Sharon Alston
Yeah and Scott, as you pointed out, I mean, when you know, we all get overwhelmed and so imagine being a high school student being first generation student for instance. And you know, the university is excited. You know, the university community is excited to welcome all these new students to campus and everyone wants to add their their welcome to provide their information. But what it led to was, as Scott pointed out, we did this exercise. And we had a group of, you know, stakeholders come together. And we said, what are you sending out from the time a student deposits until they show up on campus. And we started with little post, it notes that we had to move to big newsprint, it was well over 90 different communications within the span of those several weeks, between May 1 and mid August. And you can imagine that families are in and out, they’re on vacation, whatever, but you’re getting all these emails and all this stuff that’s pouring in, and you might see it, read it and forget it. It’s just overwhelming.

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host of today’s episode Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, we’re going to be discussing effective strategies or approaches that institutions can employ to overcome administrative barriers and promote student success. We’re joined by two experts in navigating institutional silos to talk a bit about several cases from their own experiences. Before I bring in our guest today provide you a little bit of background information on the podcast. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcast. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about our sponsor. As I mentioned, I’m your host for today’s episode, Heather Shea my pronouns are she heard her and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands the Anishinabek three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University where I work. I am so excited about today’s conversation, I was able to hear Dr. Scott Bass speak at the Council of Higher Education Management Associations, CHEMA meeting in May. And I instantly knew that this would be a fascinating topic to bring to Student Affairs now. So today joining me are Dr. Scott bass, the author of a new book out last year called Administratively Adrift, Dr. Bass is a Professor of Public Administration and Policy and Provost emeritus at American University. And we’re also joined by Dr. Sharon Elston, the former Vice Provost for Undergraduate enrollment at American University, who during her tenure, co chaired the university’s reinventing the student experience or rise project. Thank you, both of you for joining me today for this episode. And welcome to the podcast, Scott and Sharon. That was a really brief intro, but I’d love to hear what else you would like to share about your work together at American University, what you’re currently working on and doing and your roles, and how you come to this conversation. So Scott, I’ll have you kick us off.

Scott A. Bass
Well, thank you, Sharon, Heather, and Sharon for having me here. My pronouns are he him and his. I’ve been at American University now for 14 years. And I spent 10 years as the provost, I came from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County UMBC, where I was a dean for 12 years and had the opportunity to work with the President Freeman or Bosque, the third. My interest in student life, in the culture, of higher education of education, in general, has been something that has inspired me throughout my life. I’ve been in higher education from for, for all of my career. And I love the institution. But when one really cares about the institution, that also has to acknowledge its weaknesses, and seek to make adjustments in that. And I’ve done that also, throughout my career. I was recently reminded of Frederick Wiseman’s film, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of them. They’re cinema, Verity. There’s no no no language, no narrative. It’s really a view of institutions and how they behave. And one of his most famous one was ticket follies, which dealt with correctional institutions. But the one that I was was interested in was high school. And it showed an insight of what it’s like, for a student to interact in a high school without any narrative. And I saw it when I was just finishing high school, and my friend and I decided to take the film and show it in our high school. And I just graduated, the staff were opposed to that. And they eventually agreed to view it as just the faculty of the high school and no one else. So I’m deep into how institutions work. And as a provost, or even before that, but as a provost, it has a unique purpose of the institution. I get to see how, delayed in terms of how all things work. And one of the things that we created, which Sharon was part of was a, a committee that cut across the functional units of the university. And they bring forward the kinds of stuff of life that people deal with at the level of direct work with student constituencies. And so that helped us eventually move into this subject of what I call Administratively Adrift. And first, the most important is to understand how the university works, and how it is, I believe, a substantial mismatch between our operation functions and policies and procedures, and the life of current students, Generation Z, who were born in around 19, somewhere in the range of 1995, to around 2015, are really in that cluster. And their experiences, all generations are unique, but this one is different. We would like to talk to them about that. So that’s a little bit who I am, what I’ve done, and what brought me to do this book.

Heather Shea
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that background information and a little bit about an insight into your career and how you came to this topic. Sharon. And tell us a little bit about you.

