Leading Through Closure: Lessons from Texas A&M University at Qatar - Adventures in Advising

Get ready for a truly one-of-a-kind episode! Guest host Amanda Roberts Mather takes the mic to interview her boss Dr. Ryan McLawhon, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Services at Texas A&M University at Qatar as they share an inside look at what it’s like to guide students, staff, and faculty through one of higher ed’s biggest challenges: the planned closure of a university campus. 

Join Amanda and Ryan for an honest and inspiring conversation about leading through transition, keeping the Aggie spirit alive, and how collaboration with Hamad Bin Khalifa University has opened new doors for engineering education in Qatar.

It’s a heartfelt, behind-the-scenes look at what it means to make higher ed personal, even when the lights are turning off.

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Well, hello. It's time for another episode of your favorite podcast in higher ed the Adventures in Advising podcast. Well, at least in my opinion, this is Matt Markin, and today we get to turn over the hosting duties to your returning guest. And that's Amanda Roberts Mather, Amanda, welcome back.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Thank you, Matt. I'm thrilled to be here again.

Matt Markin  
Can you believe it's been over four years since you've been on the podcast?

Amanda Roberts Mather  
I know that has been a while. I was thinking about our last experience. I had so much fun doing that. 

Matt Markin  
I was like, way, way, way back episode 37 I had to look it up. I was like, when was that? June 2021.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yes, and I believe I was in the same guest room. However, I have gone back to my office since then.

Matt Markin  
And you know, I know we've been chatting over the last few months about you coming back on as a guest host, and I'm glad that this worked out, so I'm going to stop talking. I'm going to turn it over to you and bring on your guest and have a great conversation.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
All right, thank you. So happy everyone. I am Amanda Roberts Mather. I serve as the director for records and academic services at Texas, A&M University at Qatar. I've been over here in Doha for the last 10 years. And my guest today is someone I work very, very closely with. He's my boss, my chief, Dr. Ryan McLawhon, who's the Associate Dean for Academic and Student Services here at TAMU Q. Welcome Ryan.

Ryan McLawhon  
Hey Howdy, thanks for having me. 

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Really excited to visit with you today. So our topic today is something that you and I discuss quite frequently, pretty much on a daily basis. For those of y'all who are not familiar with what's going on in the state of Texas, about a little over a year ago, the Board of Regents of Texas, A&M University decided to focus their efforts on the state of Texas, and decided to close out our branch campus and basically teach out the students we have and not admit anymore. So that's what we're going to chat about a little bit today, a little bit about our timeline. What we the expectations versus the reality some of the challenges that we have faced. But before we get into all of that, Ryan, we've had kind of a similar experience over here today. We're both expats, both Aggies, graduates of the main campus, but I feel like you and I also have in common that we both took kind of circuitous routes to get to where we are in our careers. Neither one of us started out in the goal of being in this particular position, but we've landed here. So would you give us a little bit of of your timeline, a little bit of your history?

