Is Now the Right Time to Get a Master's Degree for Clinical Research w/ Randy Sears

Randy Sears discusses his role as an education administrator in the Master of Management in Clinical Informatics (MMCI) program at Duke University. He reflects on his transition from a long career in technology to education, emphasizing the importance of shaping student experiences and fostering self-discovery. The discussion covers the significance of balancing entrepreneurial and executive skills in healthcare, the diverse perspectives brought by students in the MMCI program, and the value of higher education in personal and professional growth. 

John Reites and Randy discuss the complexities of navigating life decisions related to education, the evolving landscape of higher education, and the impact of technology and generational changes on healthcare. They explore the value of advanced degrees, the influence of social media on educational choices, and the role of AI in both education and healthcare. The discussion emphasizes the importance of face-to-face learning experiences and the need for educational institutions to deliver real value to students.

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Inclusion Criteria is the clinical research podcast exploring global clinical trials, drug development, and life‑science innovation. We cover everything clinical research to deepen your industry knowledge, further your career and help you stay current on the market responsible for the future of medicine.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

If I were to watch 10 YouTube videos and I see an influencer

SPEAKER_02: 0:04

that

SPEAKER_01: 0:06

was at an Ivy League college and they're telling somebody that basically college is great, you should go get an advanced degree. And then literally the next swipe I do is some influencer telling me college is a complete waste of your money. You shouldn't spend any time in higher education. You should just, you know, I don't know, go start a business, go do whatever that is that they tell people. What do you tell people? people who have watched that influencer on YouTube and really are thinking through and wrestling with that advice. Who is Randy and what do you do in clinical research?

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

I'm an education administrator. I run a program called Master of Management in Clinical Informatics and I have a front row seat. to healthcare professionals growing in their careers. And so I get to shape that experience for them. That's the thing that excites me the most and watch them go through that. I work with students up close as they work through a one-year master's.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

You've been working at Duke's MMCI program, obviously since the start, a little over 10 years ago. But before that, you had a very long career in technology in the Research Triangle Park area. So How did that corporate career in technology and a large, very growth-oriented corporation prepare you to come over and lead a program that focuses on generating the future of life science and healthcare leadership professionals?

SPEAKER_00: 1:41

Yeah, well, maybe it did or maybe it didn't, John. The transition has gone, fortunately, extremely well. I spent 25 years at Nortel in a variety of different roles, most of them sales-oriented. And as you might imagine, launching a new educational program and telling the world it exists because it was another Me Too educational opportunity or offering. It was a very different one. So having that sense of how do you tell the story about a new offering and a sales background, I thought was tremendously important in doing that. That's been a very informative background to have in this. And then there's all the other things about budgeting and managing financial things, managing people and developing people. That was part of my earlier career at Nortel. It's part of this. But I think as much as anything, it was the experience, selling an idea, selling a solution that I brought to this because I spent a good bit of my time recruiting. That's a lot of our time and energy right here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:41

Let's get to the real question. Do you get good Duke basketball tickets at Cameron?

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

I get soccer tickets, John. I wish I got basketball tickets. There he is. There's the blue devil.

SPEAKER_01: 2:55

I know I ask you this every year, and I'm just expecting like one year, you're like, yeah, John, I've got these extra seats, and you should just take them from

SPEAKER_00: 3:01

me. Well, I won't keep that in mind, John. You know, I grew up in the shadow of Duke, and I've probably seen a ton of Duke basketball when I was younger. Most of the times I was selling Cokes in the stands.

SPEAKER_01: 3:14

But did you graduate from UNC, though?

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

I did. A couple of times. A couple of times. That's true. Yeah. So, you know, I have to sort of keep that a secret.

SPEAKER_01: 3:22

You do have to keep that. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to out your secret, but sorry about that. I just say, tell people you were reformed. You speak about this discovery process and how you think about considering higher education and how it adapts and enhances your career. And so tell me more about that. Like, what does that mean? And how do you coach people to think in that way?

