Show notes
Transition as Growth: Vaughn's Bold Leaps from Athletics to Student Services In the heartwarming and inspiring latest episode of NASPA's SA Voices From the Field podcast we welcomed Dr. Vaughn Calhoun, an esteemed academic leader, recounted his transformative journey from a student athlete with a career-ending injury to a beacon for change in higher education. Engineering Identity Post-Injury Calhoun began by sharing the immediate consequences of his injury and the impact it had on his self-image and life trajectory. He emphasized the importance of identity reconstruction, an experience that propelled him from a series of unfulfilling jobs to the realization that he needed to embrace authentic studenthood—a leap he bravely took by pursuing a master's degree far from the world of sports he knew. Encounters That Changed His Path One of the most pivotal moments in Calhoun's life was an encounter with a stranger at Borders bookstore who saw in him a potential future as a university athletic director. This set him on a path to his doctorate, with a determined goal to understand and improve collegiate athletics from an administrative perspective. Mentorship and Its Lasting Impact Calhoun credited much of his success to the mentors he encountered, specifically highlighting an inviting university president who believed in him and guided his professional growth. This president showed Calhoun how to harness vulnerability and understanding, which in turn helped him carve out his niche in student affairs. The Student at Heart of the Leader With a robust background in public policy and the professoriate, Calhoun brought humility and an unwavering focus on student success to his administrative roles. His approach has always been about being receptive to student needs and advocating for their growth and success, a principle he implemented in his roles at various educational institutions. Innovation and Adaptation Furthermore, Calhoun discussed the rise of AI in education and the urgent need for educators to integrate new technologies. Adaptation, he stressed, is not only inevitable but essential for student support and success, highlighting the importance of ethical considerations in the digital age. Embracing the Journey Closing the episode, Calhoun imparted advice to student affairs professionals undergoing transitions, encouraging them to focus on the process and seek mentorship. He suggests that staying authentic, seeking challenging experiences, and forming a supportive network are keys to personal and professional development. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to student affairs voices from the field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. This is season 10, continuing our season 9 theme of on transitions in student affairs. This podcast is brought to you by NASPA, and I'm doctor Jill Creighton. She, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Welcome back to our next episode of student affairs voices from the field. Today, we sat down with doctor Vaughn Calhoun live and in person at the NASPA annual conference in March 2024, Seattle, Washington. Doctor Calhoun serves as the assistant vice president of student services and dean of Center For Academic Success at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He's been featured on a number of national platforms, including platforms, including Fortune Magazine, Education Edition, The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, Huffington Post, NASPA Policy Briefs, and the Student Affairs Now podcast. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:54]: A thought leader and commentator on issues related to the changing landscape of higher ed, doctor Calhoun believes critical dialogue is necessary to equip students for the future of work, which means cultivating adaptive learners who can thrive in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Doctor Calhoun's leadership career spans colleges and universities in the northeast from public, private, urban, suburban, small and large institutions with enrollments from 2,000 to more than 20,000 students. This experience includes public research universities, small private liberal arts, midsize Catholic universities to a predominantly online state university. Doctor Calhoun is a graduate of Rutgers University where he earned his bachelor's of science while also participating as a full scholarship student athlete on the football team. He also earned his master's of public policy and administration from Cal State Long Beach and a doctorate of education from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Von, welcome to SA Voices. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:01:46]: Hello. How's it going? Thank you for having me. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:48]: It's such a joy for me to be able to meet with guests in person because normally we're across time zones and on a Zoom box and things like that. So I really appreciate you taking time out of your conference to connect with us. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:01:59]: Absolutely. Happy to share anything and answer anything. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:02]: In our theme of transitions, when we got your story for casting, we just looked at it and went, we really wanna talk to you. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:02:07]: Okay. