Season 3, Episode 6 - Randie Kruman

Host Sara Kacin speaks with academic leaders at Wayne State University to learn how they have developed their careers while empowering themselves and others.

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Episode notes

Randie Kruman is the director of Wayne State University's Student Disability Services (SDS), which works to ensure academic access and inclusion for all Wayne State students. SDS achieves this through a range of services such as alternative testing accommodations, alternative text format, assistive technology, interpreting, note taking, captioning and housing support. On this episode of EmpowerED to Lead, Kruman speaks to the importance of mindful listening and shares how flexibility and comfort contribute to achievements.

Randie Kruman headshot

About Randie Kruman

Randie Kruman is the director of Student Disability Services (SDS) at Wayne State University. Kruman has served as director of SDS since 2012, and she has a long history of championing students with disabilities. Her interests and specialties include learning disabilities, communication disorders, ADD coaching, mindfulness and meditation, and transitioning to postsecondary education.

Additional resources

Learn more about Koru Mindfulness.

Stay up to date with Student Disability Services on social media. Follow @wayne.sds on Facebook and @wsu_sds on Twitter.

Follow EmpowerED to Lead on Twitter @WSUFacSuccess.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to EmpowerED to Lead, a Wayne State University podcast for academic leaders committed to empowering their community to succeed, hosted by Dr. Sara E. Kacin, director of Wayne State's Office for Teaching and Learning and assistant provost for faculty development and success.

This podcast explores the personal journeys of academic leaders, both current and emerging, to learn more about how they've developed their careers. Dr. Kacin speaks with faculty and staff about their work and how they've empowered themselves and others along the way. By doing this, we hope to empower listeners like you, as you continue on your leadership path.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Today, we are joined by Randie Kruman, director of Student Disability Services at Wayne State University. Student Disability Services or SDS, as it is known works to ensure academic access and inclusion for all Wayne State students. Randie has served as director of SDS since 2012, and she has a long history of supporting students with disabilities. She's proud of her team's ability to bring a variety of skills to the table while leading students to success. It is my great pleasure to welcome Randie to the EmpowerED to Lead podcast today.

Randie Kruman:

Thank you, Sara.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Thank you, Randie. So glad that you're here. Why don't we start can you just tell us a little bit about SDS at Wayne State University? Maybe share with our listeners what your team does, who they work with?

Randie Kruman:

Certainly. Student Disability Services or as we are known by, SDS is a resource for students with diagnosed disabilities. It is our task to provide an equitable and accessible learning experience for students with disabilities. So our work entails meeting with students, discussing their diagnosed conditions and what barriers they might have in the academic setting. We provide academic accommodations to students; we provide whatever support services they need in order to make their learning experience an accessible and equitable one.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

So in the past few months, SDS didn't miss a beat with all the changes that were happening, processes were quickly updated, student concerns were immediately addressed. What do you think were the key reasons for this success?

Randie Kruman:

Well, thank you for those generous words, Sara. I think that our work is born out of an essential need to always think outside the box. Students come to us with barriers and challenges that might present a difficulty in a classroom that we would tend to think of as the typical lecture, classroom listening and taking exams. So our work is always to think outside the box how to reach students in an accessible way. So it was a number of years ago, we made the decision to use a student management system that was electronic that would allow students, no matter what their challenge or barrier was, be perhaps a bit easier to register with us. We took note of our work and realized, for example, that the student who has an anxiety disorder might not be able to readily come in, present themselves to our front desk staff, to even make an appointment to receive services from us. So, with our electronic student management system in place, students for a number of years now have been able to register from the comfort of their own home. When we were asked to go remote, this system was already in place. Our student management system has a robust set of functions. We're able to identify our students that are taking classes in a current semester, so we were able to contact students immediately. Our system allows us to see what classes they're enrolled in; so, for example, during the winter semester, we were able to identify our students right away. We knew what classes they were taking. A very large part of our business is, or it was, face-to-face test administration. So we also and this is a functionality in our management system. So we were able to identify exam times that students had already scheduled with us from March 11 on, so we were able to connect with students at all levels to determine their needs and to make sure that they had an understanding of what their course expectations were, so that was already set up for us as we embarked on this remote setting. Similarly, some of the support agencies that we use to support students for example, our deaf and hard of hearing population, we've been using for a number of years remote services. This is for real-time captioning in a class. So we simply continued with their services to provide a transcript to students who were in classes where perhaps the professor started online, just delivering a lecture, so in that regard, it was easy for us to continue with our support.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Yeah, that is outstanding. So can you share a little bit about what has surprised you most about Wayne State students and their ability to learn in the last few months with all the changes?

