Gene White feels Odessa College chose him; he didn’t choose it.
White, now the associate dean of the School of Business and Industry, came to town as part of a delegation from Southeast Arkansas College as part of OC’s leadership institute. The customer service, the culture and atmosphere fit with White’s personality and spirit.
“I didn’t volunteer to come with my former school, but I was assigned to come and when I got here, it was breathtaking. … It was very complimentary to how I went about interacting with people. It was really friendly. I got along with everybody throughout the OCLI sessions. I was very happy when I got the opportunity to come here,” White said.
White was already getting involved at OC before he got here joining the weekly Twitter chats.
“Dr. White has been a wonderful addition to our OC team. He embodies our culture and our mission to be the best community college in the country,” Vice President of Administrative Services Ken Zartner said.
From Pine Bluff, Ark., White has two associate degrees, one bachelor’s, one master’s and a doctorate coming April 29. He earned a bachelor’s degree of professional studies and information technology in math from Arkansas Tech, his master’s degree from John Brown and he is finishing his doctorate from Maryville University.
In addition to his academic endeavors, White is also a podcaster. He has one called Hijack My Life and Wranger Waves.
Wranger Waves was around before White arrived at OC and some episodes are on SoundCloud.
“When I got involved with the Black History Month planning committee, I had previous experience with my own podcast. I just saw where there was potentially an opportunity for us to make the podcast more efficient, and then provide a way for more people to subscribe to it by utilizing a actual podcast platform where people can go out and subscribe to the RSS feeds and things like that. So that’s kind of how … I got involved with that particular program” White said.
“Podcasting actually gives individuals and organizations a platform that allows them to share their story in a way that may not necessarily be traditional media. It honestly is a low to no barrier way for an individual to get in and talk about the things that are important to them. That’s what I see podcasting. For me, it was a way to share things that I had struggled with and how I overcame those things when it comes to productivity, and then taking back control of my life from the world that wishes to monopolize that time, talent and energy. … That’s how it really helped me to grow and to actually share those things,” White said.
He started his Hijack My Life podcast in late 2021. Hijacking his life meant getting control back.
“I came up with the idea in November of 2021. But then I started researching how to podcast, what platform to use, what equipment do I need? Can I just use regular recording equipment that I’ve used for recording albums back in the past and I just use that. YouTube University is always good for me, so I started to research those things and I decided okay … January is when I’m going to start my first podcast, and that was 2022,” White said.
“I recorded my intro for the podcast in December to kind of warm people up and then also to get the RSS feed out there. I needed it to be out for about two weeks so that when I recorded my first episode in January, the RSS feed would already have shown up on the different platforms … where people could just go to their phone and download it,” he added.
He called the podcast Hijack My Life because he got into bullet journaling in October 2018.
“I was struggling with (having) too many different irons in the fire and not enough to sort it out. … Bullet journaling was a way for me to sort those things out, write it down, check things off the checklist. Because of that, I was able … to reflect … I would take 5, 10, 15 minutes a day just to reflect. Sometimes I would do it in the morning, and at night. Then other times I may just do it once a day, but those reflections actually helped me to understand what was going on; things that I needed to improve on, or things that I just need to get out of my head,” White said.
Before he got into education, White sold cell phones for almost 10 years and there were always tasks to do and he never felt like he was in control, so if there was a life event that prompted the podcasts, he said, this was it.
He added that it was also preparation for Odessa College.
“I’ve never been so busy in higher education as I’ve been here, but I can handle it because I’ve built that muscle memory from going through those pieces where I was really busy in retail and then figuring out how to deal with that. So now, even though it gets hectic, and we’re always on the cutting edge and we’re always doing new things and taking care of whatever we have to take care of here, I’m able to go in and handle those because I’ve done the work in the past,” White said.
White never thought about a career in higher education. He was going to play pro golf when he graduated from high school. His backup was to be a medical doctor.
“I was on the golf team in high school. … I had a scholarship to play at … University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. That didn’t work out because I had a poor advising experience. I was 18 years old; didn’t know any better. Actually, that incident fueled the way that I handled customers in retail. And it also fueled how I handled students as customers inside of higher education,” White said.
That negative experience, plus how he was treated when he tried to pay for his classes outright caused White to never go back to University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff as a student. In each of those instances he kept the same mindset. He was going to aim for service excellence.
White’s goal is to make the School of Business and Industry the best division in America.
How does he plan to do that?
“By cultivating, developing and working with my strong team of chairs that I already have. I’m fortunate to have what I feel like is probably the best team of department chairs on campus. They support me. They’ve shown me nothing but respect since I’ve gotten here. That kind of support and respect actually allows me to push even harder and to grind tougher just because I know I have their support,” White said.
“One of my philosophies just on leadership is I try to be firm and friendly and fair. If we’re looking at a linear line, I have friendly on one end, firm on the other end, I have fear in the middle … I’m going to always be friendly. That’s my general nature is that I’m going to be friendly. I’m going to be fair across the board, because if I have to be firm, I’m also going to be firm across the board as well. That’s why fear kind of sits in the middle of there, but it works. We just make sure that we’re getting the job done and see how far we can push it to the next level,” he added.
