Speaker 2: 0:12

And now from the Blue Ridge PBS studios in Roanoke, virginia. It's the Virginians of Interest podcast, with your hosts Brian Campbell and Karthin Curran.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Welcome to the Virginians of Interest podcast. My name is Brian Campbell. I'm here with my friend Karthin Curran. We'd like to turn it over to Karthin to introduce our next guest.

Speaker 3: 0:29

Thank you, Brian. It's a delight to have a dear friend and a colleague, Dr Susan Huxman, who's president of Eastern Mennonite University, which is located in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Dr Huxman, welcome.

Speaker 4: 0:41

Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here.

Speaker 3: 0:45

I think our listeners would be interested to know something about your background and how your path brought you to EMU. I know you've been in higher education for most of your professional life, but where you grew up and the institutions that you attended and the path that got you to EMU for that.

Speaker 4: 1:11

It's been a really interesting, adventuresome journey. For me that begins quite early. I was born in Florida DeLand, florida, near Daytona Beach and I was a campus kid from my birth. And what I mean by that is my dad was a history professor at Stetson University in DeLand and my parents in their first year at Stetson were Deland and my parents in their first year at Stetson were also the men's residence hall directors. So I lived in the men's dorm my first year of life and in some sense, I guess I never really left the academy.

Speaker 4: 1:43

We moved as a family of five when I was 13 to Kansas where my father became a president of a small college, Bethel College, the oldest Mennonite college in North America, and I ended up going there to play tennis and basketball and be on the speech and debate team. And, lo and behold, that's where I met my husband, a football player, a wannabe broadcaster, a farm kid from a little town in Reno County, kansas, called Pretty Prairie. I didn't believe that was actually the name of his town when I first met him. Anyway, we married right after college. I moved to Lawrence, kansas, where I completed a PhD in communication at the University of Kansas and Jess was a morning disc jockey in Topeka and an avid fisherman, and those were the days, and those started us in a really fabulous journey.

Speaker 4: 2:40

My first faculty position was at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, north Carolina, and after four marvelous years there and the birth of our first child, we moved back to Kansas, to Wichita State University, the largest media market in Kansas, where I held administrative positions in the Elliott School of Communication, and Jess, my husband, served in various TV positions at NBC and ABC affiliates and later as vice president of content for the CBS station there, and we raised three children in Wichita. In 2011, it was off to the races. I received a call to serve as president of Conrad Grebel University in Waterloo, ontario, canada, also a Mennonite college, and I accepted that position on International Women's Day, becoming their first woman president. I was not yet 50, and that's young by female president standards. So, anyway, that is where we were for six years, and then I received the call to serve at Eastern Mennonite University here in Harrisonburg, virginia, in 2017.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I've known you for a couple of years and I've learned a lot from you, and we're both in higher education. I've known you for a couple of years and I've learned a lot from you and not and we're both in higher education. Frankly, I've learned a lot about higher education, but I also learned a lot more about the Mennonite church and Mennonite education and a lot of things that I just didn't know. So I'll tell a quick story and then I'm going to ask a question.

Speaker 1: 4:20

When I first met you, we were just I was curious about your faith and and then this higher education part, and I had mentioned you had mentioned that disaster relief had been a core mission for Mennonites, right? So I'm originally, my family's, originally from the Nelson and Amherst County, virginia, areas which happened to have the largest natural disaster in the last century with Hurricane Camille. So once you told me about this and you'd shared that they'd been active in that recovery, I went back and looked at the books and one of the lines that struck me was it said the Mennonites were the first to arrive and the last to leave, and this is a town that's almost completely, or an area that's completely Methodist, baptist and so forth. I'm willing to bet. The people in that town didn't know much about Mennonites either, so can you describe a little bit about the Mennonite faith and then how that created the Mennonite higher education and how those two still intersect?

Speaker 4: 5:12

Yeah, thank you for that, because Mennonites are not mainstream denominational large bodies and so people are often either perplexed or sometimes they conflate us with the Amish. But when you travel in the US and Canada, if people know anything about Mennonites it's what you've just identified, brian, which is oh, you are the people who come in to repair homes after a tornado or a flood or a fire, and there is real truth to that and it's interesting you bring that up because that's what my husband does now. He is director of communication for US and Canada Mennonite Disaster Service. So in all 50 states, over 8,000 volunteers are involved in cleanup of homes and bridges. In fact, I think in Virginia, if memory serves, in Hurley, virginia, there is a MDS workforce happening right now. So that has been that. Service mentality has been really critical for Mennonites, particularly North American Mennonites, for a long, long time, and Mennonites of all stripes, and there are a variety of groups of Mennonites within North America, but all of them really do strive to be the hands and feet of Jesus. I mean, after all, jesus was a carpenter and that's often used in thinking about what service is all about using our head and hands and our feet. So that's been really critical. So that's been really critical.

