Cathy Ackerman: Welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy, a podcast by Ackerman Marketing and PR featuring business and community leaders throughout Tennessee talking about issues and trends of importance to our state and beyond. And sharing some of their best sweet tea recipes and tea sipping stories. I’m Kathy Ackerman and I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Donde Plowman, Chancellor of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, as our guest today on Sweet Tea and Strategy.
Donde Plowman: Cathy, thank you for inviting me. I’m happy to be here.
Cathy Ackerman: You’re so welcome. We’re excited about talking to you. And we’re excited obviously about hearing your plans and priorities for the university’s flagship campus here in Knoxville. But before we dig into that, let’s talk a little bit about sweet tea.
Donde Plowman: Okay.
Cathy Ackerman: And first of all, are you even a fan of sweet tea? Do you like it?
Donde Plowman: Well, first of all, I’m a big tea drinker. I don’t drink coffee. So this is hot tea. But I have not been drinking sweet tea. Now, since I’ve moved back here...
Cathy Ackerman: Yes, yes.
Donde Plowman: ...I’m adapting.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: And my new favorite drink is unsweetened tea and lemonade. And I know that’s called an Arnold...
Cathy Ackerman: An Arnold Palmer, that’s right.
Donde Plowman: An Arnold Palmer. I feel that’s—I’m easing into sweet tea.
Cathy Ackerman: There you go. Sounds like a great transition.
Donde Plowman: And I love it.
Cathy Ackerman: Okay, very good. So let’s move on and talk about your relatively new role here as the University of Tennessee Chancellor at Knoxville—a large job, to say the very least.
Donde Plowman: Yes, it is big. But I’m excited to be here.
Cathy Ackerman: Looking at the numbers first, by the numbers if you will, how large is the student enrollment?
Donde Plowman: So we’re over 29,000 students. That makes us a large university. 23,000 of those are undergraduates.
Cathy Ackerman: Right. And what is your annual budget on this campus?
Donde Plowman: Our annual budget is bigger than you really want to know.
Cathy Ackerman: "Huge" would be the answer to that question.
Donde Plowman: Yeah, it is very large.
Cathy Ackerman: So you have been here now for five months or so?
Donde Plowman: That’s right.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes. And you’ve made it a point, I think, to be really accessible both on and off campus. So what are you learning?
Donde Plowman: So I have been listening. I’m trying to be patient and not jump in and start doing things until I’ve really gotten to get a feel for the place.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: And I’m doing it in different ways. I’ve been across the state, various communities, I’ve met with legislators—85 of them, in fact. And I’m holding office hours here on campus. So every Tuesday I’m doing once an afternoon. I’ll be over there at four. Anyone can walk in...
Donde Plowman: ...talk to me about whatever they...
Cathy Ackerman: So literally anyone? Someone from the community could walk in.
Donde Plowman: It’s so—yes, anyone. And it’s just been fascinating to know. And a lot of people don’t have problems they want me to solve, although some do. Um, they just want me to know who they are, what department they come from...
Cathy Ackerman: Yeah.
Donde Plowman: ...their dreams, or things that have gone wrong that they hope we can fix. And that’s been just a delightful surprise.
Cathy Ackerman: I bet.
Cathy Ackerman: And they’re so open?
Donde Plowman: Yeah, they are. They walk in. Some of them say, "I just want to know if you’re really in here. Are you really doing this?"
Cathy Ackerman: Is this office hours thing real? Yes, yes.
Donde Plowman: But you know what? We have solved some problems through that.
Cathy Ackerman: That’s great.
Donde Plowman: And I’ll be eager to announce some new policy changes that are a result of...
Cathy Ackerman: ...of listening. Yeah.
Donde Plowman: Yeah.
Cathy Ackerman: That’s great. That’s great. So what is the most different here now than when you were here, what, ten years ago?
Donde Plowman: Right. I left here actually a little over nine years ago. And the first thing is just the stunning physical transformation that’s occurred.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: When I came back, I almost—I couldn’t recognize it, almost. It’s not just the beautiful new buildings—and there are many of them, over a billion dollars' worth in construction while I was gone.
