1: Guest: SLU President Dr. William Wainwright

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All right, good day. This is Amber Narro. We are getting things done and actually moving on to the Lions Roundtable as we go to KSLU 90.9 The Lion and my first guest is Doctor. Wainwright. Welcome Doctor. William Wainwright. So glad to have you.

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Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

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As always. So this is my first move back to KSLU from North Shore Broadcasting.

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Welcome home.

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Thank you. I’m excited. That’s the thing. I’m home. So this show actually started in 1988 with Miss Rosa Dunn.

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She started the show with, as A Woman’s Point of View in 1988, then several years later she moved it on to just Point of View and when she, her health was declining several years ago, Todd Delaney, who was the former general manager at KSLU, asked me to come over and and take on the show which was like one of honestly the biggest honors of my entire Incredible, absolutely. Because Miss Rosa Dunn was a pillar of our community, just an amazing community member and lots of volunteerism, lots of just

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We stand on our shoulders without a doubt.

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Oh my gosh, true heart. So I was so happy to do that. And then when we weren’t able to do live interviews for a little bit at KSLU, Brian Shirey at North Shore Broadcasting.

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Thank you Brian, thank you North Shore Broadcasting. I mean what an incredible opportunity. We also got to see their latest technology recently, their innovations and so shout out to North Shore Broadcasting for supporting us

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Indeed during that and they were a big support of making sure KSLU also stayed online.

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Absolutely. Thank

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you, thank you, thank you. But a few weeks ago Brian came up to me and he said, alright do you you’re ready to move back? And I was like, yeah.

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Push you out of the nest?

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Yes. I am, I’m ready. So I’m excited to be back on KSLU and I’m certainly excited to have you because we had some great campus guests yesterday.

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Excellent.

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So this was a public event so I feel like we can talk about it publicly, right? But wow, strategic planning from our system.

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Yes, we had our president, President Rick Gallo join us yesterday to talk about our University of Louisiana System strategic plan and the vision and mission and how it aligns with the work we’re doing with our strategic plan. I want to thank our faculty, staff and students for turning out.

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Oh my gosh.

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Before that, they were so impressed. As And always with Lion Pride, we like being the first. So we were the first of the statewide tour of the University of Louisiana System Strategic Plan and received rave reviews for our usual southeastern hospitality where we roll out the green and gold carpet.

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I was so excited to be a part of it. And they asked some pretty good questions at the end. It started out with a I mean, you you walk into the back and I’ve got the mic and I’m about to hand it to Emily with our Veterans Affairs office and Kenneth Woods stands and he’s like, do I ask now? I’m like, go. I mean, that’s the best thing, right?

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You get a student to ask the question.

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Not only ask the question, but really the research and work that he put into the question specific to some of the federal cuts we’re seeing in education and some of the impact to our grants on campus, which aligned incredibly well with the strategic plan where we’re identifying financial efficiencies so that we can backfill areas where we may lose investment at the federal level. We can then support that investment at the state level and continue our mission. And so I thought Kenny brought up an incredible question for us to lead off.

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Very good. It was very impressive as well. As a faculty member, we were super proud of him for asking that. Made us all sound like really focused and I was super proud of him. And then we had some questions about these efficiencies that are going on and our opportunity to band with other universities to really kind of focus on cost savings and sharing some of the burden of this software and this innovation that’s coming.

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If you think about it, you know, we have multiple software systems across the UL system. A lot of them, we all have the same one. Yet we’re all going out on our own securing contracts. What would happen with the collective power of a system in reducing the financial burden of the cost, right? Looking at scale and then returning those savings back to the institutions for further investment.

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But then also look at the work that Southeastern did along with University of New Orleans and Louisiana Tech with Workday implementation.

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Oh my gosh.

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Right? We’re already leading and working collectively to implement a very sophisticated, you know, information system for our university that we realized incredible strengths and efficiencies as a result of that. And during that work it really changed a lot of people’s job descriptions. People didn’t go away, their job descriptions changed and in many cases they were able to take their work to the next level. And so as we look at the use of artificial intelligence and how it’s impacting higher education and we look at where there’s opportunities for efficiencies, it’s not necessarily tied to any reductions of team members or the work that they do for our university.

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In many cases, it better positions them to do even greater work for the university where IT can provide the solution and allows us what we’re very well known for, is the high touch customer service aspect of our mission.

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Indeed. I think we heard that loud and clear yesterday when President Gallo was talking but also where you were speaking as well that this is really about cost savings initiatives and making sure that people have what they need to do their job. Some of the things that were coming up in priority one was were Workday, our AI initiatives as well. Can you talk a little bit to that from Southeastern’s standpoint on what that is looking like right now as we’re trying to discover?

