Let's Talk UNLV

0:00:00
Alright, welcome to another session on our podcast Let's Talk UNLV on KUNV. You're with co-host Keith and Renee. Renee, this weather is so beautiful. I know you had some big plans this weekend, or this past weekend.

0:00:18
Yep, went out and did some walking and did the routine grocery shopping, car wash, all the tours. But the most important and exciting piece was basketball.

0:00:30
We in the playoffs.

0:00:31
Who you got?

0:00:32
You know, I'm a Miami Heat fan, so that's my number one choice in the East. So, okay. And we're the number one seed, and we represented against Atlanta. Sorry, Hawks fans.

0:00:40
You're looking good.

0:00:41
We put it on you.

0:00:43
I'm a Lakers fan. We're not in the playoffs this year, but I'm rooting for the Suns. It's time for Chris Paul to get his ring.

0:00:51
I could be okay with that. I was torn between them and the Bucks last year because I like Giannis too. But either one of those, I could see Chris Paul and be happy with that. But as long as they're not paying the heat, I'll root for them.

0:01:04
Well, you already got one championship team this year, the Rams, okay? So, you know.

0:01:09
You know I'm greedy. Greedy. I need all my team to represent the same in the same sport. I wish you the same success You know, I'm used to you talking about some daredevil stuff But it's that was sort of a tame a tame weekend for you walking the dogs grocery shopping doing chores I'm confused in my own house

0:01:27
My own nightmare. I am NOT a pet lover. In fact, I walk the trail. I'm like the one that's like, please dog Don't look at me. Don't look at me, don't lick at me, don't lick me, don't, don't, don't, don't come to me to pet you, I don't want you, okay? You just stay over there on your leash with your dog handler and I'm going to enjoy my walk and enjoy the sky. But no, but I have a beautiful trail. I live in Henderson, as you know, and I just like, feel like I'm just one with nature out there. So it really is a great time. But we're here to talk to our guest. Who's our guest today?

0:02:03
Yeah, we have Dr. Magdalena Martinez, who is the assistant professor at the School of Public Policy and Leadership. Magdalena, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. So excited to be with both of you.

0:02:14
I know we go way back in so many different areas.

0:02:16
So just maybe just walk us through maybe your career path and how you land in the current position that you're in at UNLV?

0:02:26
Absolutely. I am what I like to refer to as a pretty much a Nevada native. Came out here when I was about 14, but prior to that would travel back and forth and attended UNLV, graduated from UNLV, proud Rebel, and went off to get my graduate degrees and was fortunate enough to come back and work here first at the Chancellor's Office or at the State Agency for Higher Education as an Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, and then at UNLV at the Lindsay Institute. And now I have a dual appointment at the Lindsay Institute and the College of Urban Affairs and the School of Public Policy and Leadership.

0:03:06
Excellent, excellent. So out of all those roles, which one has been your favorite? Because you've had an interesting career path.

0:03:14
Oh, that's a great question. You know, I think the position I'm in right now is really the best of all worlds. As I mentioned, I have a dual appointment with the Lindsay Institute. The Lindsay Institute is a research organization here on campus that was created as a result of a generous gift to the Kirk Kerkorian Foundation about 11, 12 years ago. And I get to do really interesting things there, particularly as it relates to education policy and really taking the work that we all do here at the university externally, right, to decision makers, to community members, and really serving as a source of education and information, dissemination, and all the good work that we're all doing, not just at the Lindsay Institute, not just at my college, but university-wide. And then the teaching part of it, you know, being a faculty member, a professor, I just love working with students. I primarily work with graduate students. And it's just, every semester is like a new chapter, right? And it's so exciting to start a new chapter and to meet new people and to hear about graduate students' aspirations and dreams. I just love to dream with them, really.

0:04:22
And what are some of the current projects that you're working on?

