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The Net Assets podcast delves into the most pressing issues in independent school business and operations. Delivered by NBOA, the only national nonprofit membership association focused exclusively on fostering financial and operational excellence among independent PK-12 schools, each episode is based on a popular article in NBOA’s Net Assets magazine. Chief financial and operational officers alongside other leaders of school business share what inspires and challenges them as well as their approaches to problem solving and innovation. In each lively exchange, host Jeff Shields, NBOA president and CEO, teases out the human stories behind the printed story.
If I had to try to characterize what I see as two key attributes of transformational leaders, I would say humility and curiosity. And in the world today, when there is so much impacting our schools, if we're going to make any sustained impact on the lives of individuals and leave our communities stronger, more vibrant, able to flourish in our wake. I think it's going to be through our ability to be compassionate community builders. Welcome to the
Speaker 2:NetAssets Podcast, the official podcast of MBOA Business Leadership for Independent Schools. This episode of the Net Assets Podcast is provided with generous support by the Campus Services Group. I'm your host, Jeff Shields, MBOA President and CEO. And today I'm really excited to welcome Doctor. Patrick Scheuermann, a longtime thought partner to MBLA.
Speaker 2:As someone who's really helped shape how independent schools think about leadership, think about compensation, the intersection of academics and finance, and even the role of virtual reality as a learning tool within our schools. Welcome, Patrick.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Jeff. Wonderful to be with you.
Speaker 2:Patrick, you've been such a good friend to MBOA for so long, and it looks like we're going to recognize that fact when we present the 2026 Sarah Daniel outstanding support of independent schools award to you at the start of the twenty twenty six MBUA annual meeting in Florida coming up March. How does it feel to be recognized at this stage of your career in independent schools?
Speaker 1:I think gratitude. Right? Jeff just sums it up. Just grateful and humbled and honored the award itself. The fact that NBOA gives out this award, I think, is the thing that's really worth celebrating.
Speaker 1:And when I look at the folks the past several years, it's I've been there when they've received it. What an amazing collection of partners that you've assembled. I'm just so glad to be among them.
Speaker 2:We've been very lucky in the independent school community that we've had so many outstanding individuals who are, by virtue of this award, now a permanent member of the MBUA community, but they've contributed so much to not just MBUA's work, but to the work of our members and our schools in business, finance, operations, and really beyond. And you're certainly a great example of that, and that's why we're gonna cover so many different topics with you today because you really have had your hands in so many interesting aspects of independent schools. And as independent schools change, you seem to be right there riding the horse. That's a Nashville reference. Riding a horse right alongside of these changes.
Speaker 2:And I think that's commendable and there's a lot to learn. So with that, I think this is a great podcast for our listeners today. You know, what I've really admired about your work, observing it for many years, is that it's really centered around building and supporting independent school leaders, let's say of all stripes, right? Particularly though, those who sit at this intersection of academics and finance. Where did that work begin?
Speaker 2:How did that come to you? Because that's not a natural area. It certainly wasn't ten years ago or more that people were really examining the importance of academics and finance developing a really strong partnership for excellence in education, but also financial excellence at their schools. Can you tell me more about where that became real for you and how you incorporated that into your work?
Speaker 1:Sure. Yeah. I think in some ways it starts many years ago at the first iteration of what eventually became the Independent School Leadership Master's degree program at Vanderbilt University that I was able to launch in 2014. But the first iteration, actually, Jeff, was intended to be a joint degree between Peabody College and the Owen School of Business in independent school leadership. Because having spent a year or two preparing for this in conversation with the local Nashville area independent school heads group, it became so clear that as they were looking at the horizon, that the financial model and implications of just the way the world was evolving was gonna become so central, so important as foundational skills.
Speaker 1:And so decided to really think about it from that perspective. And although the the degree didn't end up being that joint MBA, still maintained modules within the program in both summers of the experience and was so fortunate to have NBAA's own chief learning officer, Jennifer Osland, who was a perennial favorite instructors in that program.