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Great question. It started last October actually, I was at a national conference with college and university presidents and we were all looking at AI and how to address it and it’s so comprehensive that it could almost paralyze you from even attempting something because it’s ever changing. So my takeaway was, clearly we were already doing some of that work in this space. We’ve got some faculty who are lead researchers in the AI space, who work at our institution, who do incredible work, and bring them together and begin the process of building an AI strategy for the university. So last fall, initiated a task force.

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The task force submitted their findings on strategy, on not only building the strategy but implementing it. And that was officially unveiled at convocation. And you have four pillars with ethics and transparency at the core of each. It transcends all four pillars, but first and foremost operational efficiencies where through administration of our university can we benefit from operational efficiencies through the use of AIs. You know transcript evaluation is just one example, right?

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It doesn’t mean that it’ll catch all transcripts and provide the solution, but it’ll flag those that need further look, right? But it’ll take a lot of the majority of the work off of folks. The work of student affairs, you look at how we’re already using, roomy chat and that’s just one small example of the use of AI and how we can better connect with our students. That’s the second pillar. There’s so many more things we can do in the area of student affairs.

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Faculty support is mission critical, ensuring as our students are arriving AI ready, we must be prepared. And so many of our faculty are, but many are seeking additional support and services. So the third pillar of our strategy is faculty support. And the fourth one, which I’m really excited about, is external engagement with artificial intelligence. Surveying all of our industry partners who hire all of our graduates and they tell us this is what an AI ready graduate looks like in healthcare.

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This is what an AI graduate, work ready graduate looks like in, you know, sciences and technology, arts and humanities. Mean, you name it. And our industry has stepped, they’ve leaned in heavily to provide us that support. And so think about a student who’s preparing for internship. We want them to enter their internship AI ready, not upon graduation.

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Want them to be ahead of the game. So those are our four pillars. And again ethical use and responsibility transcends all four. So right now we’re now in the implementation phase. And so task forces are coming together across.

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We’re going have a task force for each pillar. And then following the work of the task force, we’re going to provide the actual implementation opportunities and strategies to support the work.

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Right. And I want to make sure that our audience hears that this is not about none of this is about replacing people.

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Correct.

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People are the most important thing.

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Absolutely.

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But what it is the best way I ever heard it explained was that was in a healthcare space and we were listening to how people could use AI in healthcare and it was about note taking, And making sure that those notes were efficient and done well and also kind of looked across other notes and kind of compiled them all into one space and saved a physician so much time that they could really devote that time to thinking about the more important things that they went to medical school to do anyway. Nobody goes to medical school to learn how to take

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notes. Exactly.

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You go to medical school to take care of people. Nobody comes to the university to teach or to bring people into admissions or to make sure people have opportunities for higher education so that they can go and evaluate a transcript. Exactly. You know, nobody ever said that that was their goal in life.

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Exactly.

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So I think this gets, this takes some of those big huge tasks that are just a time suck and gives them a place so that the real work that, like you said, that customer service, that high touch work can happen.

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Yes, when you look at the speed of AI, it can be overwhelming. Well the last thing you need to do is couple fear with that, right? So when it comes to stability and not just for faculty and staff at the university, but you know the student experience, nobody wants to lose the power of what we’ve done for one hundred years, right? Which is to graduate successful graduates who live and work in Southeast Louisiana and are incredible contributors. We’ve got to look specifically at how we can retain the culture of our institution, retain our traditions of success, but really bring us next level.

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Now we haven’t even touched the use of AI in looking at niche markets, looking at strategic recruitment opportunities for students across the state and the nation and the globe. And so those, I mean, the list is long, but for me it’s very exciting.

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It

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is. Because I know we’ve got the best and brightest faculty and staff that can adapt that technology and make it work for themselves and for our students.

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I think so. Think so for sure. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. Doctor.

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Wainwright, one thing that I was super excited about yesterday was that Doctor. Gallo said that they would be returning in a year.

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Talk about progress.

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I heard that immediately and I think that that is probably the single most important sentence that he said all day yesterday. In fact, you know, I wrote a note to Caprice Ahube and just said, you know, how much I enjoyed that conversation and they really, they got buy in from people before they went into the presentation yesterday and how appreciative that I was that to hear them say that they were gonna come back. Because I think that that’s a promise.

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It

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is. In and of itself. Absolutely. That we are going to return to this. We’re gonna show you some results.

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We are gonna, we are invested in this progress.