Ryan McLawhon  
Well, I can, you know, kind of, I'll give you the short version. There's probably an hour two hour long version of it all, but as as probably is the same with most people. But, you know, I went to Texas A&M for my undergrad, massive university. Had a great experience, but graduated really having no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I got a fairly generic undergraduate degree in speech communication and went into the workforce, and just really did not enjoy my job whatsoever, nothing that I was really passionate about, and so decided to go to graduate school, still not quite sure what I wanted to do, and I went to Dallas Theological Seminary to study religion and theology, because it was something that I was interested in. And it was there that I walked into a class of about 100 or 200 people one semester, and I walked in the room and the professor, whom I had never met, said, Hi, Ryan, how you doing good to meet you. He already knew my name, and he knew everyone's name in the whole class because he had studied the student ID, pictures and the names prior to the semester. He did that every semester with hundreds of students. And it made me realize that education and higher education could be different. It could be better. I could participate in making it better, where we actually get to know our students, even in large universities. And it was experience that I had not had at Texas A&M at all. Looking back, I don't know if more than maybe one or two professors ever even knew my name in the four years that I was there. And so it made me think more about higher education, and more about education in general, and how we can do better as educators, as administrators. And long story short, that same professor had not that long prior, gotten his doctorate in higher education at the University of North Texas, and he had told me about his program, and specifically, the program was designed for people who are interested in higher education administration, which at that time I didn't even know you could do that. As a job. I guess I kind of thought that the professors always did it, because everybody I ever talked to at Texas A&M, I don't even remember who my academic advisor was, or if I ever even met with that person. And so I know maybe I just fell through the cracks, or maybe my experience was the norm. You know, 25 years ago, but I learned about higher education and ended up pursuing a doctorate at University of North Texas shortly thereafter, and was able to I worked at Tarrant County College in their online curriculum development program, and then was able to get a job in the assessment and accreditation office in the main campus in College Station, and then a part of that job overseeing the SAC COC accreditation for our university. I was visiting the Qatar campus every year and got to know some of the administrators here who most of whom are long gone now, but intrigued about what it might be like to work in higher education overseas, and kind of talked off and on for a couple of years with the administrators here, and ultimately an opportunity developed for me to come here, and that was more than 10 years ago now, so no regrets about anything in my Path. I'm so thankful and fortunate to have the opportunity to do what I do with the people that I get to do it with.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, you know, I'm really glad that we're both over here, because Fun fact, college station and Texas A&M, that campus is so big, but I used to get emails from you about assessment because I did the assessment for the department I was in. But I don't know that our paths would ever have crossed in College Station, you know, so, but we've had this really great opportunity to work with our student population over here, and I'm really glad that we've been able to do that, you know. And you said that higher ed is so big, and that was my experience as well in my undergraduate degree, when I graduated the university was around 50,000 students, and so it was still quite large, and now we're almost twice that. So yeah, I think I kind of had a very similar experience to you, that I wasn't on anyone's radar because I wasn't a high flyer, I wasn't a low liar. I was just right in the middle, and I did a lot of self advising, so that's one of the things I'm really grateful for here at t is that we do have a small student population, and we have been really able to develop the relationships with our students and get to know them one on one, and let them know that they are not their UIN, their ID number, they are not their GPA, and get to know them holistically, as you know, as really unique, lots of fun people. So, yeah, so, um, again, back to our this. We came up with this topic really because I was, I was chatting with Matt a little while ago, kind of trying to think of something that had not been discussed on this podcast over the years. And it occurred to me that there are other campuses that have been shut down that I've read about, you know, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed or in the news over the last few years, and that's kind of a unique experience that probably not a lot of folks have been through. But it might come to it that there might be more folks that will go through it, and I thought maybe our insight could be valuable. So since you have been involved with the with the transition team back to college station and to our new partner university, would you give us a little bit of the timeline from from February of 24 and kind of what the thinking was behind that? 

