Speaker: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

Speaker: Freshman year I came in undecided.

Speaker: I'm finance, entrepreneurship, anthropology.

Speaker: I'm a senior architecture student.

Speaker: I'm involved in the blockchain club here.

Speaker: I'm very passionate about studying abroad.

Speaker: Classes are going great.

Speaker: And then obviously very involved with my sorority.

Speaker: I'm thriving.

Meredith Aliff 

Hi, I'm Meredith Aliff. And this is major insight. This is the podcast where we talk college life with amazing students about how to find your place and purpose on campus.

From a first-generation undergraduate student studying physics and mathematics all the way to becoming a university president, Greg Crawford has certainly seen how the entire college experience can unfold, and today, we are very excited to welcome Dr. Crawford onto the podcast to talk more about what makes college so special, about all the doors it can open, and about how it can give you the important skills and exciting experiences that will stay with you for a lifetime.

Meredith Aliff 

And my first question that I'm going to ask you, that I ask everybody at the beginning is, who are you?

Greg Crawford 

Oh, I'm Greg Crawford, the president of Miami University.

Meredith Aliff 

Oh my gosh. And we are so excited to finally have you here.

Greg Crawford 

Congratulations on the major insight podcast. I heard it's about 70 now that you've done, and you have done 45 I understand.

Meredith Aliff 

Yes. Thank you so much. It's been, it's been such a journey. We've had the best time. So how I think I'd like for this episode to go is that we're going to start with some talking about your student experience at college, and then do a little bit of a switch, because you now are a father of people in college and a president of a university, and talking about your perspectives with that. So how or why did you choose your undergraduate majors that you had, and what were they?

Greg Crawford 

Oh, sure. So I studied in school. I studied both physics and mathematics, and so in high school, I just, I had an affinity for that. Actually loved to write, and I loved history and everything else, but, boy, physics and mathematics just it came to me, and it was practical too, of course, but it started off with, you know, looking at sort of big questions in nature, looking at, you know, the whole universe, and thinking that I might be an astronomer someday or an astrophysicist. And, you know, I went a different direction in physics, but it was just because of that curiosity about the natural world that we live in that got me so excited. And then math, for me, it was always like a puzzle. And so I've always loved puzzles, and so that's what sort of interested me there. But they were both a great fit together, for sure.

Meredith Aliff 

Absolutely. I'm taking a physics class right now as a second semester senior. And ...

Greg Crawford 

Which one you taking?

Meredith Aliff 

Physics 161,

Greg Crawford 

Oh, my gosh!

Meredith Aliff 

Yeah, with Professor Sampson. He's tough, but he's, he's very good.

Greg Crawford 

That's blocks on incline planes and gravity

Meredith Aliff 

oh yeah

Greg Crawford 

oh my gosh, that's fun!

Meredith Aliff 

Projectile motion, all the good stuff. Yeah, it's definitely been hard, though I haven't really touched on those things since high school. So you know, taking a over four year hiatus of all that, and then coming back in has been very interesting.

Greg Crawford 

Well, that's fantastic for doing that.

Meredith Aliff 

Yeah it's very interesting to take it because, like you said, you learn about the natural world, and you can actually ... I think it helps make sense of the natural world a little bit. There's not as much unknown you know? Okay, wonderful. And just so that we know, where did you go to college?

Greg Crawford 

I stayed in Ohio. I went to Kent State University. I did my undergraduate and graduate both there. It was just a little over an hour from home.

Meredith Aliff 

Not bad at all. Not bad at all. As an undergraduate, what are some of the major challenges that you had to overcome?

