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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- Yeah. Everyone in the community, when I first talk about Round Rock, they're like, that's where you do nursing.
- Everyone says that. It's the nursing school right there. Yes, and as you always say-
- Yeah, we do nursing, we do it really well. But let me also tell you about all the other things we do.
- Today I'm super excited about my friend Dr. Julie Lessiter, who's joining us to talk about what's going on at Round Rock. But we wanna start off Julie, talking about Julie. So first off, welcome to The Current.
- [Julie] Thanks. Excited to be here.
- Yeah. I'm happy to be here. And so I know you're a big fan of The Current and watch all the episodes and so on, and so you know that we wanna learn about you. So let's start off about like how did you end up, you have a very strong Cajun accent. I don't know if people recognize that right away. But how did you get to Texas State from your hometown?
- Yes, I have a funky accent. Most people are like, "I know you're not from here, but where are you from?"
- Yeah. It's not really a Cajun accent.
- Yeah. Yeah. So originally I'm British. I grew up in England and I was a good tennis player and-
- Great tennis player. I mean, you were good.
- I was good. It's being good on a tiny island doesn't quite translate to being good in the rest of the world, but-
- It was good enough.
- It was good enough to get me to the United States. And I had never been to the United States, and this was pre-internet, so I was just talking to people on the phone. That's how you got recruited back in the day. And I really liked this coach in Louisiana. And I didn't know Louisiana from California or Florida or anywhere, so-
- Like me, you'd probably heard of New Orleans and LA and New York, but not know about all the other small towns that are there-
- No, no, absolutely not. So I thought everything was Beverly Hills 9021. 'Cause that's what I'd seen on TV. And I agreed to go to a school called Northwestern State, and that's in this tiny little town called Natchitoches, Louisiana. And I could barely pronounce Natchitoches. And I got off the plane, I got there and looked around and I said, "Oh my gosh, where are Lamborghinis? Where's the palm trees?" So it wasn't what I thought, but I ended up-
- They were hiding them. They bring them out the second year.
- Yeah, yeah. They were around the corner. But it was a great place. And the thing you have to love about Louisiana is the people. And just the community. And the first year I was there, people kept talking to me and I didn't know them. And I'm like, "Why are these people talking to me?"
- It's the thing about the South that's so different about the rest of the world. Like people would just say, "Hi," and like really want you to engage.
- [Julie] Yeah.
- Yeah.
- People as a "Hi" would say, "Hey, what's up?" And for the longest time I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to think of something to tell these people." And really then it dawned on me, they're just saying hi. So it was a great way to get to meet people, like the friendliest people you've ever met. And I graduated from Northwestern State. I ended up working there. My first job was in intercollegiate athletics. I was the academic advisor. I loved it. I got like firsthand experience of helping these student-athletes through their college and onto careers. And then I took a brief stint in Arkansas.
- You got the Arkansas State connection.
- I was at Arkansas State. I wasn't there when you were there, but seven degrees of separation.
- Yeah. We know a lot of the same people.
- Yep. It was far too cold for me in Arkansas. And I was like, "I'm gonna go"-
- It's relative. Okay. It snows every year, but it's, yeah.
- Yeah. The snow was on the ground for more than a day. And I said, "This is"-
- It's not gonna happen.
- I can't do this. I ended up coming back to Louisiana and to an LSU school and stayed there for 13 years. And at that school, times were hard in Louisiana, we were very close to closing the doors. We had this innovative provost who said, "I think we have the opportunity to put some of these degree programs online." And I was like, "Great. I don't know what that means, but let's do it." And we doubled the size of enrollment. We really got our-
- And that's LSU Shreveport.
- LSU Shreveport. We had students enrolled in each of the 50 states. And graduation was always fun 'cause people would fly in and it was the first time they'd been on campus.
- Well, I remember when we were at Arkansas State talking about LSUS MBA program was just dominating online in Arkansas. Yeah. You guys were everywhere. The MBA program was huge.
