PODCAST | Tips For A Successful First Semester (Feat. Shirley Hoogstra, CCCU President)

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Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, Senior Marketing Coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, William Vanderbloemen talks with Shirley Hoogstra, CCCU President. She's a visionary leader, passionate about Christian higher education and the role it plays in the common good. In this conversation, President Hoogstra shares the value of a Christian education system in terms of soul crafting for students. She also shares tangible tips for navigating a successful semester in a new role. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to our podcast today. I am delighted to have my friend Shirley Hoogstra on with us today. She's the head of the CCCU, which is basically the brain trust for all Christian higher education in the United States and even abroad. And as you probably know, it was, we started helping churches find their pastor, but then that's grown into Christian schools and Christian non-profits and even Christian businesses. So really, frankly, anyone on Team Jesus that needs senior leadership, we're helping and we're trying to focus some on each of those sectors. So, Shirley was gracious enough to join us today, and Shirley, thank you so much for making the time.

Shirley Hoogstra:
It is such an honor to be with you today, William.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I appreciate it, and I would love it if you'd give people a little bit of introduction and just tell us how you ended up doing what you're doing, and a little bit of what the CCCU does, before we dive into some interesting topics.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yeah, that would be great. First of all, the CCCU has over 191 members worldwide. And so, while we have 140 in the US, we have another 10 in Canada. One of our fastest growing areas is Christian education, higher education across the world, so that's really exciting. One of the things we hear firsthand is, because we have a school in Lithuania, which has Russian students and Ukrainian students, and lots of other students from that part of the world, and they are doing transformative work in that international setting.
We do three things, William, at the CCCU. The first thing we do is advocacy, so we really represent the beauty and essential nature of Christian education to the courts, to the legislature, to the executive branch, and of course to business and to our communication outlets all over. The next thing we do is professional development, because while there's a lot of higher education, good training and information and camaraderie, only we have the faith aspect, which is so important to our members. And then we love to tell the story of Christian education. Recently we've been talking to the Washington Post, or we talk to the Religion News Service. We talk to Christianity Today. We really just want to make news journalists their best, and we like to give them the best information, so that's what my organization does.
And I've been in my post now starting my ninth year.

William Vanderbloemen:
Wow.

Shirley Hoogstra:
And I really love being in this job, being the chief storyteller and advocate for Christian education. I came to it as an education major out of college. I taught a few years, got my law degree, was a partner at a law firm in New Haven, Connecticut as a litigator, and then went to a Christian college, and was 15 years there as a senior leader. Then being called here, joining both my legal work and my higher ed work together for God service.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's great. That's great. Well, we have a whole lot of secondary schools that have been kind enough to let us do work with them. We've got a lot of people that are probably listening today that are in secondary Christian schools, which, it appears to me, is just growing like a weed.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Nice.

William Vanderbloemen:
And particularly, I mean, it seems like the pandemic, people couldn't agree on anything. We all had different opinions. But I think the one thing we all agreed on is, kids need to be in school.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
And the secondary schools that were open, the faith-based ones, I'm just seeing surges in attendance. Are you seeing a similar trend in higher education, Christian higher education?

Shirley Hoogstra:
People who want something that is not just a commodity for their son or daughter going to college, or maybe when they return to college, it's not just about getting a job. But one of the things that Christian higher education does so well is that, I think the phrase that was used recently by Pete Wehner was "soulcraft." And I think that in the vehicle, for shaping the human soul, for pursuing the moral good, to love the right things, is done through the vehicle of rigorous academics and formative community.
And so we are seeing people who say, "Look, my son or daughter, they're smart. They're going to be able to get a job, but what I really want them to do is spend this time in a community and with Christian faculty and staff who are going to shape their soul," taking what's been done in the home, maybe in their K through 12 Christian education, and then continuing it in a deeper way. So, we are seeing a rise in enrollment. We are also seeing that as impacted by demographics, of course, in the United States. But we are very hopeful for the strength and longevity of Christian education for generations to come.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I know there's some schools that are struggling, but we just graduated last spring, our daughter, from Baylor.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Oh, that's wonderful.

