Jeff Hand, Ph.D. serves as senior vice president of the Division of Student Affairs at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. As of early 2020, Rowan
The man behind the curtain, Dr. Jeff Hand serves as the senior leader within the Division of Student Affairs. He leads the departments/programs and strategies handling the overall lifecycle - from the student's first point of contact with Rowan, through graduation. Rowan is the 6th fastest-growing research institution in the nation and is recognized as one of the top 90 public research universities.
Beth Dombkowski:
Hello. My name is Beth Dombkowski and I'm coming to you from the Office of Admissions at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Beth Dombkowski:
All right. Welcome to Rowan Confidential. I am here with Dr. Jeff Hand, Senior Vice President of Student Affairs. Dr. Hand, thank you for joining us today.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Thank you very much. It's good to be here.
Beth Dombkowski:
Wonderful. So for those of you listening, Dr. Jeff Hand is now the Senior Vice President of Student Affairs, and came to Rowan in 2011 after being Assistant Vice President for Continuing Education at Penn State, and prior to that, was Provost at Post University. When not inspiring students and staff, you can find Jeff in his basement playing guitar, either flamenco or Piedmont blues. What's piedmont blues?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Piedmont Blues? It's a combination of old folk country western music mixed with the blues, and it's prevalent in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina.
Beth Dombkowski:
Very interesting. Okay, wonderful. You have a big title. What's your role here at Rowan? What does this mean?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Oh gosh, the title. It's grown over the years. What has happened... Initially when I came to university, we started with just enrollment. And then what happened is, that was very successful. Enrollments started shooting up at the university. And then it became very clear that you can't just recruit students independently, because what you say, when you're talking to students or parents, you want to make sure it gets delivered on. And so, the next thing was we were worried about students' success, which is academically are they doing well or not, and that became part of the group. Then we're worried about student services. Are they getting all the services? Is housing working the way it should be and things? And so, we just kept going and it grew.
Beth Dombkowski:
And it grew, so now it's all of student affairs. So what are all of the areas that fall under your purview?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Gosh, there's, last count, it's about 24 different departments.
Beth Dombkowski:
Oh my goodness.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
I don't think you want me to list them all, but it's everything that has to do with the student life cycle. Which is initial contact with the student, which could be in ninth grade.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
All the way through to graduation. So anything that happens in between that, that's what our student affairs group...
Beth Dombkowski:
That's what you do?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Right.
Beth Dombkowski:
Excellent. And how would you describe your role here?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
My role is making sure that all the systems, and what we do, all map or match together in such a way that whatever we're talking to students and their families about is what we are delivering when they come here. It's also our branding too, in the sense that everyone thinks that marketing is about putting out an advertisement or whatever. The first step to any of that, any good marketing, is you need to do what you say you're going to do.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
And so that's what I make sure, that we deliver on what we say we're going to do.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay, interesting. And how did you get here? Is this where you intended to be? I mean, what was your path when you started out?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
You mean my path in life?
Beth Dombkowski:
Your path in life, yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
No. If you just said I was going to be doing this when I was in college, I wouldn't have agreed with it, at all. My undergraduate is electrical engineering, and my vision was building robots, at that time. But what happened is, I went through and after I become a professor, it became very, very clear that I love teaching. I love working with students, but the opportunities to help students were just the ones I had in the classroom. And then the opportunity came up that's like, "You can help hundreds of students, if I went into administration." And so, now, we're helping thousands, tens of thousands, of students by what we do, by putting scholarships together, making sure that the housing we put together is just right, making sure that we can get students through, either academically, or socially, or work through the transitions they have in their lives into adulthood.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
And so, although I don't have direct contact with students the way I used to, or like to, I have an affect on just about everyone, every student's life in here, but I'm quietly in the background.
Beth Dombkowski:
You're the main behind the curtain?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yeah, pretty much.
Beth Dombkowski:
The wizard. We'll call you the wizard.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
I don't know about the wizard, but the crazy guy behind the curtain.