- Yeah. Actually, when I got to Round Rock, I was walking my dogs one day and a neighbor's garage door was open and they had an LSU Shreveport sticker on the fridge in the garage. And I had to walk by the house like 15 times before I met someone in the garage. And I was like-
- You kept walking by.
- Yeah. Every day I was like, "I'm gonna keep walking these dogs till I find these people." And I said, "Which one have you graduated? I bet it was the MBA." And they did. So we stopped, we talked and again, seven degrees of separation everywhere you go, sometimes you get to a point in your career where you say. "I've done this. What's the next challenge?" And a very quick funny story, like I came to the United States in 1994. I was a tennis player in Louisiana. The first road trip we took for tennis season was to Texas State, which was Southwest Texas. We convinced our coach to sit by the river. We said, "Coach, we got three hours before this match, we're gonna go and sit by the river." And eight girls, he was like, "Go ahead, I'll pick you up in an hour." And that was like my first memory of now Texas State. And so when the job came open at Texas State in Round Rock, I was like, "Man, that's that place I went to, just down the road in San Marcos." I loved it when I went circa in 1994. That would be a really great place to look to see what we could do as a pivot in a career, still working in higher education. Let's see what we can do. So I applied for the job and got to campus in Round Rock, and I'm a big runner. So the first thing I did was parked in the neighborhood next to the school, went for a run. It's up on this beautiful ridge. And you could see like the valley below.
- You think of Round Rock as being flat until you run, right?
- Oh my gosh.
- The same way as a biker. Like you discover all the hills when you're on a bike or when you are running.
- Yeah, absolutely. There's not one flat place in Round Rock. I've tried to find it and it doesn't exist. So I'm running through this neighborhood and I'm looking, I'm on the ridge, I'm looking down, the sun is setting, my gosh, this is the most beautiful place I've ever been. And then the next day I got to campus and people were telling me, we're actually celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. And people were telling me, "This is 20 years old," and I'm walking around the building, like, "There is no way this is 20 years old."
- Yeah. It looks like it's brand new.
- Yeah. I went for a run. I went to H-E-B. All the things that I love about being in Central Texas, much more but, and I really felt like at home, I'm so glad I chose to, well, I didn't choose. Thank you for choosing me.
- Well, what you choose to apply, you chose to accept it. So the backstory of you coming here is that you're the founding vice president of Round Rock. And when I came here, we had been up in Round Rock at that time for 16 years and in those buildings. But we've been there longer actually at the high school and so on. And it was my sense that we were just kind of floundering. We didn't really have a vision for Round Rock. And certainly enrollment was declining up there. We had very strong professional programs, but really nothing else to kind of grow there. We had all this property, we had a plan to build a building, but nothing to do in the building. Like, we were kinda like, "Well, we'll build it and then we'll figure out what to do with it." And I just felt like we needed someone to be in charge of Round Rock. Someone who woke up every day, thinking about how I could make Round Rock better. And I remember talking with our cabinet, with our leadership team and with the chancellor. I said, "I really don't know what the skillset will be for this person. Will it be kind of a Chamber of Commerce person?" And I actually thought, there might be people from chamber backgrounds that might apply trying to build relationships with the city and the county and be responsive to business and industry or will it be a straight academic person that I said, "I'm sure there's a unicorn out there somewhere." And you and I met at a restaurant and I'm halfway through the meal and I'm thinking, "Unicorn, this is a perfect fit." And it has turned out from our perspective to be a perfect fit. So talk about what's going on at Round Rock, because there's so many exciting things. We were just up there a couple days ago, it's our second or third annual picnic out in the quad area. And last year we ordered 500 hamburgers. And we almost ran out. So we ordered 800 this time and we had like six left at the end. The energy there is just totally different. So talk about what it was like when you first got there, and then how do we get to where we are now? 3,000 students now for the first time at Round Rock, which is super exciting.
- Yeah.