Speaker 2:That's not a surprise to me and really appreciate that opportunity to contribute because I think it's so important that we take the mystery out of academics for business leaders, and we take the mystery out of finance for academic leaders because the more we have leaders of our independent schools rowing in the same direction and really understanding each other, and dare I say, really developing at a really basic level a common vocabulary about those issues that are so important to the long term viability of independent schools. It can't happen enough. I really do give you credit for being there at the beginning and really emphasizing the importance of those relationships and that exchange of knowledge. From your perspective, what leadership skills are most essential today for those navigating both the academic priorities and the financial realities of pre k through 12 independent education?
Speaker 1:Jeff, it might sound counterintuitive, but I think leadership is getting simpler over time. Or maybe it's just the plain old truth seems to get clearer every day. So I think it is so important for leaders today to remember a few kind of foundational things. Right? And and these are kind of components of the way we approach the Leadership Academy program and curriculum and modules and all that.
Speaker 1:But the first is presence. Just how you show up to people. Right? The way you enter a space or a conversation. Right?
Speaker 1:Before words are said, you are communicating so much. And to be reflective of that, right, requires those good old emotional intelligence skills. Self awareness, self regulation, empathy. And then as I think about so many demands, right, confronting leaders and so many tasks and stakeholders that you need to switch between on any given day or hour, right, the quality of our capacity to be present is key. Right?
Speaker 1:And if I had to try to characterize what I see as two key attributes of transformational leaders, I would say humility and curiosity. Yes. Humility and curiosity. And in the world today, when there is so much impacting our schools, if we're going to make any sustained impact on the lives of individuals and leave our communities stronger, more vibrant, able to flourish in our wake, I think it's going to be through our ability to be compassionate community builders, intentional cultivators of collaboration and clarity, and through our willingness to embrace vulnerability, transparency, and consistency, to build personal connections, right, as the catalyst for authentic growth. So that's where I see us really needing to focus on those deep human, right, aspects.
Speaker 1:Right? As Parker Palmer said, great leadership cannot be reduced to technique. It emerges from the very, like, soul and presence of the individual.
Speaker 2:And you really know when someone shows up as their authentic selves. And it's so ironic because what I've learned in my own personal leadership journey is that being the leader I think I'm supposed to be is almost a recipe for failure. But being the leader that's authentically me, like you said, that comes innately from me, my character, my soul is where personally for me, I found my greatest success. I'm really interested in this idea about humility and curiosity. So speaking on behalf of the entire MBLA membership, we've got humility nailed.
Speaker 2:Our members are very humble in their approach, and I think it's really built out of respect for the education that they support that's delivered at their schools every year. And I also think that at least from NBOA members' perspective, I think they've grown past the idea that they're in a financial silo and academics happens someplace else on the campus. Have you seen that same evolution in academic leadership, administrative leadership where they're more willing to engage around business, finance, operational issues?
Speaker 1:I do. And in many ways, I hear and see in part of it is in the work that I've been able to do recently engaging school communities around this reflection on kind of our compensation and benefit systems, right, which we can see, like, initially as these are kind of financial pieces, and yet they connect so deeply to the mission, the culture, the values, the ethos. Right? So I absolutely see that happening. And the leaders who are able to really have that dual fluency and to be able to understand the languages of both the finance and business office and, right, the culture and academic program, that's where the magic resides.
Speaker 1:And as I think back to the way I sought to develop the leadership master's program at Vanderbilt and as we were engaging in the Leadership Academy, right, the goal was to try to prepare individuals to be a meaningful contributor to every conversation that might happen on a community. So that takes that fluency of language and depth of awareness and understanding that you're speaking of.
Speaker 2:That's really powerful, Patrick. And I agree totally with that idea. I have to ask you, We are now in our, I believe, our fifth, sixth cohort of the Leadership Academy. You've been there since the beginning. Have you seen a change in the individuals participating in that program, or are there trends, issues that you've seen consistent throughout the cohorts?