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:07]: Because your story, I think, is kind of unique in the world of student affairs, but also unique in that you've kind of been in a lot of different spaces before figuring out that your space, your professional purpose is here. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:02:20]: Absolutely. It took me a while. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:21]: So we know you're at Seton Hall now. We always like to know how you got to that seat, but we'd love for you to trace that journey through the beginning of sport. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:02:29]: Wow. No. That's just fantastic question. And, you know, my journey, it's something that I could not have mapped out. Yep. It it was something that really took shape while I was a student athlete. I played football at Rutgers. And in my 1st year at Rutgers, I blew my knee out. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:02:45]: And that was one of those things that you always think that happens to somebody else. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:50]: Yeah. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:02:50]: But when it happens to you, it's kinda like, oh my god. Like, it's happening. And not long after that, my head coach, he was fired. So these 2 big life moment events happened within 3 or 4 months of each other. And while I was at Rutgers, to compound that, at least at the time, I was steered into a major because it was athletic friendly. And that set me up on a course for not necessarily focusing as much as I probably should have on academics. And once I finished at Rutgers, I always tell people I graduated there, but I wasn't necessarily educated there. And that's a huge difference. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:03:22]: And it took me a while to kind of contextualize, well, what happened to me? And it wasn't until I read the book, The 40,000,000 Dollar Slave, The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, that really put it into context for me. And in particular, this book, it talks about the conveyor belt theory. Essentially, you have these institutions who go into black and brown neighborhoods and extract raw black or brown talent. And you're put on this figurative conveyor belt. And when you're on this belt, 1, you never know you're on the belt until you're off the belt. And the thing with the belt is there's always someone in front of you and someone behind you. Mhmm. And you move along this belt, and you get off the belt because you blow your knee out. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:03:58]: You aren't as good as they thought you were. And the consensus is next person up. And when the next person is up, you're essentially out. And when I read that, I was like, oh my god. I was a part of a system in which I didn't know until I read that. I was like, oh, that's what happened to me. And in that process, I was still trying to figure out, well, who am I now without sport? Because sport was something that I identified with since I was 6, 7 years old. And now here I am 21, 22 years old and it and it's over. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:04:25]: So now it's this journey of recreating myself. Like, who am I? And that led me on to going through a 1000000 different types of jobs. My first job out of college was shredding paper. Literally, shredding paper. I went back from my old school district and we were going from paper student records to electronic student records. This is 2004. And here I am, these boxes and boxes of student records. I'm literally scanning and shredding. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:04:50]: Wow. Scanning and shredding for 8 hours a day. I'm like, what the heck am I doing? And it gave me a lot of time to think in the process, and then that's when I decide, okay. I wanna go and try to be an authentic student. Go get my masters. It didn't really matter what it was. I just wanna explore this other piece of me that I didn't feel that I fully tapped into. So I ended up getting my or going to Cal State University Long Beach. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:05:13]: I'm originally from California. Going to Cal State Long Beach and I did my master's in public policy. And that's when I just started reading not just books on public policy, but just all types of books. Trying to figure out who am I in relation to the world. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:25]: So you invested in your education for yourself. Absolutely. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:05:28]: And during this process, there were so many things that I didn't realize about the world, about myself. And also in trying to find out who I am, I started taking on even more jobs. So I sold copy machines door to door in Los Angeles. And that was just something that I think everyone should try sales at least once. Just the experience of walking up to somebody and trying to sell something. Mhmm. And I remember I had this whole script. And my thing was walking into business parks and knocking on doors and saying, hey. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:05:55]: Can I talk to the person in charge of document management? And they're like, what's document management? And that was my end. Once you ask me a question, I can give you my spiel. So that was an experience. I even got put on a do not enter list because I was very persistent. And I kept going back and back and back trying to get the business. And then from there, I thought, okay. Maybe I wanna be an attorney. Maybe so then I took LSATs. