Martha Gilliland

Did you ever find yourself frustrated in that “space” between what the reality is now and what you see clearly is possible?    Your friends and colleagues are explaining all the reasons why accomplishing the possibility is impossible.    This workshop is about causing those possibilities to emerge into reality.    It is about converting “either-or” barriers to “both-and” possibilities. It is about balancing being and doing.   And, it is about the effective use of vision and goals, conversations and relationships, projects and actions, and data and evidence.     She grounds the tools in theory with great humor. And, she draws on terrific examples from her own experience of succeeding and failing.

Just as recovering your car from a skid on an icy road requires a counterintuitive move, recovering state and federal support for public universities requires counterintuitive action.   Martha brings rich stories and examples to help you turn into that skid and make the key moves.   She says: “it starts with telling the truth”. Do we speak with full integrity?     Who are we really serving; who has top priority and in what order--- the state, the students from the state who provides the dollars, other students, the federal research dollars, the faculty, or the administrators?    Is diversity action more than tokenism?    Which programs are actually excellent and which are awful?   Do we accept some accountability for the learning of the students or only for the teaching of them?      Do we actually use the pedagogies that we know work best?    How do we acknowledge and integrate ways of knowing that go beyond classrooms, libraries, books, and homework.    “The truth will set you free”.    Speak the truth and then ask for help.   The skid is reversed with firm grounding in the direction producing both results and money.

Martha brings 35 years of research and policy analysis to this speech on the nation’s energy imperative.    She places fossil fuel reserves and consumption in perspective and clearly delineates a way forward.    Just how we move forward on the energy front, she says, will determine our economic strength, our ability to have a healthy planet, and our ability to insulate ourselves from terrorism.    Everyone has responsibility---the oil and natural gas companies, the coal industry, the nuclear industry, the emerging solar industry, the government, and each and every individual.     Martha identifies the actions each can take.

I’ve learned that certain principles rule during the search process for a university presidency.   The process is fraught with short attention spans, hidden and conflicting agendas, unclear objectives, and ambiguous instructions. Moreover, a potential mismatch between the university and you is a very real possibility.   The people who advance you through the process (usually a faculty committee) are different from the people who make the decision to hire or not (the Board of Regents). The process is tedious, time consuming and full of bureaucratic and intellectual challenge. This speech or workshop focuses on five principles that will carry you through, five principles around which to structure your preparation each step of the way.