Speaker 4: 6:47

So has education Mennonite schools, k-12 and higher ed really really strong understandings of that from a Mennonite faith? And that certainly is different than from the Amish tradition where Amish tend to stop with schooling at about the eighth grade. Mennonites, whether they're on the conservative or liberal spectrum, if you will theologically or politically believe strongly in Mennonite higher education, beppo College, my alma mater, is the oldest Mennonite college. There are six Mennonite colleges that are affiliated with MCUSA Mennonite Church USA. There are other Mennonite colleges affiliated with the Mennonite Brethren and so this has been critical. Emu is in that group of six, brian, and we were founded in 1917, right in the middle of World War I, right in the middle of the Spanish flu pandemic, with seven students in 1917. So the Mennonite faith is grounded in the practical service model of Jesus and it really understands that the best education is the education of the whole student. So we're of course interested in developing students intellectually and personally and relationally, but we're also interested in walking alongside them in their faith formation journey.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Well, one last follow-up question, and I'll turn it over to Carth. And we also worked on a project in the last couple of years, a STEM-related project where we were trying to get students from your school to come to my school, vcu, a public school in Richmond, virginia, and we reached a roadblock one day and Carthen and I drove up to Harrisonburg and we were trying to figure. The roadblock was basically at a time in the last hundred years when schools had sort of drifted away from their original faith mission. The problem was was that you guys were not willing to negotiate on your faith curriculum, and so, instead of looking at that as a problem, I was immediately struck with why in the world would anybody ever question that?

Speaker 1: 8:54

And if it takes a kid a little bit longer to transfer because they have to fulfill these core requirements, who am I as a Baptist, to question that? So one I wanted to compliment you for, you know, at a time when you wondered do people still stand for original values? It seems like you guys are standing for your original values, but how does that help and how does that complicate your life as the president, knowing that you're a Mennonite school and, like a lot of religious schools that may not now look a lot like they did at the beginning, it seems to me you guys still remain committed to a faith mission. Committed to a faith mission.

Speaker 4: 9:28

We do. And again back a bit to you know some of the suspicions, I guess, that sometimes prospective students have when they see this Mennonite in the name Eastern Mennonite universe. What does that mean? We've had students ask us, you know, do you have to be Mennonite to come? Is there a dress code? Do we have to be in bed by 10 o'clock to come? Is there a dress code? Do we have to be in bed by 10 o'clock? You know all of these things and none of that is the case.

Speaker 4: 9:59

But I appreciate the inquisitiveness of it because while we have about 22 to 25 percent of our students at the undergraduate level who are Mennonite, most of course are not and they come from 30 different faith traditions or even, more commonly, no faith tradition, and we want to be very ecumenical and welcoming and opening up. We don't expect all of our students to graduate and be dyed-in-the-wool Mennonites, but we do expect them to have a real understanding and affirmation for our values Anabaptist, mennonite values of peace, community service and Christian discipleship. And we have requirements around that. There are two Bible and religion requirements. There's also an intercultural requirement which is designed to do many things, because our mission is to prepare students to serve and lead in a global context in the spirit of Micah 6.8, to do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with God.

Speaker 4: 11:01

So our students go to one of about 13 different countries to get immersed in a different culture and to see with new eyes, and to see with less certitude about their frame of reference and more compassion. So that too is a faith formation journey. So we're not willing. That's nine credits right there, that's right. Yeah, we're not willing to. Yeah, throw those in as electives. They're part of what it means to build on the identity of an EMU graduate.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Well, I wanted to compliment you, number one, and I think what you stand for is really good and the idea that education has gotten to the point now where we're constantly trying to shape and form to fit people. It was nice to be at a meeting where people said we're just not, we don't negotiate on this sort of stuff, and it was refreshing. So thank you for the opportunity, carleton.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Thank you, brian. Dr Huxley, I think our listeners would be interested in knowing too well many things about EMU, but one or two that come to mind. If I'm not mistaken, emu was the first institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth to accept an African-American student.

Speaker 4: 12:13

That is correct and I'll tell you just a little story about that. And it really has everything to do with Senator Mark Openshine who, when I came in 2017, he introduced me at the General Assembly in Richmond and he said I want to tell you about EMU and its distinctiveness in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And of course, I didn't know what he was going to say and you know you get a little nervous about that when you're standing up and saying that. But he said look, everybody should know EMU is a trailblazing university in the areas of peace and justice, and the first thing he named Carthen. The first distinctive is that, yes, emu enrolled the first Black student in 1948, well before the civil rights movement, well before any of the rest of the colleges and universities did in the Commonwealth, and it's part of our inclusivity story that has been with us for 106 years. We also have a. The second thing he said about us was EMU many of you don't know this has a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and we do.

Speaker 3: 13:18

Yes.

