What Should Universities be Teaching?

“Intro: Welcome to Listen For Insight. I’m your host David Ternik. We have for you, Bob Setlock: Air Force Veteran, Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing at Miami University, and founder of hyQ with his insights on developing leadership in others. I send you now to our interviewer Ndeye Guisse.”

Ndeye: I want you to tell me a little bit about your experience in industry prior to becoming a professor at Miami University, how did you end up here and what led you… (3:31 – 3:42)

Bob: Oh okay. I started here in 2005, so I’ve been here just about 10 years. And before that I worked in industry for almost 25 years. And I spent about half of that time as a military officer in the Air Force. The Air Force has it’s own space program, it’s separate from NASA, it’s about five times bigger, and you just don’t hear as much about it, but it’s out there and I worked there. And after that I went and started my own business and I consulted for about ten years in the automotive industry primarily in the area of alternative fuel storage technologies. I really enjoyed working in the space program, but the demands of that job required me to be away from home a lot, and I wanted to spend more time with my family and being in business for yourself allowed me to do that. I actually, my very first job in the Air Force was teaching electronics, and I left that to go to school and pursue the engineering career. And I just reached a point in my life where I wondered what if I had stayed with teaching I wondered what that would have been like and so that’s why I went back to school to pursue my graduate studies, I wanted to get a job teaching in academia to just see what it would be like. I think when you get older you often think back and wonder, I wonder what it would be like to go to college and not have to take tests you know. And the honest to God truth is it’s fun. It is good. And so that’s what brought me back here and I can honestly say that of my three separate careers, this has been the one that’s most rewarding. I truly enjoy working with the students and doing the things that I think are important with my students.

Ndeye: Now you have this aspect of leadership that you kind of have to incorporate and coming from industry how do you add that leadership aspect in when you’re dealing with those younger students?

Bob: I think that the classes that we teach here in the engineering program, the honest to goodness truth is I think that they’re not the most useful thing for our students, they’re essentially the same things that I took 40 years ago and I never used them. And so I think that based on my experience and the things that I’ve done what students really need to learn about is how to work effectively in teams, how to organize themselves and get important things done, and really all the important elements of leadership and really that’s why I think that teaching the students about those things is actually the most important thing that we can do here. 

Host: “To provide context for hyQ Bob first needed to describe Miami University’s project high flight.”
Bob: Okay well I started with a program here called Project High Flight, and I did that when I was working with my students and um and I liked to work with them on projects and I noticed with my students, even when they became seniors, didn’t really have the organizational wherewithal to pull off their projects in the way that I thought they should. And so I started Project High Flight with the idea in mind that we would look at you know developing themselves personally as individuals and then look at how we are all different from each other and how to work with, put together diverse teams and how to work effectively within the framework of diversity, and then how to organize ourselves and plan project and set goals for other people and all of that so that’s what Project High Flight was framed around. And we did it all in the context of developing our creative thinking skills. 

Host: “Bob then discussed how he taught students to lead through project high flight.”

Bob: I set it up, and gave it its initial start, but it was the students who actually took the lead and gave it form. And one student in particular, Jacqueline Vance, who ended up changing from Mechanical Engineering to Teacher Education actually took the lead in Project High Flight, she would come in and ask me what it was that I was trying to do and I would explain to her what my goals are, and she would kind of question me from her teacher background “Well have you thought about trying this, or have you thought about trying that” and I did, I tried them. And each time I thought it led to a better result. And eventually I hired her to work with me as an undergraduate assistant in my introduction to Mechanical Engineering class also, where she provided her insights and so on. After she got more and more familiar particularly in High Flight, she began no longer asking me “Why don’t you try this, why don’t you try that” she would ask me “why don’t you let me try this, why don’t you let me try that” and she ended up taking it over and leading the whole effort and so really what happened with Project High Flight is that it is truly it became a student led organization and I was more in the background, still providing access to resources and organizational framework as necessary but for me, seeing the students take over and really the necessity for me to diminish was the ultimate victory on my part. I thought that was the measure of success for Project High Flight.

Host: “Bob finished discussing hyQ with…”

Bob: What we’ve done with HyQ is we’ve taken everything that we learned in Project High Flight and we’ve adapted it for younger students in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade. And I cofounded that with Jacqueline Vance, and Jacqueline Vance is the student who was my partner in Project High Flight.

Ndeye: Nice! So its important to start early I see you’re getting them when they’re younger. So the traits that you’re trying to instill in these kids, what would be the three leadership traits that you would say you want to get in them. (8:34 – 8:47)
Bob: How about if I give you four. I think that its important for each one of my students to have some kind of useful skill that they can use to either solve problems or add value to what other people are doing. I mean otherwise you just go through life as a parasite and what kind of foundation is that for leadership. I think then after that all my students need to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to work effectively on teams because if you don’t then you’re just refereeing a conflict situation all the way through a project. And after that I think they need to learn managerial skills so that they can formulate complicated plans and set goals for other people to follow and measure their work because without that you’re just observing chaos. And then finally as a leader, I think that a leader has to encompass all of those things plus they have to able to have the creative thinking skills to formulate visions of things that are not yet but ought to be because a leader without a vision is just a manager, and a manager is great but you need to have a leader.

Ndeye: So I want you to tell me what is one piece of advice, regarding leadership, that you would leave with the world.

Bob: I believe that it’s incumbent on all of us to demand high quality from our leaders, and to not let out leadership to get away with anything less than their very best. I think it’s unfortunate that we sometimes have people occupying leadership positions who are not fulfilling the true responsibilities of leadership. They see it more as a gift of power that has been bestowed on them and it’s not that at all. Leadership is responsibility. And I think as long as we demand quality from our leaders I think that everything will be fine. I think that our shared destiny is too precious to leave it in the hands of phonies. I think that if we recognize a bad leader, and we can’t get them to change despite our best effort, and we can’t get them to leave, I think it’s incumbent on all of us to withdraw our support and go support someone else, and if we do that I think we can all make good progress. (11:47 – 12:50)

Bob: Hi my name is Bob Setlock and i see myself as an innovator and an educator. I really do want to welcome you all and thank you for listening for insight.