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Interview With Marilyn Carroll,
Student Whisperer
By Carin Chea
I've finally met a "jack of all trades and master of all."
Business professor, prolific author, and perhaps the most voracious learner I know, Marilyn Carroll's profundity is available for the world.
Her most recent book, Diary of an Online Professor, is a welcomed resource in this age of uncertainty. Needless to say, COVID has drastically changed the landscape of education, forcing everyone to transition to virtual learning and making the teacher-student connection a difficult thing to grasp.
A wildly successful teacher, Carroll has the ability to speak to the core of her students using empathy, genuine connection, and her expertise, which there is a great wealth of. After all, Dr. Carroll (a Ph.D.) has six degrees and never-ending hunger for knowledge.
You're currently a college business professor. How did you get started on this career path?
Before teaching, I was an executive at a bank. I managed a group of 120 people over 13 states. I noticed that working on the diversity panel at work, so many people weren't prepared with skills we needed to be successful work.
After that, I decided to help college graduates get acclimated to the working world. I saw this as my way of giving back. Never had I thought that it would be my new profession.
I understand you have an imposing body of work. What inspired you to write Diary of an Online Professor?
It's certainly the funniest book I've done. Before Diary was Time for School, it was also about teaching, but an academic type of book. Before that, there was Disruptive Leadership which I wrote from a business perspective.
My Ph.D. is in management and business with a specialty in leadership. I studied leadership quite extensively.
Quick question: What is "disruptive leadership"?
Disruptive Leadership is going into an organization and coming up with a way of leading an organization in times of huge change like the change we witnessed during the pandemic and now.
Thank you for explaining, anyway, back to Diary of an Online Professor.
With everything going on with COVID last year, I listened to students' various stories and how they wanted to be prepared for work after COVID. I already write every day, but I started a journal around this particular business course.
I had just been assigned to write a course for the Dallas ISD [Independent School District]. I journaled about what people were going through as well as my other research. At the end of the year, I told people about it, and people said I should make it into a book.
Oftentimes, we see these things from an academic perspective, but we don't have them explained to us in plain language. I try to share as much as I can with real-life scenarios. That's what brings the lesson home.
I come from an academic standpoint on using technology to enhance the classroom experience and research on how to engage students in an online environment. It's really about teaching people to adapt.
I would talk to people who were teaching, and they didn't know what to do. I would be in these meetings with teachers. I listened to all their problems. There was an easy fix to their problems that basic business practices could easily fix.
We are suffering educationally because we are still doing things like when we were just in one room. That's not the case anymore. I would estimate that 80% of our work now is service-related work. To do that, we have to have a paradigm shift from providing a service to finding critical solutions to problems.
Who is your book geared toward?
The book is great for college students and teachers, but really it's for anybody, like a parent trying to work with their student and not understanding things.
The section about having the tools you need these days to learn in the technology era is instrumental.
You're like the Student Whisperer. When did you discover you had this super-ability?
When I started teaching, I realized I could reach students better than other people. And, every time I got these courses assigned to me, I saw many students having difficulty passing.
The secret is: You find the positives about the students, and you turn that into a learning opportunity. I studied positive psychology a lot. My dissertation was on the positive leadership behaviors' impact on employees' psychological capital.
When I was born, my mother was 14. Nobody in our house-made it past 8th grade. How did that girl make it to earn six degrees when nobody in her family, other than her sister, made it past the 8th grade?
It was always thinking positive about what I wanted instead of thinking about what I didn't have. I looked beyond what my surroundings were. I would visualize myself out of that environment and in the environment, the universe saw for me.
Also, when I was teaching college part-time, and I'd come home, my children (who are adult children) would say, "Mom, you seem so happy!" And I realized I had this passion for helping students.
I understand the learning process and schools marry to build and enhance knowledge. And the various types of school and what they're about. That's what I teach other people as well. I was a student as a child, as a teen, and as an adult. I understand students and the learning process.
That is amazing. I feel you could literally do anything you set out to do.
When you come up without, you have to learn to do a lot of things. There were about 13 of us in one house. When my mother moved away, we were living in the projects. My mother was still working 2 to 3 jobs. We never really saw her.
I, being 5 years older, took care of my sister. I went to 2 different high schools at one time. I took more advanced math and science courses at one school and the other courses I took at the school in my community which I wanted to stay in and connected with.
How did you find the perfect balance between professionalism and "crazy?"
I am a very goal-driven individual. My second husband had a challenge with that. We divorced because I didn't have time to Pacify his inhibition on a personal level.
If you get in the way of my goals, I've got to skootch that. I'm sorry to say that, but it's the truth. Some people can't deal with that. In that way, I'm my own worst enemy at times.
I don't need anyone not believing in me. I had a goal to finish my Ph.D. in 3 years. In 3 years, I knew I was going to be laid off from that bank job. I saw it happening. Nobody has to tell me that vision. I saw it; I saw that we didn't need that many managers.
When I first took the job at the bank, they were surprised that I had fixed the problem and made it profitable for them. Next, I started a compliance group for them until they gave me more groups to run.
After 14 years of making achieving the goals the organization set for the department, I saw that in 3 years, I would either have to move to another department or take the risk of losing my job. But that was okay. Because sometimes it's best to move on if you're still growing.
After that, I took a job as a Dean then Regional Dean, and organized the campuses and student engagement. I was really good at community work at the bank in Atlanta, and I took that to the campus in Texas.
My kids would say: "You get a lot from when your students get the point you're making," and it's true. I like taking the complex and making it manageable.
I appreciate how you choose to look at the positives in life rather than focusing on what's lacking.
It's like cooking. I love to cook. When I go into a kitchen and start cooking, I may not have anything much. I may have some staples, like potatoes and maybe a chicken in the fridge, but I will work and develop a gourmet meal in that kitchen. I'm going to plan a gourmet meal you've never had before.
I'm gonna take everything I have in the kitchen and make something you've never eaten. It'll be the best potatoes you've ever had. And, I'll make a dessert, probably a cobbler, cake, or pie out of the fruit I have in the house.
Who plays Dr. Marilyn Carroll, the student Whisperer, if your life is made into a movie?
Sanaa Lathan. I think she has the craziness as well. She plays her character so well that you think she's really the character she's playing.
Oh, she is the best. I love watching her. Anyway, do you have any upcoming projects you'd like us to know about?
I wrote 365 inspirations during the pandemic. Every day during the pandemic, I would send out a text with a picture of things people could do today, like exercises or cooking. Things you could do around the house.
I wrote this while the mayhem was going on. I wrote a quote with it every day, and I think I want to publish it on a calendar.
For any inquiries, feel free to email the illustrious author and student whisperer at marilyn@drmarilyncarroll.com or purchase her book on outskirtspress.com/diaryofanonlineprofessor.
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