Ryan McLawhon  
Yes, so, you know, once we were kind of all sort of shocked by the news. I guess shocked is a good word, because that was the state that we were in for a while. We We did not, we did not have a lot of information, because, in a lot of ways, the our administrators that we work closely with in College Station were in some, in some ways, just as surprised as we were, and so we we were not ahead of the game at all as far as planning. And I guess the first kind of decision that we had to make was, if we have this four year timeline to close, are we going to admit students one more class? And that was the first question that we had, because we kind of had free reign to do what we wanted to do, as long as we closed by the expected date that was outlined by the Board of Regents. And so if we would have been able to graduate the students, you know, we we could have admitted students if we wanted to, because we had already been making offers to students for admission. We had already done the massive workload that it is to recruit an entire freshman class. And so that was one of the first decisions that we we made. And ultimately it was not an easy decision, but we made a decision not to. To admit students because we were concerned about those that would take longer than the allotted time, and what we would do with them. And you know, were they going to be able to finish on the main campus, which is maybe a question that we might discuss a bit if we get to it today, the opportunities for students to finish their degrees as we close, but that was the kind of the first big decision. And then the next big decision was one that we were not involved in, and that was the State of Qatar and the Qatar Foundation, who is our, our sponsor, here in the country. They needed to decide, what were they going to do with engineering programs? And they did not want to let you know all of the work that we had done, not only for the last 20 years, but even in the recruitment of the new class, go to waste. And so they also didn't want to have a gap in the workforce development for engineering in in the State of Qatar, have a have a gap of a year or two while they were trying to figure out what they were going to do with the undergraduate programs. And so Qatar Foundation had to scramble to figure out, what's the future of undergraduate I guess I would say more prestigious boutique undergraduate engineering education in the State of Qatar. You know, we're Texas A&M, for the past 20 years, has been feeding the upper management of the gas the energy industry here in the State of Qatar. And so our students have gone on and will continue to rise in the ranks of Qatar energy, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Conoco, Phillips, et cetera. And so that was a pipeline that State of Qatar was not interested in halting. So they had to decide what to do with the engineering programs. And ultimately, I would, I think, somewhere around May or June, probably May of that year, they made a decision to hand over the undergraduate degree programs to Hamad bin Khalifa University, which has been around for, I think, a little more than a decade, maybe closer to 12 or 13 years, but prior to that, had almost exclusively been a graduate school, and they are the only state kind of university and education city under Qatar Foundation. And so they took over the responsibility of delivering undergraduate degree programs, and they decided to go ahead and hire our admissions team who had done all the recruitment of the students, and decided to extend offers to those students that we had admitted for our incoming class that fall. And so that kind of started the really important and ongoing collaborations between us and Hamad bin Khalifa University to work in partnership to not only help them on load their freshman class for that fall, but also slowly and strategically and super Easy and simple and not complicated whatsoever, and hand over our degree programs to them and help them. I say that sarcastically, so you probably can't see my face on on the audio. So, you know we started working with them closely, and you know they started gradually talking to our faculty and some of our staff about slowly moving over to build new programs for them, and then so ultimately, they decided to start offering three of our four engineering programs, and they launched that the fall of 2024 with their first incoming class.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
That collaboration and the bringing In of the new class under the HBKU umbrella has been a really interesting experience, I think, both from like a records advising registration standpoint, which is, you know, all of the things that I oversee and making sure that our students don't get lost in that shuffle. And we're also as the as we are shrinking, hbku is growing, and there's we're about to get to the point where we're crossing in the middle, I think. But scheduling classes for students on both campuses and sharing office space and sharing classroom and lab space, that's been a challenge as well, and I think that we have fairly well. It's gone very smoothly. I think it's gone a lot more smooth than I think anyone expected it to but you know, I know you, since you also oversee the Student Affairs side of things, you are, there is no bigger student advocate on our campus than you, and so I know you're very much in touch. And so what's some of the feedback you heard from the students this this first year, as we were as the new students in the new institution were coming in, and our students were just because I know a lot of our students also felt very floored and just kind of lost and almost even a little bit abandoned. So I mean, you're very in touch with them. What was the reaction from them?