Cathy Ackerman: Well there are always construction cranes.
Donde Plowman: Yeah, and there’s about a billion dollars' worth ongoing right now. Um, but the greenery, the trees, the shrubs, the beautiful landscaping—this is a beautiful campus.
Cathy Ackerman: It’s a lot softer looking now.
Donde Plowman: Yes! It’s a place that you’d want your kids to go to college here.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: Because it’s beautiful. It feels like a college. So that—that is one thing. And I think the other thing is just the tremendous aspirations that the faculty and staff and students have here. But the faculty especially. They want this place to—they want the world to know about this place. They want to do good work and have people recognize it. So that’s exciting. There’s a lot to build on.
Cathy Ackerman: Absolutely. So the University of Tennessee Knoxville is a land-grant institution. I think a lot of people don’t know exactly what that means, why that’s significant.
Donde Plowman: You’re right. And I love talking about it. Because one of the things I noticed when I was here before—I was on the faculty from 2007 to 2010—I never really heard people talk about it very much.
Donde Plowman: And I think partly that was because UTIA was a separate campus, the Institute for Ag, and they were the land-grant, and I don’t think sometimes the rest of us thought about it very much.
Donde Plowman: But you know, President Lincoln is responsible for the land-grant university. And he did many great things for our country that had to do with higher education and—and better life. But the Morrill Act created universities that were for kind of the regular people.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: So it was more than just the children of the elite that got college degrees.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: So we’re about access. And what Lincoln wanted was curriculum that had to do with kind of regular things.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: So it introduced agriculture and industrial arts—we call that business. Um, technical work—that’s engineering.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: And the research those faculty did actually helped people. So farmers can grow more in their acreage because of what we learned about crop rotation. That kind of thing.
Cathy Ackerman: So practical realities of life.
Donde Plowman: Exactly. And the other thing that I love about it is it—we’re about access. So as Randy Boyd loves to say—and you probably said on your show—we’re never going to brag on the high percentage of students we excluded in our application process. We’re about how many we can include.
Cathy Ackerman: Right. Right.
Cathy Ackerman: That’s wonderful.
Donde Plowman: So I think who can disagree with that? And that’s who we are and so I’m really trying to kind of drill down on that.
Cathy Ackerman: So we’ve carried that legacy forward.
Donde Plowman: Yes.
Cathy Ackerman: Even as we’ve added very sophisticated majors and curriculum.
Donde Plowman: Absolutely. And if you look at right now what’s going on, the—Randy Boyd had so much to do with this—the UT Promise scholarship.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: So it’s now true—and I don’t think nearly enough people know it, although Randy’s been all over the state talking about it—if you come from a household income of less than $50,000 a year...
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: ...if you meet our requirements you can come here and not pay tuition and fees.
Cathy Ackerman: Oh!
Donde Plowman: I don’t know of a state in—in this country that has a system doing that. That’s just Tennessee.
Cathy Ackerman: That’s pretty amazing.
Donde Plowman: And it’s wonderful. So I’m proud of that.
Cathy Ackerman: So in addition to chanting "Go Vols" and cheering for our sports teams and wearing orange, what does being a volunteer really mean to you? And what should it mean to the rest of the university?
Donde Plowman: Well you know, I’ve really been talking a lot about that because when I left Nebraska—this is a true story—people said to me, first they talked about the color orange.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: And then they said, "So why do they call themselves a volunteer? What is that?"
Donde Plowman: And I was kind of shocked, taken back that they didn’t know the history.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: And so I like to talk about that history. And—and I laughingly say, you know, what does it mean to be a Gator or a Dawg?
Donde Plowman: You know, I kind of joke and say nothing in certain crowds.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: Um, but to be a volunteer really means something. And so I would like it to be true that when a student graduates from here—let's say they’re traveling in Europe before they start their job—someone sees their Power T and goes, "Oh, you’re a volunteer. What did you do? What was your project that you tried to make the world better?"
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Cathy Ackerman: That made you a volunteer.
Donde Plowman: Yes! That’s wonderful. So I really—we’re going to be doing a visioning process this spring and I want us to figure out how to really make sure that every student has a volunteer experience. Not just the student leaders who show up to volunteer on weekends. But everybody.