Randie Kruman:

Well, I think that with my wonderful staff and they really have a diverse set of skills, and I'm so grateful to have them as team members I think all of us noticed right away how much we miss being with our students. What surprised us was we really have worked very hard over the years to create a very comfortable environment for students because we're fortunate to have study rooms that also serve as our testing space for students. So on a daily basis, we always had a steady stream of students in and out of our office, sometimes to take exams, sometimes to use our rooms as study rooms, and mixed in with that was always just a connection time: How you doing today? Anything going on that we should talk about? So those informal opportunities with students have always provided us another level of offering support to them. So we were all stripped of that when the physical environment was taken away from us. So it was perhaps as much a surprise to us as it was to them that we were missing each other and the feel of our supportive village, if you will.

And so we immediately turned to other efforts in our office to connect with our students. Once we were assured that students' testing experiences were going smoothly, we started drop-in connection groups throughout the week with students because they did have questions about how to access their exam, or "Does my professor know that I still get extended test time?" They wanted connections as much as we did. We've done several informal surveys since March to understand their needs and inform the work moving forward of supporting students, and one of our questions that we asked was, "Would you like a phone call?" And we have, in the three surveys that we have administered to students, probably close to 40 or 50% of students said, "Yeah, I'd love a phone call." So I had staff members who would make daily phone calls to students, and it wasn't that they had a specific concern, they just needed to talk and they wanted to share what was going on for them with someone else. And we also found that they didn't take as well to Zoom or [Microsoft] Team meetings; they liked the phone.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

That's interesting.

Randie Kruman:

So I think the surprise on both sides from students and from our end was we have had a very strong community.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Yeah, I can see. And that's so outstanding: I love how you quickly regrouped and created virtual opportunities for students to connect with each other and with your team. That's amazing.

So taking your thought on thinking outside of the box, what successes have you and your team learned from the current time of the health pandemic that you think is transferable to the K-12 setting?

Randie Kruman:

Well, I think that what we've learned is this, I'll call it, continuity of accessibility that it doesn't matter what level we teach on. We teach students; we don't teach classes or courses. I think the remote setting has made us acutely aware of, because we aren't in that physical space, that classroom now, to go in and teach our course material, we all have the same screen that we're looking at, and that feels a bit more informal, so the notion that we are teaching students out there gets us to a level of meeting students' learning needs in whatever way we have to to teach students. I think the work at the university, which has also rung true in K-12, is that it's not an equitable learning experience out there. We can't assume everyone has a laptop and a good internet connection, so the notion of thinking outside the box, of how am I going to teach my students in a more universally designed manner so we can reach all students? And we've heard that challenge K-12, as well as postsecondary that we have to dig at that deeper level of teaching students, whatever that looks like.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

You made the hairs on my arms stand up and gave me chills when you said, "We teach students." I love that. So keeping that in perspective, and maybe even deepening your thoughts around universal design for learning, what's some advice that you could share with faculty on how to approach course content creation to be inclusive and equitable for all students?