Ryan McLawhon  
Well, the original initial reaction from them when the announcement came was confusion, maybe a little bit frustration, maybe even some anger, emotions that a lot of us felt sort of like we didn't have any advanced notice and we weren't ready for the information. And so I think there was a lot of questions that we all had. And I think one of the things that we were able to do as administrators and mentors for students is kind of tell them, hey, you know, we feel the same way. Let's let's work through this together. We're going to figure it out. And one of the things that we did very early on was make sure that the president of our university, at the time was communicating clearly with them, and we were relaying that message that, you know, we're not going to leave you out to we're not going to hang you out to dry. We're not going to leave you on the street not being able to finish your degree. We're 100% committed to not only maintaining your progress towards degree and making sure that you finish in a timely manner, but also continuing to offer commensurate student engagement activities, co curricular activities, student leadership opportunities, undergraduate research, those kinds of things. We were ensured from the very beginning that this was something that Texas A&M University and Qatar Foundation were going to be committed to maintaining the student life experience that obviously Aggies are world renowned for and hold very dear to our academic and educational and leadership development. So we were able to calm them, I think, fairly early, although they continued to have very good and challenging questions for us. Well, how are you going to do this? Or how are you going to do that? And a lot of times our answers was, we don't know, but I promise you, we will do it. And thankfully, after the first academic year, I think the majority of students, overwhelmingly, have all said what a lot of us administrators have said to which was, Wow, this is going a lot better than I thought it would. And you know, that's not just a credit to Texas A&M or Texas A&M at Qatar. That's a credit to the HBKU Hamad bin Khalifa university leadership and staff who have been extremely sincere partners in this process and working together and collaboratively, not without bumps, not without conflict, not without confusion, of course, but they really want to succeed as a undergraduate university Now as well, and we want them to succeed. Because ultimately, you know, their success moving forward is going to be a major part of our legacy here for the 20 years that we were here. You know, I think hopefully we can look back in 20 to 30 more years and say Hamid and Khalifa University is a very successful, rigorous, high quality engineering school, and we play a part in that. That's ultimately what we want, is to make sure that they are successful. But in general, I would say the students kind of got off on a tangent. Because you asked me specifically about the students, one of the things that I think they're realizing, too, is that they might not be getting the exact same experience as students before them, but they are getting just as good, or maybe even better, of an experience, because, you know, the more that they shrink, the more attention that they they're going to be able to get from us and support, whether That be mentorship or research opportunities, or student leadership opportunities, etc. So in general, thankfully, and we just met with our student government president and vice president, and they reiterated again that they feel like even in the second year of collaboration with HBK, you now we only have juniors and seniors, and they have freshmen and sophomores. They are just thrilled with how we're kind of making, you know, lemonade out of lemons, I guess. 

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, I was walking through the student tutoring space this afternoon, and some of our seniors were in there. A couple of HBKU use students walked in and what and one of our seniors said, are y'all freshmen? And he said, Yeah, y'all look like it. You just got baby face. It's been really interesting, particularly in that space. So my office is in the tutoring and student support, Student Learning Support area to see the collaboration, because some of our juniors and seniors are now tutoring and mentoring the Hamad bin Khalifa freshmen. So it's really cool to see that relationship develop between the two institutions as well. And I know some of the students are involved in a lot of student activities across both campuses, both institutions, so that's been cool to see as well.

Ryan McLawhon  
So I was going to say one decision that we made early on in collaboration with HBKU was. So they they did not have time to ramp up a lot, certainly student life, student engagement activities, but also just simple things like, of course, scheduling software. But that aside textbooks and what was I thinking about engineering and other specialized software, it's not something that they had time to ramp up in time for their students to be admitted. And so one idea that we had early on, that that we agreed to, was that we were going to go ahead and enroll all of their incoming freshmen in one Texas A&M University course. And so we just elected that that was going to be a math course, because everybody has to take math as an engineer in their first semester, and so we delivered that course for them. They were technically, I guess, cross registered, or I think we might have Mirror Mirror, stack their their sections with it, and that allowed those students in their first year to have access to pretty much all of the auxiliary and not only student support, but it technology, Canvas, our compass system, Banner system, all of those things they were able to have access to in that first year, while that gave time for HBKU to build those things that they were going to Need. And then now, a year later, now this fall, that was not something that we needed to do, because they were kind of able to stand up on their own in their second year. 

Amanda Roberts Mather  
They actually, they did get a lot of benefit from our expertise in that first year, when we when their students were co enrolled, and I haven't really seen that in the process of getting you know as right now as we're sharing scheduling responsibilities, we've seen that and we've been able to make it work. So what were some of the challenges that we have, we have come across, or some of the surprises that we we either expected to deal with and did not, or did not even think about and that came up. Is there anything you can can think of on that area?