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

I think with my colleagues, Catherine and Ellen, who does our career coaching, we collectively think about how do we shape the student experience over the time they're going to spend with us, which we get a year with them. And we are talking about working professionals. So they come in typically working in health care. They may be at the early part of their careers, they may be mid-career. So we have them walking in the door and we start thinking about what do we want them to walk out the door with? We, to borrow a line from Al Buehler, who coached cross country here and track here forever, we begin with the end in mind. What do we see as a success when we imagine our students? And then we start thinking, how do we get them there? The curriculum is obviously a big piece of that. And we're bringing lots of knowledge to them in a curriculum different topics. And then we start thinking about, so what will they do with this knowledge? And how do we help them discover for themselves what they will do with this knowledge? We bring in speakers of special topics just to introduce them to ideas. Folks like yourself, John, who talked to our students, bring a perspective to them and inform them. And so we try to shape that experience is by introducing them to a lot of things and letting them do a bit of discovery. And then Our career coach, our friend Ellen, has a curriculum that helps them think about what are the things that I really care about or in a sense would like to work on? What are the things that I'm good at? And how do I begin to bring those things together in a career and a role? And then if I'm good at this and I care about that, how do I articulate that? The value that if I were one of our students, the value I would bring an organization. Here's what I care about. Here's what I can do. Here's what I want to do. Here's what I can do in this organization. So we think about that beginning with the end in mind. And we try to shape that experience and give them the opportunity for self-discovery and nudge them along the way. Then we do some individual coaching as

SPEAKER_01: 5:44

well. That discovery process I think is impactful. And I think early in my career, I wish actually someone would come along to me and ask me some of those questions. Not that I think it would have changed my trajectory because I fell into clinical research. I didn't, my only C in college was in biology. I'm not equipped to be in this industry. It happened to me in circumstances and I'm grateful for it. At the same You're right. When you're in college, I don't remember a lot of people asking me those questions, helping me to discover when you're working with students and you're thinking through how to adapt their career for clinical research, this ability to help them think not just entrepreneurially, which I think is kind of in vogue to do. It's cool to say, these are the entrepreneurs, these are the people doing it. But strategically to say, I actually want you to hear what it's like to be an entrepreneur, what it's like to be executive is equally as important. And balancing those two things, I think, is really a testament of what you guys have set up and what I've really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_00: 6:39

It seems to go well in our curriculum with our students. Think of our students often as having a consulting skill set, one that you can take a problem apart, peel the layers of the onion. And then do the same thing for solutions. Think through it and then bring that to life. And then you've got to sell that to somebody, John. It can be internal. Invest in this. This is a better way of doing things. We can do this. And here's what we'll get out of it. Or maybe it's truly an entrepreneurial effort. And we've seen our students be successful.

SPEAKER_01: 7:12

What is the Duke MMCI program and what does it offer to students that get into it?

SPEAKER_00: 7:17

This was a creation, if you will, a fellow by the name of Kevin Shulman, who was the founding director, with a lot of other input and guidance from a number of healthcare leaders at Duke. They used, at the time, the HITECH Act as this catalyst for what they believed was a new skill set that was needed in the healthcare marketplace. There was going to be far more data that was structured in a way that could be used than had ever been. while we've always sort of been awash with data, but putting some structure to that. And then the other thought was, now we're going to start doing things with data, but it won't just be technology people doing technology things. We need to solve problems for clinical people, for consumers, for users. So how do they, they sort of envisioned a skill set that would enable people to see the problem as well as solutions from more than one angle, the business world, the clinical world, and the technical world, if you want to think about those as functional silos. So Kevin believed that the idea behind this program was to bring a business framework to thinking about how technology and data could be used in healthcare. When we started, we were all excited about new EHR systems. Obviously, today it's all about AI. It's hardly a conversation without it. But the idea is still the same. How do we think about, from a framework perspective, bringing technology and data to healthcare to solve a problem? So the MMCI curriculum is built to prepare people to do that. And we get clinical, technical, and business people. We learn from each other through the year. It's an immersion of a year. of people with different backgrounds and from across healthcare. Yes, we have people in provider organizations, research organizations, payer organizations, medical device organizations, and they're all sort of learning from each other as part of that process. That's what MMCI is all about.

