DOWAGIAC — The search for the next president of Southwestern Michigan College continued Tuesday as candidates were interviewed on the Dowagiac campus.

The SMC Board of Trustees interviewed four internal candidates who previously formally applied to become SMC’s eighth president. The candidates included Joseph Odenwald and David Fleming, who were interviewed first. The remaining candidates, Stacy Young and Lucian Leone, were interviewed after a lunch break. 

On Monday, interviews were hosted by the board of trustees in Mathews Conference Center West. The selected candidate will succeed Dr. David Mathews SMC’s longest-serving president of 18 years. Each candidate was asked to prepare a presentation to begin the interviewing process.

The first interview conducted was Dr. Joseph Odenwald, who has served as SMC’s vice president of student services since 2017. Odenwald previously worked as an assistant dean of academic affairs and student services at Louisiana State University’s College of Engineering. He also held several positions at Mississippi College as the associate dean of students and director of student life, while also teaching graduate courses. Odenwald received his bachelor of arts from Louisiana College, a master of science from Mississippi College and his doctor of education from The University of Southern Mississippi.

Dr. David Fleming was the second morning interview conducted. Fleming has served as SMC’s vice president of instruction since 2011. Previously, he held positions at Davenport University, including executive director of faculty development and assessment, vice president for academic services and executive vice president for academics and provost. Fleming earned his bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees from West Virginia University and his doctor of philosophy from Indiana University.

Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Jerdon asked a number of questions to the candidates regarding topics of enrollment, diversity and challenges.

The first question Jerdon asked was what attracted candidates to apply for the position of president and what qualifies them for the position.

“I was attracted to this institution because I am attracted to this institution’s values,” Odenwald said. “I was drawn in by values. I only really believe in working at places and serving in places where I can get up and put on a jersey every day. I can literally get up and wear the colors because I believe in what we are doing. … For me, it goes back to this experience I had as a young man. I am a first-generation college student and a fourth-generation farmer. I’m proud of both of those things. I went off to college to orientation roughly 20 years ago, and my mom and dad didn’t go because we didn’t know they were supposed to. I didn’t know the lingo or where to go. … I have to go find financial aid and Rory Lee is the president. I know who Dr. Lee is because I’ve seen him doing the welcomes. I wear striped ties because Rory wore his school colors every day. He said, ‘Young man, you look lost. Can I help you?’ That’s the most honest assessment anyone has ever said to me in my life.  He walked me there, and he walked me through that. Here’s why I am in this work. I’m in this work because we need people in this work who will take care of kids like I was.”

“I’m a very loyal person,” Fleming said. “I tried to stay at Davenport for as long as I could. I’ve been happy as heck with this place. I’ve never looked for another presidency. I told Dr. Mathews many years ago that this would be the only place I would be interested in being a president. I think the way you build up a long-term relationship with people and staff and a community of college is very valuable. … The only moto I know is that loyalty to an institution that has had loyalty to me. I just feel like I would naturally be comfortable stepping up in that role. I have 30 plus years of experience in higher education. … I’ve done it all. I’ve been part of closing campuses. I’ve been part of having to lay off faculty. I’ve probably hired more than 100 faculty over those years. I just feel like I have the experience and knowledge of this institution that I love so much.”

Another question Jerdon asked candidates was to give examples of the most challenging or difficult problems they had to face in their professional careers.

“Back in my time at Mississippi College, as Title IX was changing and as the department of education through the office of civil rights was giving us guidance about that, I had to develop and implement a Title IX process at a religious institution. … I learned a lot as a result of that, one of the things I learned as the biggest takeaway was I was a young guy. I was probably maybe 30, and I am trying to explain this to folks that are my parents’ age, and a lot of them are my mentors. One of the things I realized there is you’ve really got to have a lot of voices in the room of different generations.”

“Davenport University has a huge chunk of its credits that are taught online,” Fleming said. “It had its own online faculty, its own online infrastructure, and its own campus faculty. … Ultimately, what you had was that the faculty on campus thought the online was easier. … I required every faculty member to be trained to teach online, regardless of if they ever wanted to or regardless of if I thought they should. But, I wanted them to understand it enough so the conversations when I got them together could be something more than, ‘you just do this easily over there.’ Within two years everyone had done it because I put a timeline on it, and I had done it because I’d never taught online and that resistance of its easier or different broke down really well.”

Jerdon said one of the largest challenges for SMC is declining enrollment. Other than a decline in enrollment, he asked candidates what they see as SMC’s most critical weakness or weaknesses.

“I think campus culture is something we [have] got to work on,” Odenwald said. “I don’t say that as a criticism. It’s just a reality. We’ve had a lot of perimeter distractions since I got here. I think we have got to mend some fences. I think that listening is going to be a big key, but shared understanding has to come first. We need to get through the contract negotiations and get beyond that. My role in that is to be honest and to share the facts.”