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Absolutely. And it’s gonna take the system team to continue the great work of looking across our institutions, ensuring that lines of communication are open across all divisions. The point I made yesterday on the panel was prior to any significant change impacting our institution, the vetting takes place by those who are closest to the work. That’s our faculty in the classrooms, that’s our staff on the ground. Any vetting of any systemic efficiencies, opportunities, strategic plan must begin on the ground.

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It cannot be top down. And so I’m grateful to see so many of our people engaged and willing, willing to say, look, this will work well, this won’t work at all. This is what we need to strategically prioritize because priority is vital as well. And it’s gonna look different. You see an efficiency collaboration along the northern end of the state UL system institutions and a separate one along the southern end of the state institutions.

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For example, looking at inefficiency in securing travel for athletes, right. That’s one example where South Louisiana could take a different approach in maximizing you know economies of scale and saving a few dollars, where North Louisiana may have a different approach with a different company. It doesn’t have to be a one size fits all. And again, that’s just one small example of many things that we can do.

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Right, there’s definitely some different industry that’s coming to the North Part of Louisiana versus South Part right now. It’s interesting that you say that. We’ve got some classes that are coming in the spring that are going to be particularly of interest to honor students who are looking into business and studying how businesses recover after disasters and things things like that.

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Resiliency planning.

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Yeah, and I was able to yesterday, I mean, of the great things about bringing the UL system and then, and you and people to campus is that we also attract area leaders as well. And I ran into Ginger Candulosi yesterday. I was like, Hey, what do you think? And she said, Well, that’s where I started a lot. I’m excited about this.

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So I’m gonna be able to reach out to her later.

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Absolutely. Ginger’s our leader in economic development and she knows that economic development is core to our mission of the university and she stands ready to provide any and all support. For her, you know, having that external family member in the audience, right? With our internal family validating is vitally important.

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Absolutely and she wasn’t the only one. I mean we had lots of community leaders Paris

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president, absolutely Yes joining us as

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and it was so nice to see them come in sharing and caring about Southeastern and giving that back to us as So we appreciate everybody who came yesterday to listen to that message. On a student front, you mentioned that some of the questions that came from the audience were things like military initiatives, making sure that people are, that are smaller populations are taken care of as well and you addressed that specifically yesterday. Talk to the students here now that we’re back on KSLU ninety point nine line, right?

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There’s a lot of them in the eyehook

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right Yes, absolutely. Yes, they’re here doing all kinds of things. So they got their laser printer yesterday. So we’ve got a couple of them who are eyeballing that thing, but we’re not quite ready to unbox it yet as well. It’s unboxed, it’s just that we haven’t read the directions.

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So lots of stuff coming to the iHub right now. But when we’re talking about these smaller populations of students, y’all are still very focused on them as well.

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Absolutely. And you don’t have to look further than our QEP, right? Our quality enhancement plan for the university and for our students. Our quality enhancement plan is a very important research based instrument that we use to study our effectiveness in serving certain populations on the campus. In this particular QEP that we’re under, we’re focusing on transfer students.

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And transfer students are not just those students who transfer from community college, they’re also students who transfer from our universities. Our four years, well you know, we have a lot of transfers from LSU back to Southeastern. And, so really that’s one example of how we as a university are aligning resources, to ensure that we’re working within subpopulations. But also don’t forget, if you look and study a transfer student population, you also know that many of them are veterans. And so the collaboration between the Veterans Affairs divisions from where they were, with the collaboration with where they’re headed is vitally important.

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And so that’s some work that our team does that not many people know about is ensuring that as our veterans transfer, they’re not losing access to existing benefits. So that’s just a couple of examples.

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Very cool. So one other thing that I wanted to make sure I mentioned to you today, you shamed me.

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How did I shame you?

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A couple weeks ago.

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Oh my goodness.

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You did. I’m so No. I’m glad you did. It worked out great. We were at the football game.

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Oh my goodness.

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Or the tailgating and you said, are you going to the game? And I said, no. Oh. And I was so ashamed.

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Coach Zelfo, close your ears.

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Yes, I know. Because I several years ago, I didn’t miss one. Yes. I had a cousin who was a kicker. We we went and followed Ivy but I’m telling you, I went home and I was like, you know what?

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That’s a that is a shame that I haven’t been to a game in a couple of years. So, Jake and I.

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I love him.

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Called my our daughter. Uh-huh. And got picked up our three year old grandson. I love it. On Saturday.

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He had the best time. Oh. And when I tell you those stands were full and vibrant and thank you.

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No. Thank you. Thank you.

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Because it really, I just went, you know what? That’s a shame that I haven’t been.

