Dr. Catherine Rowe (3:47)

Kevin, thank you so much for being here. We got to come back to Forbes in a second. All right. Because it's the. It's the second half of that list that I love most. I would say that not any university would have grabbed me. This university is truly different. Yes, I am a teacher and I am a scholar, and I've loved those parts of my career. They apply incredibly well here. At William Mary, I'm also an entrepreneur. So I spent about 10 years with a partner leading a small startup technology startup around educational materials. And it did not take off like a rocket ship. So we quietly, after 10 years, put it to bed. But in the process, I learned how to run every part of a business. I learned how to think about markets and what's changing. I had the most exciting time working with the new technologies. In this case, it was iOS to make the materials that I care about as a Shakespeare scholar more accessible to many more people. And William and Mary is an institution that embraces innovation that way. We're 332 years old. And by the way, we are the first university, even if we are the second college. But 332 years of evolution, responding to two pandemics, multiple wars. We have succeeded in evolving by meeting our moment. Whether it's founding the first law school for citizen lawyers will be needed in the new republic, or most recently, founding a school of computing, data sciences and physics that's dedicated to thinking about the human applications of AI. So those qualities of constancy towards our values and our vision of a citizen and evolution in the context of the world we live now. That's why we call ourselves the alma mater of the nation. Thinking big is what William Mary does indeed.

Kevin Gentry (5:54)

Well, thank you very much. Of course, I'm a little biased by having you today because I'm a 1986 graduate of the of William and Mary, met my wife There. Our daughter recently graduated from there. And as a school teacher, as a result of getting a master's in education as well as it's very important in our lives. I have my Wave and Mary cap, but I don't put it on because I don't look very good in baseball caps. But it's really great to have you as a part of this. And you're right. Alma mater of a nation, many of the nation's founders, Thomas Jefferson, certainly the most important of them, but so many in the beginning days. But now here we are in 2025, a totally new world, changing every year, every day almost. And the fact that you're continually staying rooted in those traditions, but embracing a changing world in the way that you are, even to the point that you started in your role just before the pandemic, which was crazy. And I want to touch on that. But here's the first going big question. When you started all this, when did you sort of think, okay, I want to go bold and really think about things in a big, bold, different way? Because that's. That's really, I think, the trademark of what you're bringing to the. To William and Mary in terms of your leadership.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (7:14)

So it was a moment in the search process where I discovered that the campaign at the time that I was going to be stepping into in its final years was called for the Bold. And bold is a word I love. It is a word of opportunity, discovery, something that I think about all the time. We are educating the problem solvers and leaders of tomorrow, the ones who are going to solve challenges in the future with the toolkits we give them now, not the challenges of today. And it was that reach and vision of educating tomorrow's leaders that was so important to me. When I think about what it means to be bold, it's always a practice of matching strengths with moments of urgency. So I think of that in terms of identifying strengths using classic SWOT analyses and other kinds of tools, doubling down on the ones that match needs or moments in the larger culture. And I can play a couple of those out for you, but understanding the opportunity that the moment gives you for something that you're really, really good at, and then figuring out how to scale or reposition or restructure to seize that moment. Pandemic was kind of a powerful spur. One of the things we did, I think, you know, we reopened in person in August of 2020, which was completely bucking the dominant trend of what everybody.

Kevin Gentry (8:47)

It really was bucking the trend. And kudos to you for Doing that because I think now, as we look in hindsight, that was a critically important decision.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (8:55)

It was a scary thing to do. My board was extraordinary in backing me. So were the faculty and staff and other leaders here. It was an exercise in that entrepreneur's question, how might we. But it started with understanding what our students needed. That moment of urgency had to do with loneliness and the extraordinary difficulty of learning in isolation. And I remember it, it was April of 2020. I was on zoom with one of my president's aides, talking with them about how it was. She was a senior finishing the semester at home online. And I remember her her really vividly. She said, president Rose, the challenge is not finishing the semester online. We know how to do that. The challenge is finishing the semester in quarantine. And I heard there the cost to human beings who are social learners, who believe deeply in community, as we do at William Mary in completing her college degree in isolation. It was that moment in April that I knew we were going to reopen. And I went back to the campus and said, students need this. We got to survey them. Overwhelmingly. They told us they wanted to be in college in person, not at home. So we said, how might we do it? And went forward.