Speaker 2:What are just some of your reflections observing this group? And for our listeners, around 25 to 30 individuals in a year long in person and virtual learning experience. But based on your reflections over the last several cohorts and years of the program, what have you observed from your vantage point?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I love the way you framed it, right, around these business academic this alignment. That's something that I see the groups over time continuing to lean into, the capacity to do this alignment work, which I'll explain what I mean by that. Because in some ways, I feel like it can be a missing link. Right?
Speaker 1:In some ways, Jennifer, Aslan and I, we shepherd that program, have also learned how to foster that work, right, to really support these incredible business leaders' capacity to do the alignment work moving from kind of an operational focus to this leadership orientation. Right? Leadership in some ways can be thought about in kind of three domains. The first is there's this area around vision and direction. Right?
Speaker 1:That's often what we think is leadership. It's the direction, the bold vision. And then there's the part we can sometimes think about as management, is implementing the vision and making it happen. But in between is the essential work of alignment. This is where you bring individuals, everyone into dialogue to ensure there's clarity.
Speaker 1:That vision is sharpened and refined by seeking counsel of others. And only then do you really get then the inspiration needed to move into the commitment to action. And what we do is we've actually infused this group project into the Leadership Academy that asks individuals to come up with a bold topic, a big challenge that we need to focus on. That's the vision part. And then they've gotta implement.
Speaker 1:They're gonna do a presentation in a couple months in Orlando. But in between, they've really gotta wrestle with how do we approach this challenge? What do we mean by it? What might be the most impactful way to bring some insights to the community? And so what we found is that by going through that challenging process, right, as busy working professionals to come together to align, they're really developing their capacity then to do that difficult work across, as you said, the silos that still so often exist, to break down those barriers, translate vision into action by being those aligners on their campus.
Speaker 2:I really like that idea because I think of the word alignment when I think of schools that are really thriving and doing excellent work both academically and the enterprise is securing its long term financial health, I do think of alignment a lot because there's a lot of different leaders in the community of an independent school. The board of trustees, the head of school, the administrative team, of course, the faculty, and really the students. But when there's alignment in why we are occupying this space together, I think that's when excellence happens or excellence may happen or can happen or is poised to happen. And now let's take a break to tell you a little bit more about the Campus Services Group. We know that independent school leaders have a lot to focus on.
Speaker 2:The last thing you should worry about is whether your facilities are meeting the mark. Campus Services Group works alongside schools as a partner in the day to day stewardship of the campus. CSG believes the right people make the difference and invests heavily in the teams who maintain the campus experience. From custodial programs to ongoing facility support, Campus Services Group manages the operational details so leadership can stay focused on mission and community. Visit campusservices.com to learn more.
Speaker 2:Speaking of leadership, you've been a leader in a really interesting area. Now I didn't know that compensation was much a part of your educational background and experience and profession. And then fast forward, we have this great opportunity supported by the E. E. Ford Foundation to help our schools look at compensation differently.
Speaker 2:And you were really our lead consultant on that project. The way that research has really served as a catalyst for schools, what have you seen? Because you've done the work at a research level in partnership with us at MBUA, but you've also been in schools doing that work. You've alluded to how much a compensation model says about the values and the culture of the school. What have you learned throughout this process, whether it was the research or the work that you're doing through, very often through, MBUA advisory services now, but the work that you're doing inside schools and advancing that work with them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's just been a wonderful time to be a part of that conversation, again. Right? When I landed at Vanderbilt back in 2002, right, after many years in independent schools, I was so interested about this intersecting area of faculty evaluation, professional development, and compensation, and studied these as these integrated levers to catalyze human capital development. It's so easy to think about compensation benefits is the way we pay people.
Speaker 1:Right? But it's really so much more. Right? It's our kind of one of our key signal systems, right, to ways that we see you, we acknowledge you, we value you. Right?
Speaker 1:So there's a lot in it. Right? And so it represents, like the work of transforming those systems, what we would call adaptive change. Right? It's not a technical change.
