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Welcome to Radical Cooperation, the podcast in which higher education leaders explore collaboration as the key to lasting change. Host Dr. Michael Horowitz, together with presidents, chancellors, and trailblazing experts,...
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Welcome to Radical Cooperation, the podcast in which higher education leaders explore collaboration as the key to lasting change. Host Dr. Michael Horowitz, together with presidents, chancellors, and trailblazing experts, dives into thought-provoking conversations about solutions to some of the most pressing issues in higher education. From fostering partnerships across institutions to leveraging innovation over tradition, each episode unpacks how cooperation, not competition, drives success. If you're ready to embrace bold, forward-thinking ideas that unite and inspire, you’re in the right place.
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Episodes & Posts
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16 SEP 2026 · The world has never been more interconnected, yet many graduates enter the workforce without the global awareness and adaptability that interconnection demands. At the same time, nations and institutions are struggling with the very skill higher education exists to teach: how to collaborate across differences on shared problems. That raises a question worth sitting with. What can higher education learn from the world of global affairs, and how should it prepare students to lead in it?
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Dr. Stewart Prest, a political scientist and lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, whose work focuses on democracy, international cooperation, and the geopolitical trends shaping our world. Their conversation ranges from why cooperation between democracies rests on a sense of shared identity rather than pure transaction, to how decades of economic integration across North America became so hardwired that unwinding it carries real costs. Dr. Prest also explains why Canada's higher education sector developed so differently from the American one, and what that means for students on both sides of the border.
Rather than treating global affairs as distant from campus life, this conversation traces the direct lines between international dynamics and the institutions, students, and communities higher education serves. It closes on a practical note about what educators can actually do: build relationships across borders, help people see the world with clear eyes, and start with concrete projects that can scale.
In this episode:
- Why a global perspective is essential to understanding events on any campus or in any community
- What makes cooperation between democracies durable, and why transactional partnerships tend not to last
- How North American economic integration became hardwired, and what erosion of that trust costs
- Why Canada's higher education system is overwhelmingly public, and what limits that creates
- What higher education leaders can do to keep cross-border connections open in a difficult moment
2 SEP 2026 · Rural America is running short of doctors, and the research points to a stubbornly simple pattern: physicians tend to practice where they train. That makes local medical education one of the most direct levers a state has for strengthening its healthcare workforce, and it is exactly why Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine was founded. The question was always whether a brand new school could deliver, and whether its graduates would actually stay.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Dr. McKensie Bevens and Dr. Matthew Bevens, a married couple from Topeka who met as kids in karate class, entered KansasCOM together as part of its inaugural class, and matched together into family medicine residency at Wesley in Wichita, KS. Both came to medicine as non-traditional students after years working in other fields, and both chose primary care with an eye toward serving rural Kansas. They talk candidly about what it was like to help build a curriculum while learning from it, why full scope family medicine changed their sense of what a primary care doctor can do, and what it takes to recruit physicians who will genuinely go and stay home.
Rather than treating the physician shortage as a policy abstraction, this conversation follows two people through the decisions that actually determine where doctors end up. It is a hopeful look at what happens when a community invests in training its own.
In this episode:
- Why physicians tend to practice where they train, and what that means for rural states
- What it was like to be part of an inaugural class helping shape a new medical school
- How full scope family medicine differs from what most students assume primary care is
- Why the couples match and a community-focused residency city made staying in Kansas possible
- Practical advice for aspiring physicians, from getting real exposure to staying curious
19 AUG 2026 · Technology now shapes almost everything we do, and it reaches children earlier than ever, often before they can speak. That has left parents and educators with a hard question: how much screen time is too much, and what does it cost a developing brain? A growing body of thinking compares heavy screen use to ultra-processed food, useful for a quick fix, but a poor substitute for what children actually need to grow.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Yolanda Carlos, Professor of Early Childhood Development at Pacific Oaks College & Children’s School, who brings nearly forty years of experience across every level of early childhood education. Together they explore why device bans are spreading through school districts, what technology industry parents understand about delaying screens, and how play, not software, builds the creativity and self-regulation children carry for life. Professor Carlos also shares how she prepares the next generation of teachers to use technology wisely, supporting learning without letting it replace the human connection at the heart of education.
Rather than framing technology as simply good or bad, this conversation focuses on building a healthier relationship with it, one that protects early childhood, strengthens human connection, and preserves each learner's own voice. It is a thoughtful, practical guide for educators and parents navigating a device-driven world.
In this episode:
- Why heavy screen use is being compared to ultra-processed food, and what it does to young brains
- What the people who build technology understand about delaying their own children's screen time
- How play-based, self-directed learning builds creativity, focus, and the ability to delay gratification
- Where technology genuinely supports learning, and where it should never replace a student's own voice
- Why protecting early childhood and play may be one of the most important investments a society can make
5 AUG 2026 · For most of higher education's history, a global education has looked the same: a traditional undergraduate spending a semester abroad in London or Barcelona. But that model leaves out the working adults, career changers, and first-generation students for whom picking up and leaving for months is simply not possible. If global perspective is essential to how students learn and lead, why is access to it still so narrow?