Ryan McLawhon  
I would say the biggest surprise that just me individually, Ryan had was how many of our Texas A&M at Qatar faculty moved over to HBKU in the first year as full time employment, so that that actually really surprised me. When we originally were working on our staffing plan and kind of trying to project how we would slowly downsize over the four year period, we kind of anticipated that the faculty would stay with Texas A&M for several years, but h became used smartly, I think, went ahead and made offers to the majority of our faculty to join, you know, their ranks, starting that fall of 2024 and to my surprise, you know, I think somewhere around 60% of our faculty went ahead and went to HBKU. You in full time employment under the agreement with HBKU, you that those faculty would assist in continuing to teach their normal courses for Texas A&M University until we can get our students graduated. So that added a layer of complexity, certainly, and higher level of collaboration with HBKU. You because, because we did not anticipate 60 to 65% of our faculty to jump over to HBKU in full time employment. And so, you know, they, they continue, have continued to teach for us as adjuncts in our courses, the courses the courses that many of them have been teaching at Texas A&M for 15, 20 years just they're doing it as adjuncts, and it's part of their load as they you know, they still only have freshmen and sophomores. So if you're someone who's always taught a junior, senior level course, you're still teaching Aggies, you're still teaching Texas, Texas ad students, even though you work full time for hPk, you now I'll say the complexity with that is, I guess, fairly obvious in the sense that they don't work for us anymore, and so they don't report to us anymore. So we can't necessarily tell them, you know, what they're going to do or what they're going to teach. And so all of that communication no longer goes through our department heads, we call them program chairs. Our department heads no longer go to the faculty and say, You're going to teach X, Y and Z, and here's your time and all that we go through their admin. Our administrator goes to their administrator communicates back, and so it adds several extra hoops to jump through and communication circles to deal with. But that was, I guess, my answer to the thing that I was most surprised by.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, I didn't quite expect that many faculty to go as quickly as they did, either and support staff as well. You know, folks that we had normally been used to dealing with in certain areas? Well, they're no longer working with us. They've either gone to HBKU or they have. You know, left for another opportunity elsewhere, and so the staff of us, the remaining, those of us who are left, are now trying to scramble and make sure all the Student Services and the needs are covered. So, you know, I'm an advisor by training. I never expected to be overseeing the registration and the records and all of that. But I find it's a fun challenge, and I think I fake it pretty well. 

Ryan McLawhon  
That's a good example to the staff leaving. We, we, we didn't anticipate our registrar. He's we call director of records, that position, you know, he decided to go back to the main campus, take an opportunity that was with a little bit more stability. And so I think you stepped into that role, and kind of took on more even than that job was doing. And so not only have you done a great job, but you're obviously the right person to take on that challenge. But that was another thing that we didn't necessarily anticipate is not only the people jumping over to HBKU, but several of our staff have decided that they wanted to go either back to wherever their home was or go on to some other kind of new adventure that had a little bit more stability than because we have a we have an expiration date, and at some point we're going to be unemployed. So some people want to ride this train and roll the dice as long as possible, like you and me, and you know, decided that we we want to be the people to turn the lights out, but, but other people have made the choices that's right for them, and so that's something that is a constant state of flux for us, as we're continuing to you know, you're, you're a good example. I can, I can mention probably a dozen other people that have taken on additional responsibilities in areas that we don't necessarily, haven't had experience with in the past. But we're also eager to learn, and it's interesting, and we can pick things up and try to help finish this thing out the right way, and to continue to provide the best level of service to students as possible. 

Amanda Roberts Mather  
So expectation versus reality. You know, can you talk a little bit about when we got the news and then a few months in what we thought, how we thought things were going to go, versus how they have actually gone. It's kind of in the same vein of what we were just chatting about. But like, you know, I think a lot of folks thought that it was just kind of going to be, we've almost been asked to do the impossible, which is continue everything that we've been doing for all of our students until they graduate with fewer and fewer people, fewer and fewer resources, less faculty, less staff, less space, less you know, expectation versus reality. What's your take on that?

