“Change where you stand, and change what you see.”
Excavated and paraphrased from the manifesto of a 15th-century Italian Renaissance painter, these are words that Hilary Link, president of Drew University, has stood by throughout her 24 years as a scholar and administrator across five institutions and two countries.
President Link had a “foot in two worlds” during her six years serving as the dean of Temple University Rome, where she re-educated herself on Europe’s preeminent legal issues and the region’s specific social customs. This experience not only molded her professionally but also as a leader, thinker and mother: Link raised three children while abroad.
Now past the one-year mark at Drew, the “bi-cultural” scholar feels secure enough to plunge into the messiness of today’s higher education landscape. Whether spearheading growth opportunities as traditional structures collide with the digital age, or helping sow harmony between clashing students, Link carries those centuries-old words with her as they continue to prove their merit.
“In my first six to 12 months and my ongoing quest, I’m trying to understand what opportunities exist that have not yet been realized,” she says. “I think Drew is ripe for this kind of rethinking.”
Listen to how studying sense of depth in paintings exploded into Link’s life mantra:
Thinking ‘backward’ in strategic planning
When Link took the time to visit every faculty member’s office at Drew, one person commented that no president had done that in their 27 years at the university. But the act was more than a kind gesture.
In her “backward design” model, Link crafts her strategic plan by engaging with campus stakeholders, dissecting the building blocks of a university’s governance structure, and ingratiating herself with the region’s employers. Northern New Jersey is known for its density of Fortune 500 companies. Rooting herself in past wisdom is how she builds her poise in attacking the future.
“We look at our history. We look to our values. We look to our roots,” the president says. “But then we say, ‘Okay, what does that look like in the 21st century and beyond?’ History can be a model, and it can repeat itself.”
The ‘intellectual discomfort’ of civil dialogue
Link is thinking deeply about the potential for campus clashes this fall semester regarding the metastasizing conflict in the Middle East and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Like many presidents of private liberal arts colleges, Link is working with faculty on curating a space where students feel safe and comfortable to exchange potentially contentious dialogue. “How we can put our foot into the realm of intellectual discomfort? That’s always been a huge part of who I am as a thinker and a leader.”
Echoing the virtues of the Renaissance Man, Link reinforces her students to approach life with “multiple lenses” to better inform how they problem-solve. “Different perspectives better inform how you think, how you argue and who you’re going to become,” she says.
Link joined in April the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, a consortium of 61 colleges and universities dedicated to upholding democratic discourse by equipping students with the tools they need to engage in difficult conversations. She’s also encouraging faculty to model what civil disagreement looks like through a series of programs and conversations organized by faculty.
“That’s been my big ask, but we need to show our students who don’t always have the tools to know how to engage,” Link says.
How Link’s experience in Rome taught her to balance intellectual discomfort
Adapting higher ed to the 21st century
“I’m as guilty of this as anyone,” Link says.
“When you are in something, and you do it every day, and it’s what you’ve done for a very long time, it is so hard to step out of your current reality and do something radically differently.”
As someone who’s studied history, Link has likened the sage professor of the Middle Ages to today’s faculty members commanding a lecture hall. Case in point: Higher education has been slow to adapt to tech-driven, rapidly changing consumer demands compared to other industries. As a result, Link has delighted in the concept of dual transformation, which posits that disruptive change can proliferate more innovatively outside of the university than within. Western Governors University’s WGU Labs and Southern New Hampshire University’s Rethink Education are some of Link’s muses.
“We have to step back and ask ourselves whether it’s about earning 120 credits and getting a bachelor’s degree, or giving students—young people and those throughout their lives—an opportunity to develop those skills and embody those values,” Link says. “That doesn’t mean that you’re moving away from educating people to achieve those values and skills.”
How can colleges and universities offer the same high-quality, experiential and rigorous education in a completely different format? A new initiative? Galileo, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci never finished a formal university degree, Link quips.
But she concedes it may be wishful thinking to usher in a dramatic wave of change after only a year as Drew’s president. As for now, she’s focusing on shifting to hybrid learning models to help students “do their learning in their own way.”