SPEAKER_01: 9:09

Whenever a new year starts, the exciting piece is that you do such a good job of getting a variety of students. I remember, I think it was a couple years ago, we were doing like one of the kickoffs, like the kickoff weekends, like boot camp. Boot camp. And people are going around introducing themselves. And you had, you know, just finished undergrad into program, running a division of FDA, head of big pharma patient recruitment. And it was, you know, people are just spouting this off. And then where are they from? California. I'm doing a side from India. I'm over here from Spain. And so for me, I think one of the most exciting things is really thinking not just about who comes into the program, but sort of the mindset they come in with to work as teams, right? Meaning you We've got seasoned people, new people and people with different backgrounds. I think that's really intriguing and different. And that's how you learn, right? You learn from these completely different ideas and hearing the same thing said from somebody who has a very different background, a different perspective. It's just always been amazing to me how that works.

SPEAKER_00: 10:11

I think it's one of the coolest moments in the program is to go around the room and let folks introduce themselves for the first time and look at everybody else's sort of expressions going, wow. And then I love to see that when faculty will start a new course and they'll say, tell me a little bit about yourselves. And then what are you looking for out of the program? That sort of thing. Yeah, that's a very cool moment. But it also makes a very rich educational experience. It is peer to peer. I mean, our classroom discussions, as you well know, are pretty lively. And so, you know, these are thoughtful folks who know what they know well and what they're learning and challenge each other and add to each other's thoughts.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

For those listening that are thinking about higher education, advancing their career, adding more to the repertoire for a long-term career trajectory, What I wanted people to hear was that there's actually other opportunities besides I go to get an MBA and the program is, you know, I've got to take off a work on these days that there's actually a lot of other options and opportunities out there. Because I don't think we talk about this as much as I'd like to see in clinical research and specifically with that lens. So there's an individual who's thinking about, I'm interested in higher education. I'm trying to assess if that's good for me, if I can fit it into my schedule at work, my life schedule with my kids, my family. How do you recommend someone assess that on their own?

SPEAKER_00: 11:35

One of the things that we say to every individual perspective student is, number one, it's a very busy year. You're going to continue your life working. You're not looking to stop work to do this. You're going to need a support system that is also on board with you. In fact, I just said, as we've been writing our incoming class, because we'll start again in late July, I've been writing them and reminding them, get your support system on board. Maybe you pay forward some things you can do now because you're not going to be able to do nearly the things you've been doing. That's the one that's just being upfront about the time demand. I think the the way they grasp that even more importantly is to talk to a current student, talk to a former student. And former students and current students and visiting class are the best way, I think, to learn about any academic program. Both, you know, pick the brains of the people in it. How are you managing it? What have you let go? What have you had to manage your time? Time management is obviously a huge one. And I think not hiding from the fact that this is very demanding And build that in. The nice part is everybody tells me when they begin the program, oh, I could do anything for 12 months. I think the fact that you can put a beginning and an end to it that looks like 12 months is really important.

SPEAKER_01: 12:50

On the reverse, we all know that higher education is important. It's valuable, but it has to be with the right timing. I don't have a higher education. I actually don't have that kind of a degree.

SPEAKER_02: 13:00

And

SPEAKER_01: 13:01

really because of where I was at in my career and financially, I dug in and took some different routes because that's what I had to do. Not because someone would have come along and I would have been able to figure out how to make the time. I would have really appreciated it. So for people that were like me in that sort of situation or in that situation today in their career that can take this advice that you've given and assess, you know, why they should go into higher education, why they should spend time with advanced degree. What's the inverse? How would you convince somebody to not do it and maybe not spend the time or convince them the timing's not right?

