President Alicia Córdoba, D.M.A. brings more than two decades of experience in Catholic higher education, both as a faculty member and administrator, to her new role leading the nationally ranked liberal arts institution.
A native of the Chicago suburbs, Córdoba spent 19 years in faculty and administrative positions of increasing authority at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. She recently served as associate vice president and Beirne director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.
A graduate of The Juilliard School where she was the first woman to receive a doctor of musical arts in English horn performance, Córdoba has performed oboe and English horn with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Full Transcript:
Shelley Irwin: Welcome to Powerful Women Let's Talk, I'm Shelley Irwin. Today we are speaking with Dr. Alicia Cordoba, president of Aquinas College. Extended resume, more than two decades of experience in Catholic higher education, faculty member, administrator, of course a mission-driven and motivational leader, broad expertise in strategic operational planning, financial management, i.e. she counts the money, and stewardship. Much more on the list, also serving as an associate VP, inaugural Byrne director of the Center to Catholic Studies at Saint Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. We might ask about that river walk. But listen to this, she has received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in English horn performance. Juilliard School will drop that, and of course working with her oboe as well. We will fill in the blanks. Hello to you, Dr. Cordoba.
Alicia Cordoba: Hello to you as well.
SI: I saved about three minutes for an oboe performance.
AC: I should have brought it. I'm sorry. Next time.
SI: Did you play every day? Do you practice every day? I'll just go there.
AC: Oh, the question. No, I don't practice every day anymore. I did. Many hours a day, as a matter of fact. As a president of a college, time is limited. Time is limited.
SI: Well, a doctorate, of course, musical arts degree in English horn performance plus degrees in oboe performance. What was the original dream?
AC: Oh, with my oboe and my English horn, I had a major symphony player. That was it. That was the trajectory.
SI: Did that come true?
AC: I was playing with the Chicago Symphony when I decided that probably wasn't my trajectory anymore. Loved it, matter of time, but I felt something else nagging at me.
SI: There's where we'll get deep. You were the president of Aquinas College before we go there. When did you begin to, well, let's just say, study higher education?
AC: My first job actually teaching. I was hired to teach one class, and I very much enjoyed it. It was kind of curious being on the front side of the classroom rather than being inside as a student. I guess it was OK. But I happened to be hired at a Catholic school, and I became very enamored of what is this difference between Catholic education and my secular education, University of Illinois. Juilliard, very different. So I really enjoyed that new experience.
SI: And I'll go there. What was the difference? Why Catholic education for, obviously, your niche?
AC: My niche? Well, I think God had a plan in that. There was just something that was intriguing me that allowed me, and then with working with my students and my colleagues, to really fill in all the parts of who I was. They said, when I was on the stage, oh, I love to play. Love to be, especially Chicago Symphony. Oh my goodness, Juilliard. The players are amazing. You're just in heaven. But there was always something that wasn't there. Like, I can play, I love to play, these are my friends, but there's something else. And I found Catholic higher education being that. Mind, body, spirit. The faith could be ever present and without a problem, talking, thinking, being. So it just gave me that piece.
SI: What brought you to Aquinas? How did this path happen for you as the president?
AC: That's a really good question. Again, I think God had a plan. I'm like, okay, if this is where you're taking me, I will go. I think that many years ago when I was first teaching at that Catholic school in Illinois, the president there at the time, I was teaching a few classes. He said, you know, if you ever wanted to be a president, you would have to go somewhere else and come back if you wanted to do that here. And many years I would think about what was he talking about? So the more I got engaged in many of the tasks that you described that I...found myself doing just because people asked and I wanted to learn. The more I realized administration is really something. I love this Catholic higher education. He thought maybe I could be a president. So that was how I found myself in Texas. President said, if you could create the center for Catholic studies for me, I said, I can do that. I've created them before. Will you help me become a president? I need a few skill gaps filled, will you guide me through that process? And I said, I can help you for three to five years. I found myself at Aquinas in four.
SI: Was that perhaps the power of someone believing in you?
AC: Absolutely. And myself believing that there was something more calling me, but absolutely somebody believing them. Yes, I will do that for you.
SI: Nice, I'm sure. You give back to others. You are described as a mission-driven and motivational leader. Was this instilled in your upbringing? Take me back to the young Dr. Colburn.
