The Pursuit of Education: Dr. Youngblood on Transformational Learning at Kean Global

Welcome to Educast three thousand. It's the most transformative time in the history of education.

So join us as we break down the fourth wall and reflect on what's happening. The good, the bad, and even the chaotic. Here's your hosts, Melissa Lobel and Ryan Lufkin.

Hey there. Welcome to Educast three thousand. I'm your cohost, Ryan Lufkin.

And I'm your cohost, Melissa Lobel. And we are joined today with a really special guest. I'm super excited. I had a chance to meet with him and was so inspired by his work that I immediately knew we had to have him come on to our podcast.

So our guest today is Doctor. Joseph Youngblood II. He holds a variety of leadership roles at Keane University. Most importantly, he's the chancellor of Keane Global. So Doctor. Youngblood, welcome to the show.

Thank you. So happy to be here.

It's so good to have you. And like I said, I got to meet you when we visited the campus late last year. But for those listeners that aren't familiar with you or your work, would you mind just sharing a little bit about your background and your current role at Keane University?

Absolutely, thank you, Melissa. Good afternoon, everyone. Well, I guess for starters, I kind of consider myself a transdisciplinarian. My academic training spans law, education and public policy.

And my PhD is interdisciplinary with a primary focus in anthropology and human development. I've spent approximately twenty five years or so in higher education, holding myriad senior leadership roles across multiple institutions. And really focusing on some critical core domains, including academic affairs, where I served both as a founding academic dean and a provost. E learning international development work I've done around the world.

I also have had really important roles in public affairs and university advancement. Currently, Melissa stated, I serve as chancellor of Keane Global, where I oversee our international and regional campuses, as well as many of our strategic global initiatives. Within the Keane Global Campus is everything that we're doing with online education And also a really critical portfolio that makes sure that we're providing access to adult students who are returning, have some college yet no degree.

And the work again has consistently centered on transforming not only where and how learning occurs, but more importantly, who has access to it and ensuring that access leads to meaningful measurable impact for the students and the communities that we work Wow.

Your background is incredible. One of the things we always like to ask our guests, and this can be a a learning moment where you were on the teaching end or you could be on the learning end, but we always like to ask, do you have a favorite learning moment, you know, throughout your own learning experience, your own teaching journey?

Thanks, Ryan. There are multiple. If I had to think of one, particularly one that was kind of thematically aligned to the issues and the topics that we're exploring today, it would be one that happened to me during my law school years. I was taking one of my first comprehensive exams in law school that featured a torts hypothetical centered around a failed sump pump in a basement that went wrong. The problem for me was that I am a South Floridian from about as far South as you can go in the state of Florida, where we don't have basements.

No, no, no.

I had never seen or used the sump pump in my life. And I sat there in the middle of this exam thinking, Oh my God, is this a plumbing class or is this tort law? And that moment crystallized something for me. When learning doesn't take into account culture and context, it can unintentionally create barriers instead of building bridges.

That realization has been so important for me across the span of my career in higher education and in law, because it shaped how I approach education ever since. Especially in my work with adults in minoritized communities and global learners, who often come from very different life experiences than the assumptions that are baked into our systems and to our educational model. And so that is sort of the one that resonated for me from that prompt, Ryan. And again, it is something that I have translated and tried to have sensitivities to in everything that I do.

Yeah. It just kind of opens your mind to the fact that everybody's got different backgrounds and we can really alienate large groups of people if we don't account for that.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So doctor Wilson and I were talking about having you on the podcast. We got really excited. Your work at King Global and this division of transformational learning is really groundbreaking.

I mean, really inspiring. How do you define transformational learning? I mean, we're in a we talk all the time about how transformative a time in education this is. But how do you define transformational learning in the context of education today?

And why is that so critical?

