Hyatt-Fennell, LLC

10/14/2026

Hyatt-Fennell Traditions: Our Top Three Scariest Things a Candidate Could Ever Say

It's a tradition: every October, we round up the interview moments that still make us shudder. This year's top three:

"Honestly, I didn't have time to look into your institution before today." Nothing chills a search committee faster than realizing a candidate skipped the homework.

"Can you remind me what position I'm interviewing for?" It happens more than you'd think — and it happens for keeps.

"My last boss was a nightmare, so let me tell you everything that went wrong there." A candid answer about a difficult chapter is welcome. An extended, unprompted takedown of a former employer never lands the way the candidate hopes it will.

We'd love to hear yours. Share your own scariest interview moment with us on social media — we promise not to name names.

10/12/2026

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision." — Theodore Hesburgh, longtime president of the University of Notre Dame

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10/09/2026

The Importance of Preparation

October is a time of good-natured fright. We poke fun at fear with silly ghouls and larger-than-life skeletons on our lawn. This season of spooks can serve as a reminder to prepare for the real threats in higher education. Every leader in higher education knows there are moments of heart-stopping reality that come during any leader’s time. It is essential that you prepare for emergencies before they happen.

Francesco Cesareo shares, “The scariest moment in my career was when we received a threat that there were multiple bombs throughout our campus. The students had just returned from their Fall break and it was around 8:00 pm that we received the threat. My concern was how to protect our residential population of students, which was 90% of the student body. Since the threat indicated that bombs had been placed in several buildings my first thought was that we needed to evacuate the entire campus. Where was I going to send all the students and how can this be done in an orderly fashion, while at the same time keeping families and the campus community informed as law enforcement descended on campus. Working closely with the other colleges in the area, the city (especially the transportation system) we were able to orderly relocate all students safely to a local college close to our campus. After the campus was evacuated completely, there was an eeriness that was palpable as I spent the entire night on-campus working with local, state and federal agencies, as well as my PR staff member. The silence of campus was deafening and the emptiness of campus felt like waiting for someone to jump out of the darkness unexpectedly making one's heart jump from the scare!

I learned from this experience the importance of building collaborations beyond the campus community when the need for assistance might arise unexpectedly.”

10/07/2026

What Skills Are University Leaders Prioritizing in New Hires?

As search committees ramp up for the year ahead, it's worth revisiting what actually belongs at the top of a position profile. A recent eCampus News piece by our own Cheryl Hyatt argues that the leaders institutions need in 2026 and beyond share four competencies that go well beyond the traditional résumé check marks.

AI literacy tops the list — not deep technical expertise, but the judgment to ask the right questions of AI tools and guide a team through adoption. Interdisciplinary leadership follows, as the silos that once defined academic culture increasingly function as liabilities. Enrollment strategy is no longer confined to the admissions office, and every cabinet-level hire should arrive fluent in what's driving the pipeline. And partnership development — the ability to forge and sustain relationships beyond the campus gates — has become a core leadership skill rather than a specialty.

The through-line: the right leader for your institution today is not necessarily the leader who thrived a decade ago. Position profiles should reflect where you're going, not just where you've been.

10/05/2026

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood … but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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09/30/2026

Does Your Organization Have a Retention Problem? -

Every open position costs more than the salary line suggests — recruiting, onboarding, and the institutional knowledge that walks out the door add up quickly. If your organization is cycling through the same roles more often than it should, the fix rarely starts with a counteroffer. It starts with understanding why people are leaving in the first place.

A few places to look:
● Growth, not just gratitude. Employees who can't see a next step tend to look for one elsewhere. Clear, honest conversations about advancement matter more than an occasional round of applause.
● Workload versus capacity. When departures go unreplaced and duties simply migrate to whoever is left, loyalty erodes quietly, long before anyone says so out loud.
● Meaning in the mission. People stay for purpose as much as paycheck. Make sure employees at every level can draw a clear line between their daily work and your institution's impact.

Cultivating loyalty is not a single initiative — it's an accumulation of small, consistent signals that your people are valued for more than their output. Institutions that get this right don't just retain talent; they become the place people recommend to others.

09/29/2026

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." — Albert Einstein

09/25/2026

Supporting Faculty Morale

A new Chronicle of Higher Education report puts a number on something many campus leaders have suspected for a while: when tenure-track and tenured faculty were recently asked what should define institutional success over the next five to ten years, the largest share — 62 percent — pointed to reducing burnout and improving morale, ahead of enrollment or revenue goals.

The report's researchers are candid that daylong wellness workshops rarely move the needle. What helps is structural: clearer tenure expectations walked through in person rather than buried in a handbook, better-matched mentoring, department chairs empowered and supported rather than left to absorb every frustration alone, and leaders willing to set visible limits on email and meetings rather than modeling the very overload they're asking faculty to manage. As one researcher put it, faculty don't need to know how to do chair yoga — they need the people and infrastructure to do their jobs well.

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09/22/2026

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." — John F. Kennedy

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09/16/2026

Nobody's a Loser -

There is a difference between losing and being a loser — and the best leaders never confuse the two. Our own Jake Schrum was recently featured in eCampus News reflecting on a lesson he learned as a teenager, tagging along with his father to cattle shows across Texas. At every show, ribbons went to the Grand Champion, the Reserve Champion, first place, second place — but no entrant, his father made sure he understood, was ever a loser.

Schrum extends that same lesson to leadership today. In a culture obsessed with sorting people into winners and losers, the leaders who last are the ones who hold onto a deeper conviction: the worth and dignity of every person, distinguished from any single outcome. Losing a search, a vote, a funding round, or a difficult year does not make an institution — or the person leading it — a loser. What separates genuine leaders from the rest is knowing that difference, and living like it's true.

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