Kevin Gentry (10:15)

Well, congratulations. And again, I think as we learn more and more now, painfully, we're seeing that isolation, all those consequences were just really drastic. And so thank you on behalf of so many for doing that. I love your emphasis on the word bold, and I want to dig into that a little bit more. So how do you go bold at a university that's more than 300 years old? I mean, 1693 was its founding. It can't be easy to go bold when you have it rooted in such long standing tradition.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (10:51)

Well, that's true, but I think there's a misapprehension that tradition means stasis. And what William Murray is awesome at is evolving our traditions, inventing new ones, reshaping them. So we think of Yule Log as a tradition that's been around forever, but it's really only about 40 years old at William and Mary, maybe a little bit longer. And it does hark back to medieval Yule Log traditions, but we invented it here and we keep reinventing it. I don't read the Grinch. I read a secret story that has been selected by the president's aides every year. So the constant evolution of traditions is one of the incredible joys of being here. That's one answer. The second is to really understand the values for which you're here. And I have a very express theory of change that I tell everyone here. We change in order to advance what we value. So during Pandemic when we reopened, the mantra over and over again was keep teaching, keep learning, keep making new knowledge so our students can keep on track to their degrees. He said it over and over again. I think everyone on campus during that period, if I said, what are we here for? They would say that back. They would say it to each other. That last part led to a comprehensive reorganization of career services and career development programs. 70 people around the campus came together and said, how do we keep our students not just on track to their degrees, but landing a good job at a time of incredible economic uncertainty? We rapidly became the number one public university for internships in the country, according to Princeton Review. And then fast forward to Forbes. It's 20 new Ivies that employers love. That's the part of that new Ivies that I really, really appreciate, that employers love. We're always looking towards that leap that our students are taking to their next gen destination after William and Mary.

Kevin Gentry (13:03)

Well, thanks for giving more clarity to the Forbes mention about it being a new Ivy. And ladies and gentlemen, if you're not familiar, check out that article. It's not very old, but it's a fascinating way to look at just again, the changing landscape and the opportunities in higher education. But you touched on. And by the way, I want to go back in a moment, ladies and gentlemen, explain what in the world the Yule Log is if you've never heard of that before, or even the reference to the Grinch who Stole Christmas. But we're going to park that aside just for a second. You mentioned you had a couple of examples. What's one initiative that you're especially proud of that's an example of just this sort of new bold thinking?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (13:44)

Well, in many ways, it's about recognizing what you're already really good at. I think the example I would give is VIMS and the Batten School. So vims, the Virginia Institute for Marine Science, was, when I got here, a hidden gem. And fast forward to six years later, seven years later, it's now the jewel in our crown. How did that happen? BIMS produces science for solutions to the most pressing issues that affect human beings on our coastlines. In Virginia, that's about 5 million. In the United States, that's about 128 million. And around the world, that's about 3.2 billion human beings. They study aquaculture. They turned around the oyster industry and kept that industry not just alive, but Rapidly expanding by protecting and rebuilding the oyster aquaculture in the Chesapeake Bay. They do the same for sea level rise. They have the EPA's number one flood modeling in the country. What they do is solve real world problems that are pressing to people now using the science that they have for marine studies.

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Dr. Catherine Rowe (16:01)

We recognize that, I recognize that it's been, it's out on Gloucester Point. It's never been seen really as a full school of William and Mary. And then with an extraordinary partner, Jane Batten built the first undergraduate major just last year in coastal and marine sciences. We again we surveyed students and about 400 said we'd be really interested in a bachelor's degree in this field. Up till this point in VIMS's 50 plus year history, we'd never had a bachelor's degree. So with her extraordinary partnership and a gift of 100 million, we've launched that bachelor's degree. We've reopened as a new school, the Batten School. Five years ago, nobody truly understood how important it was going to be to steward the resources of our coastline, to manage water, desalination, flooding, drought. But now it's in every newspaper story how important that resource of water is to every community, every economy. And VIMS was already there. That's how you get from a hidden jewel, a real strength, to a jewel and a crown that meets a moment.

