Ep. 74: The many facets of shared governance

The Rev. Heather Hartung, Ph.D., has been a student, minister, faculty member, dean, and member of a theological school board. She now serves as a director of accreditation with the Association of Theological Schools. In this episode of the podcast, she discusses how boards and leaders of theological schools can approach shared governance from various perspectives. You can find more information about the podcast, including links referenced in the episode, at Episode 74 at intrust.org/podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:03

Hello, and welcome to the Intra Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. Accreditation is something every school that wants to be accredited has to deal with. And it's one of the interesting things to me. We're just coming off the ATS biennial when we're recording this. This is June 2024, is the different ways people look at accreditation. One of the things I've appreciated with the Association for Theological Schools is the way they help people do that. So I'm very happy to be joined today by the Reverend Dr. Heather Hartung. You may know her as Heather Fosek from uh her previous life in some ways, and the life has been fascinating. Uh, she has been an engineer and well trained. She has been a student in theological education. She's been a professor, a student, an academic dean, a vice president of a school. She's served on a board member and now she serves as a director of accreditation for ATS. Heather, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

Thanks, Matt. I'm really glad to be here and in conversation with you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21

Well, I'm thrilled to have you because one of the things is we've talked off the recording that I really appreciate is that the different views you have of theological education. You're you're an ordained minister, so you've you've done the preparation work. You've done not just a little bit, but some very significant degrees. Uh you've got your graduate of Duke Divinity. Um, you've seen it on the inside as a student, you've seen it as a faculty member. But even prior to this, you saw what theological education looked like as just somebody going to church. So I really appreciate your experience, and I'm excited to talk to you today. Um, let's start a little bit about this. You know, I mentioned the variety of roles you've had. Tell me a little bit about your journey, how you got into theological higher education, and and then how you ended up, what you bring to this role at ATS.

SPEAKER_00: 2:19

Sure. Um, I think I'm going to start back with um some days in high school, which is really I can first can uh conceptualize, first remember thinking about the church as a place where certainly theological education was happening for me at the um under the guidance of people who had been theologically trained. I wouldn't have used that phrase then, but I was an active kid in a Presbyterian church growing up and experienced great joy in that um engagement and service that I think I kind of tucked away for a while. Um, I went to college as an engineer, um, have a degree in industrial engineering and an economics degree, went and worked in corporate America for about a decade. I have an MBA and I loved and found that work fascinating, but always had a sense that I would go back to school in something, but I didn't know what I cared enough about to spend more time back in school and had a call to ministry in young adulthood, sort of young to mid-adulthood, that led me back to seminary, thinking I was on a pastoral path, but discovered a love of study and aptitude of study and continued for doctoral work in church history. And then, as part of that, discovered a love of teaching and somewhere along the way, my past corporate background and my love of theological education came together in the deanship, which was work I loved sitting in that middle spot in an institution. Um, and uh doing that work led me to doing a number of accreditation visits. The joy, the gift of being able to serve with a group of people tending well to an institution, which is how I am sure I ended up working as a director of accreditation for the Association of Theological Schools. So that's that's a quick history, um, but it's really being attentive to my gifts, um, things that have brought me joy and the needs of institutions seeking to do good work.

SPEAKER_02: 4:23

Sure, I can see how, especially with your expertise in church history and your background and appreciation for the different forms of uh traditions and religions, certainly gives an appreciation. I would think the engineering background and attention to detail uh certainly would help. It's it's a I think in this space, probably a unique sense of preparation and calling for this. Um, and as you know, there's there's a lot of moving parts in accreditation. I I think one of those that we look at at the intrust center is shared governance. It's one of those areas that um a lot of people have a tough time grappling with, what that looks like, how that helps. Uh you know, Amy Kardashi, our president, had heard you present at a conference, and she really appreciated the way you mentioned um, particularly the Deans. You she said you'd ask somebody to people to think about what their role in this is. Um, and I appreciate that question because it demystifies so much of what we talk about in the books that have been written on it. Tell me a little bit about the different roles you've had and what that means in terms of shared governance.