0:04:25
Oh yeah, okay, well one of the projects I'm really excited about is this joint project with the Brookings Institution from Washington, DC. We have a pretty close connection to them because here at UNLV we also have the Brookings Mountain West, right next to the Lindsay Institute, and so we do a lot of cross-pollination, I like to call it. One of my favorite business words. Yeah, I love it too. And so we work with Brookings fellows and right now we're working on this really exciting project called the Nevada Economic Recovery and really looking at it from different lenses, right? I just partnered with a colleague of ours at the business school and she is bringing in front line interviews from service workers during the pandemic and so what I'm doing with undergraduate and graduate students is we're looking at six domains, six different areas of individuals or groups, right, including business, social services, housing, education, unions, trying to understand how the pandemic has affected our community at a local level. And so this project, you know, we're kind of at the, we've hit start, but it's starting to really gain some momentum. So we're really excited about the information we're gathering. And we're not gathering it just for information's sake, right? We're hoping that this information can help inform conversations around public policy. We're hoping that we never have a pandemic like we've experienced. But we know that there will be crises to come in the future, right? So we want to be able to be a resource for our community and our decision makers and say, look, this is what worked. This is what didn't. How can we think differently about how we serve our communities.

0:06:05
And so what's some of the preliminary information that's being, that's coming out of this work that you wish decision makers would have known, you know, once the pandemic hit?

0:06:15
Right, well, to be sure, like no one expected this, right? And we were all scrambling initially. And so there's a lot of reflection. Now we've had enough time for organizational leaders and even individuals on the front lines to be reflective about that experience, right? And one of the things that we know, one good takeaway is that federal funding mattered. It helped, it helped. It helped alleviate some of the financial burdens, some of the housing issues, some of the food insecurity issues, education issues such as having technology.

0:06:53
Student loan deferment.

0:06:54
Absolutely.

0:06:55
So really it was across the spectrum. So federal funding matters. And when our government turns to us and says, we're listening to you, we care about you, it matters. Absolutely.

0:07:07
And then concerning like the federal allocations that sort of came to Nevada, part of your work or through the work of the Lenz Institute to track any of the funding disbursements and how they are used for the intended purposes or the impact of those funds coming to the local economy?

0:07:27
That's a really great question, Keith, and we have great organizations such as the Brookings Institution that have created trackers, national trackers, to see basically where the money went, right, follow the money. Our focus is more on a qualitative perspective and really understanding the experiences of the individuals, be it organizational leaders or frontline workers, and how they made sense of that, that those types of interventions, right. And so yes, they'll touch on some of that organizational leaders will refer specifically to specific type of funding. So, for instance, in education, we know higher education K-12 received a certain bucket of funding and certainly that is infused into our conversation, but we're particularly interested at the state level, right? What can state and local leaders learn from this and take away in terms of implementation, for instance, of those federal funding, right? And so those are some examples that we're working on right now.

0:08:29
Do you have a sense if system schools fared better than public independent schools? Is there a sense that schools that were able to make the decisions solely for their school based on the leadership that they had were able to either make faster decisions, better financial decisions, decisions because they have to think about the broader public institution of higher education for that state? Or did system schools like UNLV, a part of NSEE, Nevada System of Higher Education, did they fare better because they came together collectively to look at not only what's best for my institution, but how does this impact college students, you know, who are all working to achieve a degree or to enhance their personal professional goals at a college level.

0:09:22
Boy, another great question, right? And I think at the root of that question is issues of governance, right? We have different ways of governing higher education and K-12, right? And here in Nevada, we have one of the most centralized governance structures in the nation, both at the K-12 and higher education. And there's been a lot of policy movement and momentum around that. But what we know is that despite numerous bills introduced to really rethink how we govern education from a K-16, they haven't gone far, right? Because it is a dramatic change. To your question, no, we don't have, we can't point to specific examples where we could say, okay, centralized systems operate it better than decentralized systems. Because we are such a unique country in terms of how we govern K-16, every community is going to be different, right? I mean, does size matter? I think it does, and I think that when you have a ginormous, for instance, K-12 system, right, we have the fifth largest school district in the nation, yet we're like the 28th largest metropolitan area in the nation, so there seems to be a misalignment. We expect LA Unified to be the largest school district because it's one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Same thing with New York, Chicago. But here, there seems to be a misalignment in terms of scales. And we see what the outcomes of that is, right, a highly bureaucratic organization that does not give a lot of autonomy to individualized schools. I would not be surprised, actually, if, if, in the end, we were to see some advantages and disadvantages to highly centralized governance systems.