AC: Thinking about that, it has to be. You don't just all of a sudden become an administrator, one to be one. It kind of has to have something in your background and that concept of having some purpose. So yes, I think both of my parents were very driven by ideals, living certain lifestyles and always doing things for others. So I think I just, I grew up watching that. And then my dad was an immigrant. He came from Spain, met my mother, American in Spain. They got married, came here, started a family. My dad didn't speak English very much, and my mom trying to bring up all these kids, I used to just go listen to my dad talk. I was fascinated by the world of business. I just thought the relationships you had and then the people he would bring home to visit or to schmooze or whatever the case was. I just loved that. I thought, I want to do good things for people in the highest possible way. And so between how my mother helped my dad and helped, you know, be a really great mom, and still finding her way while helping him, I just, I wanted that. I wanted to be like that. So absolutely, I believe that they inspired that mission drive.
SI: Good for them and for you. Today, again, Aquinas College president, talk about the importance…I know you're dubbed in bringing team building to today's higher education success. Talk about your team and your daily experience.
AC: I have an incredible leadership team at Aquinas College. Having people you can work with and that you can trust is key to any successful leader. I found that in music. I find that at the school. I find that, I even found that when I was a faculty member. And even a private teacher, even if I was teaching by myself, the teamwork I would find between me and my students, extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. If you don't have that kind of collaboration, trust, belief in what somebody else is even believing in you, what you're capable of doing, and you're sharing that with each other, oh, everything's possible. Everything's absolutely possible.
SI: When did you pick up your first instrument?
AC: Let's see, how old is one in fourth grade? Nine, ten, something like that. My oboe was actually my very first instrument.
SI: Why'd you choose this instrument? Because my brother thought it was cool, and he was in sixth grade, so he said that would be a fun one.
SI: Was he a musician?
AC: At the time, yes. He was playing cornet trumpet, and he was really good at it, and I really looked up to him. And so if he thought it was a fun thing and a really cool instrument, that was my only choice for me.
SI: You make your own reeds?
AC: I do. Yes, yes.
SI: This progress between your, I guess you have an academic journey and a stage journey, do they correlate?
AC: Absolutely, absolutely. That drive to be successful on the stage is no different than my drive to constantly want to better myself, to constantly work towards something more and above and beyond. I love the classroom, I love working with students, I also love what happens on the stage with the people that are around you and the sound you make, each one is separate, but everybody together, same thing when you're in the classroom, same thing when you work in administration. It's always that everybody doing something that makes something grander happen. So they're both absolutely the same to me.
SI: I keep wanting to go back to, what was that first class you taught?
AC: Women in music. Wow. I think. Actually. No, it was a world music class. I was supposed to teach women in music because I thought I could do that. I'm a woman. How hard could that be? And then all of a sudden, well, we don't need that this semester you're coming in. We actually need this other class. I'm like, well, I love music of the world so I could teach that too.
SI: Hence the marriage of academia and obviously your love for music. I'm going to stay on the topic of playing a musical instrument. How important, I'm leading the question, how important is it to play musical instrument at any age?
AC: Oh if you have the opportunity even if you've never played before pick something up. There's it well for me and when I've watched with other people too that started young started old there's it's a way of communication, a space you could have by yourself and with others that you can't have in any other capacity. Like when I'm performing I know I can I cannot find words for. And so at any point in one's life, if you could pick up an instrument of any kind, even if you're tapping on a table, there's just something about what's happening between the sound the body changes and then how somebody's taking them or perceiving them. There is something beyond yourself in that whole communication space.
SI: What's your advice to those that want to either perform on stage or...have their first class or lecture, how do you minimize the butterflies or what do you say to yourself? Because you're all over it now.
AC: Well, the butterflies will always be there. So don't pretend they're not going to exist. I still get nervous until the first note comes out of my horn and then it goes into a whole other, almost a religious experience. I think it's if, as I say to myself, I've said to my students and even colleagues, that as long as you've put everything you can into it, go on the stage and just enjoy the moment. Don't think about how perfect it is. Just play. And all of it, people will hear that from you. They won't hear the couple of notes that might be a little bit off. They'll hear the joy of what you're saying from your joy and passion of the performance. And that will be what they'll take from that moment in time.
SI: One of your talents is to perform, premiere, and commission to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary. Talk about this side of your talents. Yes.