SPEAKER_00: 5:39

Sure. Somewhere while I was a student at Duke Divinity School, I was invited by my denomination, elected by my denomination to serve as a member of the Board of Trustees at Moravian Theological Seminary. So I realized as I was thinking about our conversation today, I have almost always been in some kind of dual role when it comes to the boards. I was student and a trustee. I was then faculty member and a trustee. I was then dean and trustee at a different institution, and then shifted to be dean at the institution where I hadn't been a trustee. And so I think I always entered that board space from two different vantage points, which is which is one of the things I think is so important in that board space. As you said, shared governance can sound really daunting, really scary. People assume it will never work. But I think entering that room with a posture of curiosity about what's going on, holding the institution's mission central, can diffuse some of that anxiety and lead people to uh to be curious about why others are in the room and why they're there.

SPEAKER_02: 6:49

Well, I think deans hold a special role in in a real key way. They become bridge builders, right? Some some actually talk about, yeah, it's in the title Dean of the Faculty, uh, in some places, but the bridge between faculty, you know, the heart of your curriculum, the heart of the education efforts, and administration. That dual role that you talk about is not necessarily an easy one, though.

SPEAKER_00: 7:21

It's not the dean's I loved work as dean. It is a particularly unique, as you said, spot within an institution. On any given day, most academic deans, chief academic officers are going to be in conversation with faculty, staff, students, sometimes board members, other administrators, and rarely is there someone who spans that kind of constituency. And so I think what what Amy Kardash heard me talking with new deans about was being aware of that and coming into the board meeting space that deans have this chance to be bridge builders, to represent those various constituencies to one another in a way that few other people in the institution can do. People have different points of context. Faculty are deeply embedded in the classroom with students, with scholarship, with the guild. Presidents know this range of things, but are often drawn externally to the institution in ways that deans aren't in the same way. And so a dean can think about what do I what do I want each of these constituents to know about the other in a way that can't, that in those moments that the dean has the opportunity to speak to the board, whether it's formal, written, or spoken communication, whether it's updates along the way, but those can be quite important to building trust and to helping each constituent within the institution um be its best self along the way.

SPEAKER_02: 8:54

I like the way you put that because the dean becomes um a hub for different constituencies working with staff or faculty, students certainly at time, other administrative services, whether that's library, even even in some cases catering facilities, um, any number of things, and then the president, and of course, the external work. You know, you want the dean at uh obviously the dean at the cabinet meetings, you want the dean at board meetings, and then their fundraising. There, there's a bunch in that. So I can see how the dean would straddle any number of lines in which we what we would typically talk about shared governance.

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

So I think as I think about the board's role in seeking in its own curiosity, is thinking about the positionality of each individual that is in contact with the board and what it is that the board is curious about from that position. Boards often, this is easy when they talk to students. They want to know about the student experience, but that same curiosity isn't always present in the same way when they're talking to administrator. They want to hear a report. They're not curious about what life is like in that position. And so I think a board can shift some of that curiosity that they bring to things like a student report to faculty, to the dean's report, to other reports.

SPEAKER_02: 10:26

Well, now that you've you've served a little bit of time now as an accreditor, about a year, um in as a director of accreditation, I'm curious how your perspective has changed. Because certainly, you know, as a as a student, you're a Duke, your student, you're you're on the board of uh your denominational, your fellowships seminary, you've played different roles, which I'm sure have shaped your perspective. Um, I'm curious how this now, looking at it from you know, uh as you oversee a larger scope. I mean, your vantage point now, you have this large scope of theological education and different traditions and places. Uh, talk to me a little bit about how that shaped your role of what board work might be like.

SPEAKER_00: 11:16

Yeah, that's a great question. I let me set this in the standards of accreditation, which is perhaps a nerdy but expected thing for a director of accreditation to do. But the the work of the board fits in standard nine of the 10 standards of the membership of ATS. And I think just as standards can be documents that people think about mostly when they're going through an accreditation process, boards can mostly be a group that people think about when there's going to be a board meeting. And I think one of the ways my perspective has changed is the way moving into the accreditation role, the way that board can be understood as and understand itself as an ongoing resource to the institution, right? That undergirds that work, not just in May and November or May, November, January, whatever the dates of board meetings are, when folks appear on a Zoom screen or appear on purpose to think about what does it mean to be a resource in support of the mission, which doesn't mean you know, share shared governance is the lingo here, right? It's talking about for each constituent, what is the expertise, what is the role, what is the area of reach, and how to put that in the on the table in a way that the resources of each component can be visible. So again, thinking about the board as resource, really broadly across the institution, which has which goes from recruiting board members to structure of board meetings in ways that that resource can be can be leveraged. And I think evaluating committees often will ask a board how they understand shared governance, um, what their own self-evaluation looks like, as a way to say this is an educational institution, we are learning. What does it look like for the board to learn about its work, but also about how it's doing its work?