Randie Kruman:

I think one of our guiding lights has always been to listen to hear from the student, "Tell me about your learning style. Tell me the part that's going easily for you. What are you finding challenging?" So when we listen mindfully, we're listening in the present moment. Doing that allows us to truly listen, and oftentimes a student might come to us and tell us what their challenge is, but we're already thinking, planning ahead "But that's not how I teach my class. I've got that information posted in a PowerPoint, I'm going to talk about that in the next session." But perhaps in listening mindfully in the current moment, what will rise to the surface is perhaps that student doesn't hear well; perhaps the student needs to see what I'm saying. So, of course, all of us have been advocating captioning. So I think that what I would say to faculty is listen to your students. Don't be afraid to ask, "How do you think you might learn this material more easily?" When we listen to the other side, I think it allows us to really think outside the box. It's only human nature to for example, in a lab that's hands-on, to think, Well, this is the way I have to teach it: Students have to experience this firsthand. They have to be there. But what we know right now is we have students with medical conditions, and they might not be able to be physically in a class. And so we have to stop and think, Well, what else could work? What is our objective? If it is for the student to watch that lab experiment taking place, if there are students who are in the lab who can record what they're doing in a video, then has that student sitting at home experienced the process and can they speak to the results, for example, of the experiment? I think it's important to know, what is it I want a student to learn from this? Is it holding the beaker and pouring the substance, or watching the event after it's mixed together? If it's the event and to see the result, then if they can watch that on a video and still explain why it happened, then have we achieved our teaching outcome?

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

That's a great example. So you mentioned mindfulness, and you've shared your understanding of balance of life with your meditation moments that you have done on campus a trained instructor. What inspired you to teach this? Can you share a little bit about that?

Randie Kruman:

Absolutely. It was one of those "aha" moments. I clearly remember, a couple of summers ago, sitting in my office and students with anxiety and depression, for example, who come to us. And one of the most commonly used accommodations in our office is extended test time in a distraction-reduced environment. So for the student who has an anxiety disorder, this is often a very useful accommodation. And I remember sitting there thinking, That's great that we have given them extra time on their test, but their anxiety is 24/7 we've got to do better than this, and what happens when they go out there in the workforce and don't get extra time on a project? And it was really one of those moments of all the pieces were aligned it was about that time that I was working on one of the committees, invited by Jeff Kuentzel, the director of CAPS for health and wellness. And one of the webinars that I attended that summer was about anxiety and depression on college campuses, which is a significant national trend.

I should mention that anxiety and depression is, each month, one of the top diagnoses for students coming to our office. It has been for the past four years it is what students come to us with the most. So I went to this webinar, and as I was sitting in the session, somebody mentioned, "Well, on our college campus" and there were close to 50 people from various universities across the nation on this call about health and wellness and meditation resources and somebody mentioned the curriculum that was started at Duke University called Koru, K-O-R-U. And they have been teaching this four-week curriculum for 15 years now, and it was established there. It was, at that time, the director of their counseling and psychological services psychiatrist who had her own practice and became intrigued with the curriculum and devised this specific curriculum. They did a lot of research. So someone mentioned it I vaguely remember it was one of the universities in New York. And, of course, as we all do in webinars, I heard this great program, and of course, as I'm listening in the webinar, I was Googling the curriculum after the call, realized that it was very attractive. I went back to my office and filled out the paperwork to take the training. I should also mention it was, at the same time, I had already had my own meditation practice, personal practice for a few years. It was something that I got into as I was balancing my work obligations and my obligations with aging parents and then failing health and ultimately the passing away of my parents, so it struck a very personal chord as well. So I went to Duke, I was trained, finished my certification and started teaching. And so it was one of those extra caps that I've worn in our office because it's not just for students registered with us, but I offer meditation and mindfulness classes for all members of the Wayne State community. As you can imagine, since March, I've been teaching classes nonstop. I have to say that in late March, I'm still very connected to the Duke community and in our training community, and we meet monthly. We were on our monthly call in March when there were almost 90 participants Koru teachers from all over the world: from Ireland, from other places in Europe, there was someone from Tokyo. So Koru is being taught mindfulness and meditation is being taught all over the world at universities. Because we had a lot of anxiety and depression across college campuses prior to the pandemic, and I think it's more commonplace than ever. So I see that as very important work, I look back and, with gratitude, acknowledge that it just happened at a time that maybe this is what we were always preparing for was at a moment like the pandemic to embrace mindfulness and meditation. I have really found that work very rewarding, but students' feedback has been just wonderful. That's what keeps me going because they have really enjoyed it.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