William Vanderbloemen:
And so we're keeping up a little bit with Dr. Livingstone, just doing what appears to be an amazing job.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
Record applications. They're having to put freshmen into hotels because they don't have enough dorm rooms. I mean, it's pretty amazing to see the surge there.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
And gives me great hope for the future of the Christian and the soul crafting that Christian higher education can bring [inaudible 00:06:07]

Shirley Hoogstra:
Well, I have to say, I have two children myself who graduated from Christian colleges, and they met their spouses there, so I now have four children, all Christian college graduates. And here's what I would say. It is so essential for those years when your child is getting to have their independent thinking and their worldview shaped, to go to a place that matches your family values and that matches the fact that you would like your son or daughter to know Jesus more after four years and not be pulled away. So anyway, I really think that the investment that families have made K through 12 would really be solidified when they invest in a Christian college.

William Vanderbloemen:
Totally agree. Totally.

Shirley Hoogstra:
[inaudible 00:06:58]

William Vanderbloemen:
One of the things that we've been seeing, I guess it was about December of 2020, we started to notice ... It was really October of 2020, we started getting all these calls from people ready to make a change. Which was, people hire us to help them find talent, but talent calls us saying, "Oh, we might be ..." and it was a surge. It was weird. It was, frankly, what usually happens in January, when everybody's going to lose 10 pounds and balance their checkbook and go get [inaudible 00:07:31] but it was in October, like what?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Of 2020.

William Vanderbloemen:
So we did some studying and actually put some research behind it and found there's a great resignation coming, and we actually called it before the world started calling it, and I'm seeing it in secondary schools quite a bit. I don't know if it's happening in higher education. Higher education tends to be a little bit more stable environment employment-wise, but it does seem like there's some churn going on. Maybe it's the same as what you've seen in the past, but can you talk a little bit about that?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Well, first of all, it's been a really tough two years in the education sector as a whole, right? So if you've been in higher education, let's remember back to March of 2020, the world changed, and immediately the campuses went from by and large in-class kind of educational experiences to online. And so, people had that adaptation stress that comes from that kind of major shift. And then we were all dealing with, what was the level of disease on campus and how do we keep people safe? And so then you started that second year with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of extra planning.
So I think number one, people found that they could adapt, so it opened up possibilities for them.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's right.

Shirley Hoogstra:
It's like, "Hey, I've been doing this for a while, but maybe there's something else I could do."

William Vanderbloemen:
That's right.

Shirley Hoogstra:
"I've been so adaptable, I've been successful at it." So, I think it gave some people confidence. The second thing is I think that people said, "Hey, look, I'd like to get into a different sector that's maybe not quite so unpredictable," and so they were looking maybe for more certainty.
Then the third thing I would say is that with people being tired, they may have said, "This is a good time for me to step out, retire, let the next generation take the lead." So, the pandemic was disruptive in so many ways, and I think in personnel as well.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes. Well, it pulls us out of our habits, right?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Absolutely [inaudible 00:09:32]

William Vanderbloemen:
Like taking a sabbatical, it's not good or bad, it just pulls us out of our habits and we drop back and say, "Why am I in that habit?" It's the frog in the kettle sort of thing.

Shirley Hoogstra:
It allows you to stop and think and evaluate.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, if you think about Christian higher education, whether it's a high churn or normal churn, there are people that move all the time.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
And when you've watched a whole lot of Christian presidential appointments happen, I mean, what's the average? About 15 a year is going to happen?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes. Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
Somewhere in there?

Shirley Hoogstra:
That's right. Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
So, that's a lot. I mean, that's not 10% of CCCU, but it's very close. Yeah.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes. Well, on the US campuses, it's about 10%. So in 10 years, you can have a complete turnover on your 140 campuses if everybody did that.

William Vanderbloemen:
Wow, wow.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Now, we have some presidents at 17 years, 25 years and [inaudible 00:10:27] but presidents for 15 years, if a president is in that spot for 10 to 15 years, that's a good service.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. Well, in the entire workforce, every vertical is facing this last wave of boomers retiring. Very few people 35 to 55, just by birth rate, that are available, and so institutions are faced with, do we take the person that's got more experience, or there are a whole lot of these people that aren't quite as experienced, and can we take a chance? Will it work?
What have you seen when a new president or a provost or someone in the presidential cabinet, sort of that, for lack of a better way of saying that, the C-suite of the school, when they step into a new role, have you noticed things that they do in their first semester? Or maybe their first year, they're making smart moves, that's going to work? Have you noticed any trends?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yeah. Oh, that's a such a great question, William, because it's all about first impressions. So, when a president steps onto a campus, let's just say a campus of 3,000 people, you've got faculty, students, and staff, and they're all watching. What's this person going to be like? And so your first moves are really important.
The first thing that successful presidents do is they really establish a channel of communication. So, they want to be known, and who's the best person to tell people who they are? It's the president themselves. And so, they can do that by little video snaps. They can do it by showing up to events that are happening. They can make sure that they have faculty presentations, people over for dinner, picnics, and so on. So starting off, letting yourself be known, and then telling your story, communications channels.
The second thing is to take a good assessment about how strong the internal house is. And some people inherit a really strong leadership team. They inherit perhaps a really strong foundation financially. But the first thing to do is to really get in and understand that financial platform and the personnel platform, because if you have a strong internal situation, you can then be external with more confidence. And then that's the third thing that presidents do. They work with their leaders on campus, their development office, and they say, "Who are the external third-party endorsers for this institution that need to know me, so that they can be confident that this transition is going to be good and their support will continue?"