Cathy Ackerman: So what will that visioning process look like?
Donde Plowman: Well we’ve got—we’ve got some—a couple of consultants from higher education who’ve done a lot, know what’s going on in the landscape. They’re going to work with us. And we’re going to have a steering committee and then a larger committee that represents the whole campus. To start flushing out who do we want to be.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And more than just metrics. Metrics are an important way to measure whether you’re getting there. But who are we? How do we want to set the place on fire? And so we’re going to work all through the spring semester. It’ll be co-led by David Manderscheid, the Provost, is going to be one of the chairs of it. And faculty, staff, and students to come together and stakeholders, external stakeholders.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: So let's—we’ve got a clean slate and we’re starting again.
Cathy Ackerman: What can the community do to be helpful in that process?
Donde Plowman: Well I’ll tell you what I hope—A: we’re going to ask some community people to be involved. But once we get a draft of what this vision is, we’re going to be floating it everywhere. So I’ll be asking members of the community to come together, give us your feedback. Um, if what I—if we really double down on this volunteer experience, we’re going to need the community to help us do that. We need projects. We need opportunities for, you know, we’ve got 29,000 students here. So how are we going to do that?
Cathy Ackerman: Exactly. Exactly. So what are your most important and critical priorities over the next couple of years? When you look back two years from now, what do you hope you’ve accomplished that meets those overarching goals?
Donde Plowman: I think any new leader needs to get their team in place. And that’s part of being patient, you know, is—just and my team in place, I’ve got a great team. We’re already making a change because our vice chancellor for research was interim. So that’s an opportunity to—to mold. And—and help everybody get on the same page about—we just had a retreat last night. How do we help the campus be proactive rather than reactive? What does that mean?
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: We feel like we’re too reactive. So—so if we were doing that—so getting the leadership team kind of together in a mindset. And then I think getting this visioning process complete, that’s really important. And trying to build a culture where every—everyone feels like there’s a place for them here.
Donde Plowman: Um, and that’s really important to me. I talked in the investiture about having the courage to care about one another. And I want this to be a place where that’s true about us.
Cathy Ackerman: And your speech was right on.
Donde Plowman: Oh, thank you.
Cathy Ackerman: It was so good.
Donde Plowman: Oh, I had so much fun.
Cathy Ackerman: I could tell you did.
Donde Plowman: I had a team helping me and then delivering it and I—I was telling the team that helped me: I just want to be in the moment when I do this. Because sometimes when big things happen—in like a wedding or something...
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: ...you’re too stressed out, you don’t remember anything.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: So don’t do that. We didn’t do that. But I was in the moment. And it was just wonderful. And I’m really thrilled about the response I’ve gotten to it. It gives people some foundation, some language.
Cathy Ackerman: Well, and people want to know you. They want to know who you are, what you’re about and what you’re planning to do. And I think you gave glimpses of that.
Donde Plowman: Well, I hope so. Because to trust somebody you’ve got to kind of know them. But how can a—a leader’s never going to know 29,000 people.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: But they need to feel like they sort of know you.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes. What’s the most intimidating thing about this job?
Donde Plowman: I think the most intimidating thing is what’s going on in our country right now that’s playing out on college campuses.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And you ask any college president and there—you know, you just—you just hope that there’s no big crisis tomorrow that you’re unprepared for. We’re just going through a difficult time in our society. And the first place you see it is on college campuses. Um, so I think that’s—that’s the thing that would—somebody asked me what keeps you up at night—well nothing really, I’m sleeping really well. But if there was anything, it would be that. You know, and that’s why I’m really trying to emphasize: let’s be a place where civil discourse is how we do everything.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: And where kindness and caring describes us. If we do that, we can figure the other stuff out, the issues.
Cathy Ackerman: So what are some of the trends in higher education across the country that you’re seeing?
Donde Plowman: So the biggest that’s got everyone nervous is there’s been a sharp decrease in the birth rate that started after 2008. After the big crash.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: And that is going to play out on college campuses in 2025. Those kids will be 18.
