In this week's episode, guest expert, Jacqueline Rodriguez, Vice President, Research, Policy, & Advocacy at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) in Washington, DC, joins us to talk about her move from a traditional faculty role to policy and advocacy work at AACTE and what leadership has been like during COVID-19. . We wrap up with our takeaways from the conversation. Feel free to share your thoughts and responses with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook and tag us @university_of_venus on IG and @UVenus on Twitter or post it on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/UVenus/ and we will share, retweet, and amplify! Find University of Venus on Instagram @university_of_venus , Twitter @UVenus , and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/UVenus/
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Music Credits: Magic by Six Umbrellas
Sound Engineer: Ernesto Valencia
View from Venus, Season 4, Episode 1
VFV 4.1 Jackie Rodriguez final
[00:00:00] Mary Churchill: Hello everyone and welcome to season four of the View from Venus. My name is Mary Churchill and on today's episode, I am joined by cohost Meg Palladino and guest expert, Jacqueline Rodriguez, Vice President of Research, Policy and Advocacy at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education in Washington, DC. In today's episode, we'll be talking with Jackie about her move from a traditional faculty role to AACTE and what leadership has been like during COVID-19.
[00:00:38] Mary Churchill: Jackie, thank you so much for joining us. We are really excited about this conversation and excited to be back recording our podcast for all of our listeners. Meg is going to start us off with a fun pop question and get us warmed up. So, go for it, Meg.
[00:00:58] Meg Palladino: All right, Jackie, it's so great to meet you. Our first question of the day is what is your favorite type of sandwich?
[00:01:05] Jackie Rodriguez: Oh, this is such a great question. So, I loved. I like warm sandwiches. I'm not like a cold sandwich kind of gal. And I like grilled cheese, but, my favorite is grilled ham and cheese, which I know is going to sound super strange to those people who know me as a vegetarian, but I'm Cuban. And I grew up eating lots and lots and lots of pig products.
[00:01:28] Meg Palladino: Normally I would say something like a panini, like a nice mozzarella basil tomato panini sounds good. But over the summer, I was in Tunisia and I was introduced to what the Tunisians called the best sandwich in the world. And it might be, and I forget the name of it, but it's basically similar to like a pizza, but you fold it up so the crust is on the outside and the pizza stuff is inside and then you put French fries in it and it is so good. So, I love this. It might be that sandwich.
[00:02:02] Mary Churchill: My favorite kind of classic sandwich is a turkey reuben. So, also a grilled cheese, right? Like a kind of fancy grilled cheese. I love Russian dressing, the coleslaw, the thick slab of Turkey and the Swiss cheese and the rye. I just love it so much. So, I'm also, I guess that's kind of a warm sandwich. It's yummy,
[00:02:27] Mary Churchill: Jackie, you moved from a traditional faculty role to your current role at AACTE. Tell us what that was like. And what kinds of opportunities an association like AACTE offers for folks trained in traditional Ph.D. programs?
[00:02:43] Jackie Rodriguez: Well, the transition was not seamless. There is a huge amount of growth and learning that I had to own and invest in over the course of, I really think more than at least a year. I think it probably took two years for me to really understand the role, not only the expectations, but how to successfully advocate and execute in the role.
[00:03:07] Jackie Rodriguez: And. I really appreciated the latitude and patience that my colleagues had. It wasn't simply moving to an association, but rather moving from the academy to a totally different type of business model. So, two totally different types of business models, different types of working environments. And now to a degree they're similar in that case with working environments, because as we all are remote, we're all navigating a sense of independence and autonomy and sometimes siloing, right, because of the nature of how we're working.
[00:03:38] Jackie Rodriguez: But when I first was approached about the role with AACTE I had reached out to a colleague about becoming more involved with the association as a faculty member. And at that time, my expectation was that I would perhaps throw my hat in the ring for a support volunteer role or perhaps they needed somebody to consult on a particular project.
[00:04:05] Jackie Rodriguez: I never envisioned a role in the executive team when I first engaged in these initial conversations. And I find it funny now, and I still think of myself if I only had had a year in the moment when my current CEO said to me, you know, I was thinking more or less like assistant or vice president. And I thought she must have the wrong person.
[00:04:27] Jackie Rodriguez: Like I think she had me confused at the person she's actually meeting with next, because it was so farfetched for me to consider moving from the academy into that level of a role. And what I have now come to understand is the content expertise that someone in the academy and the level of deep and rigorous research knowledge is what I think the role required.
[00:04:53] Jackie Rodriguez: But in addition to that, I have found I'm an eager person. I think most people who have met me think of me as amiable and I can be zealous, right. Like I want to go after and get done and learn and continue. And I think that level of excitement about the work was something that she also wanted in the role because she wanted to make sure that as an association, we continued to present and be at the table in a way that encouraged others, not only to take us seriously, but to ask us to participate and to do more. So, my first year or two, I did what I'm now coining like a listening tour/meet and greets where I was exploring relationships with lots of different organizations and different people. And that allowed me to understand where our association fit in the greater ecosystem, the relationships that were already established from previous staff members and how I could continue and help them thrive. And then how we wanted the association to present itself and what direction setting we wanted for the association. And, shortly into my tenure at AACTE that we engaged in our first strategic planning process and then due to COVID and all of the racial injustice that the country faced in particular in 2020, we went through another set of strategic planning processes that helped us course correct in some cases.