Greg Crawford 

Yeah, I think it was more like just systemic in nature, in terms of the global thing. So I picked up to do a double major, and not sure I needed to do that, but that sort of took out a lot of time, and then I had some odds and end jobs throughout the time. So it was always the biggest challenge was always time management. That's probably the biggest, I would say I didn't have anything in my life happen. My parents were great and supporting me and so forth in terms of inspiring me to get it done. I was a first generation student, and so the first year was a little bit more difficult, because I just, you know, my parents did everything to send their kids to college, because that's ... they didn't have that opportunity. And so the go to person, my older sister was ... went to school and she was ... so I could go to her and ask her about things, but I just didn't have like anybody to really answer questions about certain things about college, and so. But that went away pretty quickly as I got friends, and then I got more sort of mentor support and great advisors and so forth. But it's a little scary and intimidating right off the bat.

Meredith Aliff 

Absolutely. I can imagine. I'm lucky enough that my parents did did the exact. Same thing really pushed for, for all of their children, to just reach the highest level of education that we possibly could. But it is hard to come here and be alone, kind of for the first time in your entire life, and living alone and trying to, I mean, literally, learn things like, when's the best time of your week to do your laundry? Like, just little things like this are so interesting to start picking up in college. But like you said, mentors, advisors, friends, and part of that comes with immersing yourself into your college experience, but finding those connections of people who are in the same boat or have been in the same boat as you before. Just want to help you.

Greg Crawford 

Exactly

Meredith Aliff 

If you could go back and talk to your first year self, what would you say to him?

Greg Crawford 

Oh, my god, there would be a lot of things I probably would say, but I'm gonna take you forward a bit. Then I'm gonna take you back to my college experience. And so I didn't travel internationally until I was a graduate student. And I went to Italy for the first time, and I went to Yugoslavia, which then kind of broke apart later after that. And that was my first trip. But then I couldn't get enough of it. I had to, like my whole career, I just needed to go places. And when there's a conference in a certain spot, I would love to go to that conference, just to sort of see the culture and the country that I haven't been to. So that advice to my first year self, I wish I would have studied abroad, for sure, I would have done that in a heartbeat and I didn't, didn't even really know it was even an option, although it was. And not as many students did it back then as they do today. And then I had a pretty full curriculum, so it probably wasn't even possible trying to do a double major, but I definitely would have figured out a way to do that if I was going to give myself advice back then.

Meredith Aliff 

That's great advice. I think that our study abroad program is unmatched. In my opinion, it's just wonderful, and it's such an important part of your experience to kind of learn in a new environment.

Greg Crawford 

It is. And I think that's ... that would be my number one. I think number two too. I was like, I always like, maybe you have it too, but I just, I still have it today. But I needed to be like, try to be perfect. And so I was studying, even though I was totally ready, but I'd still study more and more and more right out to the deadline. And so I think there would have been... I would tell myself to chill out a little bit, because I could have done more stuff for myself, with my friends and different things. But I was so kind of fixated on, you know, getting a high score, and, you know, thinking about graduate school and knowing how competitive it is to get in, etc. And so I probably overdid it on that.

Meredith Aliff 

Sure, but if, I mean, of course, those are important things to think about as an undergraduate student. And obviously we're here to learn and be students and get to whatever level that we want to get to, but it's very comforting hearing from you: it's okay, it's all okay, like you will do just fine. You know, if you feel ready, let yourself feel ready. Because I think test anxiety and feeling like you're not doing enough is a huge part of college.

Greg Crawford 

For sure, that's where my anxiety came in. Was I always worried about: Was I prepared? And then it would just kind of build until I study, study, study, and I would go, honest to goodness, I'd go right up to that classroom before they hand out the test, studying, looking at things.

Meredith Aliff 

I absolutely am the same way, absolutely. And it doesn't go away. As freshman to senior, you still feel that pressure to just always make sure that you have everything that you need prepared.

Greg Crawford 

I probably didn't have to do it either. I mean, I mean, it helped me get my test done faster. But what good is that, if you hand your test in a half hour earlier?

Meredith Aliff 

First person in.

Greg Crawford 

Yeah, exactly. I would have been just fine if I probably relaxed a little more, it probably would help me much more.

Meredith Aliff 

What inspired you to continue on in a career in higher education? Because this is not your first job in higher education, either. You've had multiple before this, right?