Kevin Gentry (17:13)

Well, that's a great example of again taking something that you said the assets of the traditions of the history and looking at ways to focus on the relevance of real world problems and adapting to that. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not familiar, William, Mary is in Williamsburg, Virginia, you know, the sort of cradle of democracy in the United States, especially as we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, and there's that massive Chesapeake Bay right around it and the Virginia Institute for Marine Sciences. That's a great point, President Rowe. I'd forgotten about, of course, the oyster industry, for which the bay was probably most known, was decimated by disease, and really, people thought it was just gone forever. So those kinds of innovations that make it relevant to solve real world problems. What a terrific illustration. All right, so if you're an oyster.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (18:08)

Fan like I am, I love oysters. And if you're on the east coast, you are likely eating a virginicus oyster that vims helped spawn. So up and down the east coast, we turned around that industry. I feel I was gifted by an uncle who is a marine biologist to recognize what an extraordinary powerhouse that research institute is. And I had the habit of scanning for what's most urgent, what's most pressing. I just do that as a president, but also always did that as a scholar. The question is always, what are the most important unanswered questions? And with that kind of curiosity, you can very quickly match a strength of your organization with an emerging challenge.

Kevin Gentry (19:02)

Well, kudos. So this is actually a perfect segue into a question I wanted to ask next, which is on the minds of many people, and that is, is a liberal arts education still relevant in our modern society, especially now with artificial intelligence and the advent of just so much technological transformation and change? Can a student go big today in the world tapped into a liberal arts education? How do you think through all these things so that just as your example with the Virginia Institute for Marine Science demonstrated, that you can make all of this still very relevant to the modern world?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (19:47)

Well, so the answer is absolutely yes. In fact, I see a liberal arts and sciences education as one of the best preparations for going big. At William and Mary, we're interested in the new technologies such as machine learning and AI as tools of critical thinking. If you can't apply them critically, someone else is going to get the job who can. So you need to have a deep understanding of how those tools can be used for good and for ill. What are their strengths and limitations, and you need to test them out in a lot of different domains. The power of a liberal arts and sciences degree is that it requires you to think across different methodologies, different bodies of evidence, different fields, synthesize them well, learn to speak and to write well and to use AI effectively. And that becomes a much broader toolkit for anybody who graduates than a highly specialized degree. This is a world in which generalists are going to triumph. That's true in part because jobs are changing so fast. You're going to always have to be ready to retrain, and you need to learn how to adopt a new technology in a way that's going to be powerful for the mission of your organization or your community. That's what we teach people at William Mary.

Kevin Gentry (21:10)

That's awesome. That's great. And a great answer. Thank you. All right. So William and Mary, it is tough, I think, for a lot of people, too, to understand that it is a public university. It is supported by the Commonwealth Virginia, the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Virginia. But there's so much history. You touched on the yule log. So there's that tradition at William Mary of bringing in this, you know, log just before Christmas and the holidays and the. The grand illumination in colonial Williamsburg. There. There are a lot of firsts. Wave. And Mary may be second to Harvard in terms of its formation, but there are a lot of firsts, as you noted, including the formation of Phi Beta Kappa. But of all the firsts, I've got a lightning round of questions for you about William Mary. Okay, of all the firsts, what's your favorite of the William and Mary firsts?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (22:00)

That's a really hard question, because we are so awesome in our firsts, given our age. I think it's the honor code. We have the first student honor code in the country. You mentioned Phi Beta Kappa, which was originally a drinking and debate society founded in 1776 by William and Ray's students in the Raleigh Tavern. And they were testing out ideas of free expression, open debate without censorship. That came to be foundational, of course, as those students matured in the founding of our country. We have, not surprisingly, the oldest honor code in the country. And our students are constantly thinking about how does it need to be adapted for the new public sphere that they live in and that we all operate, teach, and learn in. That's a. An example to my mind, of the way this community is constantly intentional, our students, in particular, about how to make a community that's ethical, that's welcoming, that speeds learning in every way.

Kevin Gentry (23:09)

All right, what's your favorite William and Mary tradition?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (23:14)

Convocation.

Kevin Gentry (23:16)

Nice.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (23:16)

Only about 30 years old. I think what happens is that all the new students every August are in the Ren yard on my president's house side of the Ren yard. They don't know what's on the opposite side of the Wren Building. They get a welcome from the president. They get a speaker who's an alum. We do this at dusk. We light up the Wren building in green and gold. Then they walk through, and on the other side, the entire campus is cheering them, high fiving them all the way down to the sunken garden with this big welcome party. And the pep band is playing and the dance team is there. There's faculty and staff. It's really an extraordinary experience of welcome.

Kevin Gentry (23:59)

Nice. All right, so you just touched on something about that welcome, which made me think of another question. But I got to keep going. What's your favorite spot on campus? And by the way, you mentioned the Wren building. You know, ostensibly designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the oldest academic building still in continual use in the United States. So many wonderful things. But we could go on, and I don't want to keep on that. But what's your favorite spot on campus?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (24:25)

Can I give you two?