Speaker 1:And so it's been just insightful to engage with that communities in that work of adaptive change and hear, like, what are the issues that are surfacing for them? So as I go go around the country working with schools or doing presentations often with Elizabeth Dabney or Amber Stockholm, right, from NBOA. What we're hearing rise to the surface in terms of what are your core challenges, things like housing cost, when it comes down to issues of proximity to school and quality of life, and is an indicator of this broader conversation around the widening gap between educator compensation and the rising cost of living. Another key thing that we're hearing is just communities wrestling with these issues of affordability, and how far we can push the business model, as salaries are so tightly coupled with tuition. While some schools are really going back to the humility and curiosity, really thinking creatively about ways that they might explore opportunities in their education model to mitigate some of their challenges.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we're finding, another kind of theme is like, this the intersection of these trends, such as the natural age progression of the workforce, increasing numbers of folks going into the fields of education, and then just the emotional labor that working in schools represents. Is there just having to navigate complex student issues, parent expectations, and social shifts. And then this brings us to the reality underneath this work. When it comes down to this model, that model, in some ways, what we're finding, Jeff, it really doesn't matter so long as through that model and alongside of that model and wrapped all around it, you find ways of authentically recognizing your faculty and staff. At the end of the day, these are levers by which we can affirm each individual's value and effort, and that's really ultimately what this work is all about.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting to me, and I've learned so much from the research, from the work you've been doing. And when we started this effort, there were so many skeptics that really thought this was just a veiled way of figuring out ways to pay our faculty and staff more and certainly compensating our faculty and staff fairly. As I've often said, faculty is where our mission is delivered every day in the classroom between teacher and student. That's where our mission lives every day, so fairly compensating them. But what I was so pleased to learn, our research uncovered that schools were doing well beyond that.
Speaker 2:They were doing much different than that, than looking at compensation as merely what's gonna show up in someone's paycheck every two weeks. So that was a pleasure to see that so many schools are already being creative. I think we lifted that up, showed that to the community, and now it's been truly, I believe, a catalyst for schools to look at their compensation models very differently and realizing there's so much more they can do. There's so much more innovation that they can do there. Is that part of what you've discovered as you've been doing this work?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. A 100%. And often in in working with school communities, what what I'm finding is a really helpful starting place is to engage the community in the development of a philosophy of compensation because that kind of puts first things first. It's looking holistically. It's saying what values, guiding principles, right, goals do we wanna hold up for our compensation system?
Speaker 1:What does it represent for us? And as you said, it's much more than just how we're paid. So if you start the conversation there, then you can get into these areas that kind of speak both to and beyond kind of the specific kind of financial aspects of compensation of benefits.
Speaker 2:And that's so much part of the DNA of independent education. We know that the student development journey is much more than teaching them reading and math and history and science. We know that about our students, and yet now we're really uncovering that we can translate that to our faculty and staff with the understanding that individuals really work in independent education, I think especially as really a vocation. And so I think meeting them at that space that you've just described and translating what we know is true for our students, that character development is just as important as academic development. It's the holistic view of it is really exciting.
Speaker 2:Before we run out of time, I really wanna make sure we talk about some exciting work that you're doing in virtual reality in the classroom. Now I'm gonna sit back and be a student like maybe many of our podcast listeners are, but tell me about your work in virtual reality. And is this truly the new frontier? Is it the horizon that we're all gonna be looking at, or are you finding that there are very specific applications for virtual reality in the classroom that marry with independent education and the work that our schools do every day?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Again, love the way you've framed that question to focus on the right thing, instructional opportunity. Because I think far too long, right, looking back over, like, several decades of school reform and pedagogical interventions, we've not always kept our eye on the ultimate prize, which is the educational, social, and emotional impact of this model or this practice or this tool. And so turning to VR, virtual reality, and then there's AR, augmented reality. Right?
Speaker 1:There's together mixed. Though it might seem like a latest and greatest, its real impact in some ways is as old as time. So by that, every impactful instructional experience always requires some form of meaningful interaction that creates some bit of cognitive dissonance, brings us slightly out of our comfort zone so that we can then make sense of that experience, what we would call narrative translation. And then we move to some identity impact, which is the opportunity to think about ourselves and our capacity in new ways. So reading a great book can do this.