- I don't wanna give away the whole story, but there's so much going on, I can't stop myself.
- So we had a speaker on campus this morning about entrepreneurship and he told his story, and I love having people to campus because I always say, "You can come to campus, we'll invite community out." And then I'm like, "And I'm gonna have a five minute sales pitch at the beginning." So I thought it was appropriate to say, we've been running Round Rock like a startup for two years. And when I first came to Round Rock, I parked in the parking lot. I was like, "Man, I'm super early." I'm a morning person. So I'm always at work early. There's no other cars there. It's probably gonna get busy during the day.
- You leave at lunch, you come back, seeing if your parking spot's still available.
- Yes. Yeah. Still available. There weren't very many students walking up and down the hall. It was so quiet. If you wanted a place to go that was quiet, that was it-
- A lot of good study spaces there. Yeah.
- I'm so blessed to be in Round Rock because sometimes leadership can be very isolating and lonely.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- There's so many people there that are particularly women running their own businesses. Hustling for a business that they work in. So I'm so connected with this group that they inspire me every day. Like they're amazing and you show up for an event for them. Like, I get to Round Rock, I don't know anyone. About three weeks in I've seen the same set of people five or six times. And they really taught me the lesson that when you show up for people, they'll show up for you.
- And that's the thing, I feel like I do a lot of social media stuff, but I feel like inadequate compared to you, following you on social media because you're at everything. And it's always like, it's not the same, to me, I'm not sure if it's the same people or not, but there's always like a crowd of people. There's so much energy in Round Rock, especially about, there's a lot of startups there, a lot of business and industry and so on. There seems to be a different energy there than there's in other places I've been to. And they've really embraced you.
- I'm so fortunate to be there and I've got great friends who are doing very similar things but in different industries and it's great to be able to talk to them or run something by them or brainstorm with them, so I'm talking to these people about Round Rock and they say, "Gosh, we really want this university campus here, so that our students have somewhere to be, somewhere to call home, somewhere to get their education." And I'm doing this environmental scan of what have we done, what could we do? And I said, "I think we could do a lot more here. We're gonna get to 10,000 students. There's 4,000 people moving here every month. We really need to offer more degree programs that support this community. And let's do freshmen." Like-
- Never been done before.
- Never been done. So we decide this and I have some great help. Like I'll give a quick shout out to Vice President of Global, Thilla. He's like, "Hey, I'm ringing you 11 programs." And I was like, "All at once?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay, let's do it." So fall of '25, I'm sweating it. 'Cause I'm like, "We've got all these classes, the freshmen, I've been convincing people to come and teach classes at Round Rock and I have no idea how many people are actually gonna show up." And I was walking up and down the halls every day just trying to make sure that people who had signed up were there.
- It kind of feels like a one room schoolhouse in a way. Right? You're just kind of cobbling things together.
- Yes.
- And you don't know if anyone's gonna come at all.
- Right. We launched the plane. I was like, "I'm not sure if the passengers are sitting down or not." So we had 50 freshmen that first fall.
- Fall of '24.
- '24. And just talking to those students and talking to parents and everyone's like, "We're so grateful that you're here. There weren't any other affordable opportunities. We couldn't afford to live in housing if we'd gone down to the San Marcos Campus." Or, "We're not into this." Like, San Marcos is a big campus. "That doesn't fit me. That's not my personality." Like, "We love it here because it feels like community." One of my favorite things to do is like, I walk up and down the hallways and I don't ever wear my name tag. And so I'll have random students, I'll talk to anyone. So students will stop, we'll talk, we've seen each other. We'll wave. And so I just get to talk to students and they don't know I'm the vice president, so they're telling me all this stuff. And, "Man, this is really cool." I was like, "Oh, how's your class? What class are you going to?" "Oh, my faculty member that they're so kind to me. And I've gone to their office and they really helped me." And then they say to me, "What are you studying?"
- Yeah. They think you're a student.