In this role-reversal episode of Radical Cooperation, Stephanie Bihr, Associate Director of Communications at The Community Solution, again turns the microphone on Dr. Michael Horowitz. Their conversation centers on global perspective, one of the seven superpowers of radical cooperation from Dr. Horowitz's book, The Community Solution: the Power of Radical Cooperation in Higher Education. Drawing on his own path as the child of immigrants and decades of building higher education programs, he shares how the system reimagined study abroad for adult learners. From a first Spanish immersion trip to Mexico to multi-institution courses in Germany, Cuba, and Japan, Dr. Horowitz and Stephanie discuss why the exchange always runs both ways.
Rather than treating global learning as a luxury reserved for the few, this episode focuses on the many ways institutions can open students' minds to the world, whether through a single week abroad, welcoming international students, or building partnerships across borders. It is a candid, wide-ranging look at why a global perspective keeps both students and institutions strong.
In this episode:
- Why the traditional semester-abroad model overlooks working adults, and how to redesign it
- How a single embedded week in another country can reshape how students see the world
- What pairing law and psychology students in Germany revealed about learning across disciplines
- How international students, immigrants, and cross-border partnerships bring the world to an institution.
- What American higher education can learn from how other countries teach, eat, and train physicians
22 JUL 2026 · Higher education has long prized individual expertise. Scholars master their fields, faculty are rewarded for their own research, and institutions often assume their job is to pour knowledge into students and guide the communities around them. But when learning moves in only one direction, institutions stop growing, and they miss what their peers, their communities, and their own students could teach them.In this role-reversal episode of Radical Cooperation, Stephanie Bihr, Associate Director of Communications at The Community Solution, turns the microphone around and interviews Dr. Michael Horowitz. Their conversation centers on two-way learning, one of the seven superpowers of radical cooperation that Dr. Horowitz introduces in his book, The Community Solution: The Power of Radical Cooperation in Higher Education. He shares candid examples from across his career, from rebuilding programs at The Chicago School to launching KansasCOM in Wichita, and explains why the strongest institutions treat learning as a two-way street with their peers, their communities, and their students.Rather than positioning the university as the sole expert in the room, this episode focuses on how a culture of continuous, reciprocal learning makes institutions more responsive, more connected, and more effective. It is a practical look at what it takes to keep learning, no matter how senior your role.In this episode:
- What two-way learning is and why it is one of radical cooperation's seven superpowers
- Why higher education's focus on individual expertise makes collective learning so difficult
- How institutions can learn from students, especially adult learners who bring real-world experience
- What KansasCOM's work in rural and underserved communities reveals about learning from a place
- Why the best leaders, and the best accreditation teams, stay open to many ways of doing things
8 JUL 2026 · American higher education has long equated quality with exclusivity, treating the number of students an institution rejects as a measure of its worth. That logic puts enormous pressure on the colleges that open their doors widest, and it frames struggling institutions as inevitable casualties of a shrinking market. But what if access and excellence were never actually in conflict?In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Dr. Jonathan Koppell, President of Montclair State University, the second largest university in New Jersey and one of the nation's leading institutions for economic opportunity and student success. Drawing on more than a decade of experience at Arizona State University, Dr. Koppell explains how a majority-minority, majority Pell-eligible university can deliver research-level excellence without sacrificing access. He also shares how Montclair made the decision to absorb the historic Bloomfield College, the only four-year predominantly Black institution in New Jersey, instead of allowing its distinctive mission to disappear.At a time when many assume distressed colleges have no choice but to close, this conversation explores how cooperation, thoughtful mergers, and a genuine commitment to community can preserve what makes institutions valuable. It is a candid look at why the strongest universities measure the impact they create, not the applicants they turn away.In this episode:
- Why access and excellence are not a trade-off, and how Montclair proves it at scale
- What the "delta," the value a university adds, reveals about real quality versus selectivity
- How the Bloomfield College merger preserved a distinctive mission while gaining economies of scale
- How Montclair's full-merger approach compares with the Community Solution's federated model
- Why cooperation among institutions, and partnership with local communities, matters more than competition
24 JUN 2026 · Higher education measures success in grades, credits, and completion rates. What those metrics rarely capture is what gets in the way: a broken-down car, a missed bus, a laptop the student doesn't own, or twenty dollars that the family can't spare. For a significant share of students, the difference between persisting and stopping out has nothing to do with academic ability and everything to do with circumstances no syllabus accounts for.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Bhaktirose Dawdy, Director of Student Basic Needs Initiatives at Mt. Hood Community College, about the emerging discipline of basic needs work in higher education. Drawing on Bhaktirose's 31-year career bridging social services and education, the conversation explores what students actually need to participate in college, how Mt. Hood's Equity and Community Resource Center was co-designed with students, and why small interventions, sometimes as small as twenty dollars or a one-month bus pass, can drive double-digit gains in retention.