Greg Crawford 

So it was it was interesting. I knew I kind of always wanted to be a professor when I started graduate school, I had sort of, at one point, thought maybe I would do something in industry, but then, as the years went on, I got so, like, tied up with my research, and I just loved it, like trying to answer problems that nobody answered before, that really inspired me. And I was like, what if? And I had a great PhD advisor, and so I saw what he did. His name was Dr Doan at Kent State, and he was just amazing. He did great research. He was a phenomenal teacher, and he just inspired his students. And so I really wanted to do that. What he was doing, like, define my own research and get my own grants and then train my own students and teach the courses on the areas that I loved. And so it really was a lot about that, was about a PhD mentor that kind of, you know, showed me the way, and I loved what his journey looked like. And so it kind of went like that. But my first job out of school wasn't academia, so I started off, and we do these things called post docs. And so it's a bit of a couple of years where you work with another scientist, and you write papers to kind of build up your portfolio. And I did that at the Navy in Washington, DC, and I worked on remote sensing. Then there wasn't a whole, still, not a whole lot of things that I wanted to really do in terms of academia. There's a few interviews here and there, but it wasn't a lot of hiring going on right then. So I took a job at Xerox. And it was like, in my generation as a scientist, if you could get a job at Xerox ... PARC was ... Palo Outdoor Research Center in California. It was like, THE place. AT&T Bell Labs, THE place. IBM Watson, THE place. And so I got one of those kind of top jobs there. And it was interesting. At this company. And it was, you know, there's no doubt that you had to generate products for profit, but also they gave you a lot of flexibility to invent, and then I started writing patents and doing that kind of thing and so forth. And then we spun off a company there at Xerox. And so I got the entrepreneurial flavor in me, in terms of what it was like to start something from scratch. I love that. There was... it was neat being in Silicon Valley and just hearing all the inventions and all the excellence of people trying to start something new. That's never been done. But I always knew I wanted to go back to be a professor, and then got that shot at Brown University where I did my assistant, associate, and full, then became Dean there, as well as engineering. And I was in two departments there, in physics and engineering. So it's really great. Then often Notre Dame as Dean of Science, and then ultimately vice president. And then in 2016 recruited here. So been really part of, like, I had some great industry experience, but also very part of a nice, you know, three different universities that really had a focus on students. Student ready, student centered. And so it's always kind of been where I've been at, where the focus has been on students. And I just love that piece of it.

Meredith Aliff 

Absolutely. And so I want to take a little bit of a switch, because I think this is a good segue into being somebody who's a parent and a president, and now on the other side of the college experience, you gave really great advice that about things you would say to yourself as an incoming college student, what advice did you give your daughters before they went to college?

Greg Crawford 

Oh my gosh, I have two daughters. I was very fortunate too. They were very curious growing up, and they studied hard. And, I mean, we spoke with our friends, not everyone's, you know, kids studied a lot. And so ours did, and so I never had kind of anything, any issues whatsoever, in high school. They were phenomenal. And they went to top schools, and they loved it. And so I just... I always told them to study hard. But that was handed down from my dad. He always told me to study hard. And so it was quite simple advice, but that was it. And I tried to get both in the study abroad, but they didn't.

Meredith Aliff 

Oh, no way. Neither of them!?

Greg Crawford 

But now they love to travel. So they do a lot of traveling as well, but, but yeah, it was... they're great kids.

Meredith Aliff 

Did you see higher education transform them at all through those four years?