[00:06:21] Jackie Rodriguez: So, it was really exciting. And I'm very happy that I took a leap, but I would say by no means, was it easy or simple. But I feel like I'm a better person for having engaged in it. And I, people ask if I miss working at an institution of higher education and I do, I loved my job. I have to say that out loud, because I think there could be this perhaps, perhaps either an observation or because there is a vacancy in that conversation around my experience there that perhaps I didn't enjoy it, but I was surrounded by amazing colleagues.
[00:06:59] Jackie Rodriguez: Like I talk to those colleagues. I still try and engage them in the association’s work. And when I think of experts in the field, I still think of them. Like the people I worked with, I was so fortunate to be surrounded by true scholars. So, from the Dean who hired me to the Dean, I worked for, I couldn't say anything more or better about William Mary, who was great.
[00:07:24] Meg Palladino: So, Jackie it's my understanding that you lead a team that's predominantly women. And tell me, what was that like during COVID, what were the challenges and the opportunities and, what did you learn from the experience?
[00:07:35] Jackie Rodriguez: Yeah, so during COVID we have a six-person team at that point and four of the six people on the team were women.
[00:07:46] Jackie Rodriguez: And also, to add that additional layer, two of my team members, including me, so, three of us out of four had children. So, it was an interesting kind of shift to see how the structure of an eight to five or nine to five working environment changed. When you came into the office You know, because it wasn't just go home and work.
[00:08:17] Jackie Rodriguez: Right. All of us experienced go home and work while your partner is also working. And perhaps now children are at home working as well as whatever COVID pet you acquired is now barking or meowing or, you know, a parakeet in the background. So, it was a zoo, it was a zoo. And I think it was for everybody.
[00:08:37] Jackie Rodriguez: And here's what I found really helpful. We all got our dignity back. I feel like during that period of time, we as professionals have as women, I think too, this is my perspective only, always attempted to come across as put together and organized with structure and a sense of grace with a sense of tenacity.
[00:09:03] Jackie Rodriguez: Imagine trying to balance all of those sorts of polarizing characteristics. You want to come across as somebody who is deeply invested, but you can't be too excited and you want to come across as somebody who is absolutely organized, but you can't be the only person pitching ideas. And then all of a sudden, we're back at home and everybody was experiencing the same kind of chaos.
[00:09:26] Jackie Rodriguez: And we were allowed as women to have our children in the background, walking across screens. And what I loved is that men also had their children walking through the background and no longer could the perception be that the man or the person who doesn't have these things actually factored in to his work role actually now has to factor them in because it's quite obvious that those things are taking place.
[00:09:52] Jackie Rodriguez: And I feel like that gave us back all of us, some dignity where as humans, we have the same experiences, many of us, the same factors to consider, and all of us were pitching in oftentimes within the same levels and because we're all at home and it wasn't just, well, you're the mom and the worker, and you're still responsible for these things.
[00:10:15] Jackie Rodriguez: Now everyone's at home. So, we've got to differentiate some roles, which was great and ask our children to pitch in to some of those roles that they had not experienced prior to. No, I'm not going to pick up that glass of water because it's your glass of water and you're working there. And if you want to move it, then you know, you could move it.
[00:10:32] Jackie Rodriguez: These are, I think it was wonderful. But I think throughout COVID there were different levels of acknowledgement around what the new expectations and norms were. And I always said out loud, because I would prefer to operate with transparency. I have children at home who are virtual learning in the background and you're going to hear them.
[00:10:55] Jackie Rodriguez: So, I apologize if it gets really loud, just let me know. And it never did but acknowledging that it could and acknowledging that they were there, gave the person on the other end dependent, whatever gender identity that person had. Right. To say, yeah, me too. And I have a crazy dog who is just like cooped up right now.
[00:11:14] Jackie Rodriguez: And I found that in my colleagues, we became people again. And I really, really valued that because of those relationships I felt we're accelerated to a degree that could not have happened without COVID. We would never have been in each other's homes in that same way. And I think everybody operated with the level of generosity of spirit too.
[00:11:38] Jackie Rodriguez: And I'm hoping that we continue in that same frame. Like I've noticed that even as kids go back to school, there's still a sense of like, yeah, my partner is in the background also taking a call and nobody said that because we all live the same life, you know? But one thing that I felt like AACTE did really well and I would like to celebrate is acknowledging that as a team and still, predominantly women, but as a team recognizing when the high productivity of that team needed to just press pause. And so, our CEO worked with our executive team and, as a team, we discussed, let's ensure that we put in some protocols. So, we have a remote work task force that has established some guidelines for how to work well in an environment based on what our staff has said.