Rather than framing basic needs as a peripheral student-services function, this episode focuses on what it looks like when basic needs are treated as central to institutional strategy. The conversation also examines the under-told story of community colleges, the role of national accreditation standards in legitimizing this work, and why the real first question for any college serious about student success may not be how to teach better, but how to remove the obstacles that keep students from showing up at all.
In this episode:
- What "basic needs" actually means and why technology and transportation often outrank food
- How co-designing with students changes the model of student support
- Why small dollar interventions can drive significant retention gains
- How community colleges serve populations the rest of higher ed underestimates
- What national accreditation standards are emerging around basic needs work
10 JUN 2026 · Higher education is often framed as a competition for students, rankings, and resources. But as financial pressures grow and the challenges facing colleges become more complex, some institutions are exploring a different path — one built on partnership rather than isolation.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Dr. Thomas Evans, President of the University of the Incarnate Word, about the creation of CHARISM, a new alliance of four Catholic universities across San Antonio, New York, Chicago, and San Juan. Together, they discuss how mission-driven institutions can collaborate to expand opportunity, strengthen sustainability, and preserve institutional identity while building something larger together.
Grounded in the principles of The Community Solution, the conversation explores the practical realities of building trust across institutions, launching shared initiatives, and creating partnerships rooted in shared values rather than competition.
In this episode:
- How CHARISM came together and what it means for its founding institutions
- Why long-term leadership matters in building successful partnerships
- The growing importance of bilingual and bicultural education
- What other colleges can learn from CHARISM’s collaborative model
- Advice for presidents and trustees considering institutional partnerships
27 MAY 2026 · The disconnect between higher education and the workforce is widely acknowledged but rarely addressed at the institutional level. Most universities respond by adding internships, expanding career services, or launching new programs. Few are built on the premise that half of what students need to learn cannot be taught in a classroom.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz speaks with Dr. Robert K. McMahan, President of Kettering University, about what it looks like when a university makes industry integration central to its identity. Drawing on Dr. McMahan's 15 years leading Kettering and the institution's century-long cooperative education model, the conversation explores how universities can build real professional experience into every student's path, why long-tenured presidencies make structural change possible, and what colleges owe the communities they sit in.
Rather than defending the traditional academic model, this episode focuses on what becomes possible when universities are willing to reinvent themselves. The conversation also looks at higher education's resistance to change, the rapid disappearance of entry-level roles in an AI-driven economy, and what genuine collaboration between universities, industry, and community looks like in practice.
In this episode:
- Why long-term presidencies make meaningful institutional change possible
- How Kettering's cooperative education model integrates classroom learning with professional experience
- What universities can do to support the cities and communities around them
- Why higher education often treats change as a threat rather than a need
- How AI is reshaping entry-level roles and what it means for higher ed
13 MAY 2026 · Radical cooperation is the key to building stronger, more resilient institutions—and in this episode, you’ll learn exactly how it works. Radical cooperation isn’t just a concept; it’s a practical framework made up of seven elements that can transform how teams collaborate and succeed. If you’ve ever wondered why some organizations thrive together while others struggle, this conversation reveals the structure behind real collaboration.
Hosted by Dr. Horowitz and Associate Director of Communications for The Community Solution Education System, Stephanie Bihr, this episode explores the 7 elements of radical cooperation from Dr. Horowitz’s book, https://www.amazon.com/Community-Solution-Radical-Cooperation-Education/dp/B0FP149X2C, and how they apply. From niche superpowers and two-way learning to productive humility and continuous urgency, you’ll hear how these principles help institutions navigate uncertainty, strengthen partnerships, and drive meaningful outcomes. Whether you're leading a team, managing change, or building community, this episode offers a clear framework for working better together.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The 7 elements that make radical cooperation actually work
- How to identify and leverage your organization’s niche superpower
- Why two-way learning strengthens teams and communities
- The role of humility and risk-taking in effective collaboration
- How continuous urgency drives real impact and momentum
Don’t risk operating in silos while others build stronger, more adaptive partnerships. Learn how to apply radical cooperation to create lasting impact.
Welcome to Radical Cooperation, the podcast in which higher education leaders explore collaboration as the key to lasting change. Host Dr. Michael Horowitz, together with presidents, chancellors, and trailblazing experts,...
show more
Welcome to Radical Cooperation, the podcast in which higher education leaders explore collaboration as the key to lasting change. Host Dr. Michael Horowitz, together with presidents, chancellors, and trailblazing experts, dives into thought-provoking conversations about solutions to some of the most pressing issues in higher education. From fostering partnerships across institutions to leveraging innovation over tradition, each episode unpacks how cooperation, not competition, drives success. If you're ready to embrace bold, forward-thinking ideas that unite and inspire, you’re in the right place.
show less
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| Author | Sweet Fish |
| Organization | Sweet Fish |
| Categories | Education |
| Website | - |
| radicalcooperation1@gmail.com |
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