
are, what the end goal is. Our whole strategic planning process is coming to fruition
this week in that we are presenting our Board of Trustees with a strategic budget,
separate and apart from our operating budget. Were saying these are the monies
weve got to have in the coming years in order for us to do all the things that we
need to do to continue to be competitive and to continue to be seen as an
institution that is doing new things. Well, its a big number, and my job is to make
the board aware that we dont have a lot of choice here. If we dont fund it, we
have just lost all credibility with our staff relative to the planning process and into
the lip service that we give everyone about wanting to be on the cutting edge. So
weve worked really, really hard to justify the resources were asking for. That is step
oneand very symbolically says to the to the staff and the faculty were serious
about thiswere serious about this. And weve already done a little reorganizing

which has gotten everyone out of their comfort zone. But nobody has lost their job
because of it. And were doing it slowly. It is a case where were being deliberate,
explicit, and transparent. I am hopeful. I am hopeful.
Jack Boeve: Excellent. So amid all of the change within DE, what points or what
aspects of DE do you think should remain constant going forward?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, there is no question that weve got to pay attention to
quality. (Right/JB) Nobody wants and if we dont pay attention to quality, we will
be responsible for our own demise. Now how you define quality, thats more
subjective. Your definition of quality and my definition of quality may not be similar.
Particularly if I am convinced that quality instruction at Berkley only cameit was in
the eyes of the instructor, if he didnt teach it, it wasnt quality. But that says about
as much about the hubris of the place as it did anything. But were going to be
looking for more objective assessments of learning outcomes. One of the problems
that Coursera and edX and a lot of these have is that nobody is willing to allow for a
third party to come in with psychometrically prepared, nationally normed
assessments and determine whether anybody is learning anything or not, and until
they do, Im not accepting their credits and transfers. And weve said as much.
One of the things that Ive said--and Ill be a bit of a provocateur here, Jack, and its
something you and your classmates may want to think aboutbut do you know of
any other profession where the manufacturer gets to determine solely themselves
as to whether the end product is any good or not. (I cant think of one/JB). (Me
neither/JE). Yet, that is exactly what we do. I will be told by the people I go to at
edX that if the exam is prepared by a member of the MIT faculty, that's good
enough for them. And Im saying okay, tell me what exactly how mechanical
engineering prepares you to administer exams. The credibility of the assessment is
something that we need to be paying attention to. In Great Britain, I did a little time
at Oxford, and the instructor of record and the assessor of record are never the
same. Youre going in and you are taught a class and then you go someplace else
and somebody else gives you an exam over that material. Now, both the instructor
and the assessor are working from the same syllabus, but you have independent
verification that the person really learned it, that that they really know it. And
theyre not just taking questions out of a textbook publishers test pack.
Jack Boeve: Are there any other innovations that you foresee coming in DE in the
next few years?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, I think the idea that we are going to see a buffet model,
particularly for the post-traditional student. Were not going to see the old
manufacturing model where everybody goes down the assembly line and gets equal
parts of A and B. Thats gone. What were going to see is that youre going to take
something from this tray and something from this tray, and were going to have to
spend a whole lot more time within the academy learning how to assess that,
learning how it fits together, and making sure that there's a level of coherence in

the credential that is ultimately awarded. Its ironically what we were created to do
back in 1971. We were bringing credits from multiple sources, validating them,
trying to make sense out of it, and trying to put them into the New York state
degree program. Were going to see more of that.
Jack Boeve: Okay and how you think a DE organization can prepare and position
itself to thrive in the current environment. Is there anything else that you would add
to thrive and survive?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well, there is no one thing; there are multiple things that have to
be done and they all have importance. You have to build a good product. You have
to staff it with faculty that actually care about their students. That is still the
number one reason given by our students as to what motivated them through the
program or got them to go from one course to another: caring faculty. But even
before that, youve got to pay attention to who the student is, how ready they are,
and if they come to you not ready, what are you going to do about it? Are you
turning them away, or are you engaging in some form of remediation? So it is a
process and there is no one piece of it that stands out. Youve got to have good
marketing and recruitment; you could have the best program in the world but if no
one knows about it, what good is it? So, youve got good marketing and now youve
got to make sure the product is good, and the idea that adult students particularly
dont need support is hogwash. Ive been an adult student; youre an adult student.
We absolutely have needs, and it mostly centers around time. Its not about
distance anymore, it is about time. We are using technology to move time around.
(Right/JB). I was at GW, I was in a distant education program, but I got on an
airplane and flew to Washington. Now, hopefully that wouldnt be necessary. But I
really feel like weve got to map out the process and be concerned about standards,
high standards; we want rigor in the program. We want quality in the program, and
we have to look at it from start to finish.
Jack Boeve: Just two last questions. How should future leaders in distance
education prepare for leadership and management within either an organization
such as Excelsior or any other type organization? So how can people prepare better
for leadership and management within DE?
Dr. John Ebersole: Well first thing, Jack, as someone who has put a lot of time
studying and teaching in the field of management and leadership, first off, we have
to realize those two arent the same thing. Management is quite another skill set
that is different from leadership. There are people that I am sure you know, that are
good leaders but are not particularly good managers and vice versa. I think weve
done ourselves something of a disservice when we tend to put leadership on a
pedestal, and somehow management is secondary. I think you are compromising if
you are not striving to be good at both arenas. Leadership is uniquely about the
human experience, whereas management is dealing with all kinds of resources. In
terms ofIll tell you something we are doing here at Excelsior, and I frankly would