I can only imagine how helpful that is, so I'm really glad to hear that. So, let's switch gears a tiny bit and talk a little bit about leading your team and, so, with the coronavirus pandemic, it's kind of what you were alluding to, like, offer different opportunities, right? So in this space it's an opening and availability to openly accept things like mindfulness and maybe things that we didn't quite think about before, so with that same thought, it's given us the opportunity to rethink leadership a little bit because we're now being leaders in a virtual environment in an online environment. So how have you evolved as a leader in this virtual environment?

Randie Kruman:

I think that it has been a rewarding experience for me to lead my staff. I think flexibility has been my guiding light flexibility and acceptance. "It is what it is." I have a staff with children of all ages, and it is what it is. As we progressed in this time, and it was very clear I think several of my staff members lost their child care facilities; others were quite worried about sending them back. And I think we have one on the way a new baby arriving. And so for me, perhaps the wisdom of having been there at one time, we have had, I think, wonderful productivity because it was my goal to put aside any worry or concern about child care. If your child has to sit on your lap while we meet, that's just one more person on our call and we take time out for when pictures are drawn, and "I want to show you my picture." That's part of our meeting, so children are now a part of our meetings. And I made that very clear to my staff: I understand the ability to or the need to work when somebody is napping. I have three children of my own, so I've been there: Multitasking can be very stressful, so whatever you have to bring to the table, you bring to the table. And I think as a leader, being able to express that flexibility and demonstrate it has allowed my staff to do what they can. I think we threw away the notion of 8:30 to 5, if that doesn't work, and remembering on a very personal level that getting up before your children because those were your only quiet moments to think. So I have staff members who start the day at 7 a.m. to do what they can, and so, typically in our office, prior to the pandemic, our office hours were 8:30 to 5; one day a week we would stay open until 7 p.m. So we are still abiding by an 8:30 to 5 framework, except we are very flexible if a student needs to be seen or have an appointment, not seen but met with outside of that framework. Because in fact, it's much easier for some of my staff to meet or have a phone call with a student at 7:30 after they've put their child to bed. So it really is whatever works, and I have to say they've been amazing. So working with flexibility and comfort is very important to me.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Yeah. I think those are outstanding. So keeping that in mind, as we move forward after COVID, right I mean, there's still a lot of uncertainty. So how are you preparing your staff, I guess, moving forward for this world of uncertainty?

Randie Kruman:

For right now, on some days we simply say, "This is our work and we're doing it right now in this time." I think what we've learned in this time is that we can't plan for the future. We all thought isn't it interesting we all thought that in March, I think all of us had this image that we'd be back in the fall. We were already planning. Now, we can do the work to plan, to a certain extent, being back in our offices, but we don't know when, and we don't know how, so we have discussed at length this summer we've worked on our continuity plan. We are moving forward with, for example, analyzing our physical space. As far as the actual logistics, I think some of that, we have to wait and see what it looks like. I think for some of our students, they may have a comfort level with remote learning and for safety reasons, for their health, need to remain remote as long as possible. So we can't really predict when all of us have learned from day to day, any plans we make, work for today and maybe for tomorrow! Or maybe not. So as we prepare, we will remain flexible, and we will remain committed to comfort level because we do know that we can do the job supporting students in a remote setting.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Yeah. So as I listen to things that you're saying, I mean, you've just accumulated all these really helpful thoughts around being a leader. So do you, yourself, did you have somebody that mentored you or somebody that inspired you at any point in time in your career that you would want to share about some of their qualities that you took and said, "Hey, I like those, I'm going to incorporate those into my work?"