William Vanderbloemen:
And now, help me understand the flip side of that. What would be the ... Let's not name names, but you've been doing this nine years, you probably see some people start off poorly. What would be the, Ooh, I don't know that I'd have done that right out of the gate, kind of mistakes that people might avoid as they take a new position?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Sometimes people come in and they make changes a little too quickly, and that frightens people. Then the internal side of the house says, "Well, what's going to happen here?" And so, I think a president that spends a little time making sure that they know their team and then can make the wisest decisions probably helps solidify that person as a safe and trustworthy next leader.
And then I would also say that maybe presidents who don't get advice from others who know the institution better than they do. If they're an outsider, they might be asked to do something or they might think, "Well, that would've been fine in my old life, and now I'm in my new life." And they're not quite as familiar with how an action of a president gets magnified. So something that they might think was small when they came maybe from a business environment or a legal environment, gets amplified on a campus environment. So, seeking a lot of feedback, wisdom, and advice those first 90 days is really important.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's really good. That's really good. Now, when I'm thinking about a president, I'd love for you to correct my thinking or add to it or what have you. I try and ask a search committee or board or whatever group we're talking to, presidents have to wear a lot of different hats, right? So to me, there's the scholar hat, and some places want the scholar president, right? There's the operational or community hat. Are they at the basketball game? Are they showing up in the different events that you mentioned? And then it seems like the third hat that comes along is, are they the ambassador for the school? Are they doing donor relations? Are they doing fundraising? It seems like those are the three big hats that get worn. Can you think of, is there a fourth one or a fifth one? You know this way better than I do.

Christa Neidig:
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Shirley Hoogstra:
I think you've hit all three there. I think that they have to have a great relationship with the faculty, because the faculty is the content that people buy. I mean, when all is said and done, what kind of faculty did you have? What kind of courses did you have? Did this live up to the promises of the brochure?

William Vanderbloemen:
The faculty is what the people are buying. That's-

Shirley Hoogstra:
The faculty are what the people are buying.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's worth remembering right there.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes. And then the thing that I always ask is, "Are you really getting a set of peers that will make you better?" So who are your classmates, and what kind of support services do you have so that you can be a successful ... Like the mental health services, do they have a good nurse or doctor on campus? Are they helping you get internships so that you can grow in the kind of interest that you have? Do they have a spiritual formation plan for students all four years that can make a difference in your life? Those are great questions to ask.
But the president should be a chief spokesman for spiritual discipleship. He should be a, or she should be a chief spokesman for academic rigor. And the kind of discussions that can happen in a Christian college campus better than anywhere else, because they're not as polarized and they're not as left, where you've got political correctness? But then of course, you got to go out and you have to raise money, every institution.
Now, why do people give? There just was a great Barna of study out just recently about why people give, and number one, people give because of who they are, and then second of all, how they were asked to give.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes. Well, I don't want to single out people and diminish their gifts to just one lane, but long-time friend Michael Lindsay, my goodness, did he raise good money for Gordon College.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes, he did.

William Vanderbloemen:
And it's something about his presentation to donors that made a difference. And then again, not to single out, but we just finished the chaplain search at Wheaton, and Phil, the president, doing a wonderful job. But the interest he took in the theology and the approach to discipleship in these candidates was almost like a pastor hiring an associate pastor. I don't think you see that in a regular college presidency. That's probably reserved for the Christian hiring.
But I guess that's what I'm getting at is, they're different hats, and it seems like if I'm looking at an opportunity or if I'm looking for a cabinet, if I'm a new president, I'm probably going to try and assess, which of these three hats is most important historically to this institution? And which one has to be important for the next phase? I mean, the development hat is pretty critical in some schools that are frankly in decline right now. I don't know, I just ... wondering if you're seeing other areas that should be focused on, or if that seems to be kind of the three big rocks in the jar, and ...