Greg Crawford 

Fore sure. I mean, my one daughter, who she studied economics, and then she went to law school, but I could ... just her maturity level. It was extraordinary. And I think that you know some of the elements that she did while she was in college, she got to work for a judge out in California as an internship, and then she went off and got to work for a prosecuting attorney in Boston as another internship the next summer. And so I saw like this, the blend of the school and those real life internship practice... the practicing that she got to do in terms of law and so forth, really help her grow in her kind of emotional intelligence, and, you know, intellectually, and also expanded her curiosity. And then my other one was a... she studied biology, and then she went and did a master's degree in entrepreneurship and things like that. But she was really kind of into the startup space, and she worked out in Silicon Valley for a few years, and then now she's back in medical school, but I saw her really grow, because I think that startup experience is important because it's just so different than ... because you're doing everything. I mean, you're like working making presentations, trying to figure out strategy, and at the end of the night, you're emptying garbage cans, right? Because you don't have nobody to help you. And so I thought that was, you know, her education, plus that kind of experience in a very smaller company, was actually helped her grow in a big way, and see things very differently. So I do think it's the blend of both the college experience and then all the things that college opens up for you -- whether it's an internship or a co-op or a capstone or a research project.

Meredith Aliff 

Yeah, college leads to life experience, always. And I think especially, I mean, we've ... I talk a lot on this podcast with everybody about just fully immersing yourself and doing everything in college. And, you know, try not to say "no" as much as you possibly can. If you can say "yes," do it. And I think that that's really what grows the life experience of college as well.

Greg Crawford 

Oh, absolutely for sure.

Meredith Aliff 

So we talked a little bit about challenges that you faced during your time as somebody looking on the other side, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that face college students today?

Greg Crawford 

There's certainly, you know, we've seen and put a lot of emphasis on mental health, and so I'm happy where Miami is at in terms of their journey and our journey to help students out in that way. But I do think that's really kind of a big area for us. And then I do think when you look at the cost of college now, the, you know, the support has been sort of waning in terms of public institutions. And so tuitions, you know, keep going up, and it's very expensive, and so that cost of college is on a lot of families minds, a lot of students, minds, and so forth. And that's another area that really like to put a lot of focus in on it. At Miami, we do a lot of ... our fundraising has been around scholarship, scholarship, scholarship, so we have a lot going on there. And so hopefully we can help out those families in those ways, but there's just a lot more going on besides those two things. But I would say those are a couple of things that are really challenging today's college students.

Meredith Aliff 

I agree. I absolutely agree. Well, going actually off of that is a really good bouncing off point. What do you think is special and unique about Miami's college experience?

Greg Crawford 

Yeah, so there's all kinds of things. And so I could just sit here all day and give you kind of lists and lists. I'll give you a couple of of my top three or four. The nature of the Miami experience is so ... it's so relationship driven, and so faculty and staff here really put their heart and soul into students, and I think they self select to come here. That's why we have such a great, you know, support system and mechanism in place. And I would say that kind of the first thing is like the teacher-scholar model, and so you have faculty members that are top scholars in their field, and they're getting grants, and they're doing all different types of things, and writing books and papers and international experts, etc, and they're teaching first and second year students, and so they're embedding what they also have that's not in the textbook quite yet into the classroom. So I love that model. And I think the other piece of it is, is, I think our professors here are also like, I would call it maybe Citizen Scholars, right? We have a big effort through our university communications and marketing where they become experts and sort of talk about their own expertise and wisdom out there in the media and the press, and so the general population, it goes above and beyond the classroom and gets out there to citizens of the world about sort of some of the aspects that they're experts in, that they can kind of opine on. So I love that model where they're highly engaged with students, and then the research piece is so embedded into everything that we do. And then you think about it, what makes it different is that you think about a student going through their different global Miami plan courses, and then all these different professors adding in a little bit of research or a little bit of current topics that's not in the textbooks yet, or anywhere, then all of a sudden, you've been exposed to basic research, applied research, quantitative research, interpretive research, nuance. You've been exposed all those different things that you may not get until you're in graduate school. So I think that's one piece of it, which then builds up to probably why we have so many undergraduates doing research here, and I just... I love it, because, again, you create something that it's not solved yet. Nobody knows the answer, and you as an undergraduate are doing that, and that's special about Miami. It's not that you can't find that everywhere across the country, but not at scale like we do here, that if you want to do research as an undergraduate and scholarship, you know, creative endeavors, you can do it here. On our Student Life side, too, our student life resources are phenomenal. We have a great office that does all kinds of stuff for our students, but all the different clubs that you can be involved with: major insight podcast as a student, right? You can do things that you just probably didn't even imagine that you could do when you were in high school. And you come here and all those opportunities are kind of afforded to you, and we don't have the right club or the right fit for you, then make it up and be that entrepreneur and start something new. And so I think that's truly what makes Miami special, but when it comes down to it, too, I mean, our campus is gorgeous, the red bricks, and it's amazing how it's been consistent over 200 plus years. But it's the people, right, that make this place so special. It's the faculty and staff that put everything they have into the students, and it's the students that select to come here that are so enthusiastic and want to kind of change the world and be positive change agents in that world. As I walk around campus and get to see everything, I mean, you got students that have already written their first novel. You got all kinds that wrote a publication already and presented at a conference. You got many that started a business plan and started the company. You got some that have their first patent, you know, you got some that are trying to start a magnet school. You got some that had composed their first song and direct their play. I mean, it's just amazing, sort of what you can get done here as an undergraduate.