Beth Dombkowski:
The crazy guy behind the curtain. And you said that your background, you started out as an engineer?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Beth Dombkowski:
An electrical engineer?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yes, if you can believe that.
Beth Dombkowski:
Oh my goodness. And you went on for a master's degree?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Well, it took me 10 years to get the undergraduate. One of the reasons I'm so empathetic in how systems work, I was not destined to go to college by any stretch.
Beth Dombkowski:
Really?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yeah. And again, it took me 10 years and I made every single crazy mistake that a student can make. I'll give you one example. I know we don't have much time, but I went to one school and I applied. And they said, "You're pretty good. We'll bring you in here." And I said, "Okay. What do I need to do next?" They said, "Well, you don't have to worry about money." So I just took that at face value.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Not realizing that when I didn't have to worry about money it was I had to go fill out the FAFSAs. I had to get my financial aide sorted out. It was a lot of things I needed to do. Well, today I knew that, but at that time I did not.
Beth Dombkowski:
Why should you?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
I showed up on the first day and said, "Here I am."
Beth Dombkowski:
Did they let you take class?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
No.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
And I was shocked. It's like, "But you told me that I was okay."
Beth Dombkowski:
Told me about the money, yeah.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
And then I have a whole sequence of issues getting my education like that. So I'm very empathetic to what students go through, and families go through to get through school, because I didn't have money either. And I'm very empathetic to school's an expensive endeavor for most people.
Beth Dombkowski:
It certainly is. But that didn't stop you, you did your undergraduate degree.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yeah, I was too stupid to give up is what that was.
Beth Dombkowski:
So what happened after that? Masters?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Got the masters. What it was I ended up being computers, if you know the Commodore 64.
Beth Dombkowski:
Absolutely.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yep. Well, that was one of the products I worked on.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
It became very clear that it's not the technology. It's not the engineering, it's people.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
People are always the issue.
Beth Dombkowski:
Of course.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
So that's why I went into clinical psychology and got my degrees there. It's like, "Okay. Well, maybe I can figure out something about how to get people working together to get a complex project built."
Beth Dombkowski:
Interesting.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Right.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay. And then, after that, you didn't stop, you kept going.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yes. I kept going.
Beth Dombkowski:
You kept going. So you did a doctorate. You've got a PhD, as well.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Got a PhD in an engineering subject, which is computers and information systems.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay. Now, so that's a diverse background. You did a bunch of different things, but you managed to bring it all together in your career. I find something, a theme, for this podcast has been people starting out with one idea, seeing where the road takes them, and ending up being very happy doing something completely different. And this idea of combining different fields like, "I'm interested in this, and I'm interested in this." And you were telling me earlier a story of somebody you worked with who combined two very different fields, as well. It was archeology and information systems?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
IT, yeah.
Beth Dombkowski:
Yes.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
You had to be very specific. I mean, they came to me and they had studied anthropology, and they wanted to continue on into archeology. But it was very difficult for them, in the sense that it was going to be an expensive endeavor. And it was the sort of thing that you needed a lot of resources economically to proceed in a field like that. And so, I was teaching IT and they were talking back and forth, "What are the options they had," because they wanted a job and they didn't particularly like IT, but their real love was anthropology and archeology. And so, we went back a forth a little bit, and came up with this idea that actually worked out for him, which is taking ancient ruins in Egypt.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
And so, one of the things was, I think it was King Akhenaten, or Pharaoh Akhenaten. And after he wasn't the king anymore, they took apart all of his temples.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
But they used them as building blocks in other temples and other buildings, or they scattered them all over the ground.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
So what he was doing was he's working with an archeological group and building a database that was looking at those pieces of rocks. And what he was doing is reassembling them in the computer. Since then, he's done other projects, but that was the one where, all of a sudden, you realized you can put your two loves together. Well, his one love and he had a good disposition for doing IT and made them work for him.