SPEAKER_02: 13:16

Well, you've been involved in this work for a number of years in different perspectives. When you talk to, like, for instance, new deans, or you're talking to a school, um, as you know, across the face of schools, there are some schools that have been doing this for a long time or have seasoned boards, and others are like shared governance. What okay, we see that in standard nine. We're not sure what that means. Um tell me what what you want them to, what's the basic thing you want them to know when they hear something like shared governance? What are the types of things you want a board member to be thinking?

SPEAKER_00: 13:50

Sure. I think at the most basic, I might say shared govern governance means who does what and why and how would we know. Now that's not that's not the language of the standards, but I think being in and this is an exercise that a that a board could do with itself, a board could do with the faculty, could actually look at standard 9.6 through 8, which is really where shared governance comes in, read that together and reflect, do a little bit of an exegetical exercise on it and say, um, what do we do? So there's the mission of the institution, but there's also committee structures. The how do we do this? Those are probably set up in bylaws or a constitution. So periodically reminding um itself, itself in conversation with constituents, what those roles and responsibilities are as a way to, you know, it's it's hard as an institution to remember all the things. So that occasional reminder of what we do and why and how we do it can again prompt thy curiosity to say, oh, I didn't know we had a student member because the bylaws said we need a student member, um, or I didn't know board composition looked like this. And that can create educational opportunities, reflection. Um, and that can that can be a way to do that. The standards, um, if someone wants to look at them, of course, can read them online. But I'd also suggest looking at a document called the standards with self-study ideas.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

So every short paragraph of a standard is followed by a set of questions that a school might want to consider. And so those kind of things, like a school might want to talk about its bylaws, a school might want to talk about how and why and when it delegates responsibility for the curriculum or for admissions to the faculty of an institution. And so that going back to those documents can also, I mean, it might raise tensions in some places, but if it raises tensions in some places, it's probably productive to say something might not be working here. Um, and for very new institutions or maybe very old institutions who have long-standing processes but haven't done this. This can be a prompt to add structure, reconfigure structure again in that evaluative process. And a visiting committee is is almost always going to ask a board about its own self-evaluation. How would you know you're doing the work of the board well? Where are you getting feedback?

SPEAKER_02: 16:17

Yeah, I'm going to put a link in uh the podcast page at intrust.org/slash podcast to that uh the self-study questions. There's there's a couple of versions on the ATS website of standards. There's the standards, and then there's ones with kind of like a reader guide, which is really it's really well done. I yeah, I I found the material very helpful. I mean, I wished in some board situations I've been involved in with some other accreditors they had some things like that because it was for something like a board education session, even between accreditation visits, it would be a really helpful exercise, I would think, to walk through that and say, well, you know, as the fiduciary, how are we doing with this? Um it's a it's a really super resource, I think, that um even between those sessions, as I said, would be helpful. Um what what you might see is some myths or some things that you know people think shared governance is that you know, the things that you find whether you know in your career, having been parts of boards or what you've heard rather routine work to the to this now. Um what do what do people misunderstand about it?

SPEAKER_00: 17:45

Sometimes misunderstandings about shared governance can fit under a heading of abuse of power. Um there there are there are in governing documents responsibilities that are delegated to different constituents, delegated to the board, delegated to the system or to the rest of the system. I mean, but I think sometimes decisions can be made by one body and not well interpreted to another constituency in a way that because it's hard, because it's unpleasant, because there aren't all the details that can uh foster distrust. So whether that's a tenure decision, a decision about a curriculum change, um, a decision about heading in a new direction that someone in the system, faculty, staff is very excited about, maybe a board doesn't approve, doesn't approve as is. And if the appropriate fullness of that logic is not translated back, it can start to start to deteriorate a sense of shared governance working well. Well, what was the board thinking about when a no or a no but came forward? Um, board board members are um take these volunteer roles to be good stewards of institutions. And so I think a kind of this is where trying to diffuse some of the tension around shared governance before a hot button issue, if you will, comes for conversation can be helpful to understand why people are doing the roles they are within it within an institution. My in my doctoral work as a historian, we learned to talk about a hermeneutic of charity. So, which is my students would often think I would want them to think like other people thought. And I could say, no, I don't I don't need you to think like someone else thinks. I need you to be able to relay the logic of another tradition. And so I think that kind of that same kind of hermeneutic of charity saying, I don't think that that the faculty, I don't think the board would do an irrational. Thing. So why is it striking me as irrational? And figuring out how to foster it again, here's where I think a dean, a president, can sit in an interesting translation position. It's it can be weighty, it can be risky, it's a lot of work to do that. But I think understanding that deep understanding of different positionality can be really helpful and living into something that says, oh, you people have these kind of degrees. You're going to be good at weighing in here. You have these kind of degrees. Please use your expertise there and figuring out how to get and honor those expertises that are in the room versus um resisting what feels heavy-handed. Does that help?