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Oh and. You know? You know, I I I wanna speak directly to the students and first of all, you know, I look at our very first home opener. What incredible energy, right? And and office of student engagement along with, you know, Allen Waddell, one of our alum offering the, I forget the exact name of it, our game day winner, know, a $500 cash award to students.

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He does play by play on the sidelines.

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On the sidelines. Time. And talk about giving back to his online. Unbelievable. I mean, just an incredible resource.

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But Alan, know, Office of Student Engagement, Ryan and his team, I don’t know if people noticed, but this past home football game, the students who attended had rally towels.

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Yes.

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And they were taught when to use them and how to rally our students. So really what I want to ask our student body is let’s get up, let’s show up for our homecoming. That’ll be our next home game. It’s gonna be

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It was

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so fun. It’s fun. While we know tailgating is fun, it doesn’t stop there. I’m grateful to all of our students who welcome our football players, who cheer on our band and dance team and cheerleaders and color guard as they march with our football players. That’s vitally important, but I need everybody in the stands.

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Come in, engage. We have a long tradition, much of our Greek life, our new Greek life members might not be aware, but we had a tradition of displaying our letters in the stands and then having each of our fraternities and sororities present and showing up and representing. We need it. Our team’s on a roll, we’ve got some deep talent. A lot of our students, I want them to understand that not just football, but across all of our programs, we have coaches committed to developing Louisiana talent.

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While we do have transfers from out of state and we recruit out of state, majority of our players are Louisiana native and many of our students have gone to school with them. So get out there, next game, get out there, homecoming, let’s make it a homecoming to remember.

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I love it. I love it. I can’t wait. And I had, I’m telling you, we had such a great time. So appreciate you putting that little that little piece of that little thought in my head.

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Noah William caught a T shirt at the game.

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Thank you.

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And let me tell you, he ripped, I had bought him a gold because it was gold out weekend.

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Gold out weekend.

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So, I wore my gold shirt. I said, he’s going to have a a T shirt, went to the bookstore, got him a little T shirt. He had a ball but when he got thrown, that white T shirt from the cheerleaders at the game.

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He won the lottery.

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Ripped his.

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Yes.

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Yellow T shirt off in the stands in front of God and everybody.

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I love it.

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Put his white shirt on and he was proud as he could be to walk around that place with that foot long. I mean, was to his ankles and he was so proud.

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But you know, I talked about traditions earlier and family and you know, having Noah William there at three years old, getting to experience the green and gold, it’s memories he’ll carry for a lifetime and hopefully bring with him when he enrolls at Southeastern in the future. And that’s what I want to take a moment to really commend our faculty and staff for. You know, we’re teaching and learning in today’s, you know, market driven economy, right? And it’s very dynamic and our faculty and staff do an incredible job. But we also wake up every day to plan for the next century of impact to, We’re telling a lot of stories about faculty and staff who set the tone, who laid the groundwork, built the foundation for us to be successful today.

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Well, we are. We’re now that team in place building for the next one hundred years. So very grateful. Somebody asked me the other day is, how you know, is it tough being on campus with all those students? It is the greatest blessing.

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I tell you just to look in the eyes of our future and just to hear from our students and really just, you know, garner the excitement that they bring and the energy.

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The energy is

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Knowing they’re gonna do

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It’s great amazing. All right. So when you look at that strategic plan and you’re looking over the next several years, how long are they looking to go with the strategic plan? What kind of timeframe is it?

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Yes, so I know with the initial work with Lightcast, they were looking at a traditional five year strategic plan. Of course, that mirrors ours, and look, timing is everything, right? We are in the final quarter of Vision 2025, so I just reviewed a preliminary review of all that’s been accomplished the last five years. We’re gonna be putting that together in a strategic plan final report to share with all of our students, faculty, and staff as we begin the process for Vision 2030 at Southeast and the planning for our next five years. So as we are working on our plan, there are going to be incredible alignment opportunities with the UL system that we didn’t have at the time we established Vision 2025.

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So we’re gonna have an extra leveraging component in the process. I’m really excited about that.

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That’s exciting. Which part is your favorite?

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Yes, my favorite I would say, you know, it’s always gonna be about the students, right? Yeah. I mean their success is what’s built the success of the institution. It’s not about any one person or or one president or or one system president. It’s really about the success of our students and how they how they shape and impact our communities and how they build strong families, how they build economies.

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And so I’m excited about the student component of it.

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Awesome. Dollars 500,000 for Giving Day.