Donde Plowman: And it’s big. And it’s going to hit almost every state in the country. And it’s even more severe among the typical profile of people that send their kids to college.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: So affluent, upscale, highly educated families are having way less children.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And so we’re going to have to look to other places to find students to come to school. So we’re all chasing each other’s citizens.
Cathy Ackerman: Right, right. That population is decreased.
Donde Plowman: Yeah. So we’re going to need to look at different sources of students. We’re going to need to—there’s great opportunities among, um, people of lower income.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: They have not—they don’t send their kids to college like affluent folks. So—so there’s some big changes coming to all universities and colleges.
Cathy Ackerman: And I guess when you marry that up with the opportunity that we now have here in Tennessee to receive a free college education?
Donde Plowman: That’s why I think we are exceptionally well-poised to deal with it. I really do. And the other thing that’s happening right now in Tennessee—this fall one third of our entering freshman class are from out of state. And I just went to an orientation last week for transfer students. Same thing was true.
Cathy Ackerman: Interesting.
Donde Plowman: I asked them to stand up: "Where are you from?" And you name—you name the state, there they—that was where they were from.
Cathy Ackerman: Why do you think that’s happening?
Donde Plowman: Well, I’d love to say something is happening here and people are figuring it out.
Cathy Ackerman: People are noticing.
Donde Plowman: Uh, I do know that our recruitment folks have been working hard at that. You know, telling our story.
Donde Plowman: I think Tennessee’s been a little, I don’t know if you’d call it "Appalachian-shy"...
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: ...um, but we’ve got a great story to tell. We’ve started telling it, we’re going to get better at it. So I expect that to continue.
Cathy Ackerman: And I think that you’re getting better at packaging that story. Not only telling it, but figuring out what to tell that matters to the audience that you’re telling it to?
Donde Plowman: I think that’s right. And we’ve got tired of seeing kids leave the state and go to Alabama.
Cathy Ackerman: There you go! Let’s be honest about it.
Donde Plowman: So we’re going to—we try to stop that.
Cathy Ackerman: So what worries you and excites you the most about higher education?
Donde Plowman: Um, what worries me is that there’s a lot—a lot of the public that have lost trust in higher ed.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And that makes me sad. Because higher education, college is where kids grow up. It’s where they start to figure out where they might fit in the world...
Cathy Ackerman: ...and who they are.
Donde Plowman: ...and who they are. Honestly, it’s less about what they major in than the kind of person they become.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: So if their—if parents are losing confidence in the institutions that enable that, that—we’ve got to work on that. So that worries me. We’ve got to regain that trust, which I think we can. Um, and that’s not aimed at University of Tennessee, that’s just higher ed in general.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: What excites me is that I think that higher ed is the place...
Donde Plowman: ...first of all, education is the key to the growing economic divide. So if we do our job and educate more kids, we’re going to help that big problem in society. I heard Governor Haslam talk about that not long ago, that’s the biggest problem we face in Tennessee and in this country. So education’s really the—the path through that.
Donde Plowman: So that excites me. And—and I think Tennessee has a unique opportunity. I think young people, they value experiences, so I think this idea about truly making the volunteer experience compelling—that’ll attract kids from lots of places.
Cathy Ackerman: So what is the very best advice that you would give to an incoming student, an incoming freshman?
Donde Plowman: Go to class.
Cathy Ackerman: That’s what I tell my children.
Donde Plowman: "Study."
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Donde Plowman: And the other thing is: experience the fullness of what’s here. I—I watch some students come through college and they’re just showing up at everything and trying this and trying that in terms of interests. There’s—there’s such an opportunity. And you don’t think about it—you’re only 18 years old and you think, "Oh, this is great." When you graduate, the world is really different.
Donde Plowman: I remember a friend—a young guy I worked with in Nebraska who—who helped me fundraise and he said: "When I got out of school, I looked around. I got a job and everyone was in their 40s," which seemed old. We know what we’re talking about.
Donde Plowman: Um, you know, you’re around young people who share the same interests as you. You know, take advantage.
Cathy Ackerman: Unique time in life.