As I was developing that construct and transitioning into Kane, in charge with the task of creating a new division that encompasses everything that I talked about in terms of my portfolio, I drew heavily on my experience in human development and anthropology, specifically allowing the work of Jack Meserell and his transformative learning theory to guide how I was looking at the application of that work, particularly given that Kain as a very traditional eighteen to twenty four age providing organization was structured and facilitated, that there needed to be a guiding framework about how we looked at the educational experiences of students who fell outside of that sort of traditional age parameter that Kane was just accustomed to from, the time it was chartered in eighteen fifty five.

And Mezzereau's theory was really important because it forces us to question our assumptions about how do we fundamentally reshape how people see the world. And in higher ed, especially with adult learners and those returning to complete degrees, we've made the experience far too transactional. Enroll, take courses, get a credential, go out and get a job, right? But I believe fundamentally that it must also be transformational.

So this adult theory of transformational learning says that there are things that we can do that we should do methodologically, pedagogically to ensure that any person irrespective of their age or experience can lead the educational process transformed. So that for me also represents the importance of empowering learners to see themselves, to see their possibilities and to see them differently. It's for me about agency, it's about identity, it's about purpose. And in a globalized world, particularly given that part of my portfolio, transformational learning is not a luxury.

It has to be a prerequisite for all of the things that we value at Kean University and that I value personally, like equity, adaptability, and real world impact. So that's kind of the framework that we've used to push this transformational learning model. It has taken off at Kane in extraordinary ways. People understand that there is buy in, and it has allowed us to transform the experiences of students irrespective of where they are on the developmental continuum.

That's amazing.

It's such an important thing to think about, especially in the world today. How are we moving beyond just that traditional learning experience, right? Or even that traditional learning experience put online, and how are we transforming lives? How did you get the university to adopt this?

And how did you bring faculty and staff along on this journey with you? Because I mean, you have seen tremendous growth with your global campus. So how did that happen? How were you able to make that happen?

That's a great question, Melissa. And my initial response will be to say mission alignment and mission specificity. That so often institutions try to create new initiatives and new things that are completely disaligned with the mission and the core values of the institution. So for me and my colleagues in transformational learning and the global campus, we were pretty clear about focusing on some of the guiding principles that speak to Cain's identity and its historic mission.

So we were concerned about issues of access. How do we create academic programs that are relevant for these students that are transformational? And how do we have varying degrees of intentionality about what that represented to some of the transformation that needed to take place, particularly with a relatively new Kane Online orientation. At the time I entered into Kane, Kane Online was about five years old.

So, you know, still very much in its infancy. We designed and redesigned the platforms to reflect the realities of today's learner and to do so in a much more contemporary way that leveraged learning technology, that leveraged professors and people who were facilitating the learning, who really understood the backgrounds and the experiences of the students that we were working with. Many of whom were working adults, caregivers, and in the context of our global work, had to be globally mobile. So that meant integrating a lot of the culturally relevant content that was a part of our course development transformation process, where we emphasize flexibility, embedding wraparound supports for students.

Kane is also a Hispanic and minority serving institution. So the cultural context was an important part of how we were constructing this new online identity for Kane. And most importantly, I think we focused on designing for transformation. So learners were not just consuming content again to this notion of Mesereaux's framework for transformational learning.

They were engaging in reflection, applying knowledge, and in many ways, building the confidence that they needed as returning students, as older students with all of these life complexities. And the technology gave us the tools to be able to do that. But it was our philosophy of transformational learning ultimately that shaped the experience for these students. As a result, as you stated, Melissa, we have seen unbelievable growth, scalable growth, and also scalable success and outcomes.

So for us, it hasn't just been about increasing the number of students in Cane Online and in our global programs, but also in a very short time period, seeing different levels of success, persistence, retention, and ultimately graduation for many of our students.

You've also done an incredible job reaching populations that higher education struggles reaching. Is there intentionality behind that? How are you doing that?