Shirley Hoogstra:
Well, you clearly understand higher education well, William, and it is because of that work that you do. It's because of the way that you've been on campuses. You get to know current presidents and you get to know them and how they're hiring. And so, your observations here are correct.
But I would say this, no president gets to be sequential. They always have to be multidimensional. So, let's say that you're at a community event, you're at the basketball game. There is a sort of a [inaudible 00:19:37] in the gymnasium where the president can have their friends, donors, alumni. You're constantly operating, cycling through that theological half. People are evaluating you, you're cycling through, do I know my donor well? That's something Michael Lindsay does so well. He really knows his friends and supporters. He writes personal letters. He calls them. And then you're also though ... You got to be available. Students are watching. Are you kind of removed and distant, or are you creating enthusiasm and able to tell the story? So never linear, never sequential, always holding them in sort of a circle. I would say like a carousel. You're constantly cycling through all those roles, probably at every engagement.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. Just which hat are you wearing first, second, or third?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Oh, right. That's right. That's right.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And it all goes back to, for me, it all goes back to, this is going to sound so bookwormy, but old reform theology of understanding Jesus work. We called it the threefold office of Christ. He was a prophet, he was a priest, and king.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yup, a priest and a king. That's right.

William Vanderbloemen:
And you can line some parallels to those three hats up to the work that I think presidents are called to. Well, as we round out our time, I wonder, give me a pitch. I'm sitting here, I'm watching this. I'm a headmaster at a Christian school and I've got seniors getting ready to apply. What's the difference? Why should they think about CCCU schools and not just whatever university is local or where their parents went?

Shirley Hoogstra:
Well, thank you so much, William. Well, first of all, I would tell a headmaster at a Christian K through 12, "Get to know the CCCU website." We have a great website called Journey to Distinction. It has eight videos on it that talk that are student perspectives about how they went into business, how they went into medicine, how they went into the arts. And they said, "I could have gone to a lot of places, but when I went to a Christian college, first of all, the faculty members were interested in me as a person. They wanted to find out what my hopes and dreams are, and how they fit in with God's calling on my life. The second thing is I developed habits of faith that I wouldn't have developed if I went to a secular institution." And then thirdly, there's recent research out of Stanford University that says, "Students who have a purpose in life do far better than those who are looking only for a job." And at a Christian college, your purpose to honor God and to glorify Him forever is going to be undergirded, supported, and flamed.
And so that's why I would say ... And you can get into anywhere, so people say, "Well, if I send them to an Ivy League school, they're going to have a better future." I don't believe it, and here's why. You'll have a good future, not a better one, because at a Christian college, your future is completely attached to your faith in who holds the future. We don't. God does. Attach your boat to that sail and you will have a happy life.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's awesome. People forget, I didn't know till I went to Princeton for seminary, I didn't know till I was there that the congregation was started at Harvard to try and train ministers.

Shirley Hoogstra:
That's right. That's right.

William Vanderbloemen:
The Episcopalians started Yale to try and train ministers. The College of New Jersey, which became Princeton, Princeton was started by the Presbyterians, and in the beginning, it was pretty much all Christian education, and things drift and we lose our alignment to the original cause. But so appreciate the work you guys are doing. I know it's not easy talking to college presidents. I know there's hot button topics that even in the CCCU, you're having to figure out, how are we going to do this in a way that's not burrowing down in a bunker, that ignores the world and what's going on? But really appreciate the work you guys are doing to try and manage that tension-

Shirley Hoogstra:
Thank you.

William Vanderbloemen:
... and do formation, soul crafting, in a way that is distinct.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Yes, thank you so much.

William Vanderbloemen:
Thanks for making the time. Yeah, appreciate the time today.

Shirley Hoogstra:
It's been great to be with you. And I wish you all the best as well, and your listeners today.

William Vanderbloemen:
Thanks Dr. Hoogstra. And if people want to find you, the website is?

Shirley Hoogstra:
CCCU.org.

William Vanderbloemen:
There you go. Dr. Hoogstra, have a great day.

Shirley Hoogstra:
Bye now.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, Vanderbloemen.com, to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.