A True Scholar-Practitioner Bridges the Urban-Rural Divide with Dr. Teresa Spaeth
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:20:06]
Exactly.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:20:07]
And if you’re OK with that, because, hey, it’s a school project, right? Who reads your school project? It’s a huge one and it is published. So you might think it’s going to be different. But real researchers are going to read stuff in the research journals and they’re going to read students work. Honestly, even though it’s good work, that’s not what they’re going to do. And no one else is going to read this stuff.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:20:27]
Yes. Realize that afterwards. Right? Right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:20:30]
When you’re caught up in it, you think this is the most important thing ever. And I remember that. I remember thinking when I was in graduate school was so I went through graduate school twice. I was on the traditional path and my research advisor died unexpectedly. It was the plane crash. And so that there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of sort of changes because of that, the department couldn’t handle his students anymore. And some of the students were basically right there at graduation and they were able to finish, but it wasn’t right there. If you were just a little bit away from being right there, you had to start over. And so I decided I’d been a poor graduate student for long enough and went to work for a while before eventually going to call back in the process. But but this notion of of being able to to detach your your passions from what you’re doing and just get it done is really, really important. And something I really put in practice to eventually get my own PhD because I was following my passions the first time around, which is OK if research is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. But if you’re serving others in a different way, like I am now and like most of our students do then, getting not being a student anymore and getting out there and serving people is what you want to do.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:21:47]
It’s going to matter more. Yeah, exactly. And it does open more doors. You wonder when you’re older, I think of it, does that really matter? I’m so much older. Is that going to make a difference? And actually it does. It does make a huge difference to be done.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:02]
In so many different ways. The opportunities you never dreamed of just come knocking on the door.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:22:07]
Yeah.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:08]
It’s amazing.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:22:09]
Yeah. It is. Very much so.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:10]
Tell a little bit more about the dissertation process itself. So here you are. You had this group of people, this cohort where everybody was going through this process together and they all left you and you’re on your own and you’re struggling to get through this process. I know you mentioned the taking the bit of a hiatus to to to go back into the workforce for a little while, because that was something that you felt you needed to do when that opportunity came. But beyond life, kind of calling you back, what was it about the dissertation itself that. Was a challenge for you, a struggle or.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:22:49]
Keeping on pace, keeping, setting deadlines and keeping on pace very much a challenge, making sure that I like I would continue to stay up on literature because I had a too much time goal behind between the proposal and the dissertation. So I want to make sure I was current on issues as I went to talk to presidents. I spent a lot of time because it was qualitative and interviewing. I really put a lot of thought into what the right questions were and what would what would especially in qualitative. If you don’t get the questions right, you don’t get the depth that you need to. And so I would practice I would call before I actually went out and finalized the questions. I would practice I would call people in practice with like a provost or a dean or somebody that could help that cared and would help me. So I relied a lot of my contacts to do that. But getting that done right. And then when I finally ended up with the coding, like when you get all the interviews transcribed, then you have to do all the coding. I just told myself you’ll just code one hour a day. All you have to do is one hour a day of coding and not get to go fight in a room by yourself and just curled up. And I had to I was fortunate enough to be able to use a stylus and a Microsoft pro tablet to do the coding. And I would just stay about one hour day and just small chunks until it would get done. And then I would spend Saturday mornings.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:24:11]
How many pages of transcripts would you say you had?