Ryan McLawhon  
Yeah, I That's a good question. I don't, I don't really know, because when we were really in the thick of trying to figure things out, I I didn't even have time to set expectations. It is not, not just physical time, but but I guess a kind of emotional and brain bandwidth to try to really project what things were going to look like. The first year that we were working on this, we were kind of just taking things as they came. It's like, okay, we got this problem with these students that are kind of stuck in limbo, or this faculty member, this staff member left, or those kinds of things that we just kind of had to deal with. Everything ad hoc. We didn't really have time to sort of map and plan out what we think, how everything is going to work. Thankfully, I would say on the Student Affairs, it's what we call it, our student life, basically office. Hamad bin Khalifa quickly hired two of our kind of early career Student Affairs staff, and that was a wise decision by them, but we were able to keep the more senior and more experienced Student Affairs staff, and so really kind of kudos to them for really maintaining a high level of co curricular engagement of students, and credit also to our seniors last year, who continue to mentor students, continue to develop them in a lot of ways. I think the announcement of the closure for our students created a a deeper and more meaningful bond, not only across with the students. But also, in some ways, you might think that they would be angry with the university. But in a lot of ways, I've seen our students dig in with a greater affinity for Texas A&M University, because they know one day it's going to it's not physically going to be here, but the Aggie now. Org, the Aggie community, the former students, the alumni, the Aggie Spirit, we hope will maintain here and our students, our current students, and our recently, recent grads, and even our our grads from a long time ago are are really strong. Will be more than 2000 strong by the time we close, they have really decided to carry the torch, and they are invigorated and inspired to continue to have an Aggie land presence here in Qatar, even after we're gone. And so it's been really great and exciting to see our former students really take on that challenge and start to really brainstorm and think about how we can continue to keep Qatar and Texas A&M University's close bond and relationship that's been developed over the last 20 years.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, I think that the you mentioned that we've been a pipeline to the senior leadership with a lot of the oil and gas companies here, and I think again, the more students that we graduate that they get to their companies, and they find that their senior manager is an Aggie. And it might be a graduate from here, but it also could be a graduate from the College Station campus, but they have that instant connection. I've seen that happen so many times, and I've really enjoyed this last year, particularly watching the newer graduates connect with the former students, as we have tried to kind of ramp up and get get those connections made, and get that group a little more involved, like they've been involved in the past, but now I I have, as you said, I've seen it demonstrated more so that They really want to make sure that there is a continued presence of some sort of Texas A and M, if it's the the local alumni club, or the, you know, the game watch parties, those have been a lot of fun. So what do you think our legacy, aside from, aside from our students, in 20 years, you know? So Texas A&M has been here in Doha for just over 20 years now. So another 20 years down the road, what do you think people will look back and say about Texas A&M and what we've done here in Qatar?

Ryan McLawhon  
Yeah, I would say one of the one of those is what we already touched on, I think, which is placing, placing Aggies graduates of Texas A&M University with Aggie rings and Texas A&M degrees and an affinity for the university in senior management leadership positions in the energy sector, not just in Qatar, but globally. Because certainly this is one of the key epicenters for the gas industry, LNG. And so having Aggies in those those positions is is something that we can be quite proud of, and that will be our legacy. I mean, the future of of the leadership in that sector here in Qatar, I really do think is, is our Aggies, because of the stellar graduates that we have, many of them are from those early classes, oh 809, 2010, are starting to get to the point where they're really going to be hitting their stride in their careers, in their 30s and early 40s coming up. I guess we got a little bit more time to learn the early 40s, but, so that's one thing, but, but I'd like to hit on something else that is probably an even greater accomplishment than any of those things, and it's the impact that Texas A&M University has made in Qatar, Qatar as it relates to educating female engineers? Oh, absolutely, we. We have done what no one else in this region has ever been able to do, and we have also done what pretty much no other engineering programs in across the globe has been able to do, which is have a many years greater than 50% student population in engineering, female. Our main campus, for example, is less than a quarter. If I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong on that. Maybe it's around a quarter or 30% in the College of Engineering, but we have been, at least for the past 10 years, right around 50% if not over 50% and then another, and then half of those. So a 25% of our population have been cuttery females. And so, you know, in general, culturally, I don't know what the listeners under you know, knowledge of the region is generally female. Qatari students do not leave the country to go to university, and so prior to Texas A&M being here, they had very minimal. Options for if they wanted to study STEM and specifically engineering in the State of Qatar, certainly for very high achieving students seeking a prestigious university, there were no options. And so that's a service that we provided to the State of Qatar. And so the what we've been able to do not only in maintaining that female student body and educating cuts females, what we've been able to do is also place those female students in a primarily dominated male environment, the engineering workforce. And so now we have some of the first we some of the first Qatari women in working going in offshore and working in plants, chemical plants and those kinds of things, and have placed females in high levels of leadership, and will continue to do so for the next several decades, graduates of Texas A&M, females who are going into the engineering workforce and making a big difference in that sector. So that's something that I think we can be very proud of. And then the third thing, of course, we've already mentioned as well is our legacy will be the success of hbku University, and so that as much as we can help them to to continue to ramp up and build up their programs. You know, the more lasting legacy that we can have, we have already seen even in the co curricular Student Life. HBKU has created some some of their own unique programs and activities, but also have modeled some of their activities and events and student orgs and those kinds of things after Texas A&M ones. And I think that that, you know, that is a, I I think that's a We should be flattered by the fact that they want to build things that look a lot like Texas A&M as far as the co curricular is concerned, because it's something we take a lot of pride in. And, you know, imitation. What do they say? Imitation is the highest form of flattery. And so if HBKU wants to do, continue to do things that we have established here, you know, we don't, we don't get jealous about that. We don't get any, we don't get anything but joy out of seeing them take something that we created and maybe even making it better in the future, we'll see.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to add my kudos to our Student Affairs staff, because they are dedicated, amazing professionals that do an incredible job. I mean, I don't know if they sleep, but they do a really great job. And I know students come and talk about Mr. Miguel or Miss Stephanie or Miss Sabina or Miss Jenna, you know, to my office all the time and tell me about the experiences that they've had working with them, either through student travel or student organizations. So again, I want to give them a big shout out as well. So way to go, Student Affairs. We're really proud of you guys, proud to work with you.