Absolutely intentional. Again, this focus on the history, the mission of Cain and its identity within higher education in New Jersey and around the world. We were very specific in saying, we want to use online learning and education and distance education to provide access for people. And again, to create what we know happens in terms of social mobility and success, particularly for underserved So that was a very intentional part of our focus. Our marketing campaigns were not apologetic about that. And again, it has afforded a different level of access and opportunity for people traditionally left out of the higher education framework, particularly now, given the cost, and other issues relating to financing a higher education experience.

One of the aspects I love about what you're doing, and especially when you're dealing with nontraditional students or students who have their educational journey interrupted, is that assessment of prior learning. I think that's so valuable and lets people not just start flat footed, but really gain from what they've already accomplished, right? What does that process look like?

Absolutely. I think that, it's so interesting. When I started the lexicon that was clearly around prior learning assessment, That is now shifting. We use prior learning assessment.

We use credit for prior learning, irrespective of the label. It's the same concept that it honors the fact that learning doesn't just happen in classrooms, right? Yeah, exactly. It happens in boardrooms, on military bases, in kitchens, as parents are teaching their children how to measure the amount of vanilla that you put in the batter for the cake.

And it happens in the community based context as well. So at Kane, we evaluate students' prior experiences and competencies, and attempt to translate them into credit where appropriate. And for adult learners, is extraordinarily important because for many of them, their education was interrupted for all of the reasons that we talked about. So PLA and CPL is really a game changer.

It accelerates the time to degree, it reduces the costs, and perhaps most importantly, it validates their lived experience, which is such an important part of a human developmental understanding around your academic abilities and intellectual prowess. So it becomes a source of academic worth that these students are able to bring currency to the table that allows them to acknowledge their own competencies, but then also rewards them because again, it cuts time to degree and cost for the education. So, PLA and our ability to assess learning irrespective of where it takes place has been one of the most powerful tools for equity in higher education today.

And at Kane, it has become a cornerstone of what we're doing as we work, particularly with non traditional populations and non traditional students.

I love that. And I think it keeps students from getting lost in the fact that they're taking courses that they already know the subjects on. Right? Like, they're paying for these courses to teach someone they already know. Right? They can they can move ahead. And I I just think that, like you said, bringing equity to the table, I love that aspect of it.

Yeah. It's such a confidence builder too if you think about it. You're already rewarding and recognizing the skills of your learners as they're coming to the university. And that's like to me, that's just so powerful in encouraging people to drive towards their own success and giving them agency in their learning. Another piece that I know you all are invested in is a comprehensive learner record or skills based learning. Share a little bit about how you've approached that so that not only do students have this value and currency, but they're able to demonstrate that to the world.

In this same framework of ensuring that everything that we do at Kean is transformational for our students, we are building and we've built systems that see students as more than just their GPAs or more than just the sum of the courses that they've taken. And so this movement at Cain and actually internationally now around the development of comprehensive learner records really captures what students know and what they can do across courses, internships, service learning, community engagement and research experiences and opportunities. And it combines the skills based part of the education experience, but tells a much richer story that employers and graduate schools alike can really appreciate and have demonstrative evidence to support that students have these competencies.

So we've had a really historic and groundbreaking relationship with organization called Territorium. So huge shout out to Territorium. It has been an extraordinary highlight opportunity that we've had, primarily starting with the College of Business and Management, working with our student affairs division. So that a lot of the work that our students are doing in community service, student activities are linked to learning outcomes that can also be defined and packaged in terms of the evidence that they need to demonstrate the value of what that represents to their education and their development.

And to really allow students to have a platform electronically to be able to demonstrate that. So this shift for us as a traditional university and most of the universities are, means that we get to reflect the reality that the workforce is less concerned about in terms of seat time and really focus on outcomes and learning outcomes. And finding ways that are evidence based that are couched in assessment to be able to allow students to demonstrate that. So our graduates leave Kane now, not just with your traditional transcript, but they have a comprehensive portfolio that demonstrates the skills, the competencies and the contributions that they've made to their education, to their discipline and to society.