- Like, yeah, they think I'm a student. I'm like, "Well, you know"-
- I work here.
- Yeah.
- "I work here. I kind of run the campus. Maybe I'm the vice president." And they're like, "Oh, we shouldn't." And I was like, "No, I love it that you're"-
- Yeah. You wanna hear that.
- Yeah. "That you're talking to me and you feel comfortable telling me all of this." And just the vibe on campus right now. Everyone in the community, when I first talk about Round Rock, they're like, "That's where you do nursing."
- Everyone says that. It's the nursing school right there.
- [Julie] Yeah. Yeah.
- Yes, and as you always say.
- Yeah, yeah we do nursing, we do it really well. But let me also tell you about all the other things we do. Just seeing these students together, it's amazing to walk through, even the Avery Building where we have a lot of our general education classes, and you see all these students, we plan study areas. What we should do is just like, let students sit where they want to sit and study-
- And build around them.
- And then build it around them.
- It's like in the old days, they used to build roads where the cows went, and so, "The cows kinda know where to go. We'll build a road around top of it." Same thing with students.
- Right. Right. And so I walked down there, I'm like, "Do you guys know each other?" "Yeah." "Okay. Do you know?" "Yep." "Do all of you know each other?" "Yep." And then it's like this community, like small close knit community of students that are all friends, they all know each other. And like, I'll walk off and I'm just grinning. 'Cause I'm like-
- It's smaller than their high school in many ways. And they gravitate towards that. I talked to two of your sophomores a couple days ago and I think sometimes people think, well they've defaulted into Round Rock. Like they couldn't get into San Marcos Campus or whatever. They're only here for one reason or another. And one of them said, "I came to campus to San Marcos and I was in new student orientation and it just felt overwhelming, it was so big and I was just gonna white knuckle through it. And I came home and my mom said," and she's from Pflugerville, both of them actually went to Pflugerville, didn't know each other until they went to Round Rock Campus. But her mom said, "I think there's a campus, there's like a nursing school here that Texas State has, and maybe you can take some classes there." And so she walked in the Avery Building and she ran into one of our student success people. And she said, "Is it possible for me to take classes here?" I said, "Actually, you can be like a full-time student here." And she said, "Really?" Like, she was like excited about it and she still has that same excitement. This place worked perfect for her and her other friend that was with her, she's got a little sister who's like 10 years younger than her. And she said, "I was really nervous about leaving my sister behind because we're very close, now I get to live with her and I'm here. I got my part-time job. I got a job here and this campus is perfect for me." So I don't see it as like a step down. It's just different. Has a different quality in it. And I think in some ways for the right people it's better because it meets them where they are.
- Yeah. Absolutely. I resemble that too. I'm like, if it's too big, I feel overwhelmed. And I love to be on a campus where I know everyone's name. Faculty, staff, have a tremendous student success team that you met the other day. Our student workers are fabulous. And that just, that works for some people. I get some people wanna be in San Marcos, some people wanna be at Round Rock. And we are creating a very different experience that is unique to that Round Rock Campus that meets the needs of the people that are there. And for me to see the joy of the students, the faculty, we set a vision and everyone's bought into it. And to me, that's the greatest joy that I get every day.
- You mentioned, we've been talking about students, but you mentioned employees and faculty and staff. You told me a story recently about, you have to wear a lot of hats there. And you're wearing a lot of hats. Like you're a chamber of commerce, you're a provost, you're a dean, you're a, whatever. You're always doing something. But you had like a little incident that needs some housekeeping. So tell that story. I love, it's one of my favorite stories in the past month.