Speaker 4: 13:18

Yeah, yeah, a Liberian woman, lama Bowie, who really, with a couple of major friends, helped stop a civil war in Liberia nonviolently, and she was a graduate of our Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and then mentioned that we have a seminary, and of Virginia's 27 private colleges, emu is the only one with a seminary that is integrally related to its campus. So I was pleasantly surprised at Senator Obenshain's homework about us and I think it is a way to describe a trailblazing impact of EMU as a faith-infused peace and justice university.

Speaker 1: 14:00

Well, the second thing when I visited Carson I visited that I learned which was interesting. The first was the service components and other things. But in 1980, the majority of your students were Mennonite focused and that is correct. Over a 40-year period you've seen this major transformation from people who showed up on day one sort of consistent with you didn't have to educate them as to what the faith was about to. Now it's the sort of opposite. Right, you said the number is 20-some percent of 24, 25 percent.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So I have one out of four is a Mennonite. The other three quarters are not. So how does that impact your recruiting? You're clearly sticking your sign out and people are coming. Is it mainly just overcoming some of the curiosities and the questions and sort of getting those to rest and then allowing people? You're also in the business of doing some things that a lot of universities are now trying to do no-transcript.

Speaker 4: 15:19

Pedagogy principle is when you start getting more students who don't know that much about your faith tradition, you've got to meet them where they are. So we have heavily invested over the years and this would even be before my time but we continue to heavily invest in onboarding of our faculty and staff. We are principally a teaching university. We take teaching very, very seriously and part of that is not just hiring faculty who are top in their field, whether that's in the sciences, performing arts, humanities, social sciences and professions, but that they understand and affirm themselves what it means to be an Anabaptist educator. So we, you know, sort of put them through the orientation of saying these are the kinds of skill sets that are important from a Mennonite, from an Anabaptist perspective.

Speaker 4: 16:18

And not all of the faculty that we hire are Mennonite. That's changed too over the years. They are Christian, they come from different Christian orientation. That's still very, very critical for us, but we really work to make Mennonitism if you want to call it that, accessible and relevant for our 17 to 22-year-olds in particular. Some imagination. It takes some creativity to say where are Mennonites in the world today? They're in all fields, all stripes. We have lots of guest speakers that come in, so it does take a different educational intentionality when you have fewer who know of the history?

Speaker 1: 17:08

One last question and I'll turn back to the car what?

Speaker 4: 17:10

is Anabaptist? Anabaptist? This is such a funny question. I know you mentioned I'm a Baptist.

Speaker 1: 17:16

I didn't know what an Anabaptist was.

Speaker 4: 17:17

Well, I grew up in the Baptist church Southern Baptist, no less and I'll never forget a Mennonite young man that I met when I was in Canada who said I'm no longer Baptist, I'm Anabaptist. And then he laughed and I said what are you laughing at? And he said well, when I first heard that word, anabaptist I said to the person who was sharing that word with me Anabaptist. I know John the Baptist who is Anabaptist. That has stayed with me forever. So an Anabaptist is actually someone who is against infant baptism, which, in fact, brian, as a Baptist, you are an Anabaptist.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Exactly, the immersion by water Exactly. You're the first person to explain this to me.

Speaker 4: 18:06

So that's the theological connection between Baptists and Mennonites and Quakers and Mennonite brethren and brethren in Christ is this doesn't necessarily have to be an adult conviction of belief in Jesus, the triune God, and getting baptized in that sense. So we have infant confirmations but we have older child or adult baptisms. So Anna was used as against infant baptism. Thank you, but it's still a funny word.

Speaker 1: 18:45

I thought about. Should I ask, and I thought I bet you, most people listening are probably going to say what's Anabaptist? So thank you for clarifying, I hope as an Episcopalian.

Speaker 3: 18:52

we'll have a chance to get my side of the story at some point. It's a good segue, brian. Your question to Dr Huxman the origins of the Mennonite denomination religion from Germany? Is that where? Religion from Germany, is that where?

Speaker 4: 19:09

It's a great, great question because there were, you know, to make it kind of a quick yet, I think, still accurate assessment, there really were two waves of Mennonites. The first that came to the east and this is where we get the Virginia and the Pennsylvania Mennonites, in particular was from Germany and Switzerland. Yes, the Swiss Germans would have been and they would have come very early, I mean even, as you know, almost as early as William Penn and the Quakers, and there was some real strong alliances between the Quakers and Mennonites. The second wave of Mennonites came significantly later, in the 1800s, and they settled in the Midwest and they came from Russia and Ukraine. Almost all of the founders of Myalhambad or Bethel College in Kansas came from Ukraine. So very different sensibilities and they have some different practices and different ways of expressing their faith and different ways of aligning themselves as citizens of the US. But those are the two major waves, yeah, late 16th, 1700s and then 1800s.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Thanks. This gets back to the thing I told her earlier, where we had that thing we needed to work out related to STEM curriculum. So what's the strategic plan of Eastern Mennonite, knowing that you remain very deeply committed to your history and culture, but yet you're also trying to prepare students for the future in different fields than they may have been studying, or stuff like STEM, cybersecurity, in other words, all these sort of things, the buzzwords of higher education how do you manage to thread that needle to where you remain committed to your faith-based experience but also trying to train the workforce of the 21st century?