SPEAKER_00: 13:33

When you think about higher education, a quality program, a Duke program, institutions like Duke, they're going to take you somewhere. And that first question you have to be able to answer is, is that somewhere they're going to take me where I want to go? Because if it's not, And it's not going to get you what you want. A, that's the wrong program. It still doesn't mean there isn't a right program, but that's the wrong program. Now, the second phase of that question you're asking is maybe education is not right for me. I don't need to invest money. time, money, and a formal education. There are so many opportunities to learn specific skills and knowledge online, and a lot of people self-educate. And I think they do really well. I mean, you know, you have to bring a discipline to that. We just had a panel Thursday night where three of our graduates were doing a deep dive about AI and how they're using it in their careers. They didn't learn all of that. in MMCI. I wish I could take credit for that. They learned the basics. They learned foundational things and they learned framework for thinking about it. But they've applied themselves in learning ever since and to continue to grow. So could a person do that without formal education? Of course they could. Formal education maybe is the easier pathway, to be honest with you. At least it's organized and you have a beginning and the end and somebody's really thought hard about the

SPEAKER_01: 14:53

curriculum. Fair point.

SPEAKER_00: 14:55

Right?

UNKNOWN: 14:56

But

SPEAKER_00: 14:57

Education is knowledge and you can gain it a lot of ways. But yeah, I look at our graduates. And in fact, we're surveying our alums now because we've got 15 years of alums. 427 are out there and another 27 will be out there in about two months. And we're now looking at their careers since MMCI. How did the program serve them? And what have they added to their careers, maybe from a knowledge and education point sense, and how are their careers growing? So I think people who have a strong curiosity, John, this has got to be you. People who have a strong curiosity continue to learn. They're self-learners, and they just want to know how things work. So I can't say that's not a good pathway. It is a good

SPEAKER_01: 15:43

pathway. When you think of a higher education, it's an investment of time. It's an investment of capital. It's an investment, like you said, of having to all-in support, getting a support team of people. But I haven't actually met somebody that's gone through a program and said that it was a terrible idea and a waste of their money. The thing I encourage people, and I got this question, it's actually what precipitated this whole discussion to even to get you on inclusion criteria, is someone had reached out to me and said, I'm really interested in the program. Tell me why I shouldn't do it. That was their question. And I felt good because that's a good question. And I sort of said, here's why you shouldn't. But a lot of those weren't because of the longer term value. It was really timing. But what I was trying to encourage them is, hey, think through right now. Is your life going to be any different in five years? It's just going to get more complicated. And so again, I'm also a proponent, just like if you've got a startup idea and you want to do something, unless it's a terrible idea, which is a different discussion, if you're going to start something, start it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:41

Just get going. I think there may not be the perfect time to go back to school, so to speak, but there are better times and worse times. And that's a life decision, right? That's a life decision.