SPEAKER_02: 20:44

Absolutely. I think there's there's often I find in work throughout my career the the idea of intentionality, not just how I'm being intentional, but what I think of others' intentions. Sometimes it's a matter of I've got to assume best intents, which which I'll tell you, as a former journalist is not natural. Right? Even sometimes as a minister, it's not natural. But uh, you know, some of the language I've heard you use is it's like the bond of trust. Finding, you know, some focus on goodwill, shared values. Talk to me a little bit about that in a um sense of shared governance. Because as a board member, you know, if I show up three times a year or twice a year, or maybe I'm doing some Zoom committee meetings, I have no, I'm not on the campus all the time. And of course, then I go to a board meeting and I have I might find the one faculty member or staff member or student who's got a grudge or or whatever. I might not come into this well. Um talk to me a little bit about that and shared governance, is is how you form the group around that, maybe, and and find trust.

SPEAKER_00: 22:09

Yeah, so I think there are a number of things here that's really well stated in terms of uh even board members who know the most, who have the most connection to the institution, are not like faculty, staff, and students, connected to the educational mission on a day-to-day basis, unless they happen to also be engaged in a degree program. So I think a reminder for boards that you know they they see through a glass dimly. Um and then letting that shape this kind of curiosity and humility that I talked about, to say, I feel well informed, the reports are good, the financials are clear, and yet there must be things I don't know because I'm not here. I'm not in the Zoom classroom, in this physical classroom every day, letting that kind of curiosity shape questions, shape agendas. And then I think a sense that people will simply be in the room with different, even with one well-adhered to mission, will be in the room with different vantage points. I was helped somewhere along the way. Um, I don't know if the engaging six cultures of the academy is a book you've ever heard about before. It's by Berkwist and Pollock. It started out as four cultures and has a revised version. It's a little bit old now. Uh, it was brought to my attention as part of a dean's group with the Wabash Center, but it talks about within higher education in North America six different vantage points that are different cultures. So a managerial, a collegial, and the different kinds of questions and assumptions that are brought to the table. It's a little bit of a wonky book. I don't know that I would recommend it for a for a board to read, but what it does even in snapshot form is remind a board that the vantage and a faculty and a dean, the vantage point that they bring to those conversations may differ from someone whose primary lens is working for a management consulting company, working for a public accounting firm. Um, and yet to sort of acknowledge that in a way that lets those gifts come into the room.

SPEAKER_02: 24:28

I think part of shared governance and one of the difficulties uh, you know, even on boards I've served on, is you know, I've served on an advisory board of a couple public schools, I've served on uh, you know, fiduciary boards and nonpro in the nonprofit world. And I find that one of the difficulties is at some point is understanding my own limitations, both and that's both for better and worse. The better is when I realize that um if if we've hired well, if we're working with professionals and people who care about in the situation, you trust them, right? But the the other side is I've got to realize my limitation. As you just said, I'm coming in as an outsider. Here are my lens, my lenses are on, I've got some blinders to things. I might champion things I shouldn't. I might not, you know, realize what the situation is. But I've got to realize in a theological school, you've got a bunch of highly trained people, you've got competencies in variety of ways, even on a board. Um, we I recently did a podcast with Karen Stiller, a Canadian author and editor. Um, and she talked about her own board role and said she had to realize she was there for a purpose and had to use her voice in that role. Um, which I thought was a wonderful way to put this, is part of the board role is to figure out, you know, where they're strong and what they're doing, and then in shared governance to say to release that or to release the parts of it that they're supposed to.