Speaker 4: 21:14

on new majors, particularly in the STEM fields, and still very much in what we hope students sense is an authentic expression of faith in that learning project. Let me give you a couple of examples. Nursing is still our top major. We actually have to turn people away because we do not have enough nursing slots and we are known in the region. We are known here in the county of really generating some of the best nurses in the commonwealth. All of our nurses, 100% of our nurses, have job offers before they walk across the stage and get a diploma. The pass rate for the nursing exam exceeds somewhere of 95% and so you say, okay, well, that's great. How does that means? Is we really attend to understanding that?

Speaker 4: 21:56

The healing process, no matter what a person's affliction is, the healing process is about bringing people into wholeness, and nurses at EMU learn to view an individual patient's story as holy ground and they intersect with patients in sacred space and we teach our nurses how to listen well, how to show compassion, in addition to their clinical expertise clinical expertise. So that's one example where nursing and the Sacred Covenant come together to produce top talent that stays here in the Commonwealth. Another would be in our science and math and pre-med courses. We have a cadaver lab for undergraduates. Name me another undergraduate institution in Virginia that allows freshmen to work on cadavers.

Speaker 4: 23:15

And you say, well, what does this have to do with religion? Well, what we do before there's any work on these bodies that are donated to us and this is not an inexpensive proposition but our students and professors actually stop. They honor the dignity of the souls that once inhabited these bodies. We have a ceremony where we release lanterns, we say a prayer, we sing Amazing Grace, and it's all to honor those who have donated their bodies to science. So we do find those are just two examples.

Speaker 1: 23:58

There's a great example, by the way, terrific, by the way.

Speaker 4: 24:01

So that we're not just saying, oh, on Tuesdays we'll throw in a little, you know, faith formation. It's really part of the curriculum and part of chasing the cutting edge work and discoveries in these fields.

Speaker 1: 24:18

Well, let me I'm sorry to ask one last question on this, but it's found it fascinating. So you've got less Mennonites showing up, but you're clearly committed to something, and that's also at a time in our country when people are not attending church or not faith-based in a traditional way. Do you think part of what makes this a selling point is the fact that you can come there and receive, and not only an education but in an environment that's loving and caring and accepting and with a long history of not just having that as a placard but sort of living walking the walk? Don't you think that's attractive to non-Mennonite?

Speaker 4: 24:50

students? Yeah, absolutely, and you know the stats, brian. How many students today suffer from loneliness and isolation and depression coming out of the pandemic? It's just, it's crisis level, and the number one reason that students leave a university, regardless of size or regardless of mission, is that they do not feel seen, they don't feel valued, they don't think they fit in, feel seen, they don't feel valued, they don't think they fit in, and so much of what the faith formation component is at a school like EMU is seeing people, validating people.

Speaker 4: 25:29

You are a child of God. Here is how we think and learn as a community of learners, together, and that success, if it's going to be true success, particularly in a religious faith formation setting, is one in which you are valuing team players, and so this is why our tagline is lead together, and we, quite frankly, can't lead together until we have learned to belong together. So there is this sense of oh. So when you say one of your Mennonite values is community, oh, I get it. Now I get how it happens inside and outside the classroom, and it makes me a better human being.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 3: 26:13

Carthen. Dr Hochul, could you, in addition to nursing, maybe for our audience, talk a little bit more about some of the other flagship majors that EMU has? I know you have one of the strongest reputations in pre-med in the Commonwealth. You have an engineering major now, which I think is interesting. Yes, school of your size to have that major. That I think is a very unique. And back to the STEM.

Speaker 4: 26:43

It is. We're one of the few small schools in the Commonwealth that have a not just an engineering program but a bet accredited. It's really hard to get that engineering accreditation and it's in computer science, engineering and mechanical engineering. But there's another example where we work very hard to have an incredible service component to engineering. A number of our engineering students volunteer for our spring break. We always have service opportunities. So, yeah, some students go and go to the beach and other things, but others are doing actual service projects. Learning and serving with Appalachian people is one of those and our engineers have been involved in helping with water projects, helping with bridge repairs, actually working as volunteers with MDS, mennonite Disaster Service. So again we get the humanitarian impulse and the community connection for our engineers that the work they're doing is again being the hands and feet of Jesus and the practical demonstration of service is so critical. Demonstration of service is so critical.

Speaker 4: 27:57

Education is another big major for us Nursing education, business psychology, engineering. In education, again, we teach a kind of restorative justice to how we handle discipline in a classroom. We have strong programs in both nursing and education. In terms of graduate programs, actually our first doctoral program is in nursing but we have a number of master's programs in education. So, again, these are the helping professions.