“I just again think the lack of knowledge about what SMC is, outside of our small community, is what is hurting us,” Fleming said. “I don’t think enough people understand that this is the premiere, high-transfer, traditional-age institution in the country. … It goes back to why do people want to work here. … That to me is a weakness, people don’t know enough about us.”

Jerdon also asked candidates, what are the greatest opportunities they see for SMC under their service.

“I think lieutenant depth is so important on campus,” Odenwald said. “What I mean by that is people that are on the ground floor and living in the work every day. I think what we have done there in the last 18 months, it’s been a collective effort to be really intentional about hiring. We have hired some outstanding midlevel managers on this campus in the last 18 months. I think about what we have in admissions, in the record office, in development. I think we have in dual enrollment. We have made some really strong hires and these people working together we are going to see things take off.”

“I think it’s working with our partners to create some alternative pathways,” Fleming said. “This whole notion of just well you come to SMC for two years and then transfer is great on paper but we’ve got to create more specific pathways. If you ask me later what are your greatest accomplishments as a leader. I am going to say, ‘nothing,’ because my greatest accomplishments as a leader is getting other people to do the right thing.”

Jerdon said SMC has been successful in attracting a student population that is twice as diverse as the college district. He said the college has recently taken steps to increase the retention rate within this population. He asked candidates what steps they would take to continue this effort, including increasing the diversity of staff.

“I’m very proud of the fact that our most recent step that comes right out of our strategic plan that I presented last March and that was hiring a student success coach and diversity inclusion coordinator,” Odenwald said. “That’s a step we’ve taken, and we were fortunate to attract and hire an African American male. We needed that. We have done really well at recruiting diverse students. … But we do need to hire more people from underrepresented populations. I think what we’ve got to do is to when our students transfer out of here and go somewhere else, one way is to bring folks back that had a nice experience. … The other thing we do is we need to have relationships in the academic and even in the service department with the graduate programs and the state universities around us. We got to spend the money to recruit in publications and on websites.”

“If you have a diverse staff, then diverse students see people they can identify with,” Fleming said. “If I come to a college and see someone who looks like me and they are accessible, then I am going to probably persist because I know there is someone there like me. We have to get them first as employees and that is the tough part. That is a tough part. With northern Indiana, we get a large population of very diverse backgrounds. … We have to value the diversity element of someone who comes in and gives an interview.”

After the lunch break on Monday, Dr. Stacy Young and Dr. Lucian Leone were both interviewed by the board and both shared their own respective presentations on the future of SMC.

Young has served as SMC’s dean of the school of business and advanced technology since 2013. In her time at SMC, she has held several positions including dean of SMC’s Niles campus. Prior to working at SMC, she was an adjunct faculty member at Ferris State University and Davenport University. She also previously worked in management and auditing at several companies. She earned her bachelor of science from Manchester University, a master of business administration from Bethel University and her doctor of philosophy from Andrews University.

The last candidate interviewed was Leone, who has served as SMC’s director of admissions for the past nine months. He first joined the college after working as the director of operations at the Institute for Professional Excellence at Davenport University. He also worked at Lansing community college in several director capacities and served as the associate dean for the College of Business at Ferris State University. Leone completed his bachelor of arts from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts and a master of business administration from Eastern Michigan University and his Doctor of Philosophy from Michigan State University.

Questions asked of candidates covered a number of topics, including the college’s student enrollment, the diversity of employees and candidates’ experience with work-related challenges.

The first question the Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Jerdon asked was what attracted candidates to apply for the position of president and what qualifies them for the role.

“I almost didn’t apply because my boss, Dr. Fleming, who I think is amazing and would do an amazing job was going to apply,” Young said. “To me, this job is bigger than just my resume. The moment I walked onto this campus 15 years ago, I remember this peace came over me. I thought to myself, ‘this is where I’m supposed to be, this feels really good.’ … I have some skills too, other people who I think would apply haven’t seen the whole college like I have. They don’t have that business background like I have. I still wasn’t sure [about applying], so I prayed for some signs that I should apply and I kept getting them. … If I am going to do this job, I need to feel like I have a whole team behind me. I got another sign, and it was the fastest walk back to my office ever, because then I hit submit. I believe my qualifications are that I have ran every area of this campus on a smaller scale.”

“I spent the first half of my career working in marketing and sales management and the second half of my career in higher education,” Leone said. “I really had decided that working here at SMC was probably going to be my last stop in my career. … When I heard about Dr. Mathews retiring, I talked to my wife and I said, ‘I at least want to apply. I’ve worked in higher education a long time. I’ve worked at community colleges a long time.’ I think I have something to offer. … Also, because I’ve had such a positive experience here. It’s a job I think I would enjoy just because of the culture that has already been developed.”