- We actually had headshots in the morning. So someone had come up from San Marcos to do headshot, which our people loved. And I get a text message from one of the admin assistants in a different building that said, "Hey, I think the president's coming today." There's a bunch of dust bunnies and leaves right here. So I said, "Okay." So I go downstairs, I'm like, "Hey, where do I find a broom?" So one of our student success people hand me a broom. They're like, "What are you doing?" I said, "Come on, we're gonna go clean up the dust bunnies." So where the dust bunnies were, it was a terrible design, so you had to climb over the rail. So I'm in my very professional outfit, they're wearing their jeans, so I'm trying to reach over and clean up the dust bunnies. And literally they rolled their eyes out loud at me and said, "Oh my gosh, please." And they grabbed the broom, climbed over the rail and started cleaning it up. So a couple other student success folks came by, they said, "Oh my gosh, now you need the"-
- Dust pan.
- "The dust pan to put all of this in." So it was kind of funny 'cause there's like five of us cleaning up this-
- How many Bobcats does it take to sweep up some bus dust bunnies?
- But I really felt like that was what our team is all about. It's like, nobody's above doing something to help the vision and get the mission done of the campus. And this is what I tell them all the time. Like at Texas State Round Rock, there's no other place I'd rather be. Like we all understand that together as a team, we're stronger as the team than the individual parts. And I'm so blessed every day to be in that community, be with the team that I have and it's never dull. We always, we're having a good time and everyone's there for our students. So that's what I love.
- What's next? We have a new building coming online. What else besides the new building?
- New building, new academic programs. Our community really wants us there. And every week I get a phone call from someone and we really need this program. And it's great to be in a community where people want you. And so we're trying to meet the needs of the community as quickly as possible.
- You're right. I mean we have a goal of 10,000 students there, but I think the people in Round Rock would be happy with, let's have 20,000 students if we could grow bigger and bigger, bigger, they have no concept of stopping because the growth patterns in Williamson County are unbelievable.
- Yeah. I was at a luncheon, State of Williamson County. They said 12th fastest growing county in the nation. And they're hungry for success. They're bringing us with them and they're looking for, "How do we keep people in Central Texas? How do we get the next generation of workforce trained?" And it's so amazing to be around people that really wanna help. They're very conscious of making sure that everyone is building themselves up to be successful. So it's this great energy that's right there. So we're building it as fast as we can. And we're excited to see what the future holds.
- You and I talk a lot about industry needs and people, we need more engineering majors, we need more accountants, we need more of this and that. But one of my favorite stories that has evolved in the past couple years is something that is not kind of industry driven, but it's society driven. It's a teacher shortage in Texas generally, but specifically in the Round Rock area. And we've got this really cool partnership with Round Rock ISD, share a little bit about that.
- Yeah. We find a lot of students don't know how to go to college. And they don't think it's possible for them.
- Less than half of high school students in Texas go to college, 'cause they just don't know. Or they can't afford to. They think they can't afford to, they don't think they're smart enough or whatever.
- I'm a first generation college student myself. I think you are too. And boy, it's confusing. We use a whole language that people on the outside don't speak. And so just creating these pathways for students to be able to walk through, to take a dual enrollment class, perhaps a ACC, and then come to us because they wanna be teachers and be able to start their degree and finish their degree. And student teach in Round Rock. Just, if you can keep your people here, they're more likely to stay here.
- So you're calling it the Grow Your Own program.
- Grow Your Own, we have a lot of industry partnerships with other types of industries and companies because I really feel it's important to be connected. A student doesn't know what they can do with a marketing degree. And so I love having people come and be able to mentor our students and talk about like all the different things you could do. And I'm just using marketing as an example. Teachers, they get that externship where they get to see what it's like to be in a classroom. We had Dell on campus the other day. We've got so many great partners and the types of industry that wants to come and everyone's always so willing to give, give their time, give their energy.
- Yeah. The thing that I think is unique about Texas State at Round Rock is our responsiveness to the needs of the people who are gonna hire our students. And I think over time universities developed degree programs that who knows where they come from. Somebody says, "Hey, this is my area. We should start something." And you start a degree program and nobody really enrolls in it, or a few people do, and then I retire and that degree program just exists and no one knows what to do with it. At Round Rock, it seems like we're much more responsive to like what the needs of the workforce are. So the people who are leaving Round Rock are gonna leave with a degree that really provides them an entree into the workforce, which is what their parents want, what we want and what the state wants and what the employers want and what the students want. So it really has worked perfect in all those ways.