Meredith Aliff 

Yeah, and something bigger than yourself as well. You know, you want to make a positive difference in the world. And I've been lucky enough to be able to graduate as an honors student in May, and that's a huge thing that we talk about, is that concept of Citizen Scholars, of people that are going to take what they learn here and apply it to whatever it is that they do in the future. But it's so interesting. Like you said, you just run into these people. Like there's somebody that I work with in the Honors College, and he is translating his grandfather's biography from Chinese to English, and he's just doing that. Like, it's just the craziest thing and and these people are so accomplished and so driven. And I, as a second semester senior, could not agree more with all the things that you said about Miami, but I was interested to see if you would talk about its beauty, because that is the initial thing that draws people into this campus. There truly is nothing like it. My dad burst into tears when he walked onto this campus. He turned to me and just said, Meredith, this makes me want to do college all over again, like I just want to do it again. So I have one more question for you before we close out, if you could talk to a high school senior who you know is about to step into this journey. It could be specifically a Miami journey or just a college journey in general. What would you say to a high school senior coming to college?

Greg Crawford 

Well, I think at first that they should be super excited. I think, you know, going to college is still a privilege, but I also tell them that, you know, college is about studying, and it's obviously, it's about learning new things, and it's about doing research, but to really get involved, both personally, with friends and do outside activities, to get involved with all the student life activities that you can get involved with. And then also, don't think you're in this alone, because there's always a shoulder. It's always something to help you. There's always a helping hand. And it may be a professor, it may be a staff member, it may be a family member, but it's also, in many cases, I'm sure you know as well - that it's a student, it's your student colleague, it's your peer that helps you out. And so the support structures are all there. Many are informal, but they're there to sort of help you succeed. And so just tell them to go for it, because there's so much out there that you can do, especially at Miami, and to experience as much as you can -- without hurting your grades, of course -- but to really try to get involved with some things and pursue your passions.

Meredith Aliff 

Absolutely. Well. President Crawford, it has been an honor and a pleasure to speak with you this morning. Thank you so much. I know you are so busy on this campus, so thank you for taking time out of your day to come hang out on major insight for a little bit well.

Greg Crawford 

Well thank you very much. And a big congratulations on being a senior and then also on major insight. This is a phenomenal program.

Meredith Aliff 

Oh. Thank you so much.

Meredith Aliff 

Dr Greg Crawford is the president of Miami University, where he is helping to lead the university and higher education into a bold new future. And this is also an exciting time for the future of this podcast, because next time, as we get ready for a whole new academic year, we'll meet the new host of major insight.

Maggie 

Hi, my name is Maggie Snee. I'm a zoology major with a geography minor and a geographic information systems certificate, and I am the new host of the major insight podcast.

Meredith Aliff 

Yay!

Maggie 

Which is so cool.

Meredith Aliff 

We have a host. Well, we are so excited to have you, Maggie, and you are absolutely gonna do amazing in this role. And I can't wait for major insight to get to know you. That's next time on major insight. Until then, many more episodes are now available wherever podcasts are found.