Beth Dombkowski:
Sure, sure. Wonderful. How does your diverse background influence what you do now?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
It's always putting different ideas together. In fact, I'm going on with a conversation right now with a student who... They're trying to decide what they want to do.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
They've been going to school for literature, English literature, and want to go to graduate school. She's making decisions like, "Well, I'm going to be miserable, if I don't get the PhD, so I'm going to go for the PhD, but my backup strategy is, well, if I'm not doing that, and I'm not getting paid much, I'll go into law." I'm like, "You have other options and other ways to do this and things." And, in fact, the specialization in my PhD was, believe it or not, statistical linguistics.
Beth Dombkowski:
Really?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yes.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
So we're going back and forth. It's like, "There's other ways to apply language, and literature, and writing into other fields that do pay enough to make money. You don't have to limit yourself to just what you see in front of you."
Beth Dombkowski:
So for the people listening at home who might not know exactly what that is, can you tell us?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Statistical linguistics?
Beth Dombkowski:
Yes.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
It's the way Google does the search engine.
Beth Dombkowski:
Okay.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
It's always like magic, "How does it know what I'm thinking?" And so, what it is, is getting computers to understand the written word and giving you which one. So what I did, specifically, was if you're a scientist, or you've written lots of papers, you always have to write a review of the literature. What did others scientists do?
Beth Dombkowski:
Sure.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
So I wrote a large program that would basically construct the review of the literature in a fraction of a second. If you've ever been in a PhD or master's program, you know that it usually takes you about a year to read enough to get that information.
Beth Dombkowski:
To get all that review.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Right.
Beth Dombkowski:
Interesting. Wow. I have one last question for you before I let you go.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Sure.
Beth Dombkowski:
Why Rowan?
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Lots of reasons for Rowan. As a parent, as someone looking for a good education here, Rowan has advantages. I've been at other schools. In fact, some of them are world ranked. They rank very highly in engineering, for example. What's so unique here is a lot of hands-on experience. When you go to engineering here, it's not that they're trying to eliminate you. When I went to engineering school, it was the old story, it was like, "Look to the left of you. Look to the right of you. Everybody's going to be gone."
Beth Dombkowski:
Yep.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
"And you'll be lucky if you're here, and we don't particularly care if you're here or not."
Beth Dombkowski:
It was the same way in art school.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Yeah. Rowan's not that way. You never will hear that sort of speech. In fact, our whole motto is, if you're here, we want to make sure that you finish. We want to make sure that you get the best possible education you can. And the way we teach it here is hands-on, even the medical schools. They have the medical students out early on doing things, so they can start to crystallize what they're learning in the books very, very quickly in practice. And so, that is one of the great reasons about Rowan. The other thing is this is a safe place. This is a good place for students to go through their changes to adulthood. And again, it's a more positive atmosphere than most other schools I've been at.
Beth Dombkowski:
So why do you stay? What attracts you to your position here and working here? How has your impact on the school been shown? I know that you have mentioned some rankings.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Well, rankings are dry and boring. And there are certainly schools that rank higher than us, but what's happening is we're jumping up quite a bit in the rankings. I mean, if you were here eight years ago, we didn't even rank nationally. Even regionally, we didn't rank too high in things. Now, when you look at us, we're the fourth fastest growing university in the country. Our diversity, we're sixth fastest growing in the country. I think last year we were 191 in national rankings, or 166 in national rankings, and that doesn't typically happen unless the school is making major improvements, and major investments in the students. And that's what's reflected, and it... To move that far in the rankings means that you're moving. You're doing a lot of things the right way. Other rankings too, we're ranked very highly for veterans. We're ranked very highly as one of the safest schools in the country. We're ranked very highly as one of the most affordable schools in the country.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
All those things, we've been working on for the years, and it's just crystallizes what we've been doing, and it comes into the rankings. You say, "Yes, we are doing good."
Beth Dombkowski:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Because I'm usually looking for where's the problem, and what do we need to fix today? But it's good to take stock at different times to see how well you've done and celebrate that. Then the next day go back to what problem I need to solve next.
Beth Dombkowski:
Absolutely. It's so nice when it's recognized by national rankings.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Right, exactly.
Beth Dombkowski:
Dr. Hand, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your conversation. And this is Rowan Confidential.
Jeff Hand, Ph.D.:
Thank you.