- For me, the mark of success is, how do we help the student get in door? How do we support them while they're there? How do we prepare them to be a good employee or just a successful human living in the world that we live in? And then helping them get out into a career. And it's not just getting them in the door. It's how do we also then make sure that everything we do is built around making them a successful person. How they're giving back in a community, how they participate in a community and community doesn't exist by itself. If you don't have people that are willing to volunteer to take on roles on committees, to help that next generation, then you don't have community.
- Well Julie, this is my favorite time of the podcast. So we ask viewers and listeners to submit questions for me. So you get to be the interviewer here. I've not seen the question, so you get to ask me the question.
- Wow.
- Okay. That's not a good sign.
- No, this one's a great question. It's one of my favorite things to talk about and people put it with a negative connotation, but I think it's really a valuable lesson. What's the most unexpected lesson you've learned from a failure?
- Oh, that is really a good question. So the best thing I've learned is that sometimes, I'm a humble person because I have a lot to be humble about. And that's actually a famous line from Winston Churchill, one of my favorite leaders. But he was talking about somebody else. He was not very humble, but he said he has a lot to be humble about. That's why he's so humble. But, I recognize my weaknesses and my failings pretty commonly. But sometimes I think like I know, like I was somewhere else and I saw that's how it worked there and we need to do it here. And I kind of like get tunnel vision. Like let's make this thing happen. And what I've learned is that if I don't include the people who are affected by the change, that first off, they can be really resistant of it. And that causes all kinds of problems. And second, the people who are affected by the change that I'm suggesting might say, "Yeah, I see what you're saying. But if you do that, you're gonna make it even worse." And if, I was gonna say, "If I've made a mistake," I've made a thousand mistakes. But probably the most common thing was not engaging with the people who are gonna be affected by a decision well enough so that I ended up making the right decision at the right time with the right people. So we actually have the change, the improvement comes along that we don't make things worse. Well the worst experiences I've had in the past have been where I've made a decision. And then the people who are affected by went, "Well, you're gonna mess this thing up over here." And then having to undo the decision and start over again. There's lack, you lose faith, people, they start to wonder like, "Why didn't you ask me in the first place?" But also there's just all this down. There's this lost time, this lost momentum, you gotta start over again. It would've been so much better to just do it right the first time. So what about you?
- Gosh, I could do a whole TED talk on failure. Because I think I fail at something every day. So I love to say, to fail is like first attempt in learning. And I'm a very reflective person. I go for a run a lot and think about is the only time I'm alone. Like I don't take a phone and I'm lost with my own thoughts. So it's very easy to really reflect on things that you didn't do so well. But I think it's the resilience, like, yeah, you didn't make the right decision, or, boy, you didn't handle that conversation well. But you can circle back with people and say, "Hey, I know I didn't handle this very well. I'd love to start this conversation again." Or, "Hey, I totally screwed that up and I know but it's okay 'cause we can fix it." And I don't think failure has to define your day or your minute or your month, but you can always come back from it if you're willing to accept the you did fail. And then, "Okay, how do I do it better next time?"
- In golf they talk about not letting the last shot affect your next shot. You gotta have a short term memory about this, but also learning. Like if you keep making the same mistake over and over again, there's a problem there too if you're not learning from those mistakes.
- Yep. Yep.
- Thank you so much for joining to share with us about what's happening at Round Rock. If you are interested in what's happening at Round Rock just Google, Texas State Round Rock, TXST Round Rock. You go to her webpage, find about all the degree programs that are out there, find out about what it's like to be a student there. It's a wonderful program. It's a beautiful location and I can't wait to watch it grow. Thank you Julie for leading us over there. You are indeed the unicorn that Texas Eight Round Rock needed. Thank you.
- Absolutely. Thank you.