SPEAKER_01: 16:53

There's this principle that I've heard many times from different people and different ways that they say it, but it's this choosing to cheat concept. And that every season of your life, you're going to have to cheat something. Meaning you can't be fully invested in your education. You can't be fully invested in your work. You can't be fully invested in your family. You've got to pick. People think about balance. I don't know what balance is. I haven't had balance in a long time. I don't know what that is. But I do think this principle of figuring out like, hey, for this six-month period, I'm going to pull back on this because I need to go cheat and spend some time on that. And what's interesting is a lot of the executives that you put out of the program, some people I keep up with and still talk to, ran into one last week, amazing leaders in healthcare and life sciences. That's kind of what they did. They went to their families and said, hey, I need to do this. Can we rework this and make it happen? And so I hear you. And I think if this is something that you want to do, it's an investment and you have to consider it that way. And the encouragement I'd give is that there are ways to do it and they're going to be difficult. But thinking through that and getting that right, I think is a really important decision to make. And everybody needs to make that decision at some point, once or twice even in their career. Thanks for walking through what the program is and how to think through. I think that's what our listeners might get the best advantage from is thinking through higher education. No matter where you're at in your career, career in clinical research. We have individuals that are earlier. We have individuals that have been in doing it for 20 plus years. They're saying, hey, I'm now thinking I want to spend some time here. And I think it's a really healthy career conversation. Let's flip to some of the things that are trending because I actually, maybe for the first time in quite some time, I think education is trending in discussions. And the reason it's trending is sort of the complexity of what you said, online education. YouTube arguably being the biggest television program there is. And now we've got AI. If I were to watch 10 YouTube videos and I see an influencer that was at Ivy League College and they're telling somebody that basically, college is great, you should go get an advanced degree. And then literally the next swipe I do is some influencer telling me, College is a complete waste of your money. You shouldn't spend any time in higher education. You should just, you know, I don't know, go start a business, go do whatever that is that they tell people. What do you tell people who have watched that influencer on YouTube and really are thinking through and wrestling with that advice that not doing advanced degrees and maybe college is on its way out over time. What do you tell somebody that sees that on the interwebs?

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

I think the first conversation that we have when we see that sort of thing, and it happens, you're right, all the time, is that people question the value of higher education. It's certainly gone up in price and that sort of thing, which makes that return on investment calculation even more difficult. So I think the first thing I think of, and I was talking about my colleagues I do this with, is that are we delivering value? Can they walk out of this program and say, wow, it was a life-changing moment? Because if we're not delivering value, then there is a problem with the value equation. There is a problem with the return. So first and foremost, we're looking internally going, we've got to make sure we deliver value. And then we take that messaging out and we sort of make it the proposition for choosing this program is that we're going to deliver you this value. And these things are going to happen. And then look, look at the folks who've graduated. Talk to them. Look at this faculty. This faculty are amazing thought leaders. You can't get that packaged up very easily in 12 months with that many thought leaders. So it definitely is a means to an end that's highly effective. And so that's kind of the way we approach it is we are committed to delivering value to you that will be impactful to your career. These are the ways we do it with thought leaders, with programming. with the whole experience and immersion with other people who are like you and that they're working professionals and they're trying to build careers in healthcare, but they're different from you because they have different backgrounds. I think higher education has done its own damage to its own reputation by being happy to put something out there, but not really thinking about, are we delivering? So I think higher education has gotten that message in the last few years that just because you offer a degree and someone has got to earn it, your work's not done. They've chosen you, but they've chosen you and you really are on the hook to deliver.

SPEAKER_01: 21:21

YouTube has kind of changed a lot of things, right? Because one, you've got people who care, who know what they're talking about who are on YouTube. And then you've got, as we all know, and for those of you who have kids or older kids like me, you have to deal with these conversations where you're like, okay, listen, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. And they've never actually worked in a company in their whole life when I'm watching something online. And I think that sometimes people sort of, they think about education as information that goes into your head, not as a work process that you go through to do it. Right. the things that I learned, I learned by doing them. And I actually learned more by doing and failing or messing something up than I did from learning and going, yes, I can repeat that and doing it. And so I do think that, yes, it is a trend. But I'm really hopeful that people are seeing that trend as a component of education, not as the replacement of education. It's the approach

SPEAKER_00: 22:11

we've taken is to have a little bit of blend. There is a need to meet people who are working across the country who would have to make trips to meet them where they are a little bit. But I would not be interested in running a complete online program, even though we did during COVID. And we did it for a class and a half. And I think we worked really hard to try to enhance relationship building. through virtual environments, and it can be done. But nothing's nearly as good as the face-to-face. I expect as much learning and connection happens between class and during breaks as it does during class. It's a really important part of being together face-to-face.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