Speaker 1:Travel can do this. An inspiring lecture can do this. A challenging group project in the Leadership Academy can do. And what I think, Jeff, to really bring it back to VR, what mixed reality technology adds to the mix is to bring us to very contextually impactful locations with robust learning resources to enhance the capacity to do, to practice, to test out, and to apply. So looking at kind of some research, right, students remember about 10% of what they hear, about 30% of what they see, about 60% of what they verbalize and write, but about 90% of what they do.
Speaker 1:So the power of VR technology is really in its capacity to help you experience, empathize, and do things. Very much aligned with looking back a hundred years, the progressive and constructivist like Dewey and all those cats, then more recently, the kind of the experiential learning literature, like from Cold and others. It's not just what we hear. It's not just what we see. It's what we're able to do.
Speaker 1:And I really feel as though VR and and AR give students unique opportunities that at click of a button sitting in this seat, you can go to the moon. You could go to Mars. You could go to Spain. You can go back in time, and it just takes you places. And what we know about education is it's contextual, and this technology just really helps us do that in exciting ways.
Speaker 2:I also think the independent schools are very well positioned because we're always coloring outside the lines. Part of the gift of independent education is that each school determines how best to educate their students. So this is our last question because we are running out of time. How does a school get started with incorporating virtual reality in the classroom? And for my business officer friends, what type of investment does a school have to make in order to think about this maybe more seriously?
Speaker 1:Great question. Jeff, think as schools explore immersive technologies, it's important to remember that we are really are at the front end in what's gonna be a rapidly expanding and evolving market. And so because of that, there's a learning curve involved from both a technical and a pedagogical perspective. So thinking about investments in both of them, the hardware and software, and then the human training is important. It's not just enough to go out and buy a classroom set of devices.
Speaker 1:There's got to be intentional professional development to help educators translate their practice into these immersive environments. And I think the best sources of insight into the implications, both from a budgeting and staffing perspective, can come from schools who are already leading in this way. So I'm thinking about a conversation I had two years ago with NBOA's own Nancy Green, right there.
Speaker 2:The whole Nancy Green. She's always at the front of things.
Speaker 1:She is. So she's at the front of things there at Pinecrest in Florida, and we're in the context of a mentor group conversation about their group project. We followed up afterwards, and she's like, so tell me a little bit more. She was curious. Yes.
Speaker 1:She's on the campus. We we had that conversation, and now they are leading the country in what you can do across the entire spectrum in VR. And they figured out all the ways that all the road bumps and all of that, and they would just could be a tremendous resource. I presented with them just a couple weeks ago at the future of education technology conference. I was asked to do a session on your question.
Speaker 1:How do you bring VR to your school? And I said, you know, how we're gonna do that is I'm gonna have Pinecrest come and do this session with me because they know
Speaker 2:Excellent.
Speaker 1:Other than anyone. But real quick, from a budgeting perspective, a classroom set, which is a good starting place for the devices and some software and some training, you're looking at about $20,000 and a onetime investment, and about half of that is an annual recurring. But brings a world of opportunity to your campus.
Speaker 2:And like with everything in ed tech, it's not just about purchasing the technology. It's about really building a bridge between the technology with your faculty. Walk them over that bridge so they can really see how that tool can be instrumental to them and can be supportive of their academic goals in the classroom. So much to talk to you about, Patrick. Thank you so much for being here with us and for sharing your perspectives.
Speaker 2:We will look forward to seeing it celebrating with you at the twenty twenty six MBOA Annual Meeting in Orlando. To our listeners, don't miss Patrick's contributions at the MBOA Annual Meeting, along with dozens of opportunities to connect, learn and lead. Register now at mboannualmeeting.org. Thank you again to our friends at Campus Services Group for supporting this episode of the Net Assets Podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening to the Net Assets Podcast.