AC: My very eclectic career. That was a project that I started with a sabbatical. I took my first sabbatical as a tenured faculty member. I wanted to figure out how to bridge all the loves of my life, the intellect, my music, and my love of the faith, particular, I have a devotion to the Blessed Mother. So I think I started this in 2016, 2017, this project of writing about the theology why we love our mother, I call her my mom, the Blessed Mother, and what does the church teach and why is she so amazing for us. And then I visit shrines around the world and throughout the United States to experience that the love of her. And then I thought, well, how does my music fit all of that? I said, well, if I talk, I don't write music. I play, perform music. So I ask friends or people I meet along the way, have they ever thought of writing in her honor? And most of them say no. So we talk about it. So it's a way of talking about how she fits in the Catholic faith, how she fits even in other faiths, and what that might mean for them. No one has ever turned me down. And I have an incredible array of music written in her honor, which again, when I finally get to the point of finishing this book, it will go along, a recording that will go along with it.
SI: Tell me more about the book.
AC: It literally is almost an ode to the Blessed Mother. It's the teachings of why she's so important to us and how she could really be a strength for us. That's one part. The spiritual part is I literally take diaries, visiting shrines around the world. I've chosen six in Europe and six of the international sites in the United States. And then I visit, I take notes. Originally I thought about just saying how beautiful these spaces are until somebody actually read some of the notes and said, you need to close the door, go in your room, read what you wrote. And I realized I was writing in male voices, female voices, I was getting direction. I was complaining, all these different things were happening. I said, that's what people need to know about that devotion to her. She's right there with you, helping guide you. Her son, Jesus, is right there too. It's a phenomenon. So that's the book part. And then this music will go with, again, that other part of the voice. You hear the spiritual journey, you hear that how it's journeyed in its music. And then where does it actually all come from? What is the truth in the teachings of the church?
SI: Talk to me a little bit about you serving as a president of Aquinas College. I don't need numbers, but are you rare as a female?
AC: Yes, in the entire sector of higher education in general, and also in Catholic higher ed more specifically. And I'm the first at Aquinas College, first female president. So I'm the 13th, but actually the first female. Which is interesting to me because it was started by women. It was started by the Dominican sisters. So I take this as an incredible honor and a gift to represent the womanhood of the founding of the institution at this stage in its history. But pretty, pretty amazing.
SI: Off the cuff question. What's the role of what's, what's your husband called first? First gentleman. What's his role in your life is we speak.
AC: Listening to me most of the time and keeping me calm when there's so many things to have to juggle all the time. No, he actually, to me, I call him the alumni gatherer because he's out talking to people. He's always wearing Aquinas gear and people ask him, oh, did you go to school there? And he says, no, my wife is president. So it starts conversations. And 99% of the time the person's either an alum of the school, a sibling or a parent was in one of those schools or they know somebody who went there. So he tries to get people back, but he just enjoys being with people and he loves being a part of Aquinas and he loves not having to work. I could do that for the two of us.
SI: You could do that. You could have a best friend. What do you say to the young Dr. Cordoba who picks up an English Horn, an oboe for the first time and begins that plan?
AC: If I think back to when I first started, oh my goodness, did I want to quit? It sounded so bad. Um, but I persevered a lot of that again. And my mother is an incredible mom, um, in the sense of the word. Um, but really always just persevere because the more you work hard at it, um, the more you just keep trying to do your best. Good things happened. Um, but, but, but always to kind of watch the path. For example, here I started playing this instrument that took me out of the stage with the Chicago Symphony. That was a 30-some-odd-year journey. And then where it all kind of kept twisting and turning, I'm like, what an amazing path! I said, I'm not the only one who has an amazing path. And that's what I would say to people. Just watch what's happening in your life. Don't underestimate any moment. Don't underestimate that one thing somebody might say that jars something in your head and maybe there is something different for me. And just be ready for anything. Like a lot of those things you read about what I do, somebody just asked and I said, sure, I don't know how to do that. I'll figure it out. And sure enough, I gained so many friends, colleagues, and a lot of respect, obviously, because I ended up with this job, which is an incredible job and an incredible school. What a God given gift to be there. But really, just to be thankful for everything, but always just pay attention to every day because every day is a grace.
SI: Your students have a nickname for you? Dr. C or anything? Exciting.
AC: That's a good question. I'm not sure I have that, but my daughter's friends all call me a mama T because her last name is Tate. No, actually, they have at Aquinas, the students have associated me with the term mariposa, which is Spanish for butterfly. So that's my symbol at the school because they heard of a story when I said my first real connection with Michigan was at the Michigan Dunes camping with my family and a butterfly would come out of the trees and land on my shoulder every day for a week. I could hold it, it would be there all day until I went into the camper and it would fly back into the trees. Not to any other family member, just to me. So my name, kind of if there is a nickname, is Mariposa.
SI: Very nice. Keep those wings flying. Thank you very much, President of Aquinas College, Dr. Alicia Cordoba. Take care.
AC: You too.