SPEAKER_00: 26:09

And and good boards have great diversity in terms of those skills and gifts. And I think for the board itself to think about how it enacts its role in shared governance, in engaging constituents. You know, I served on a on my denominations board when I was faculty and academic dean at another institution because what I brought to that board was an was some knowledge of theological education, knowledge of ATS. Um, and that board did a good job acknowledging that in me and letting, you know, in the committee work that I did. Um, but that's I think a board chair can be very clear in recruiting board members and then enabling board board members with, as that conversation with with Karen Stiller, you mentioned articulated, what what do they bring? What do they bring to the room?

SPEAKER_02: 27:01

Well, one of the difficulties as well, I think, is as a fiduciary, having to oversee some things that you're you're you know, your faculty brings you here's the curriculum or here's the expertise, your financial folks, etc. And as a fiduciary, there's a point where you can only go so far because you're not in the day-to-day, you're not the expert. Um, talk a little bit about those tensions because there are natural tensions built into this.

SPEAKER_00: 27:29

Sure. Let me give an example of um from an institution where I served as dean that underwent a significant curriculum change. And knowing that at some point, by the bylaws, the board was going to need to approve this. This is thinking in the seat of a dean, what needs to happen between now and then to enable the board to vote fully informed and confidently? And so what it meant was in a couple year curriculum revision process, checking in about what did the process look like before long before we got to the content, so that the board could have confidence in and some input into the process along the way with updates. What are the what when will student learning outcomes be defined? How will they be defined? What will that mean in terms of defining courses? So thinking about a board working with a dean, working with a president, whether it's a curriculum decision or some other kind of decision, to understand the process that sits behind the information that came to the comes to the table for vote. And so that meant walking an academic program committee through the process structure of curriculum design and giving them an example of how one class came to life, right? This is also a chance to get people excited and to, from a dean standpoint, turn the board into informed cheerleaders of this new thing that is coming, which particularly when there are graduates of an institution who serve as a board who hold the delight, hopefully, of their time as a student there central in their memory to help them understand why things shift, how they've shifted, and again to build that kind of confidence. So administrators might think about how to pave the way for a vote. Boards might think about what may what might make them nervous about this vote in a couple of years, and what would it be helpful to know about the process and the content along the way?

SPEAKER_02: 29:37

You use that term cheerleaders of it, right? It's it we don't always hear that in shared governance. I mean, we all have or people in involved would have some again, there are tensions built, and inappropriately so. I mean, the checks and balances.

SPEAKER_00: 29:54

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 29:56

Um, and yet everybody's supposed to be on the same team. Supposed to be, right?

SPEAKER_00: 30:02

Yeah, so the standards, the standards, uh, the ATS standards, which again are from the membership drawn, the wisdom of um a century of theological education across many traditions, focus on educational quality. So there are tensions about shifting financial models and theological education that are real and are part of thinking about how do we hold educational quality in a way that serves our particular constituents. And those um we know every episode of this podcast talks about some of the tensions and um the difficulties in theological education. There's also a tremendous amount of innovation. So those aren't necessarily easy conversations if the budget won't balance, but that can be a prompt to get mission gifts back on the table for conversation so that alongside the tense conversation, who gets to decide what and how is it how does it get done? There are real stakeholders, real denominational leaders, real students on the table to think about. Given our mission, given our history, what is it we can and will commit to doing now and plan to do in the years ahead? Again, that doesn't some of that tension, as you said, needs to exist, but to turn it into productive check and balance tension versus I don't trust you tension is the is one of the tricks.

SPEAKER_02: 31:45

Yeah, well, it's I appreciate that because it really comes back to, you know, we talk it often at the intrust center about mission and money. They go hand in hand. You should be spending your money based on your mission. These tensions should coexist, I would think, within that. And and one of the things I've appreciated in again, the 2020 accreditation standards that came out in the self-study guide. It's it's very um it's very supportive in that, like driving people back to the mission because you know, why do you do this? Why do you serve as a volunteer board member? Hopefully, you believe in the mission.

SPEAKER_00: 32:29

Well, and that's the this set of standards are really designed to draw on the uniqueness of schools in their context, and that pushes some of the burden of response. A school then must be clear about how its mission shapes its library collection policy, how its mission shapes its recruiting efforts. Um, but but those are the kind of conversations that um stand a chance at strengthening an institution for its its future, even if its future looks radically different than its past. Figuring out what that central magic, not quite the right word, but magic is of an institution.