Randie Kruman:

I would have to say that perhaps one of my biggest mentors has been my husband who led the history department at Wayne [State] as chair for 20 years and remains on the faculty, so he has a long history at Wayne as well. So it was very easy for me to be in a leadership role, having observed challenges that he had in leading his team, which is only human nature, that when you have a group of people identified as a community, you have to work together. So I've always had a great sounding board in my partner of almost 43 years. I've had Dr. Monica Brockmeyer as my boss since I took over the directorship, and she has so many fine leadership qualities, and she has always supported my ideas, always asks excellent questions to get me to think about, perhaps, my way of arriving at a decision. So she's always been there to listen, to guide, suggest, and she has been a very gracious and generous, intelligent boss. I couldn't have asked for a better mentor in Dr. Brockmeyer. I also think I'm an observer, so just observing others and paying attention. I also know that I've made a lot of mistakes, and I always put those on the table at our staff meetings. I'll be the first to put my name on the list of, "I guess that was a failure." And that's important. I've had a lot of ideas that have just fallen flat, and I think the ability to sit back and observe to ask why and laugh, I think it's so important to have a sense of humor. And, I think, in our office, we have all mentored each other in such a way to say that it's important not to take yourself so seriously. I had parents who believed in me as well and taught me the value of hard work; in-laws who did the same they were biased and thought all my ideas were good, but I'm not so sure that they most unbiased opinions, but I have been very blessed to have so many supportive people in my life.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Well, I love that you ended that sentence with that because I think and I'm going to read some of the things that I observed and listened that were either direct answers or that I pulled from your answers because I think you have taken that quality of support and have totally gone out[side] of the box for not only our students on our campus, but also for your team. So things that I heard you say are: thinking outside of the box came up a couple of times. Connecting who's in front of you, and what level they're at and what they might need. Creating a comfortable environment and also collecting feedback to make informed decisions was a value of yours. A lot of good ones here, as you can see! So listening very deeply in the moment and what is happening, and observing what's in front of you and being very flexible. So most importantly, right now in this time and accepting … so I love, you learn from your past experiences and bring those to the table. And one of my all-time favorites is: Do what you can and that's enough. You didn't say, "and that's enough" I'm adding that in there, but I felt it from what you were talking just do what you can right now in this minute and that's enough for right now, and we'll get to the next parts later. And then I just loved I didn't expect it, and you added so many more amazing things just now: Mistakes are OK. Ask why you made the mistake, it's just feedback that helps us move along. And then another one of my favorites is laugh be collegial, and to have that value in hard work. So I know that's a pretty long, extensive list when you hear that, are there things that you think, Oh my goodness, I forgot to say this I think this is really something that I think listeners would really like to hear about, or do you think comfort when you hear that? Or do you think No, I think that's a pretty good list here?

Randie Kruman:

I do think it's a pretty good list, and I think that one of the teachings of mindfulness and meditation is the notion of acceptance. As you said, this is the best I can do right now. And that's all we can expect from any of us: It's the best I can do right now. But also accepting things the way they are. When we struggle and we say, "No, no, no, I want this," or "I want things to be the way they used to be," we cause ourselves a lot of suffering, and so, to accept things right now the way they are and really make the changes we know we can as small as they might be means that we can find comfort and, actually, fun in what we're doing in this very moment.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

I love that. So Randie, where can listeners follow you or SDS on social media?

Randie Kruman:

On our studentdisability.wayne.edu website, on our homepage, are links to our Facebook and our Twitter pages, so we are connected in those ways.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Wonderful. Well, we thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights today about leadership and some of the pathways forward as we're moving forward with the after COVID, if you will, and just appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

Randie Kruman:

It's been my pleasure. Thank you, Sara.

Sara Kacin, Ph.D.:

Be sure to join us next time on EmpowerED to Lead.

Narrator:

We're glad to have you listening to EmpowerED to Lead. To learn more about our podcast, please follow us on Twitter @WSUFacSucess.