0:11:02
So I have, you know, colleagues that work at public institutions are not part of a systems. And my assumption would be that their morale would be different because many of these schools, they stayed open. They did not close where some would say we had a year hiatus and that maybe they were reduced services or we did not have to come to the office. And so we were able to maybe take care of some of those personal home fronts because we had no choice but to be closed and removed from the campus. But when you speak to them, they are just as agitated Or they report that communication was lacking or that there was no transparency that they're still struggling to have programs come back fully online and Having that conversation with them I guess I was really shocked because I just thought they would have this kind of chutzpah of we stayed open We know what's best, you know, it was important to our community to stay open and have the full range of services, but not so. So I'd be curious to know, like I said, eventually if there will be a survey or a study that would begin to look at how these schools fared better or they were pretty much in the same situation because it was, as you said, something we couldn't plan for and to some degree there was no playbook that we could, you know, operate from that we can make, you know, faster decisions. So let's talk about some of the educational policies that you're interested in studying. Tell us more about those.

0:12:35
Sure. So early on in my work at the Lindsay Institute, I spent a lot of time looking at, for instance, English language learner policy, which my predecessor, Dr. Sonia Horsford had laid a really strong foundation previously to her departure to other great opportunities and so I picked up some of that and another stream of inquiry has been on issues related to school financing, right, so we commissioned a school study, school financing study to see how we were faring nationally. Another area has been within the higher education realm, looking at access and equity issues, particularly for underrepresented students. So it really is a diverse area of work that I've done. Hispanic-serving institutions early in my career, I really looked at Hispanic-serving institution and what that means. Now I'm focusing more on not specific policy issues per se, but more the policymaking process. And right before our state legislature converted to a majority female legislature, I was doing interviews with women. And so I seized on that opportunity to try to interview as many women in the legislature as possible. So a lot of my work right now in writing and thinking has been around women legislators, particularly women of color. And it's been really exciting. I'm learning a lot and I'm hoping that other people will find it useful and inspiring, right?

0:14:17
Now, before you actually came into this current role, you know, when you're on the outside looking at decision-making and policies, you have one perspective, but now that you've been able to sort of get into this work and look under the hood and tinker with things through surveys and current data has been collected and reading small publications, what has changed in your perspective from being sort of on the outside and now that you're sort of in this field and in this work and immersed in it day to day?

0:14:47
Right, so prior to transitioning to the university, I was at the State Agency of Higher Education, the Chancellor's Office, where I was really on the front lines of interfacing with a lot of policymakers. And for those of you that have worked in the legislature, for instance, you know, it is fast paced, right? And the Chancellor's Office is really charged with being a resource for the elected Board of Regents, right? So in many ways that that is our primary charge, but during the legislature that's where we get all of our funding, right? So there's a tremendous amount of attention focused on specific committees. And so it is fast-paced for those folks that do that work. I have a lot of sympathy for them because you really work around the clock and not unlike some of the work that you all do here too, because you're interfacing with federal agencies, and having accountability reports, one after the other, and just responding to the to the request of multiple stakeholders, right. And so it's almost around the clock type of type of work. And I tell my friends and colleagues that being a professor is one of the most privileged positions we can think of really, because it's really an opportunity to stand back and ask meaningful questions. of the most privileged positions we can think of, really, because it's really an opportunity to stand back and ask meaningful questions and really think thoughtfully about how the work that we do intersects multiple areas, not just theory, but practice, right? So it's different insofar as I really have an opportunity to think long term how I can work with colleagues both internal to the university and external, right. And so like that Brookings project that I described, that's an example of that, right. If I was, if I was at a nonprofit organization or a local municipality, I wouldn't have the luxury to be able to reflect and interview people and look at data through multiple lenses, because I got to get that money out to folks that need it ASAP. Right. And so I think that's one of the big distinctions that that now I can ask questions and really work with colleagues, not just here at the university, but nationally, to hopefully help inform future conversations or short term type of decisions around public policy issues.

