When David Eisler was named president of Ferris State University in July 2003, he knew that people would have to get “comfortable” with him.
His 30-year career path to the presidency was fairly traditional. Eisler began as a faculty member who rose to assistant dean at one university, then dean at another before taking the provost spot at Weber State University in 1996.
Pretty good for a clarinetist. Eisler earned his masters degree summa cum laude from Yale and his doctorate with highest distinction from the University of Michigan. Both degrees are for music. Moreover, his fine-arts path to the presidency included no formal training in academic administration.
“People needed to become comfortable with a musician,” Eisler remarks, even though his successful record is testimony to innate organizational and administrative skills. “One’s academic discipline becomes less important with the interactions you have, certainly as a provost. Still, as a musician you work to be a perfectionist. But as a provost or college president, you have to work with what you get.”
Works both ways
The search committee and the board got comfortable enough with their unconventional choice, and Eisler hit the ground running. On his to-do list were building new quarters for Ferris’ school of optometry, revising the summer school semester to increase revenues, joining the budget-cut battle with the state legislature, as well as championing a plan he developed called the Michigan Technology Initiative to bring jobs to Michigan and retain them.
But Eisler knew he needed a better understanding of what made Ferris State tick, a school with a very small music program but very big on hands-on applied technology. Its technical degree offerings are unique and greater in number than any other institution in the state. For example, Ferris has one of the few four-year degrees in plastics engineering, not to mention a professional golf major.
“It has to do with how you walk into a new environment,” Eisler says. “I know people who have struggled for years because they said upon arrival, ‘Now, this is the way it’s going to be.’”
Instead, in the fall of 2003, he began meeting with his various constituencies. To date, Eisler has held 63 hour-plus meetings with 1,100 individuals, including 440 faculty, 600 staff and more than 100 students, with more to come. How he orchestrates the meetings is an unconventional lesson in itself.
How to get comfortable
The meetings were structured into small groups, organized around how long a person had been on campus. He first spoke with those at Ferris the longest, then the least, and worked towards the center, looking to discover what others believed was important for the campus.
“I expected that those who had been at Ferris a similar amount of time would have similar concerns,” Eisler says, and he was correct. “The idea was to treat people as individuals and not get compartmentalized views.”
After introductions all around, the interviews began with a short survey of three questions. What three things do you like best about being at Ferris State? What are the school’s three biggest challenges? What would you do as president? At the end of the session a photo was taken of the group with Eisler, which was published on the school’s website.
Then, out came the butcher paper, on which Eisler wrote the participants’ unattributed answers to one other question: “What are things that disappoint you about how Ferris treats you?” He didn’t comment, not even a nod, as people spoke.
Keep it moving
“I didn’t want to shut down the conversations,” realizing that most probably never had such a tete-a-tete with a president before. During the latter part of each meeting Eisler was often rewarded not only with their concerns, but with expansions on why they really liked being at Ferris. During any problem-airing exercise, he didn’t collect what they liked, and he remains close-mouthed about the personal concerns.
“About 80% of the concerns were things that stopped people from doing their job,” he reveals. In general, he says, faculty and staff had budget concerns, students were concerned about parking spaces. Most exhibited pride in the university and concerns about its future.
But it’s clear he got more than he bargained for, first in the form of seven or eight sheets of butcher paper from each meeting. Since he wanted an institution-wide perspective, he didn’t review specific comments right away. Once Eisler sat down with all the collected transcripts, he began rewriting the comments, hoping to condense the responses.
“I wasted about 20 hours going down that road,” Eisler admits. “It lost the flavor of the comments.” Finally, he organized them into four categories – Cherish, Challenges, Advice and Concerns. The result is a rather bulky document that maintains the context and meaning. The faculty comments run about 80 pages. Staff comments total about 100 pages, with about 40 pages so far from students. Meetings are ongoing.
The results
Eisler feels he wound up with a better understanding of the programs and the people. He also found the meetings an excellent way to directly connect with the history of the institution.
“It’s been an extraordinary experience, something I really enjoyed,” Eisler says. “I don’t think I understood just how much I would learn. I have to find a way to continue this next year.” Meanwhile, he’s looking for ways to go on-line with alumni in the Fall.
“People shared things with me that I would never have shared with a president,” Eisler says. “They were much more revealing than I would have been.” Confident of the results, Eisler prepared a vision statement with input from his leadership team. The document was presented to the campus community in April.
“Our first focus is our need to work together,” Eisler says, knowing from the interviews that not all that has been accomplished at Ferris has been done in a cohesive manner. Also stressed is the need to create a unique learning institution, focused on careers through the “connective force” of state-of-the-art learning techniques and assessment. “And we must become an ‘engaged campus,’ with better ways to connect what happens inside the classroom with what happens outside the classroom on campus.”
Moving ahead
The process will culminate later this year in a three-year strategic implementation plan. He has also changed some of his own plans – the Michigan Technology Initiative for one, now dubbed the Michigan Careers Initiative.
Necessity is one driver. More than 2,700 people have been put out of work by the closing of an Electrolux plant in a nearby town, with another 400 idled by companies that supplied Electrolux. Another 800 jobs disappeared when Johnson Controls moved out of a town two hours distant from the campus. Eisler has begun building collaborations with businesses and other educational institutions one step at a time.
“The initiative is now a working document. Part of the process is doing this survey,” Eisler says. “We’ll coalesce our efforts around that and let the initiative develop externally and internally. Essentially, we’re taking our campus conversations off-campus.”
Which, he adds, should help everyone get “comfortable” with the idea.