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:24:13]
Oh, my goodness. There were 16 interviews by the time I was done, and I would say one transcript was probably on average 20 pages.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:24:24]
So over three hundred pages of transcripts that you’re going through. Detailed, laboriously trying to pull out those those themes eventually that that. This is why I tell people do quantitative work and you have to push a button on the computer, it says, here’s the answer.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:24:47]
I know I kept saying that halfway through it. I was like, oh, my God, you do start to see themes and you have to kind of be careful that you’re not leading. So you have to be very careful the first time through, especially when you do the first round of interviews that you stick to the same questions my adviser would slap me for. That would be like, don’t don’t veer, because then you will be Previte because you’re starting to gain experience and know what you can anticipate, what they’re saying you’ll be leading and that will hurt you. So I had to be very careful about that. And the second it was harder, the second round of interviews, because those were more open ended and perhaps more emotional. And it was hard not to want to say, oh, but I understand all about student success in college. And so, yeah, I have to be disciplined. And they said you have to remain detached, which is really hard when you’re passionate about something. And you do at that point where you want to prove you know something and you’re trying to suppress that because you’re trying to draw out their expertise. And that was a huge struggle for me to not want to just what I really know about this and I want to help you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:49]
And that is because that’s that’s not your role at that time, even though you can do it. And that’s where, again, these passions can get can get in the way, can cause trouble. Yes. That professional detachment and that can be difficult when you’re looking at a situation like, oh, like would definitely help this person and maybe later you do. But that’s not your your job right now.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:26:13]
Yeah. And I had to be disciplined about that and not, you know, and I thought it was interesting because most people, most of the presidents were interested in seeing the model that I created after I had done it. But I had to be very disciplined before then to not interact so that I wouldn’t cause any biases.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:31]
Yeah, you wouldn’t want you don’t want to sway what they’re going to have to say.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:26:35]
Yeah. So but that was so that was good and bad in doing that. But it was the coding that was difficult. And I had to just every night an hour of code and code and coding and then I, I had locked up a room in the office and they had I have a friend who worked for 3M, so I got to go to the store one day and I bought every kind of Post-it note you could possibly find. And so we had an entire wall was just Post-it notes, as you tried. If I tried to wrestle with framework’s and what is the saying and moving pieces around? I mean, it’s not necessarily scientific, but it literally was a Post-it notes all over. And my kids would come in like, hi mom.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:16]
Yeah, this is what does that room looks like when when they find the crazy serial ax murderer? Is that his room looks like?
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:27:27]
Oh, don’t touch that, don’t go in that room. But, you know, and I you have to just play with the data for a while and start to it. Part of it. Yeah. And I finally framework’s started to emerge. I started creating themes and then I started finding like literature that was similar that I could look look to an innovation thing. So it worked out, but it took a lot of discipline and a lot of moving around a Post-it notes and things like that.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:55]
And in your case, a lot of frequent flier miles.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:27:59]
Yes, it did. It did. I threw up. So I flew across four different states and we went to rural universities. I went to rural universities. So we rent a car and drive four hours into a cornfield. Airport. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:15]
Where’s the closest airport? Well, yeah. OK, so you’ve gone through obviously it’s a challenge to get to this point, but you get to the point where you ready to defend. What was that process like for you of, you know, did your committee invite you to defend? Did you decide, OK, it’s time, I’m ready. How did that transition move from writing to defense?
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:28:41]
Actually, my adviser said, you know, I finally I think I got to the point of saying, I think I’ve come to the end. I think I have my model, where is it at? And my adviser said, yeah, I think you’re ready. We kind of mutually agreed that it was time to go good. And then, of course, you know, one of the big challenges that I had, too, is this. Your committee members are all teaching usually or they’re not just doing dissertations. So you only have small windows. So you’ve been defending my proposal, like posing. I had to submit it at a certain time and then I had to wait an amount of time and they had comments back and forth. And that was one of the difficult things when I was working that was causing trouble was to get my schedule in sync with what theirs was and even when I wasn’t working. OK, now I’ve got this section. I’ve got to get to my adviser and that person is going to take three weeks to get through the comments and come back. And then I do think sometimes it’s a rite of passage because some of the stuff they the first time they had me change, the second time they almost had me change it back like the committed in the opposite direction. And I notice sometimes on the defense. They were expected to argue with each other, almost kind of like.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:29:58]
