MALVERN, Pa. — A swimming race taught Colin J. Neill, chancellor and chief academic officer at Penn State Great Valley, a valuable professional lesson. In college, a friend of Neill’s — who was the captain of the women’s swim team — challenged him to an informal race up and down the length of the pool. Though Neill guessed his friend would win, he said, he figured that playing basketball made his level of fitness comparable to hers, so he agreed to compete.

But before he made it across the pool, he said, she had completed both lengths to win easily. Neill was stunned. How had his friend beat him with what seemed like so little effort?

Neill said he realized that while they were similar in strength, his technique was not nearly as efficient as his friend’s. Her training allowed her to optimize her strokes and speed through the water more than twice as fast as he could. He had underestimated the gap between their skill levels and the difference that would make in their performance.

“And we see that a lot in industry, too,” Neill said. Just as he misjudged his swimming ability as good enough, he sees financially successful corporations assume that their methods of operation are good enough.

“We become convinced that, because we’ve not failed miserably, what we’re doing must be correct,” he said. However, he pointed out, “you don’t even know how good it could be if you got the technique right.” 

Neill took this lesson with him when he worked as a software and systems engineer and then began teaching these disciplines at Penn State Great Valley in 1999. As a professor, Neill said, he noticed that some of his graduate students were hesitant to abandon their companies’ usual ways of working to embrace the new methods he taught them. Students sometimes told him that their employers were doing well, so their corporate practices must work well enough.

“My response was always, ‘Imagine how well they’d be doing if they were doing it the right way,’” Neill said.

In a book he co-authored called “Antipatterns,” which offers strategies for handling various organizational problems, Neill identified this common resistance to adopting best practices and dubbed it “being dogmatic about dysfunction.” To counteract it, he wrote, “Foster an atmosphere of inquiry and advancement. Encourage staff to explore new techniques, set up training in their current techniques and ensure that the evangelists in your organization are themselves open to self-improvement.”

Neill said he has made this openness to improvement a goal for himself and has fostered this attitude among students, first as a professor and now as chancellor and chief academic officer at Penn State Great Valley since 2022. And despite the inherent difficulties of learning new techniques, Neill consistently hears former students express appreciation for the value they got from their graduate studies.
 

“This is grad school, not grade school,” Neill said. “I like the fact that people found it challenging and they learned something from it. That’s the point.”

Mike Guth took classes with Neill and completed his master’s in software engineering at Penn State Great Valley in 2011. While technology has evolved since then, Guth said he learned enduring lessons during his graduate studies, such as data-driven decision-making and systems thinking, which have been valuable as he has progressed in his career. In the years since he earned his master’s degree, Guth has risen up the ranks at the tax technology company Vertex, advancing from software engineer to senior director of software architecture.

Guth remembered learning about object-oriented design from Neill, who explained the basics and did not rush ahead to more complex approaches too soon. Neill taught students to add complexities to an object-oriented application only to address specific problems in a context.

“This fundamentally changed how I approached software development in Java early in my career and is still conceptually how I coach,” Guth said, mentioning that he still has one of the textbooks from that class. Just as Neill taught him, Guth encourages his team of software architects to establish “firm grounding in the fundamentals of a technology or methodology.” Guth said his graduate studies helped him with not only the technical aspects of his job, but also with understanding organizational issues and leading people.

“All of what we do is professionally oriented. It’s not high-minded theory, it’s not isolated from business, industry, society; it’s fully integrated into it.” Neill said. “What you learn in the classroom, you can use the next day at work. That’s really been our mantra.”

Penn State Great Valley’s programs have high rankings from third-parties, Neill said, which further attests to the programs’ value.

“We maintain a very relevant and contemporary set of programs,” he said.

In the past several years, he responded to industry needs by leading efforts to develop and introduce Great Valley’s newest master’s degrees in data analytics and artificial intelligence.

For Neill, one of the clearest indicators of the strength of Great Valley’s programs is their impact on students’ career paths.

“If someone’s career accelerates post-graduation because of the education we’ve provided, that’s evidence that we’re creating value, for that student and for society,” Neill said.

Some students have become industry leaders and entrepreneurs, he said; some have gone on to earn doctoral degrees, and many have landed high-level roles in major companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Google, IBM and more. Neill referenced studies that show that a graduate degree in business, computer science or engineering — especially from research universities with large alumni networks, such as Penn State — can lead to increased lifetime earnings of about $700,000 to $1 million.

To complement Great Valley’s academic offerings, Neill said, the campus is embracing its land-grant mission and getting more engaged with the local community through continuing to offer free cultural events, film screenings, lectures and rotating art exhibits. The campus is also working to establish an arboretum to create a more beautiful environment for students, staff and faculty, and also to improve its stewardship of natural resources by replacing excess pavement with native plantings.

In his leadership of various campus initiatives as chancellor, Neill said he continually looks for ways to improve himself and Great Valley’s offerings for students and the broader community. Drawing on what he learned from losing that swimming race and from his ongoing pursuit of knowledge as an academic, he cultivates intellectual humility and teachability — qualities that are sometimes rare in leaders. During a recent staff town hall meeting, he asked employees, “What could I be doing better to support you?” He was not afraid to ask for feedback, he said.

“My key motivation is my passion for this campus and its mission,” Neill said. “This place is not just a place of work. It’s not just a school where we teach students; it’s a community.”