Speaker 4: 28:33

It's interesting a couple of years ago, the Commonwealth trying to think what the study was identified what is the ranking of graduates in the Commonwealth who graduate in the helping professions? So that would be like social work, education, nursing I'm missing some other kinds of things. Saying I'm missing some other kinds of things, but we ranked number two of all the private and public, of those who are graduating in the helping professions and I thought, well, this is great, this is our mission, this is what we do. We're preparing students to serve and lead in a global context. We also ranked number two or three in the number of graduates who go on to earn a PhD, the number of graduates who go on to earn a PhD in the Commonwealth. So we do have many on the trajectory the graduate school to vet school, to med school, and that's also exciting because it does speak to the academic outcomes and the academic rigor of an EMU undergraduate educator.

Speaker 3: 29:34

Well, let's also discuss the Midnightsites can have fun too. Dr Hutchman maybe describe this wonderful and I'm not sure how many years you've had this.

Speaker 4: 29:52

Bach Summer Festival at EMU. Yes, and thank you for mentioning music. I would really be remiss if I didn't say music is a central core to Mennonite community and to Mennonite peacebuilding. In fact we are the only undergraduate program in the country right now that has a program in music and peacebuilding. So it's an actual major and it's an actual minor in music and peacebuilding. So much of the music we sing, whether it's sacred music or some other kind of music, is designed to bring people together.

Speaker 4: 30:22

Mennonites have been known for centuries as those who sing four-part harmony. And the very first classes at ENU, right there in the midst of World War I, there were four required classes. You know, you'd expect Bible, you'd expect literature, but you might not expect agriculture or music. But those were the four required courses. Everybody had to have an agriculture course, which was generally soil cultivation, but another was music and it needed to be vocal music. Because at EMU vocal music was given a really high platform. Theologically, let's tell later that instrumental music came into play.

Speaker 4: 31:04

But we have the Bach Festival every year we're in our, I think, 30th year professionals from New York City, Boston, from LA, to come and work with our musicians, our orchestra folks, our students and it's a week-long event. Many of the concerts are free and it is a place to provide this sense of community, building this sense of peace and wholeness. And music and making music together brings out the very best in our humanity, and I'm just very fortunate to have a music department. We have five full-time faculty in music, which for a small school is a lot of full-time faculty. That doesn't include the adjuncts, and they are second to none. They are just rock stars as music faculty. So, yeah, I'd invite you all to come. It's, I think, the second week in June. It's called the Shenandoah Valley Buff Festival. It's gotten rave reviews from various artistic outlets as the place to be if you want great music. And, of course, Harrisonburg is a foodie city, so you can have it all food and music.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Well, that's a good that's a good so good venues around there yeah, that's a good segue. So, Carthan and I came over to see you and some other folks about a year and a half ago and I had unfortunately not been to Harrisonburg at all. And there's two things that struck me was man, james Madison has gotten really big that I had been and they've really sort of almost taken over the town. How have you peacefully coexisted with the state university which is busting at the seams over the last 40, 50 years?

Speaker 4: 32:50

Yeah, that's always a good question because people say, well, you know, the elephant in the room or the gorilla in the in the town is JMU, because they're so big.

Speaker 4: 32:59

We really coexist quite well with them. And here's one example how do we get five great, top-notch rock star musician faculty, like I just mentioned? Well, because they come with partners who can get jobs at JMU and on top of that it's such a well-recognized college town. I mean, two years ago we were recognized as a top 10 college town out of 185 in the country. And that's because we have JMU, this great public, we have EMU, this great private. We also have Bridgewater, not too far down the road in the county, and Blue Ridge Community College. So we have these four colleges in a pretty tiny, still rural town of Harrisonburg 58,000. And the town of Harrisonburg rolls out the purple carpet and the blue carpet for EMU and the other colors really well. And they also recognize that the four of us together are a particularly valuable economic and cultural asset in the town and it's probably why Harrisonburg is known as the friendly city. We really are friendly, even to the throngs of college students that dominate our restaurants and streets and arenas.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Well, that's terrific Intercollegiate sports. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 4: 34:33

We are in the NCAA Division III, the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, the ODAC arguably the best Division III conference in the country from top to bottom. We have 18 varsity sports and we compete well in all of those and that is a big draw to EMU. A big draw to EMU. Last year 42 percent think about this 42 percent of our incoming students came in part to compete in varsity sports at EMU and the student athlete is still so much the expectation the student being first, the athlete being second that we really are here to recognize that many students who come have great physical gifts, great leadership gifts, but at the end of the day they're not going to be going on in any kind of pro or semi-pro way and that there are great other skills that they're going to be learning along the way. But that adds to the vibrancy and to the sense of community. We get good student attendance at our games.

Speaker 1: 35:53

How about? Universities have changed a lot in the last 20 years. I remember being in graduate school 25 years ago and the online stuff was just coming out, you know, and I remember in our class they said this is at Virginia. They said this is still Disney World. At the end of the day, kids want to come to Disney World. They don't want a replica of Disney World. How has the online nature and MOOCs and all the stuff that we've been dealing with the last 25 years impacted the way your university functions?