0:17:06
So for the female legislators, what's really the driver? Is it something that happened to them in their childhood or when they were, you know, mothering or othering and this, you know, opened their eyes that this was an injustice, so they wanted to change. Are their decisions influenced by, you know, following the money? I mean, what helps them, you know, creatively think this is part of the change effort that I want to see?

0:17:32
Oh, that's a great question. And I feel like you've started to touch on some of the articles that I've recently published. And so my approach to understanding policymaking is much more of a, this is a little bit of a different approach, not so linear, not so rational, many theories approach policymaking as, you know, A comes before B, C, D, and so on and so forth. And I approach my work from the lived experiences, right? And so really trying to understand, you know, how do women of color in particular, come to prioritize certain policies? And how do they make sense of their own experiences? And how does that inform their overall policy ways of thinking, quite frankly, policy ways of being right. And so you're absolutely right, our experiences absolutely inform who we are, how we think about the world, and how we approach life. I'd say that women of color here, legislators in the state of Nevada are typically much younger, motivated by different experiences. It's not uncommon for women or even primarily women to wait until they've raised a family to their near their end of their career to say, I will now step into public service. Not universal, but you know, in our state legislature, we're a part time legislature. So there ain't no money involved in that. In fact, you're putting out money. But these young women of color, that's not the case, they feel a greater sense of urgency to step up, they may be early in in their career, or just getting to mid level, but they feel that that urgency to step up to the plate. And I get chills just talking about it and thinking about it and to really bring their voice to bear and bear witness also of this process. So you're absolutely right.

0:19:27
kind of what was the, you know, I guess, who were the village of people that, you know, promoted them, that encouraged them, that, you know, said, okay, this is how you get this done. This is how you run a successful campaign. This is how you fundraise. I mean, all those, you know, components. Yes, yes. And, you know, I'd say the majority of women of color legislators that I interviewed were

0:19:52
the first in their family to run for public office, right? There are a few exceptions, but they were the first. And so it was a leap of faith. They jumped into it, and I can remember one particular legislator saying, I had nobody support me but my mother. Okay, and she took a leap of faith, and she didn't know how she was going to do it, but she knew she had to keep moving forward. Right. And so politics is something that I won't even pretend to understand because it really is not just one way. Right. It, it, it, it flows depending on what's going on, who the players are and who's upset with who that day. But these women had to prove, for instance, to their caucus members that they were worthy of investment, right? And so it wasn't until perhaps after a primary that they were on top that, you know, the caucus maybe came forward and said, OK, now we'll give you our formal endorsement, which is not uncommon. But in terms of mentorship, other women have been great sources of mentorship and men, right? And it's really connected to the party, usually, right? But they certainly confronted a lot of the challenges and a lot of the sexism, right, that that we all face outside, and all of the racism as women of and mindful way because they understood that their calling was greater than what they were experiencing right there. I just one more follow-up question. Renee, you know you've been asking questions the last 10 minutes. You see why it's difficult, why she chose me so she could just take over the whole

0:22:13
interview but go ahead Renee. Okay so but did they learn that grace, that grace

0:22:20
grace under fire, grace under pressure, or somehow it just kicked in. I mean, had their circumstances in life been preparing them, or somehow they learned it from their other communities of color, you know, or through their faith community or something, and they were able to, you know, ride that wave in a different way? Or, like I said, they just, you know, kind of just got baptized into politics. This is how it is. You got tough skin.

0:22:53
Keep, keep moving.

0:22:54
I think it's a little bit of all of the above, right? Certainly women of color have been confronting issues of race and racism and sexism throughout their entire lives. So they were not surprised when people would confuse them with other black women or other Latina women. Right. Um, in fact, they, they, you know, they took it gracefully and said, well, thank you, you have a nice day, too, rather than correcting them in that instant. And so I think that there's so much to be said for the lived experiences and the communities from which we come from, right, that have taught us how to navigate these different spaces, spaces not created for us, or in mind with us, right. And certainly, state legislators is one of those places. In fact, it's been places that have created policies of exclusion. And they're very aware of this, right, based on my interviews, these women of color, they understand that they're not kidding themselves, right. But at the same time, what I found most inspiring is that despite that fact, they were still inspired to go and trust the system. Okay, trust the system that in the end, if they were there, they showed up. Okay, and they built coalitions, not just with people that look like them or thought like them, but with all people, there is a sense of belief in a democratic process and a democracy that is changing before our eyes. I feel like they really democracy. That is changing before our eyes. I feel like they really had a unique perspective, okay? They weren't afraid of this changing democracy. They