And that frankly for us, Melissa and Ryan has been a game changer for our students. It has positioned them to be much more competitive in the marketplace. We are finding that students are applying to and being accepted to top tier graduate and professional programs. And again, this is a part of the framework for transformation that we've embedded in a lot of the work that we do at Kean University.

It's so interesting because we've had, you know, Melissa and I, we go to a lot of the conferences and there's a lot of debate around whether or not employers are ready to hire skills based hiring. Right? But what I think is so interesting is it also empowers those students, to your point, to be able to market themselves better and really understand the skills they bring to the table because they're very clearly articulated, right, in a way that just maybe a standalone degree that doesn't break down those component parts, you know, prepare students for. It's fascinating.

No, absolutely. I'll just add briefly, I gave a brief mention to the College of Business and Public Management because in the piloting phase, it was the discipline and the multiple disciplines that just made sense in terms of having industry standards and industry expectations for the graduateness, if you will, of students. But the greatest takers of everything that we've been doing with Territorium have been the liberal arts students who are finding ways to leverage that broad, wonderful, rich liberal arts experience into other micro credentials and skills that they can use to demonstrate what they bring as candidates to the workforce.

So it has been exciting to see the inter multi and transdisciplinary reaction to Territorium and what these CLRs represent for students and their life beyond their undergraduate experience at -MIKELLE: Yeah.

I love that.

You wouldn't think that necessarily, which is such a really powerful insight. Thinking about your student body, you have a number of global partnerships. I was thinking maybe share a little bit about your approach to that and maybe a little bit about those partnerships. How have you kept to this concept of transformational learning or this foundational approach as you're thinking about serving students outside of the US?

No, I think it's really exciting that we have a president who is such an extraordinary visionary, And he frequently cites, the quote by Wayne Gretzky, where he talks about his success being linked to the fact that he was always very clear about skating to where the puck was going to be. And that's really what we've done at Kane in terms of our investment in global education. Our investment in the development of a Wenzhou Kane University in China, which is one of three US universities that have US degree granting English speaking campuses in the People's Republic of China. And in our case, we're the only public university in America with that status.

But what we have found is that those values that you're talking about in the approaches, they're universal. So we're very clear that irrespective of where we're doing work in the world and in our global portfolio, that we are positioning the importance of dignity of purpose and the desire to grow. All of that really underpins the fact that transformational learning is everywhere. And how you deliver that in our estimation and in my estimation must also be deeply contextual.

So I think you're beginning to see the intersection of my transdisciplinary background because the human ecology aspect of culture and context are just a critical part of who I am and what I've done professionally in terms of shaping these types of programs. But our work in China, our work in Bermuda and also in the Gulf States really don't just expose students to this exported US model of higher education or education. We engage and we try to engage with local partners. We listen to the learners that we are working with across these educational contexts.

And we really work to co design culturally relevant pathways for students across the human developmental continuum in terms of age and experience. I have found in my work internationally and international development and global education that the one size fits all framework is extraordinarily damaging, detrimental, and ultimately not sustainable in terms of a successful model. It just doesn't work. So transformation must be localized.

It must take local root. And we are very culturally sensitive, particularly in the work that we're doing in these global settings around the world.

Yeah. I need to figure out some sort of speaking engagement in Bermuda with you because it's where I went on my honeymoon. I love it. It's just beautiful.

Love it. It's a fascinating context. And what we like about it, particularly in terms of our pilot of the work that we're doing in a lot of the Western Caribbean nations, island nations, that either have a history of only two year, you know, sort of the equivalent in the US of a community college experience is creating academic pathways for those students. In the context of Bermuda, we also have a partnership with the Bermudian government that allows us to leverage our research capacity as a research to university to really be a fundamental part of the solution to the issues and challenges that they face as an urban island nation, which is not too distinct from the same issues that we have in the urban centers in New Jersey.

So it has created a wonderful platform for us to explore these issues, to look at issues of transferability, of the solutions, and to be an anchor institution, not just for the communities that we serve here in New Jersey, but the communities that we serve around the world.