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:06:15]: And then I said, well, maybe I might not wanna be an attorney. I might wanna be a police officer. I was driving down the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, and there's this huge billboard that said LAPD hiring starting pay with a master's degree, $70,000. So I drove home, went online, put in my application, got called back for the written exam, and then got called back for the physical exam. And after I took my physical exam, it was about a 8 month period where it's just background check. In that time, I found me another job. I started working in insurance. And it was just this whirlwind of trying to figure myself out, but it wasn't until I had this one interesting interaction at Borders bookstore. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:06:50]: Remember Borders? It was like, Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:52]: oh, yeah. Mini Barnes and Noble. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:06:53]: Yeah. It was like it was like, you know, it was like Nike Reebok is Barnes and Noble's Borders. And I love Borders. But I walked in one day and this older gentleman looked like Bernie Sanders. Right? And he says, hey, did you play Rutgers? I'm like, mind you, I'm in Long Beach, California. How in the world does this guy know I played? And I barely even played. But I had a Rutgers Football t shirt on. He's, oh, okay. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:07:12]: He says, oh, it must have been a fantastic experience. Right? So, you know, older gentleman. So I sit down and have a conversation with them. And at the end of the conversation, you know, after I share my story with him, he goes, I can see it now. Vaughn Calhoun, athletic director, USC, Stanford, University of Texas. I'm like, oh, I've never even thought about myself in that way. Right? And he was the first gentleman, the first person who kinda put in my mind that I can maybe fix college athletics or do something about it because my experience as a student athlete wasn't the greatest one. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:07:42]: He was a total stranger. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:07:43]: Absolutely. Total stranger. Did did know him, but we spent at least an hour with each other. And subsequently, we kept talking, kept meeting with each other and he even introduced me to his network who was a sitting athletic director in Los Angeles. So he said, hey, I want you to meet my buddy. I'm like, okay. So now there's this whole world of college athletics on the administration side that I didn't know exist. Well, I knew it existed, but I didn't know, like, that was a path that I could take. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:08:06]: So now this is 2,008. I just got married and if you recall, we had the financial meltdown and crisis in the world was just going in bad places. And I decided in that period of time that I'm gonna leave my job and move across the country to pursue my doctoral degree. And everyone thought I was nuts. Even my parents, like, what are you doing? You're leaving because at the time, I was working at for a local government agency making, you know, pretty decent money. And I said, you know what? The money at that time money's important, but it wasn't important. Right? I said, this is the thing that I wanna do because I said, I wanna understand how a college works and where does athletics fit within an institution of higher education so I can be an athletic director and fix it. And then here I am moving to Boston. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:08:49]: Literally, set my car, My wife and I are now newlyweds in Boston. And I remember as I'm going through this transition, I get to my last year of my doctoral program, and my dean and I get very friendly. And he says to me, listen, Vaughn. I know what you're trying to do. You wanna fix college athletics, but the way that you feel about it, 1, are they gonna let you in? And 2, if they do let you in, do you have to uphold the system in which you don't believe in? Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:09:14]: I was like, oh, dang. Those are some great questions. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:16]: That's a hard hard dissonance to deal with. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:09:18]: And I was like, what do I do? He said, well, I have door number 2. I said, well, what's door number 2? He said, you can teach. I said, who the heck am I gonna teach? And he said, listen, because my dissertation was on student athletes who were academically clustered, steered into a major because it was athletic friendly. It was a qualitative research study looking at the lived experience of student athletes who were clustered. So he says, I want you to come into my undergraduate class and just give a presentation on it. Right? So I said, okay. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:09:42]: So I did it once, did it twice, and then he says, do you feel comfortable with that now? I said, yeah. I feel pretty good because the students were very engaging. I was like, oh, this this is teaching, Oh, I can do this. He says, okay. Now I want you to start applying to faculty jobs. I was like, oh. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:53]: Oh, he's pathwaying you. Dr. Vaughn Calhoun [00:09:54]: I was like, oh, you we didn't say I was lik…
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