0:24:42
wanted to embrace it and they wanted to come up and say, look, we're an actor just like you are and we're gonna work collectively. And related to that, leadership. And I want to maybe just highlight the work that you did with the Kellogg Foundation. In particular, I call it finishing school for for individuals for presidency at minority service institutions. Could you maybe speak to that work and maybe some of the the key components of recommendations for those who have aspirations of leading a minority service institution such as like UNLV or others around the country.

0:25:13
Yeah, okay. So I haven't talked about this in a few decades, but I love that work. I love that stage of my career. Back when I was in Michigan, the Kellogg Foundation provided a very generous grant of $10 million to prepare the next cohort of presidents at minority serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. And so they partnered with three national organizations, HACU being one of them, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, NAFIO, which is the counterpart for HBCUs, or Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and AHEC, which is a counterpart to tribal colleges and universities. And essentially what these three organizations did in partnership with the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, DC, was create a year long fellowship program for individuals that were a few steps away from the presidency. However, the focus was on minority serving institutions. of president-like, you know, finishing schools for white dominant universities, right, particularly the elite universities, but very few at the time focused on MSIs. That was such great work. I met fantastic individuals, every year was a cohort, and this was a three year project of, I believe, 30 individuals, right. And so many of those individuals have are at the helm of minority serving institutions now, right. And so basically, the idea was, how do And they, quite frankly, they have a lot more resources in minority serving institutions. So the focus of this program was really to rethink leadership, how it's practiced, how it's understood, and the individuals at the helm of these type of institutions, which are all people of color. Renee, powerful, powerful conversation around policy change and just improving how we collect data, use data to improve and inform decision-making in the local community.

0:27:45
What were some of your takeaways from today's discussion?

0:27:48
This is so good. I don't want to end it because I'm saying we need to have her back. I think about the MSI task force work, and we could bring some of these presidents and have a presidential roundtable to learn about how they ascended to the presidency for serving in a minority serving institution and what were some of the ways they had to strategically think about governing, think about community engagement, think about student success and working with academic affairs and student affairs. And what a great discussion that would be. And so timely to the work that we do. And so I can just go on and on and on and on. And to also know that we didn't get to it this time, but Dr. Martinez talked about during MSI week about, you know, if you want to show me your values, you want to show me what matters. You show me your budget about, you know, equity, diversity, inclusion. And I want her to actually review the student life budget and to say beyond professional development, beyond funding positions, which is our standard way of saying we value these things or we provide scholarships for different identities. But beyond that, are there other ways that we need to begin to put on the radar, our ways that we're saying that we are supporting these institutions and these efforts? So this has been a very enriching conversation. What was your takeaway?

0:29:16
I mean, I echo exactly what you said, the sentiments, and, you know, especially around as UNIV begins to really understand and embrace being a dual MSI and HSI-certified institution, you know, how do we get more action-oriented in terms of changing our behavior and actions in terms of how we look at instruction, how we look at how we support students, how we define success and then following that with how do we reconsider how we allocate our resources and prioritize our resources to support that work in a sustainable way.

0:29:48
Dr. Martinez, thank you for joining us. Oh, thanks so much. It's been so much fun. Great to see both of you.

0:29:54
All right. That's a wrap. For more Let's Talk UNLV, be sure to follow us on social media where you can get the latest updates on the show plus great behind the scenes content. We're on Facebook at Let's Talk UNLV Podcast, Twitter at Let's Talk UNLV, and Instagram We're on Facebook at Let's Talk UNLV Podcast, Twitter at Let's Talk UNLV, and Instagram

0:30:21
at Let's Talk UNLV Pod.

Transcribed with Cockatoo