That’s why it’s a committee, and not a team, right, because everybody’s got their own background, their own experiences, their own biases. So, yeah, it’s a it’s a juggling act. It’s like balancing plates or something like that, spinning plates to get them all going. At the same time.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:30:14]
I was thankful that I my advisor told me to take notes, but she took notes as well throughout the throughout all of the process. And then she had all of the committee members submit back to me my proposal with all of their comments on it and then on the preliminary defense. That was the same way where I handed them. They marked everything and then I consolidated them all. That was good. I will say to I was when when I started with my first adviser and he was younger, but very digital. And he had warned me from the very beginning, he said, any time you can look at your textbooks or anything that you can do in Kindle or Nook, where you can digitize them and you can save your highlights in your notes, he said, do everything as much as you can that way. And early on I would take my research class if I could do it again. He said to do it and I didn’t. And I wish I had because I wish I had taken my little review classes and those things a little earlier in the process because I could have started categorizing and using my classes to create some of my review, create some of my stuff. And I didn’t do a good they warned me to do it and I did. And I wish I had that.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:31:24]
You can start thinking about your dissertation earlier while you’re still in your classes. There are definitely ways that you can leverage the work that you have to do for your class anyway, because you have to take those classes and leverage it into your dissertation. So that is that’s that’s a good point. The digital thing, everybody’s got to kind of take their own stance on that. I know some folks who are still on paper and that’s what they do. And we need our trees. But if paper is the way that it works for you, then do what works for you. I was at a point when I when I went through the dissertation process for myself, all of my journal articles were digital except that they were pictures. So it was like they took a picture of the article and put it in. And so you had each page was a picture. What that means is you couldn’t search the articles. You couldn’t you couldn’t go through. So there were still information in the library, keywords, things like that. But when you try to go in and actually find, OK, where was he talking about this theory or this concept or whatever it might be, couldn’t do it, then I still went fairly digital on my end because I felt like that was it made sense to me. But but I was I was right at the point where I think it might have made sense to make that transition. I’d advise people to do that now if they can. But again, to each their own. If you’ve got a system that works for you, particularly if you think, hey, I’m older, this is what I’ve been doing for my whole life, it’s always worthwhile to to learn new skills. But don’t do that when you’re also working on your dissertation. That’s there’s enough for you to do on the dissertation side to not try to learn like the entire digital age and all of these other things at the same time.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:33:10]
I agree. I agree.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:12]
So awesome. All right. What was the defense experience itself like?
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:33:18]
Well, I didn’t realize there was a preliminary defense and then a final defense when I first I was scared, I was scared because I was like, oh my God, I have to get a job soon now. I mean, I can’t be doing this. And so I was scared to death the first time. They were like the preliminary. They were like I said, I thought it was almost like a rite of passage because I kind of beat up when I got done and I was like, oh, my God, will I ever be able to get all these things, you know, all these things done? And my by this time, I had a friend who was a retired provost helping me. And she’s like Teresa this is why your advisor had you take notes and had them turn in their notes, because when they the second time around, they’re only going to look at the comments they had to make sure you change that. So so she said, no,.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:04]
That’s the way they should do it.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:34:06]
So she like by the time she said, read all of their comments, don’t take them to heart, don’t take them. You’re almost there. Don’t break down and say, oh, my God, I’m going to have to redo this whole dissertation because that’s not you know, so I did I did take all the comments and I went through and I fixed, like, literally like fixed that part. And then I went back through and wove through segue-ways and rearranged things that made me made more sense. But I made sure that I addressed every single one of the things that they had written or commented on their copy of my my preliminary dissertation. And the second time through, like it’s the first time I was scared and I wasn’t sure they’re stumbling. And you’re not sure how you’re supposed to present. They said, I remember walking in the room and my advisor just said, don’t be worried, don’t be nervous, just talk it through. And the first person goes, Well, where’s your PowerPoint? And I’m like, what are you talking about? And so I choke. And it’s like, Oh, it’s OK. You know, calm down. It’ll be fine. My advisor was kind of there, but it was I was scared and I thought this time, I mean, honestly, I was older probably than almost the entire committee, except for maybe one person. But I got through it and they were like I said, there was a lot of detailed questions. And sometimes I thought, why are you even why would you even ask that question? But I think they wanted to be nit picky. Or do you really think this or that or the other thing? And then it felt kind of grueling. But the second time through, it was more like I did a PowerPoint presentation and they asked a few very, very minor questions that were just sort of soft pitches to give accolades. And then they asked me to leave the room and I left the room for probably, I don’t know, felt like forever. But I would say it was probably no more than five minutes. And then my advisor came out and got me and they came back in and they said, well, congratulations, Dr. Spaeth.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:36:01]