Kevin Gentry (24:26)

Absolutely.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (24:28)

The entrepreneurship hub that I created with a faculty member when I got here. And it's just a place where lots of people come together to collide in their learning and inventing process. I love it. The second is the porch or the portico of the Wren building because my husband, Bruce Jacobson, who's our first. First gentleman, and I saw a couple get engaged there three years ago.

Kevin Gentry (24:55)

Nice, nice, nice. All right, well, my wife and I got engaged on Krem Dell, of course, but that's a different, different story. So what's your favorite order at the cheese shop? What's your go to order at the cheese shop?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (25:09)

Tuna sandwich. No sauce.

Kevin Gentry (25:13)

No sauce. Okay. Somebody just gave us some of the cheese shop sauce the other day as a gift. They just knew we went to William Mary and some bread rounds to go to go with it. Bread ends. So. So, okay, first, back to the welcome that the students receive at convocation when they go through. I certainly saw you. A lot of my fellow alums remarked on what a super fan you were recently. You're great about cheering on different moments. Tell us a little bit about that. I mean, it's sort of obvious why it's important, but maybe not as obvious. Why do you lean so heavily into that?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (25:55)

It's one of the delights of my job. Just sheer fun. When, you know, William and Mary students. In this case, I think you're talking about our women basketball players.

Kevin Gentry (26:05)

Yep.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (26:05)

But when you come to know them overall. They are joyfully competitive. They strive, they work hard in everything, play and work. They're inventive. They know themselves and why they're here. They, as I said, are intentional about creating community, just as that team was. And so to watch them achieve, especially against the kinds of hurdles that they went through, it's such a deep privilege and satisfaction. It's easy to shout and jump around.

Kevin Gentry (26:40)

Awesome. Well, I confess I reached out to a number of recent students, current students, faculty, even alums of my generation for ideas on questions. And one interesting insight I got was that many people said who've worked with you that you're a very good listener. You have an ability. I don't know if you've ever gotten this feedback before, but you're a very good listener. It's obvious that you're just paying close attention to what people are saying in the room and you're kind of processing and organizing that. How important is that to going big with respect to effective leadership?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (27:20)

Oh, it's absolutely essential. I suppose I get that from years of classroom teaching, discussion based teaching. But when you want to go big, you have to really listen to your if it's in business, it's your customer. If it's in higher ed, it's your students. That's who we're here for. And the story that I gave you about pandemic, listening to that senior say the challenges, finishing the semester in quarantine, if you're not listening really hard, you're going to miss incredibly important opportunities and you're going to not understand who you serve. That's really why listening matters. If you understand who you serve, what they need, and you can test that out. So we didn't just take one person's example. We went and surveyed the students. If you understand who you serve, then you can leap far with them. You can't go big alone. I don't think you can't scale something alone. I'll give you another example. We five years ago launched a civics curriculum for all incoming students called Better Arguments. And we started with some principles that the Aspen Institute uses for small group conversation. And for us, the exercise was how do we scale that to something less than 10,000 students and something around 3,500 employees? We started with the students with an incoming class and the student affairs team and librarians who were developing the program redesigned to scale first to all incoming students, with students as the peer facilitators. After that first year, they refined, they expanded the peer facilitation Group. Interestingly, one of the key premises, there's five premises of better arguments. How do you, how do you argue with somebody that you deeply disagree with in a way that's productive? Is the question. One of the key premises is listen passionately. And, and so the whole campus has leaned into that in those subsequent years. It's what stood us in good stead last year. It's why this campus argued with each other in a way that was ultimately pretty deeply respectful, even around things that were really tough with the war in the Middle East. And it's one of the things I prize about being here.

Kevin Gentry (29:58)

My little informal focus group had two follow up related things and you've already touched on them and that is that how do you, first of all, do you have specific advice for any of us listening, how we can be better listeners? It's great advice from an aspirational standpoint, but it's not easy to execute if you're doing well by it. Any particular tips?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (30:24)

Well, when I first became an administrator, I put a sticky note up on my wall and it said shut up. And I look at that and I reminded myself for about five years, it's not, this meeting is not about me talking. This meeting is about me being curious. So that was one, make rules for yourself that will help you give the airtime to the people you're trying to understand. I think the second thing, if you haven't had a moment in which you reflect on what it feels like to be curious in your body. Have you, have you ever done that? Just say, what does it feel like? When I'm curious. Ask yourself that question, try to name it. And if you spend 15, 20 minutes really working that through and getting the feeling in your body, you can put yourself back in that place and you can start a meeting there. So some of this is about the kinds of mindfulness practices that get stronger by habit.