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Giving Day, broken record, 5 and 7,000 as of this morning and counting because we still have some additional funds coming in. But gosh, what an incredible accomplishment on the heels of exceeding our Centennial Campaign goal of 100,000,000, right? And what I love about both is whether it’s Giving Day or the Centennial Campaign, every day you walk on this campus, you get to see the results of that giving. You see it through innovations and technology. You see it through new construction on campus.

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We’re all witnessing that right now. The Vicars is complete, Dugas is under construction. And then within our existing facilities like iHub, for example, where we sit, we’re always innovating. We see that all those funds, we see it through endowed professorships, scholarships, need based grants to help students close that gap when they’re just shy of what they need to be successful. All of that is happening every day at the university.

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So hats off to all of our alum, all of our donors. We have so many industry donors. We have several donors who are not alum of Southeastern but have benefited from our mission and our graduates. So hats off to everyone and a special shout out to our Office of Advancement, Faith Peterson, who led our Giving Day. She was given bold goal a and, she never wavered and saw us through that goal When being

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she came and talked to us, when the show was still at Shore Broadcasting, Malayne and I were like, you gotta get to half a million. And she looked and she was like, oh, that’s big. That’s massive. Was that the goal?

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That was the goal, yes.

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Okay, very good. Because she was a little nervous. We were like, oh, no problem. You’re gonna hit it. You’re gonna hit it.

00:24:37.685 –> 00:24:41.820
So all day long, was texting her. I was like, you’re almost there. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

00:24:41.820 –> 00:24:42.460
Well, and

00:24:42.460 –> 00:25:12.490
then what I loved, if you go on LinkedIn or social media, well, first of all, it’s positive social media. Yes. So I was so excited to see the specific targeted opportunities where like our different colleges, different clubs, our different programs, our different research interests, everyone had their own page. Everyone aggressively sought out to communicate to their donor base the value of what they’re doing. It was not just an ask.

00:25:12.570 –> 00:25:25.185
It was, this is what you contributed last year. This is what’s been accomplished. As we look to the next year, this is where we’re headed. How can you support us? And just the response was incredible.

00:25:25.185 –> 00:25:37.730
It was. And we certainly appreciate it for sure. Thank you so much I for talking know you’re super busy and you’ve got lots of stuff to do. I always like to ask one personal question before you leave though, right? Just to kind of get to know you.

00:25:37.890 –> 00:25:43.890
What’s your favorite hobby? You know, I didn’t ask you that the last time you were on the show. So I need to know. What’s your favorite hobby?

00:25:43.890 –> 00:26:21.995
Absolutely. So those who don’t know about me, grew up in South Louisiana and one of my playgrounds as a child was the Atchafalaya Basin. And so growing up and spending a lot of time in the Atchafalaya Basin, that’s where I learned to water ski, it’s where I learned to fish, it’s where I learned to hunt. So I can still get up on water skis, I can still get up on water skis, I’m not as good as I once was, but I can still do that. And you know for me when I have the chance to engage in what we know as Louisiana’s sportsman’s paradise, it’s really a way for me to reconnect with where I come from, but also reconnect with nature.

00:26:22.235 –> 00:26:56.225
And also I’ll tell you, anytime I’m in the Atchafalaya, the Wriggles, or Lake Marrapah, I am reminded of the work that our researchers are doing, which ties directly to health and quality of our basins, estuaries, rivers, and ensuring the future, that future generations have that same access. So when I’m out and connecting with mother nature, I’m also reminded of the mission of our work here and why it’s so important. That’s my story, I’m sticking to it.

00:26:56.465 –> 00:26:57.905
That’s awesome. I love it.

00:26:57.930 –> 00:27:03.450
I love to get lost in the Atchafalaya Basin. You can get lost so easily and found easily.

00:27:04.650 –> 00:27:08.890
Yes, absolutely. That’s the most important part. Yeah. So, thank you. Thank you

00:27:08.890 –> 00:27:09.530
for asking.

00:27:09.530 –> 00:27:10.330
I appreciate you.

00:27:10.385 –> 00:27:10.785
Alright.

00:27:10.785 –> 00:27:35.160
And thank you for listening here at KSLUs ninety point nine, The Lion. I’m Ambranero. We are at the Lions Roundtable for the first time with Doctor William Wainwright and I’m very excited to have on our show tomorrow. Malayne and Faith will be coming to talk Giving Day and give you all the specifics of that as well as how we can continue celebrating homecoming and one hundred years here at Southeastern. Absolutely.

00:27:35.160 –> 00:27:36.200
Thank you. Thank for joining us.

00:27:36.200 –> 00:27:36.920
Lion up.

00:27:36.920 –> 00:27:39.480
Absolutely. Lion up. I’m Amber Narro. Y’all have a great day.