Yaaay! That’s awesome. And for a lot of our students, they don’t have that preliminary defense. Most people’s experience is what you had for the final defense, because the preliminary defense for a lot of folks happens in editing the dissertation. The committee sees the dissertation and they’re going through and giving you their edits and tearing things apart and all that before you’re standing up there in front of them. So by the time you are standing in front of them, it’s all the pats on the back. And like I said, it seems like softball questions. By the time you get there, if you ask somebody else, they would probably really choke over those questions. But you are you’re there for a reason. You’re ready to be there. And so there’s questions that you think are softball questions are, in fact, not, really.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:36:49]
But I was surprised, too, I guess, because I work in higher ed, I may have been more cognizant if I had done that, but I didn’t realize they made a public announcement and invited the public and that they they it’s it’s live on live broadcast across different a couple of different campuses. So that’s beamed into a different campus. I didn’t realize that that was going to happen. I thought it was just going to be my committee. But other professors had that had been my professors, were there people? And all of a sudden I’m like, oh, I know that people who are in higher ed were aware of that. But that wasn’t me. So I wasn’t aware that that was all going to happen again.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:29]
Again, a lot of folks there experience will vary because a lot of them, it is just their committee and a lot of folks are doing these things virtually these days. But the reason why they do that, it’s a kind of a light of day philosophy that you’re not earning this degree behind closed doors. The university isn’t doing anything to kind of give you this degree, but it’s right here out in the open. Anybody wants to come and they come and see it. When I was at the University of Chicago, we used to get a few people that would come in because they knew that whenever there was a defense, there were nice snacks.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:38:01]
I can see that because that’s there were snacks and things there.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:05]
They would come in and they would sit very quietly and they would not very knowingly and not know what the hell you’re talking about. But it was time to get snacks.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:38:15]
It was time to celebrate.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:19]
So so that’s an interesting little hand it to the light of day philosophy.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:38:25]
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:26]
So now you mentioned before, Dr. Spaeth, all done. Spiffy new degree. What comes next? What opportunity start knocking at that point?
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:38:37]
Actually, I set up my network. I was fortunate to have had presidents that I interviewed of universities. And so and I shared with them, I’m here, I’m done and things like that. And I fell into the first position that I have because one of my dearest friends from Bannermen on the reservation that I moved to, she was the president of a tribal college and her dean had resigned two weeks before the start of the semester, right after they had an HLC, their higher learning commission, because it just quit. And so my first job. Yes, well, she quit. But let’s just say by the time we got we hadn’t gotten the report yet. So when we got the report, the reason why she quit became evident, right?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:22]
Oh… OK.
Dr. Teresa Spaeth [00:39:22]
So I literally put my my friend, she did not have a higher ed background when she became the tribal college president, which is very typical in that environment. And so here I go in and she we were just talking on the phone and she was she didn’t even think about my PhD. And she’s like, oh, my God, I don’t know what to do all this stuff. And I just finished my Ph.D. in educational leadership, which is basically a degree on how to run a university. Do you want my help? And so. Oh, my gosh. Yes. And just instantaneously that started going on. And I right away, I got to do work in that arena. And then one of the presidents that I had interviewed had called me and said that she had an opportunity that she had been thinking about and that some of the work that I had done at the previous research institute, in addition to what I had talked to her about in my journey and the things that I was interested in, she asked me if I would be interested in a position. So she put me on contract. So I had two contracts going once. One is an interim dean and what is it, a director of strategic initiatives at the same time. And then eventually she created a position on one side at the University of Minnesota. And then that takes a long time because the hiring process, as you know, in a university, is not it’s not following a path straight forward. It’s slow and it’s particularly you’re creating a position, lots of committees, lots of proving yourself, lots of them. But I was fortunate I had a contract in the meantime to get to get my feet wet. But then finally that all came to fruition and ended up in a position that I really love. That is a newly created position that was from an endowment that they had a a chance to before she had had many and had endowed a chair and then never hired the chair. So the purpose kept building money. So it’s kind of really cool to be walking into higher education at a time when all of this chaos is going on. And then to have a fun to know you’re relatively secure for a few years to get your feet underneath you and to really look at innovation in real higher education in a way that nobody else has. Even the time or the funding to do is really it’s an awesome opportunity for me to be able to do that.