Kevin Gentry (31:30)

Just constant repetition, developing good habits. You're exactly right about that. Well, you're right. No, you're absolutely right. That muscle memory, the power of repetition. Absolutely well related. You touched on this. This is also a moment. I mean, you know, we've got a lot of things we're facing. We've got rapid technological change. Yes, you had the pandemic. You have an enrollment challenge happening because of just the shift in demographics. They're going to be fewer people going into universities soon. And again we have all these technological innovations, artificial intelligence, and then we also, at this moment, tremendous disagreement and people get very upset. We know that. How are you? I mean, you Touched on this. So maybe it's a matter of not only how, but how important is it that we get better about bridging those divides?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (32:29)

Oh, it's essential. One of the proudest moments of my career was last summer when faculty came to me in the spring to say, we're really, really worried about the fall. There's so much political disagreement. We have a national election. And I said, well, what if we. How would it be if we brought the program that we do with our students to the faculty and staff? So we ran professional development days. Two of them in the summer, focused on better arguments, and 80% of our faculty and staff came out and went through the same program. So when we started the year, we had a shared vocabulary. That value of shared vocabulary. You only get that when you're open to stepping back and deciding. I'm in this conversation not to win, but to listen passionately, to prioritize relationship. Those are the first three principles of better arguments, and those are practices, just like the curiosity exercise I just gave you. Those are muscles that can be stronger. We start from the premise at William and Mary that honorable people may deeply disagree. And it's a founding principle of our government, pluralism, that out of disagreement comes deeper knowledge, wisdom. So you have to use the disagreement to grow an understanding, not just to fight something great.

Kevin Gentry (33:55)

And again, these are great lessons, too, from the founding of the country. And they did resolve a lot of stuff at Raleigh Tavern. Raleigh Tavern played an important role as well. Okay, so I have two last questions. This has been terrific. Thank you. I can easily see how you've been effective as a leader at William and Mary. So the last question is designed in part to help us understand a little bit more about you.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (34:24)

What might.

Kevin Gentry (34:24)

Knowing all that you now know, what might you tell a younger version of yourself that you would have done differently? And if you want, I mean, please tell us a little bit more about you in the context of that.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (34:36)

I would have taken a stats class. I wish I'd taken a stats class in college. I've had to learn all my stats sort of as a layperson, and it's not very organized. I'm getting better and better. But understanding how to deal with information at scale, in aggregate, that's one of the keys to the kingdom in the next half century. And so I say to admissions, look for all the students who've done AP stats. We want them. Tell them they're our people. Any field that you're in, that's going to turn out to be a really powerful conceptual framework. So that's what I wish I'd done differently.

Kevin Gentry (35:16)

That's so funny. Well, I laugh because I found that class at William and Mary the most intimidating. I was an economics major, and I did not like it at the time, but I look back on it fondly as being really, really helpful. So you really. You hit the nail on the head. I don't know how you knew that, but with respect to me, or maybe it's just a key piece of knowledge.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (35:36)

For all of us, I didn't. I just hope you make sure that every parent or guidance counselor out there listening says, william, Mary loves AP stats.

Kevin Gentry (35:45)

Got it. Great. All right, so last question. What advice would you give to those who are listening, who are current students, recent students, prospective students, faculty support staff, and those who aren't outside the world, maybe have no connection whatsoever to Wave and Mary? What advice would you give Katherine Rowe for all that you've done to think about how we should all go big?

Dr. Catherine Rowe (36:16)

Wow, that's a lot of constituencies. I think the answer is embrace the instability. That it's at moments of instability where you can see opportunities to leap using the muscles you already have. So instead of being afraid, ask yourself, how could. How might I. How might we. Because actually, I don't think you can go big solo. How might we lean into something that we see as needed, necessary, coming our way, and be part of the solution? Embrace the instability.

Kevin Gentry (36:57)

Wow. That's great. What a great insight. Thank you. Thank you for all the wisdom today. Thank you for all that you're doing. Terrific inspiration, and hopefully we'll have you back in a few years just to tell us all about the new progress that's been achieved. Thank you so much. Kathryn Rowe.

Dr. Catherine Rowe (37:11)

I love it. Great to talk to you.

Kevin Gentry (37:13)

Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources, and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big podcast.