Yeah. So, what have been some of the biggest challenges in kind of implementing transformational learning? I know, as a younger university, you benefit to some extent from not having some of the baggage or the preexisting elements maybe. Is there but what are the biggest challenges you face?

Well, I would say, Noor, in the context of, I guess, US higher education to some extent, but, Kane was founded in eighteen fifty five.

We Oh, jeez. Never mind. You're not new at all.

We've been around for for quite some time. And in fact, we are the oldest public university in the state of New Jersey, which is one of the oldest states in the union.

So So to that point, do have some of the figure quotes, I'm making figure quotes baggage, The established way of doing things, Correct, correct.

And to your point, one of the major challenges that we face and that we're constantly dealing with and mitigating is the issue of scaling transformation. And it's hard because systems are built for efficiency and not reflection. So we've had to fight against inertia, bureaucracy, particularly in terms of some of the work on the global scale, And even well meaning policies that ostensibly block learners in. So breaking free of that and really trying to scale transformation has been critical.

So the lesson for us is that we always center on the learner. Wherever we're doing this work, whatever the sort of objectives are, the focus rigidly on the learner has always kept us attuned to the context. So the law school sump pump story I shared earlier, illustrative example, taught me that if we ignore context, we risk alienating the very people we're trying to uplift. So globally, it has meant having a tremendous degree of flexibility.

Domestically, it means dismantling all of those assumptions about who college is for and pushing the point that transformation really starts with humility and listening. And that's our inherent obligation as an institution of higher learning to demonstrate that to the communities and to the learners that we're working with.

And how do you ensure you're getting the faculty buy in on that? Because I know we still hear people say, Oh, you know, my job as an educator isn't to isn't to teach skills. My job is to make better members of society, that kind of thing. How do you get that faculty buy in?

The buy in comes from engaging people and including them in very transparent ways on the ground floor of these initiatives. What we were able to do at Cain, I mean, when I transitioned here, I was at for many years, an adult serving institution. It was baked into the fabric of that institution. It was a part of its charter that it focused specifically on that population.

So everything within that institution was strategically aligned to the mission and the focus of serving adult students. So imagine my transition coming into a very traditional environment, But I had the wherewithal and the change management understanding to really emphasize the learning, to bring people along, to be transparent, and to not make assumptions around where people were or where they were willing to go if they had the right information. So we implemented what we call the I2 process here within the Transformational Learning Division. The I stand for implementation to ideation.

And we would have implementation to ideation workshops around this Star Trekkian set of values and things that we were bringing to the table, like transformational learning, like leveraging learning technology for new modalities, hybrid flex learning opportunities for an institution that has never had to deal with that or had not had to deal with that. So for us, it was about deeper levels of engagement. These I too sessions were intended to be much deeper dives than just the traditional socialization to a topic or to an issue. And they were structured so that every entity, every functional division, every department within every college had a place at the table so that they could understand what their role would be in leading aspects of this transformation.

So faculty buy in was not an issue because they were engaged in these processes from thought one, from the moment it was ideated until we moved into execution.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's key. I mean, that's the biggest challenge, I think. Your background with the change management, I mean, had to have been key to driving that, because Businesses do it all the time, but universities do it as well where you don't bring those voices to the table and then we wonder why the outcomes aren't what we want them to be. Absolutely.

You're practicing what you teach in so many ways. It's the fundamentals of transformational learning is applying directly to transformational leadership which is so powerful. I'm curious and we can't not ask this question. What role is AI playing for you in all of this? Or how are you thinking about AI as you are continuing to ensure your students are having these incredible experiences that you're committed to?

AI is the future of transformational learning. It is a major innovation that is already changing and shaping the future.

And in higher education, we have to get on board and accept that AI is our friend. It is our compadre and not our enemy. So when I think about what's next for transformational learning at Kane and in our Kane Global portfolio, We are focusing very intentionally on some of these new trends like artificial intelligence, providing micro credentials, really maximizing the use of immersive technology to assist and develop learners and to again, help improve outcomes. So we use the word trends in higher ed, but these are really much more because they become tools for how we reimagine the learning journey for students.