recommend it at other places. We were not happy about our candidate pool when it
came time to select new hires, particularly as it related to ethnicity. We were not
getting the individuals we wanted to be getting in terms of minority candidates for
positions. So, one of the things the board said was why dont we start training our
own, why dont we identify high potential individuals, give particular preference to
those that may be of color, always a tickly situation, but we were able to work that.
Well, we created a leadership Academy internally. I have a gentleman who is 94
years old, former vice chancellor of the SUNY system, who has been an interim
president 14 times since he retired, and he came here 10 years ago bridging
between my predecessor and me. Well, he managed the Dr. Barry Black Leadership
Academy, and Dr. Black has had seven cohorts go through the academy. 75 percent
of those youngsters have been promoted since they went through. We are now
working with some of the faculty at the business school to create a more senior
level were weve got a lot of people who are in positions of responsibility that
they've never been trained for. We got supervisors that dont know how to
supervise; weve got managers that really need some help. Well, we didnt do it as
remediation; we made it as an honorific. You get selected to be in this academy; it
is an honor to be in this group. But what were doing isits a year long, very
specialized curriculum, with some very interesting college-related projects which are
completed during the course of the internship or academy experience. Were really
high on this. Weve had such great results internally in preparing our people for
more senior positions that were thinking about bottling it and selling it on the open
market.
Jack Boeve: Sounds interesting. Last question and somewhat tied to the last one,
but do you have any other advice that you would offer to those who are entering or
are new to the DE field are beyond recommending the development of certain skills
for example technical or leadership skills? What advice would you offer to people
who are coming into the DE field?
Dr. John Ebersole: It is such a fast changing field. Nobody dominates in it at this
point. I'm not sure anybody can. And it's become very intertwined with the vendor
community. There are software development companies, hardware development
companies, various types of service providers. You can't stay on top of your game if
you're not out meeting and talking to these people. You need to be professionally
plugged into organizations like Sloan C (or they renamed themselves OLC, I think it
is), or UCEA, or UPCA, or WCET. I know people on campus are going to say you are
out boondoggling at all of these conferences, but the truth its the only way youre
going to be able to stay current. Its amazing to me how fast the whole world of
LMSI wouldnt have expected the LMS business to remain as dynamic as it is,
given the expense of getting into one particular LMS. Who is ever going to change
after going through all of that? If you have to deal with BlackBoard very often, I
think youre motivated to go over to somebody else. So were seeing that, and its
a case that I need to know what the options are. What are the various LMSs that I

might even consider? There are other examples that I might give. Proctoring for
instance. Weve been a big user of Pearson VUE over the years. They are too
expensive. Cant use them anymore. I have to go to somebody else. Who do I go
to? Well, I need to go out and talk to people and find out. You could be thinking
that youve got the best product in the world, and then you go out and start visiting
with others, you find out that maybe your product isnt as good as you think it is.
Jack Boeve: All right well that was the last question, so thank you very, very much
for your time.
Dr. John Ebersole: When your colleagues see this and if they have any other
questions please feel free to have them email me. I'm more than happy.
Jack Boeve: Thank you very much.
Dr. John Ebersole: Its not often that I get in the classroom anymore so its fun to
be able to interact with students.
Jack Boeve: This has been a real pleasure and privilege.
Dr. John Ebersole: Those are very thoughtful questions, and really do think you are
asking the right ones: how do you manage change? I tried to give you the formula.
Jack Boeve: I think it's like you said it's probably both art and science and it takes a
lot of work to figure out which way to go.
Dr. John Ebersole: Having someone dedicated to itthis is where the world of the
project management has become so important and people who have it their
responsibility to keep everybody clued in and know where they are in the process.
Jack Boeve: I thank you very much. Have a great afternoon.
Dr. John Ebersole: Bye bye.