And when you think about AI and education, I think people are making a lot of assertions about how it's going to impact education, how it's going to change education. But can I take a different side of that coin? Can you tell me, what are you all thinking about in how to educate students and how to think about and use AI and apply AI or be scared of AI and different elements, like whatever those aspects are? So forget the sort of macro view of how it impacts the program over time, good or bad, but really think What are you doing in the program that's helping to equip students to be in front of or in advance of the changes that are actually happening in AI? The challenge

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

is education. Did you write your paper or did AI write it for you? So that's kind of the academic side of it. The reality is we want people to use AI. not to do their work for them, but as an effective tool. So we talk a lot about AI. I expect that all our students use it in one form or another. Every faculty person has their guidelines for how it can be used and in what ways. But I think particularly the clinical informatics faculty that make up part of our curriculum expect students to use the technology. We got into an interesting conversation in the panel the other night about And this is a downside. Who's liable when the machine's wrong? And the physician on the panel says, well, it's the people who made the machine. It's the software. It's the tool. It's the AI tool. The consultant says, well, I've yet to see contracts that really put the liability back to that. You're the user. You have to be responsible. So there are things that are complex here. around AI that we talk about as topics in the classroom as part of our formal education. How would we deploy AI in ways that it can be trusted?

SPEAKER_01: 24:46

One of the other things I just know personally is, you know, for not being scared of things, for looking ahead and saying, hey, this is coming. Maybe I don't understand the full impact of it, but we are going to be in front of it, not waiting for it. When you think about higher education or the thinking you get in higher education is this idea very stoic view of this is just going to happen. And the only thing I can control is me. So I'm going to apply me to this thing that's happening and I'm going to figure it out. I think it's such an important concept and one that you see in students, right? That are thinking about higher education because they're not scared of what's coming. Figure out how to use it to make the change that's really impactful and important to them to see in clinical research.

SPEAKER_00: 25:30

But I do think, and I do think though that education is, is struggling, obviously, like others, with how to use it in a way that's effective. Education is being accomplished, not just we learn to do better prompts, but that we can still think critically and all those other sorts of things. So we see it as a tool to be engaged, to be used, and to be managed.

SPEAKER_01: 25:53

I think part of the educational journey is There's things that have been going on for 100 years that you learn about educationally. You learn about history because history is so much the indicator of the future. But being able to balance understanding that and what's currently happening is it's the basis for good education, in my opinion. If someone wants to learn more about Duke's MMCI program, what's the best next step?

SPEAKER_00: 26:15

The best next step is to reach out and let's have a conversation. You can do that very easily by just writing us at mmci.duke.edu. That'll get an email right to us. We'll engage in a conversation. We would certainly encourage people to visit class, and we would connect folks with students or alums to talk to them about their experience. But it starts with a conversation. And what we're really looking for is people who really want to change healthcare, believe that technology and data are enablers and tools to do that, and want to be part of leading that effort. So that's who we're looking for.

SPEAKER_01: 26:51

And Randy, if someone wants to connect to you specifically, what's the best way to reach you?

SPEAKER_00: 26:55

I'm old school, John. We're talking about advanced technology. I'll take an email. r.sears at duke.edu is my email. I'm on LinkedIn. I love to connect to folks.

SPEAKER_01: 27:06

Randy, thanks so much. Go Duke.

SPEAKER_00: 27:09

Yeah, go Duke. John, I know I have a different color blue blood inside, but the truth of matters, this is an excellent institution. And excellence is what this place is all about. I am very fortunate to be part of what goes on in this place. This is an amazing place.

SPEAKER_01: 27:24

Randy, they're fortunate to have you. I appreciate you spending time with us. Thanks for helping everyone listening to Inclusion Cracked here to learn a little bit more about high education, how to think through it, and how to think some about these trends that are going on. So, Randy, good to see you, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks so much. Thank you.