Speaker 4: 36:23

We do have undergraduate online courses. We certainly had quite a few of them during the pandemic but primarily it is an in-person experience at the undergraduate level. We are uniquely, I think, in some respects, at least here in Virginia, a university that has half of its student population at the undergraduate level and half of our student population at the graduate level. We have 11 robust graduate programs plus a seminary, as I mentioned earlier. So the graduate level certainly lots and lots of programs are online and some of them online exclusively At the undergraduate level. We don't have that. We just don't have that experience as much.

Speaker 4: 37:10

And you know again, we recognize, you know one of the real challenges right now you know this. Besides you know the demographic slip and the cost of higher ed is that the four-year residential experience as we once knew it, or still sort of know it, is crumbling. More students come in with more credits and they want to graduate into three years. We have more and more transfer students, which is great, but that creates a different kind of dynamic in terms of a student's growth and we're working on that. You just have to be nimble and adaptive and still find a way to make sure that a quality faith and learning education is happening.

Speaker 3: 37:59

To piggyback on that comment, dr Huxman, can you, since the pandemic, the multiple challenges a school the size of EMU faces, if you could maybe touch on a little bit more about those challenges and how EMU is addressing the challenges the demographic cliff that you mentioned, the cost of a higher education today, even you see it all the time in the media the commentary about is a college education worth it? That's disturbing to me. But you're in the forefront, you're in the battlefield, so to speak. Kind of give me your thoughts and strategies On how EMU is adjusting to today's climate.

Speaker 4: 38:48

Yeah, let me start with the pandemic. In one sense and this sounds sort of counterintuitive, but in one sense our very small size worked for us During the pandemic. You know, we don't have sororities and fraternities here, and in the early months of the pandemic, especially when we didn't quite know yet how COVID was transferred from one person to the next, we weren't dropping like flies, so to speak, like larger colleges that had large classrooms or sororities and fraternities. And what's interesting is in that two and a half year period of the pandemic we stayed with in-person instruction the whole time, except for two weeks when we had significant outbreaks and we went online, and that's because we have small classes, except for two weeks when we had significant outbreaks and we went online, and that's because we have small classes. We don't really have any class that's over 50 students, most of them are between 10 and 15. And we really just followed the protocol. You know 12 feet apart, wear your mask. You know reams, miles and miles of plexiglass and we did a lot of outdoor instruction.

Speaker 4: 40:00

I was so glad to be living here in Virginia. When I think about Florida and Kansas and Canada, these are places where the seasons aren't as warm. Well, florida is warm but where you don't have opportunities to be outside, where it's not winter and it's not sweltering heat. So we did a lot of outdoor classrooms and we did well, and again, this community of care really was a part of how we succeeded. Our retention was fabulous during the pandemic and we worried about that. There's an old African proverb that we really sort of leaned into, which is you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And we worked really hard at going together to get through the pandemic as successfully as we could, coming out on the other side.

Speaker 4: 40:56

Certainly, problems exist and again, given our size, we want to be particularly nimble. A great deal of learning was lost in high schools during the pandemic, and so what we have been seeing in the last several entry classes are some real remedial issues. This is not just at EMU, this is almost everywhere. How do we get people up to speed who have really lost a good deal of learning in their junior senior high school years? So we have invested through our educational department, we have invested in a center for teaching and learning that has a much more robust agenda than it ever did before the pandemic, and that is to get these students up to speed. Certainly, the pandemic has been hard on most households economically and the cost is a real issue for students, and we're working on that too in creating more financial aid for students to attend EMU.

Speaker 3: 41:55

Most of the student body that attend EMU are, most of them, virginian.

Speaker 4: 42:01

They are. Most of our students come from right here in the Commonwealth. We do still get a number of students from almost every state and international students. The numbers of international students getting visas has curtailed sharply since the pandemic and that's a missed opportunity for additional link, but nonetheless, yes, most of our students come from right here in Virginia.

Speaker 1: 42:33

I've got a question. I didn't really reflect on the visit until now. I'm reflecting a lot on the visit we came to your campus. You know I've been on college campuses for almost three decades and there's a certain energy, right, but it's related to intercollegiate sports, it's related to activism. There's just an energy. I felt more of a peacefulness and I don't say that in a bad way, I say it in a good way. I didn't feel like that. There was any angst when I got to your campus. It just felt like I could take a deep breath.

Speaker 1: 43:01

So the two questions are colleges also struggle with students making the break from childhood into adulthood. So this idea of social life and what goes on at a college campus, my first question is is that a problem for you or is it less of a problem for you at a place like EMU than if you were to be somewhere else? Number one and number two this idea of activism. So a lot of times kids want to do two things to go to college they want to party and they want to express themselves. So how does EMU handle one? We won't get into that, but Carthen didn't end up at EMU. He was looking for a robust social life. So tell me, is this to Mennonite, do you have the same struggles with some of the behavioral?