Ryan McLawhon  
I have the utmost respect for just in higher education in general, have the utmost respect for academic advisors and program coordinators and program specialists and really boots on the ground student life people at universities because, because we all know they did not get into the industry for the money. They do it because they love it, and most of them are grossly and horribly over underpaid, sorry, underpaid, overworked and but most of them absolutely love what they do, yeah, and so, and that's and that's evident certainly with the staff that we have here.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, yeah. And I truly think you know, kind of bringing it back full circle to what you said about wanting to make a difference in wanting to make higher ed personal for our students. I don't know any other I mean, I came from our main campus, but from two fairly large departments and colleges. I don't know anywhere else where students are on first name bases with the dean's office, you know, the students have no hesitation to talk to you if they have a question or a concern or to go to, you know, Dr. Linky or Dr. Malave. They have there's just, there's not that boundary, because I think our administration, our leadership, has done a really good job of developing those relationships and and our students know that in my office, in the advising office, in your office, you know that, like again, you're Dr. Ryan, they know you by name. They know you. You know they know you by sight. I've got to say that you've done a really great job of of achieving your goal, of making an impact and making higher ed personal. I don't know any place else that students would be able to walk up and say, Hey, Dr. Ryan, how's it going? How's your band?

Ryan McLawhon  
Well, that's no, that's really nice of you to say, I don't know. I really don't know what, because when I worked in the main campus, when there were there was. Is now 70,000 more, 80,000 students. I don't know. I did not work in Student Affairs, as I said before, I worked in the assessment, accreditation, institutional, effectiveness office, and didn't get a chance to interact with students. I don't know if I would have been able to navigate such a large student population and make the impact that that I was able to make here on a personal level with students. I mean, the fact that when we go to commencement, I know almost everybody's name that walks across the stage, not necessarily had any kind of meaningful or deep connection with with all of them, certainly not, but I know almost all their names. And I think one of the things that I probably enjoy most about my job are the times when a student comes to my office randomly interrupts whatever boring spreadsheet or email I'm dealing with and ask, probably for me, ask me a question that I have no idea the answer to, but working with others, seeking to find a good answer for them, and helping them work through whatever issue or struggle they might be having or I mean, the thing I always say student is either in my office for one of two things, it's either really good or really bad, same so. But even though, even the difficult situations where students struggle, struggling, whether it's personal issues or issues of faculty or courses or whatever it is, I just love the problem solving side of my job, where my day can be completely derailed because a random student walked in my office with some kind of issue or concern or problem that I don't know the answer to, and that's the kind of thing that really gets me excited about going to the office every day, to be honest. And so certainly, after, after I'm done here in a few years, that's the kind of next opportunity I'll be seeking, is something where I can help students navigate those extremely complex problems, issues, relationships, etc. That's what I've really felt like. I guess my calling and my greatest joy as it relates to my work, is helping students with those issues.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, yeah, that is, that's, I mean, again, I've seen it. So you and I got here around the same time. I got here in January 15. You came in in September of 15.