And at the end of the day, it has to be utilized in service of human outcomes, which is why we see AI as our friend. So at Kane Global, we're exploring how AI can personalize the learning experiences of our students while strengthening their sense of belonging. We're expanding our digital and physical access points across continents. Again, in ways that allow us to leverage AI and these immersive technologies to support students, to support development. And the next frontier is really going to be creating what I like to call these borderless ecosystems, where transformation isn't just possible, it becomes an expectation.

Yeah. We usually, at this point, ask, like, get out your crystal ball. What do you see in the future? You guys have already been like looking deeply into the crystal ball. It's pretty clear.

It's Doctor. Ruppolet skating to where the puck is going to be, or I should say Wayne Gretzky, but nonetheless, you know, that's a part of how we continue to innovate. One of the taglines that we have in transformational learning is that we have to relentlessly innovate. So relentless innovation is the framework that allows us to really continue to be ahead of the curve.

And relentless innovation is not necessarily a term highly associated with higher education.

Absolutely correct.

For institutions who might be looking to kind of start embracing that innovation, start going on their own transformational learning journey, What's one piece of advice around even just getting started?

Every initiative for me, and this is who I am as a researcher, as an academic, as a scholar, and as a person is, you have to start by asking the why, what questions.

Ultimately, it's a human developmental piece that we should be asking periodically across the life course anyway. The who am I, what am I question. We have to do that organizationally as well. So my advice to institutions that recognize the importance of really embracing this emerging and evolving population in higher education is to really ask the first question, what do our learners need to know to transform?

And not just what we want to deliver to them, but how do we build systems and structures and strategies that recognize the lived experiences of our students, that prioritize reflection and that foster connection? You can't allow the complexity, particularly of working with new populations to paralyze you. Start small, but also really take advantage of the lessons learned in terms of what that reflection and self appraisal represents to embed the practice of prior learning recognition into what you're doing. So in New Jersey, for example, there are over a million people who have some college, but no degree.

A huge opportunity to, again, really allow those people to have the platform and the access to go back and finish what they started. But we have to build systems and structures and strategies that are aligned to that. The traditional higher education model simply is not.

Just the high school graduate funnel doesn't map to that at all.

That's right.

Ultimately what we've positioned is the orientation that how we have structured the programs, what that means in terms of the content, the delivery modalities, positions us to really be clear that transformation is not just about pedagogy. It's really about how do we fulfill the promise to these students, and how do we make sure that we're creating systems that support that, and that ultimately are not barriers to their success.

Yeah. The only downside to this being an audio podcast is you can't see Melissa and I nodding along aggressively.

Huge smiles.

And that I see it. I want to share with the listeners that we're all very connected around these themes and issues. That's why this has been such a delightful conversation for me. Amazing.

It absolutely has. I mean, so inspirational and so many, I think, really powerful nuggets.

For higher education leaders that are really trying to think about their work and what their future looks like, the impact they can have on learners and how that's changing really dramatically today. I can't thank you enough for joining us, for sharing these stories. We have a bunch of links that will be in the show notes as well that reference a lot of the work being done at Cain, some of the research around transformational learning. Listeners, you'll be able to get more context for this. And again, Doctor. Youngblood, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Honestly, I can't. I will be watching what you all are doing because I just think it's incredibly innovative and thanks for sharing with us on the show.

We are excited. It is such an extraordinary time to be at Kean University and I'm just so honored and humbled that you asked me to do this. And I hope that, you know, again, listeners really can take something away from this conversation and this dialogue. So very much appreciated and thank you.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Educast three thousand. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and drop us a review on your favorite podcast players so you don't miss an episode. If you have a topic you'd like us to explore more, please email us at InstructureCast at Instructure dot com, or you can drop us a line on any of the socials. You can find more contact info in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Educast three thousand.