The term “work-life balance” refers to a state of equilibrium between career demands and personal demands. People who manage to find the perfect work-life balance are able to prioritize these two demands evenly and steadily. And people who don’t have it experience an unending case of the Sunday scaries. But what, exactly, does the ideal work-life balance look like and how do people achieve it? Experienced educational administrator and UF Administrative Alumni Dr. David Parrot recently shared his insights on this extremely tricky and often touchy endeavor.
The Work-Life Balance With Children
Few things can tip the balance quite like having children. However, the unique nature of a career in higher education has allowed Dr. David Parrott to incorporate his children into his work life in fun and exciting ways, creating what he calls a “life-career blend.”
He and his wife, Dr. Kelli Peck Parrott, talked a lot about work-life balance before they had children, but when they had kids, they found the ideal balance they had discussed hypothetically was quite difficult to achieve in reality. “So we went for blend,” he says. “We went for life-career blend. And my children (I have two sons) still talk about it.”
Abandoning the idea of dividing his life into two separate but equal areas (the professional and the personal), he opted to merge the two into something of a cohesive whole. While working for Texas A&M University, he would take his sons, Jackson and Jason, now 17 and 16 respectively, to campus, put them on a golf cart, and drive them around to the multiple construction projects for which he had oversight.
“So they got to know the landmarks on campus as they were little kids, and I was able to do my work,” he says. “So we blended. And when I had to attend events at night, I often took them with me.” This experience had a particularly profound effect on his oldest son Jackson. “He became enamored with Condoleezza Rice when she spoke on campus, and it has shaped his entire career path,” David Parrott remembers of seeing the former United States secretary of state. “He’s going to go into public policy because of that: because he went to one event when he was eight years old and heard her speak. So it’s blending.
It’s taking my children to events. It’s letting them see what I do. They spend time in my office. They know my colleagues and the roles each of us play at the university. They each have an understanding of universities and a vocabulary the demonstrates that understanding. They are able to navigate a university in ways that I could not imagine when I was their age. The exposure to the university has provided great benefit to them. The second part of the equation is making sure that I have the flexibility of my schedule to go to where they are: to go to their schools and spend time and to go to their events.”
UF and Work-Life Balance With a Spouse
The same concept of “blending” has served as a healthy element in Dr. David Parrott’s marriage. A career in higher education administration commonly requires moves across state lines that can really take a toll on both personal and family life.
Although these moves were indeed quite trying for his family, David Parrott also describes them as “wonderful” and “extremely beneficial.” Many of the personal life benefits that he has reaped from his chosen career path have arisen from the decision that he and his wife have made to travel that path together, thereby blending both their private lives and public lives into a single shared experience.
“My wife and I, we’ve worked at Western Michigan, Texas A&M, and the University of Florida (UF). We’re now at the University of Louisville. We’ve both been at Bowling Green State University. We’ve met some of the most wonderful people in the world and had the opportunity to shape the lives of students in different venues and to learn and shape ourselves. And it’s just marvelous. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.”
Just as David Parrott and his wife have blended their shared life as a couple into the workplace from UF to UofL, they’ve have also brought their work into their home space to benefit the entire family unit. “We’re renovating our basement, and I’m putting a high-end teleconference system in my office because we do so much from home (consulting, Teams and Zoom meetings after hours and all that kind of stuff),” he says. “So, we’re just going to put that in and make that part of what we do. It’s blending!”
David Parrott’s Career Milestones
Over a career in higher education leadership that spans nearly four decades, Dr. David Parrott, has demonstrated outstanding proficiency in a full spectrum of legal and compliance issues related to student affairs. His specific areas of expertise range from free speech and inclusion, threat assessment and crisis management to matters involving DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion).
His professional highlights include tenures as assistant vice president for student affairs at Western Michigan University, associate vice president for student affairs/dean of student life, chief of staff, and interim vice president at Texas A&M University, and vice president for student affairs at the University of Florida (UF). While serving as an administrator at WMU, TAMU, and UF, he taught higher education law as a member of each institution’s graduate faculty. He continues to teach at the University of Louisville.
In particular, he has emerged as one of the nation’s premier authorities on subjects related to free speech and inclusion, risk management and federal Title IX regulations. Since 2019, he has served as Title IX and ADA coordinator with the University of Louisville (UofL). This position places him in charge of all UofL Title IX compliance undertakings with a dual focus on the letter and spirit of this important legislation.
Prior to UF – The Early Days of Dr. David Parrott
Dr. David Parrott says his earliest days of his career, shortly after earning his doctorate of educational psychology from the University of Louisville with a focus in student affairs administration, were the most formative.
Armed with this degree and the insight provided by his dissertation on racial identity development, he served several years as assistant dean of students, assistant to the vice president for student affairs, and director of residence life at Western Kentucky University. When a job offer in Michigan took him away from his beloved home state, it was a tremendous step for Dr. Parrott.
“Well, no one in my family had ever moved out of the state of Kentucky,” he remembers. “So me moving out of the state of Kentucky was just a mind-blower for me. I mean just, ‘wow.’ Moving to Michigan was a major milestone. What a great experience and what wonderful people we met.”
Dr. David Parrott places a lot of value on the most personally touching and existence-changing private experiences that life has to offer. “Getting married was a major milestone,” he recalls. “Having our children was a major milestone.”
But he also found it impossible to overestimate the tremendous role that professional advancement has played in his life. “Moving to each institution and getting promoted within those institutions was a major milestone, and certainly earning the degrees that I’ve received.”
He adds, “Each one of those was a significant milestone in my career. And they serve as building blocks to help open up the top end of career paths as you get those degrees and get those experiences and change institutions and so forth.”