Jerdon also asked candidates to give examples of the most challenging or difficult problems they had to face in their professional careers.

“I challenged all of my folks to do 32 hours of outreach two years ago,” Young said. “I wanted to help with enrollment and I also said to them, ‘I would do it side by side.’ … They were resistant because it was going to be added on top of their day job. By the way, this was the year the college voted for a union. … It was really hard. I made them a deal, if you go to meetings that will help you get an enrollment or help with retention you can count that as your 32 hours per semester. … It was really hard and I felt so bad. I have to admit not everyone got to their 32 hours. What I learned from it was that I was probably giving them a little bit too much of a stretch goal.”

“When I was the associate dean of the College of Business at Ferris, I was asked to take on the assessment of the business world,” Leone said. “We needed that because of accreditation. We had to put in more robust systems to assess the learning that was going on in the business core classes. The whole assessment was what did students know when they came in and what did they know when they left? What I realized was that I had to do this completely with the cooperation with the faculty. What I did was start a book study. I basically started to meet with a group of faculty that seemed to care and we talked about an assessment process should look like. They had no requirement to be involved in this project it was really something they had to want to do, that’s what made it challenging. It was critically important for the college to get this done. What I was able to do was find about five faculty who really supported what this idea was.”

Jerdon said one of the largest challenges for SMC is declining enrollment. Other than a decline in enrollment, he asked candidates what they see as SMC’s most critical weakness or weaknesses.

“The morale thing has been a struggle for me, because I think it distracts,” Young said. “I want the community to see SMC as the gem that it is. To have the opportunity of a culture center right here in your community is such a treasure. I feel like we don’t have that full spirit of what we could be getting. Our accreditation is something I worry about regularly. I feel like that could hurt us if we don’t pass that.”

“Our critical weakness or threat for us is our lack of appropriate technology across the board in so many different issues that are technology-driven,” Leone said. “I think that’s a real threat that we are limping along doing OK with. Our competitors are doing much more and it’s going to become apparent to students. … The biggest threat I see is generating the funds and resources so that we can integrate our technology at a level that allows us to be truly competitive.”

Jerdon also asked candidates what are the greatest opportunities they see for SMC under their service.

“To have our students do that hands-on learning,” Young said. “The year we talked about doing small house project our enrollment in the construction trade program doubled that year. The other cool thing was 30 percent of our class was females that year because we had that hands-on experience. I would really want to scale all of that up and do more of that. That’s what the Gen Z population is really looking for. That would probably help [students] be on campus more often. Our auto club has been more active, those students are coming on Fridays and Wednesday nights to do work for our community members and they are giving back. If we can do more things like that its positive PR for the community, for our students giving them civic engagement and great for the college.”

“The greatest opportunity is really just getting the word out to a broader cross section of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana about what an outstanding value this is,” Leone said. “It really is a small four-year university college experience that you are getting at this amazing campus with great faculty. All we need to do is get the students to campus and see the faculty and they see our programs. It really does sell itself.”

Jerdon said SMC has been successful in attracting a student population that is twice as diverse as the college district. He said the college has recently taken steps to increase the retention rate within this population. He asked candidates what steps they would take to continue this effort, including increasing the diversity of employees.

“This is always a tough question because of where we are located to attract people,” Young said. “One of the things we have to do is make sure we don’t have any bias as we are asking questions of people or maybe our ad is written to make sure we are attracting the best quality and qualified candidates. … by having a committee of people working together to get to that point. The biggest diversity we have in this community is simply socioeconomic. We have a lot of poor students in our area, and I think addressing that is always going to be a struggle for us. Doing things like making sure our textbooks and other fees stay down is going to be very important so we don’t put barriers in their way. The diversity is interesting, especially when looking at leadership at a college. … We want to make sure we are always hiring the most qualified candidates, and if they happen to cover some areas of diversity, I think that’s important too because they come at things with a different lens.”

“I think the key issue with diversity is making sure we are creating a culture in which both the employee and student perspective makes everyone feel welcome,” Leone said. “We create an environment to show we respect diversity in all its forms. I think from what I can see, we’ve done a very good job in terms of having workshops and seminars on diversity and what that means. In terms of hiring, we are trying to make efforts to make sure our workforce is as diverse as they possibly can be. I think the key there is making sure that everybody knows how important it is and that we all value it together.  I think the more we get the word out about this being an outstanding place to work and study, then people will see this as a truly diverse school that’s committed to diversity. Then it’s only going to continue to attract the best staff and faculty. Until diversity isn’t even an issue, it’s just something that we do because it’s part of who we are.”

As the search for the eighth president of SMC continues, candidates will be sent additional questions from the Board of Trustees through Human Resources Manager Heather Hess.

After interviewing four candidates on Monday, the board will also need to contact references provided by the candidates.