SPEAKER_02: 33:17

Charism, the power of it is, sure. The charism would be a good one. Um or a term I've heard we often use is special sauce. That's a little more uh vernacular, but the charism is a good term. What is it that makes a school what it is?

SPEAKER_00: 33:32

Yeah, and I think let me give an example from an accredited from a visit, a comprehensive visit, and this is aggregated from more than one visit, but the sense that even in a school that is facing nearly every struggle imaginable, financial governance, there's a time when a visiting committee sits in a room and interviews students who can talk about why they selected that school, what they and alums, alumni conversations are often the same, what they have been given by studying at that institution. And that is the charism of a place on display that I think sitting alongside those tensions can remind one why one does the hard work.

SPEAKER_02: 34:22

I appreciate that. That's you know, one of our uh David Rowe is a consultant in this in theological education, that's been a president, has worked with us for a number of years, likes to to talk about how, you know, go back to what the mission was when the school was founded. You know, if that's still the mission, or whatever your mission is, you exist for a reason. There's a reason why there are so many schools. And and we might think they're not a lot, but there's a lot. There's there's these reasons. And I'm curious now, you know, as we wrap up our time, and this has been a really rich conversation, is when you look back now, now that you are are doing accreditation, you're seeing um this wider field, and you're seeing all kinds of threads and things come together. Um, what is it you would look back and and maybe tell yourself, or tell somebody, you know, years ago, or tell somebody maybe getting into this or board if they said, Heather, you know, we're trying to figure this out, we're trying to move ahead through some things. What's the charism? What's the secret sauce? What's the what's the magic? What's the the thing that we really need to know?

SPEAKER_00: 35:34

I think I would ask a board who their conversation partners are and what they've learned from them in the last year. I might also ask a staff that ask a faculty that as a way into trying to be curious about an institution's curiosity. Um and and in part because even mission can be a space of tension and contest. And so the the if that is particularly the case, and I'm thinking about higher education more broadly here, that is having to shift to to adapt to demographics versus changes in the church, um, thinking about what we're learning from one another and inviting, enabling spaces at every meeting at other times to do that. I think I think I was a benefit of some of those spaces as a as an early board member at Moramian Theological Seminary that always set up time with faculty, staff, and students. But I think I know now I can trace the benefits of some of those kinds of conversations. So I would encourage them more specifically.

SPEAKER_02: 36:48

And let me this part this strikes me as you were talking. So we'll extend time a little bit, but who would you say? We have a view, I think, in in a lot of places, but who owns the mission of the seminary or a theological school in shared governance? Who would you say that is?

SPEAKER_00: 37:07

So I'm gonna give the answer that my students hated in my church history classes, which is which is it depends. Um, it depends on context. I I told them if they left my classroom being able to say it depends, um, that I would sorry for that. But but here's why I say that, because I do think that it depends. In a Roman Catholic seminary, the mission might be owned. So I think your question, I think asking that question, and how would we know in this particular institution is really important to having a conversation about mission. So if you planted that, well done. But I think um a an institution that has no denominational ties owns its mission, if you will, internally in a little bit of a different way. Um, and an institution, you know, I can reading mission statements. I mean, God owns the missions, right? So I think there's a there's a range of answers here from internal, external parties, denominations. Some donor in some place might have a particular kind of informal yet powerful control of mission. And so I think asking who owns the mission it can be a really productive way into some of this conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 38:30

Well, that's a great, it's a great thought. It'll lead to some, I think, further conversations, both here in the podcast and certainly it should happen in some boardrooms, I think around North America as people look at that, because mission comes to the heart of the standard, I think, in what people do.

SPEAKER_00: 38:52

But boards, boards are great. That board space is fantastic space. It is where more things come together in an institution than anything else. And so I think for boards to realize that, for faculty, staff, and administration to know that and to figure out how to harness that is um is one of the one of the many tasks at hand.

SPEAKER_02: 39:16

Heather, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. I think it'll plant plenty of seeds and discussion points for folks to understand, or as they start to look at um accreditation standards, shared governance, board work, and any number of other things. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00: 39:34

Thanks, Matt. I appreciate the invitation.

SPEAKER_02: 39:36

My guest today again is the Reverend Dr. Heather Hartong, who is a director of accreditation at the Association of Theological Schools, has been a board member, a student, a minister, a dean, and any number of other things, and has brought some great thoughts to the table. We'll have some links on the podcast page, intrust.org slash podcast. Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.