Donde Plowman: It is! So learn from each other. Get to know people who are different from you, from a different state or country. You’ll never get that chance again.
Cathy Ackerman: I’ve loved hearing you talk about leadership as being, quote, "the courage to act." Talk about that a little bit. What does that mean exactly to you?
Donde Plowman: Well you know, I have taught leadership. I’ve written about it. I’ve had the fortune to be in a number of leadership roles. And what I constantly see is people talk a lot about what to do, they don’t do that much.
Donde Plowman: So it’s just simply the willingness to step forward and have an idea. Express yourself. Do something. If you see someone mistreating someone, step up and say something about it.
Donde Plowman: And when you talk about leadership that way, I’ve always found that everyone—people respond to that by saying, "Well I can do that." And actually organizations need leadership throughout the organization. So it’s not just the person at the top, the big office, the—you know.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: It is people who are willing to tell the boss, "I think there’s a mistake on this."
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: You know, that makes us better. But somehow we get into organizations and people are fearful. So to me that’s what I—I want us to do here.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And it so fits—I’ve said it long before I came to Tennessee—the willingness to act. Well here, being a volunteer, that’s what it means: is to serve, to lead, to act. So I kind of feel like I’m well aligned with this place right now.
Cathy Ackerman: So UT is celebrating its 225th year as a university this year, making it older than the state of Tennessee itself. Think about this! So what does that future hold?
Donde Plowman: Well so I—I constantly say to people: the people in this region have delivered on this promise for longer than our state.
Cathy Ackerman: Right.
Donde Plowman: That says something. You know, and what Randy Boyd and I—Randy says all the time: we want the next decade to be the best—best decade. It’s hard to think about 225 more years. But we want to put a stake in the ground right now that says we’re going to make this place the best beyond what it could have imagined over the next decade.
Donde Plowman: So let's build on what others—I stand on the shoulders of other people—this beautiful campus. Now let’s take advantage of some of the opportunities that are in front of us and make this a place that the world knows about...
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: ...and wants to—wants to be like, wants to imitate.
Cathy Ackerman: Are we competitive in terms of recruiting top faculty, in your mind?
Donde Plowman: Yes we are.
Cathy Ackerman: Mm-hm.
Donde Plowman: And sometimes people in my position think kind of narrowly about: what makes you competitive? Are our salaries competitive? Are our benefits? Yes, we’re fine there. What we haven’t sold well enough is the Smokies, the river...
Cathy Ackerman: Our quality of life!
Donde Plowman: ...our quality of life.
Donde Plowman: The Oak Ridge corridor. That is huge for anyone who wants to come here and be a faculty member in any number of disciplines in the STEM areas. The idea that they could work close to that, go to the lab, work with people there—that’s a big draw.
Cathy Ackerman: Are there collaborations going on currently between this campus and Oak Ridge National Laboratory that it would be interesting for people to hear about?
Donde Plowman: There are. Faculty, especially in engineering and the sciences, are working through a number of—we have four or five different centers. Um, we have a program called the Bredesen Center where PhD students get a—a doctorate in kind of an interdisciplinary degree of the sciences and work at the lab.
Donde Plowman: I ran into a sophomore, young woman who I was—I was intrigued in talking to her because she’s in computer science. I’m saying: "How do we get more women in computer science?" She said: "I’m getting to have an internship at the lab this—this semester. I’m so excited."
Donde Plowman: Those are all possibilities that other universities can’t offer.
Cathy Ackerman: True.
Donde Plowman: So that makes us really attractive. And we’ve just got to go sell that and talk about it.
Cathy Ackerman: Once again, we need to package and communicate that, right? Exactly. Donde, thank you so much for being with us on Sweet Tea and Strategy and for sharing your thoughts and goals with us. We wish you so much success as you assume this important leadership role at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Donde Plowman: Thank you. I—I’m honored to be here. It’s a big responsibility, but I wake up every day eager to get to work and to be among all these people who love this place so much. That’s a true asset. So thank you.
Cathy Ackerman: Well, your enthusiasm is contagious. And we appreciate you talking to us. Thank you so much.
Donde Plowman: Thank you.