[00:12:27] Jackie Rodriguez: And on Mondays, we have no meetings because nobody likes them starting Monday at 9:00 AM with a meeting. And we try to really honor that. And then we typically had in the past, given people half day Fridays over the summer months, because that's a slower time. However, we continue that into the fall and throughout 21.
[00:12:51] Jackie Rodriguez: So, if there aren't external meetings and if you feel like you've tied things up with a bow, on Friday night, you can clock off and you can take care of the things that you don't really want to do on Saturday. You can get them done on Friday, so you can actually take reprieve on Saturday. And we extended some holidays to be sure that, you know, people, if they needed a four-day weekend, they got it.
[00:13:15] Jackie Rodriguez: We even gave us at the end of the summer of this year, people just got a four or five day weekend where we closed it Thursday and Friday, I think on Monday to honor that productivity and I think the other pieces within our staffing structure, knowing school's not being open and then reopening and then having to shut down.
[00:13:38] Jackie Rodriguez: Sometimes that meant that whoever was charged with dropping off small humans or picking up small humans, they were going to have to need differentiated work time. So, we asked team members. So just tell us if you're able to start work at seven and you need to take a two-hour break between 8:30 and 10:30 to do small human duties, that's okay. And then if you need to work till 5:30, we totally understand. And instead of taking vacation in the middle of the afternoon for an hour to go pick up small humans, we've said, take it as your lunch break, or just take that out. And then finish the hour later so that there is a sense of compassion that we have for what it means to work from home during not just COVID, but I think into the future.
[00:14:26] Jackie Rodriguez: And I think most people with families really appreciated that because it gave them a sense of security that they weren't being judged. Nobody was going to say that they were taking advantage of anything or that they were complying with the rules or that they weren't getting their job done. We trust our staff, they're getting the job, they're doing more than their job.
[00:14:46] Jackie Rodriguez: Right. So now they have the flexibility to do that on the time that they have available. I love
[00:14:52] Mary Churchill: small human duties. That sounds like something Meg would say.
[00:14:57] Meg Palladino: So, you know, I'd like to comment on this idea that we all got our dignity back after COVID United. Like two years, you know, in my pajamas with a kid on my lap, I don't know if dignified is how I felt, but I can also tell you that, like now I have to come back into the office three days a week and I'm two days at home.
[00:15:19] Meg Palladino: And the days that I come into the office; I just feel like I'm a mess. I mean, I'm late and I'm forgot my lunch. And like, you know, I don't know if I remember to comb my hair and it's so stressful to come in and. I kind of missed the days in my pajamas with my kid on my lap. Honestly,
[00:15:37] Mary Churchill: you know, to that point, I have some really beautiful blouses that I bought during COVID. So, I would wear pajama bottoms and like these gorgeous blouses.
[00:15:48] Meg Palladino: You know what I did? I moved twice and I got rid of all my stuff. So, when it was time to come back, I'm like, I have like two pairs of pants. I don't have any shoes. I certainly have no, like nice. I had a few nice blouses. I mean, I have maybe three sweaters.
[00:16:04] Meg Palladino: And so, I was like, I need some work. So, I went out and bought a pair of Doc Martens, which aren't Fluevogs, but I was like,
[00:16:11] Jackie Rodriguez: yeah,
[00:16:12] Meg Palladino: that's great. And that's my professional shoes now. And so, I feel like my idea of what's professional has shifted a little bit.
[00:16:18] Jackie Rodriguez: Oh, definitely. When I think about like our dignity, I feel like we value the right things right now when it comes to our professional colleagues. Right. Like we didn't, we value if they come to the table with added encouragement, with ideas, solutions. They troubleshoot these what we used to call like competencies around like emotional intelligence.
[00:16:47] Jackie Rodriguez: But these are really dispositional characteristics that I feel like get to. During COVID, we start to realize, like, it doesn't actually matter if somebody comes in late to a zoom meeting as opposed to an office meeting, or if they're wearing the latest and greatest on their wristwatch or on their shoes, or if their hair is perfectly coiffed, like nobody cares.
[00:17:08] Jackie Rodriguez: We care if you're in it for the mission, if you're going to move out on it. And if I can depend on to get the work done. And I felt like that was the part that like the dignity of the work. Right? Like that was the part that I was. So, I treasured, I really treasured. Yeah,
[00:17:24] Mary Churchill: no, I think that really resonated the centering the work. I just think that so much of what you shared though, really Jackie is it's very eye-opening, the type of work that you're doing. And I think the opportunities for folks in higher ed to move into another sector, like the nonprofit sector or the advocacy work, the policy work, the lobbying, you know, kind of like how do you do this work?
[00:17:49] Mary Churchill: So, it's, you know, there's one thing to come up with a great idea. It's another to implement it and get it funded and to make people believe in it, right. To sell the idea to those who have the power to make it happen. Right. So, I am really grateful for the work that you do and thank you for joining us.
[00:18:08] Jackie Rodriguez: It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it. It was great. Thank you so much. That was awesome.
[00:18:15] Mary Churchill: As always. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week with Shana MacDonald from the University of Waterloo in Canada.