EdUp Provost

In this episode, EdUp Provost host Dr. Gregor Thuswaldner sits down with Dr. Joshua M. Walehwa, Special Advisor to the EVC/COO at Washington University in St. Louis and host of The Best Worst Thing Podcast, for a candid, high-level conversation on bridging the gap between enterprise operations and academic leadership. Drawing from his unique trajectory across student affairs, academic administration, and executive operations, Dr. Walehwa offers a masterclass in navigating institutional friction. He discusses the inherent calendar and cultural misalignments between provosts and chief business officers, offering practical strategies to build collaborative, trust-based cabinet partnerships before crisis strikes. Turning to his work on resilience and narrative learning, Dr. Walehwa breaks down how academic leaders can cultivate psychological safety, dismantle destructive cultures of blame, and embrace vulnerability following high-stakes operational setbacks. The discussion also tackles the real impact of executive isolation, highlighting why tools like executive coaching, therapy, and non-formal mentor networks are indispensable for long-term sustained leadership. Takeaways:• Aligning Academic & Operational Calendars: Success requires pulling enterprise operations, IT, and financial leaders into strategic academic initiatives early to bridge the gap between multi-year capital cycles and curricular timelines. • Dismantling the Culture of Blame: Provosts must foster psychological safety by modeling personal accountability and framing operational missteps around learning rather than fault-finding. • Reframing Crisis Through Curiosity: Bouncing back from setbacks requires leaders to stay open, lean into vulnerability, and extract actionable wisdom from unexpected institutional challenges. • Combating Executive Isolation: Because cabinet-level roles can be deeply isolating, academic executives must proactively assemble a support matrix—including executive coaches, therapists, and peer mentors—to sustain their well-being. • Speaking Operational Languages: Effective chief academic officers learn to translate academic vision into the language of risk, sustainability, and scale without compromising the primary academic mission.

For this episode, EdUp Provost host Gregor Thuswaldner sat down with Nadine Burquel, Director General of HUMANE (Heads of University Management & Administration Network in Europe), to discuss the evolving landscape of European higher education leadership. Their conversation explored the structural differences between European dual-governance systems and North American institutional models, emphasizing the strategic elevation of administrative roles into high-performing "professional services" to support the core academic enterprise. Burquel outlined the major headwinds facing European institutions—including demographic shifts, severe budget strains, digital transformation, and geopolitical tensions—while highlighting how global partnerships are shifting from high-volume agreements to highly vetted, strategic alliances. She also emphasized the importance of cross-silo executive leadership, relentlessness in institutional transformation, and the necessity of keeping human-centered passion at the heart of higher education management. Takeaways• Elevating Professional Services: European universities are transforming traditional administrative support into strategic "professional services" that work alongside academic leaders to navigate institutional complexity and execute strategy. • Dual Governance Structures: Unlike the single-board models common in North America, European institutions typically operate under dual governance balancing executive boards with senates or councils for academic legitimacy. • Shared Global Pressures: European higher education leaders face strategic challenges nearly identical to those in the U.S., including shrinking 18-year-old demographics, severe budget cuts, and elevated risk assessment in international research partnerships. • Quality Over Quantity in Partnerships: Institutional internationalization has evolved past "naive" agreement-signing into carefully curated, strategic cross-border alliances aligned directly with core institutional missions. • Breaking Down Functional Silos: Effective senior leaders must transcend specialized domains—such as HR, finance, and research—to cultivate cross-functional alignment and drive transformational institutional change.

In this episode of EdUp Provost, host Dr. Gregor Thuswaldner sits down with Dr. Stephen Whitehead of Commonwealth University and 5th Hammer Innovation to discuss why great ideas in higher education so often stall before they become real change. Drawing on his consulting work, his military background, and his experience coaching academic leaders, Dr. Whitehead unpacks why execution—not creativity—is the real bottleneck in the provost's office, and offers practical frameworks for building ownership, trust, and momentum around change.Takeaways:• Ideas rarely die from a "no" — they die in the handoff, when no one owns the next step.• Focus your energy on the persuadable 60%, not the immovable 20% who will never come along.• Fall in love with the problem before designing the solution — curiosity beats speed.• Academic leaders often mistake activity (meetings, plans, dashboards) for actual progress.• A new provost's most important 90-day habit: build a listening-to-action system and act on something visible, fast.

In this EdUp Provost episode, host Dr. Gregor Thuswaldner sits down with Dr. B. David Rowe, Founder and President of Windermere Consulting, and Dr. Frank Boyd, Vice President of the Higher Education Practice at McAllister & Quinn to discuss how shared governance works, where it breaks down, and how it needs to change. Drawing on their experience as a college and seminary president, trustee, faculty leader, and provost, they examine the president-provost partnership, the provost's position between faculty and board, and how boards and presidents can avoid mutual over-deference. They also explore how governance should function in a crisis, why faculty and board members perceive time so differently, and how a shared governance system can help an institution find and amplify its mission. The conversation draws on the paper they co-authored, which looks at governance through both the presidential and faculty perspectives, and closes with a look at whether current structures are equipped for today's pressures, plus book recommendations from each guest.Takeaways• Good governance is fluid and shifts with the season an institution is in, and no single model fits every campus.• Governance starts with structure: the bylaws, faculty handbook, and charter should be reconciled and read together before a crisis arrives.• Faculty and boards experience time differently. Slower faculty processes are meant to get decisions right, while boards have to weigh the long-term fiduciary consequences of inaction.• Provosts do their best work when they hold both the faculty and administrative identities at once, and when they are clear about what they are not working on.• Boards are responsible for far more than finances. Fiduciary duty extends to the academic mission, and every academic decision has a financial component.

In this latest episode of EdUp Provost, host Dr. Gregor Thuswaldner welcomes back Joshua Thorpe, a learning designer at the University of Strathclyde and author of the newly expanded second edition of AI for Students, now published by Bloomsbury. The conversation explores the psychological impacts of "AI Vertigo," the shift toward process-based portfolios, the risks of parasocial relationships with chatbots, and the critical need to intertwine AI literacy with traditional learning literacies.Takeaways• AI for Students, 2nd Edition: Now published by Bloomsbury and ~30% longer, the revised edition adds more interactive content and critical reflection spaces.• ARF Prompting Framework: Thorpe's Aim, Role, Format (ARF) mnemonic encourages active, interactive engagement with AI in education rather than "vending machine" use.• Managing AI Vertigo & Slop: Countering AI-driven overwhelm and misinformation requires balanced perspectives (e.g., Cal Newport's podcast) and integrating AI literacy with broader media/information literacy.• Process Over Product: AI's availability creates an opportunity to shift assessment toward documenting drafts, prompts, and problem-solving—though frameworks like the AI Assessment Scale must avoid overloading students with complex rules.• Parasocial & Cognitive Risks: AI's anthropomorphic design can foster unhealthy emotional attachment, so students need to understand it as stochastic prediction rather than genuine cognition—while still leveraging AI for productive "desirable difficulty."