Ryan McLawhon  
I just hit my 10 year about a month ago.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
And so we've kind of grown up together in these roles. Because, again, when I was hired to be one of three academic advisors, and I've kind of gone down a different path, in a good way, not this is not anything like I said I ever expected, but it's really been a fantastic opportunity, a challenge, a joy for me to learn all of these new responsibilities. I have a few more gray hairs now than I did. You didn't have a beard when you got here. You were clean shaven.

Ryan McLawhon  
Clean shaven, but I certainly didn't have all this gray in my beard.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Yeah, for sure. Neither did. Neither did a lot of us. We have a little more, you know. So you know, you said, Are you looking to you said, you want to stay here and ride it out, which is kind of my plan as well, and then ultimately you think you want to return to the main campus or seek something else out, or another expat bubble, something else.

Ryan McLawhon  
I mean, certainly I'm keeping my options open. My we really enjoy living overseas. Texas is definitely home for us. I think both mine and my wife's parents are, you know, getting a little older, and so we wouldn't mind, and we would certainly enjoy being back in Texas closer to family. I I continue to love Texas, A&M. I would love an opportunity to work back on the main campus. I don't know what that would look like. I would think somewhere in the Division of Student Affairs, but I'm certainly keeping my options open, because I raised my children over here. They are certainly Third Culture kids, and matter of fact, my oldest is graduating this year from high school, and she's applying to some universities in Texas, but she's also applying to some universities in Europe, which is sort of a hard pill for me to swallow, because I was kind of thought, Well, okay, she's, I'm an Aggie. My wife's an Aggie. Her name's Maggie. Maggie, the Aggie, supposed to go to Texas. She's been wearing maranham White her whole life. But, you know, she's, she's, what would it look like for her to go to college in the in Europe, and, you know, that's a what if she lived overseas the rest of her life? I don't know that's that is a complexity that we created by raising our kids overseas. And I think that certainly Megan and I, my wife, Megan and I and my kids are better for this experience, for sure, but I never come. I never really imagined that she might go somewhere other than than Texas A&M or somewhere in Texas, but yeah, ideally we end up back in College Station and continuing to serve Texas A&M University. But you never know what, what higher education might throw at you.

Amanda Roberts Mather  
Boy, that is for sure, there have been a lot of things that I did not have on my bingo card this year that 2025 has thrown at us. It's almost as if 2025 said, Hold my beer.

Ryan McLawhon  
That's right, you know, I mean, truthfully, what I'm I just want someone to call me from from a university and say, Hey, we're going to start a new campus in Bali. Would you like to help us? I'd be like, yeah, that's, that's the dream job right there. 

Amanda Roberts Mather  
I'll be right there, absolutely so well. Thank you very much, Ryan for being my guest and for chatting with me this evening. It's really been a great conversation, and I've thank you for giving us some insight into this shutdown process, the challenges, the expectations, the surprises, but most of all, I think what you have really emphasized. And what we all try to emphasize is it's about the students, and we're here to serve them and do the absolute best we can and make sure that their experience is not affected as much as it you know. And we want to make sure that they have everything that they need. Because really, that's why we do what we do. I don't, I don't have kids of my own, but I have 500 kids, you know, right? Yeah, so yeah for sure. Thanks a lot. I appreciate your time.

Ryan McLawhon  
Thanks to you and to Matt for having me on. Thinking of me really enjoyed it.