Speaker 4: 43:50

and that is that when students come, yes, they're looking for adventure, their first time away from home, and so, especially in that first year, you know being able to host a variety of evening events that are fun. We take students all over the place, whether it's Washington DC, whether it's during the winter, to Massanutten, to Tube down the mountains. We have special days where kids get free food if they do certain kinds of things, and we have all sorts of special guests who come and we try to provide an atmosphere that really meets students' needs. That's tricky, I realize, and we just also have about, you know, for a small college, we also have lots and lots of clubs that are quite active and we strongly encourage students to be a member of at least two to five clubs that meet and have, you know, their own budgets to do things. So there is that, and again, we're lucky to be in a city that does have places to go on a Friday, saturday night. Some settings, some rural settings maybe, have less than we do, so we're thankful for that and we do provide.

Speaker 4: 45:17

Back to your second question, we provide designated drivers for our students who want to go off campus for a period of time, load them up in vans and cars, drop them off at 7.30, come back and pick them up at 10, because the last thing we want is for them to be driving their own cars consuming alcohol and then having to get back in their cars and come home. So that is an issue with us. You know, when I was president of a Mennonite college in Canada, the drinking age was 18. And so it was a different kind of thing. You could actually moderate and evaluate drinking on campus, and it was much more of a walkable campus or mass transit here with the drinking age 21,. We're not naive. We know students are drinking at earlier ages, and so we find A some divergent activities or B we meet them where they are, no questions asked. Get in, we're taking you downtown and we're going to pick you back up and bring you back home.

Speaker 1: 46:20

The second part was let's just use what's going on in the Middle East now, where college campuses and college presidents, quite frankly, are really struggling with this is the fact that your faith is so rooted in peace building and so forth. Does it alleviate that problem for you or does it make it more manageable?

Speaker 4: 46:37

It doesn't alleviate the challenge. Let me say this we had protests at EMU over Israel-Palestine, but they were peaceful protests. I met with students that was very much alive and well this spring is that many members of this group had actually been to Israel, to Palestine and Jordan, just last summer as part of their intercultural experience, which again is one of those required classes. So they had meals with Muslims, with Jews, with Christians. They were coming back with an enlightened view and also a large systemic view of the complexities of the violence in the Middle East. And so we worked with the students' administration, our board of trustees, and when we did make a reaffirmation of who we are as a peace and justice university and when we did make a statement on Israel-Palestine, it was rooted in the way in which Mennonites have always walked the walk in conflicted parts of the world.

Speaker 4: 47:54

Mcc, the Mennonite Central Committee, has been in Israel and Palestine since 1948. And their trusted emissaries, trusted peace builders, you know, on multiple sides of the conflict there. So we, in one sense, yes, we have responsible peace and justice protests and we have the maturity of students who are doing it again in a responsible, even prophetic way, which is grounded in, I think, biblical scripture. So, yes, we have protests, yes, we have activism. A very different kind of activism, a very different kind of protest. Thank you, Garthyn. A very different kind of protest, Thank you.

Speaker 3: 48:42

Garthyn. Dr Hochman, how do you see being a private institution of higher learning? You don't receive direct appropriations from the Commonwealth. But looking at opportunities down the road, do you see some emerging opportunities or capacity where EMU could perhaps do some things with well VCU that Brian mentioned earlier, or James Madison that kind of thing? I know that Averitt was successful I think a year or two ago in working with their local community college to a public entity, a private school like EMU. I'm just curious to get your take on maybe some opportunity there.

Speaker 4: 49:31

Yes, private colleges have their own struggles, and many of them are around finances, and that's because, quite frankly, the number one job of a private college president is fundraising. We don't get state subsidies, and so, you know, when we offer really good financial aid packages to students who are economically challenged, we do that because we have so many generous donors, foundations, who help us out. That was sort of another special thing that, when I was looking to whether I wanted to come here or not, I was just blown away at the percentage of alums who give back to EMU. We're on something called the Grateful Grad Index, meaning that our alums give back to EMU at twice the rate of other colleges and universities. That makes it a little bit easier. But when I came in 2017, it was the centennial and we raised more money in that year than in any of the previous years, partly because it was a centennial. And that continues to be an important goal for me to, you know, find ways to raise money for new projects and to make EMU affordable.

Speaker 4: 50:48

The second piece is very real. Partnerships are the coin of the realm right now. When you know years ago, brian, you'd recognize this too it used to always be. You know, publish or perish. Publish or perish right. And now the adage is partner or perish. I mean you have to partner, whether it's a consortia, a strategic alliance. Maybe it's a full-blown merger, maybe it's around particular programs and we are exploring and have been exploring those.

Speaker 4: 51:18

We have some partnerships with other Mennonite colleges in the US and Canada around particular programs. We have a collaborative MBA which is offered. That degree is offered by all four Mennonite universities, four of the six Mennonite universities. We have that with sociology. We have worked very hard at a great pipeline between Blue Ridge Community College and EMU, particularly in nursing, and so that's a partnership that we're working with there for sure. But yes to the VCU and EMU partnership. That's particularly exciting because of the urban-rural connection. And yes, we teach the whole students the applied liberal arts and we think we give them the right kinds of foundational character skills to go on and really excel in the more specialized technical world of a VCU, whether that's pharmaceutical engineering or some other kind of area. So we need to ramp up those additional kinds of connections.

Speaker 1: 52:29

Well, thank you.

Speaker 4: 52:29

Go ahead, make that our bit.

Speaker 1: 52:31

Yeah, we're going to wrap up, so I'm going to ask my last question and then we'll go to Carth and then we'll turn the floor over to you. This doesn't have to be with EMU. You've been a college president a couple of places. Go back in time to when you were first college president. What were you prepared?

Speaker 4: 52:47

for? And what weren't you prepared for? Well, you don't know what, you don't know right. And you know I had served in administration before, as department chair, as a dean, as a graduate dean, a dean as a graduate dean, and so I was prepared for the academic side of things. I think I was prepared to know what the joys and concerns of faculty are. I had done some fundraising at Wichita State for a number of years, because we were an endowed school of communication and I had a 12-month appointment and had certain fundraising targets no-transcript.

Speaker 4: 53:48

So they're incredibly complex. So that's, you know, just learning the complexities of a university and then how they interface with the wider church, with government, with community, with business, with industry. So it's constantly learning. I mean, you know, that part has been really good and recognizing that. You know, one of the most important things that you can do in navigating these complexities and challenges is, you know, surround yourself with really really good people, and I feel blessed that I've had a president's cabinet, particularly here, that are, again, in my view, second to none and that helps tremendously.

Speaker 4: 54:30

No president can do this alone. It does take a team. I grew up in sports and I often think about leadership, as I played point guard at a pretty successful high school in Newton, Kansas and, of course, the primary statistic for a point guard is assists. I played before there was a three-point line and I played before there was a women's ball. So, even though I scored, my main stat was assists and that's really what you do's really what you do as as a president. You're assisting students, you're assisting faculty, you're assisting partners, you're assisting donors and alumni. You know, feel, feel like they're part of the team.

Speaker 1: 55:13

Thank you very much, Carlton.

Speaker 3: 55:16

In the next five years. If you had a crystal ball, where would you like to see In the next five years? If you had a crystal ball, where would you like to see? Where would you want EMU to be? Are there some flagship majors that you're considering down the road and where you want to see? As far as enrollment, is it a place where you want to keep the number of students that are both undergrad and graduate, or do you want to expand that and grow of?

Speaker 4: 55:40

students that are both undergrad and graduate, or do you want to expand that and grow? Well, we need to grow, and it's not just growth for the sake of growth. The more students we can attract, the more opportunities we can give them. We are blessed in the sense that in addition to the main campus, carthen, which is of course in Harrisonburg, we have an instructional site in Washington DC and we have an instructional site in Lancaster, pennsylvania. The one in Lancaster has even more applied areas, like aviation and like a CNA program, which is a clinical nurse assistant, which is a growing area of the nursing field. So we would like to continue to grow our offerings, grow our students.

Speaker 4: 56:29

We're known around the world, actually, for a different acronym than EMU and it's called CJP, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. When I left Ontario for this job, I shared with my peacebuilding friends in Toronto that I was going to be the next president of EMU and they kind of looked at me and where's that? I said, well, you know, emu, it's where CJP is housed. And they said, oh, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. I didn't know that was housed at EMU.

Speaker 4: 57:02

So anyway, around the world, and certainly in Canada and other places, we are known for this enterprising graduate program that just puts out some of the best peace leaders for countries everywhere. We'd like to leverage that strength and make it even more accessible for undergraduates who are coming to EMU. Not that everybody has to you know, major or take a course in peace building, but greater exposure to how whether you're going to be a doctor or a nurse or a school teacher or a social worker how so many of the new and well-researched discoveries in trauma and resilience and restorative justice and mediation, how those can help in any field. And so that would be an answer. You know, always learn to leverage your strengths. It's an easier way to grow, and that's really what we're planning to do.

Speaker 3: 58:01

Thank you so much. It's been a delight to grow Right, and that's really what we're planning to do.

Speaker 4: 58:05

Thank you so much. It's been a delight to be with you this morning. Thank you so much, Carthen and Brian. Thank you, Dr Clark. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 1: 58:09

Yeah, thank you. Thank our listeners for joining us today on the Virginians of Interest podcast, If you like what you heard today please download, subscribe and like us.

Speaker 2: 58:18

Thank you for listening to the Virginians of Interest podcast. To hear other episodes of this podcast, head to virginiansofinterestcom.