Sharon Alston
Well, I always like to say that I’m a native New Yorker, and I’m a first generation college students, I’m the first in my family to have gone to college. And I won’t be as shy as Scott was, my career in education has spanned almost 50 years. I recently retired, but I served at American University for about 23 years. And I had the pleasure of working with Scott Bass for 10 of those 23 years, it was wonderful. I remember Scott telling me when he first started that he believed in changing communities. And I will give him the nod to say that I think that he left his mark at American University and changed us in many ways for the better. But this work in particular really resonates with me, because I was a first generation college student, and I was a financial aid recipient. And even though it was so very long ago, I can still relate to the issues that many of our students experience when they arrived at at the university. And it’s come, it cuts across many universities, I know. But it touches me in a very personal way. And so this is why I was excited about the rise Initiative and the work that we did. So now that I’m retired, I remain very interested in issues around access and success and diversity. I had worked for seven years as a high school counselor, and I’m currently serving on the board of my high school alma mater, looking at how they are serving their students and transitioning them from high school to college. So I think I’m just always going to be a student in some capacity forever. So that’s a little bit about me.

Heather Shea
Well, thank you so much. Both of you, I think are going to bring some really interesting insights that is, you know, adjacent to and familiar to our audience, but maybe not the water that we typically swim in. So, Scott, I read your books on my Kindle, actually. So I don’t have the hardcopy to show. But I would love if you could provide a overview for our listeners of the book Administratively Adrift, Overcoming Institutional Barriers for College Students Success. And you’ve already talked a bit about what led you to explore the topic, but maybe what why did you decide to turn it into a book?

Scott A. Bass
Well, after the experience we had, and let me say that let me get to how we had the experiences I came to AU at a critical times and new president, a president who had been at the institution actually, as provost, as Dean, as even as an undergraduate isn’t as a lot white American University, so really knew this institution. And he basically said that he had done these roles and that he wanted to give me the keys to the institution, and that I would work with him to help really accelerate and build the institution. So I had support from the very beginning, the community was supportive. And I sensed right away that the ambition of the institution was divergent from where it was as a setting. And part of that was welcoming a more diverse community to the setting. And so that was my first priority. And we set out and again, the it was just wonderful to have someone like Sharon Alston

Scott A. Bass
to share these ideas with and then to implement them. But the one of the first things we did, and we involved a process to do that with the Faculty Senate. But we made LSAT and a CT, the various tests optional. So that was one of the first things we did. We created a new honors, top honors program called the Frederick Douglass distinguished scholars program. And what we didn’t share and had this responsibility was we wanted to change our financial aid approach. And what it was when I arrived was 80%, of financial aid was used for merit awards. And what we set out as a goal and I bet Sharon did maybe in a two year period was to switch it is to move 80% of the money to need. And a number of other presidents and provosts were shocked at that. But you know, what every one of our metrics improved, as a result of diversifying the student population and changing and we different than then perhaps a large public or a mid size research university. Our our profile did did change quickly. And I anticipated that the consequences for that change in terms of dynamics on campus didn’t happen right away. But it was something we, we expected. So we tried, and Sharon can talk more about that is it, we learned that it’s not just providing financial aid, it’s, it’s meeting 100% of need. And that’s hard to do in a private university with the resources we have. But when we did that, students would graduate. So I’m very proud to say under Sharon’s leadership that our highest retention cluster our Pell eligible students, they, first a second year retention hovered between 89 and 91%. And I’m very proud of that, that that was an it was hard work and a real achievement. And we found that by providing talented students with the resources they need, that they can be successful. Nonetheless, the we we then went through Middle States accreditation review. And they pointed out, which we were aware, but that as the campus has changed, one needs to look at the culture of the institution, we have all these wonderful learning opportunities. Are they really available to all students? And do they feel that they belong in setting. And so we had, we went through, we decided to do some workshops and sessions. And I remember this rather vividly, we brought in a consultant. And we had a session with most of the leadership of the campus faculty, and students. And the consultant was going through the agenda. And at some point, some students started speaking up about incidents that occurred on campus, run arounds, they had chafing that they encountered with some of our services. And it started to pick up momentum and actually get get somewhat hot in the session. And the cotton consultants stopped the session and broke and, and then met with us, all of us. And we decided to change the agenda to provide that opportunity. And I think we walked away. And this is before we created the reinventing the student, experienced rise initiative to realize that we were on we were at sea on a burning platform and did not know it. And I would surmise that every listener you have on this podcast, are in a similar boat and don’t know it is that there’s so many issues that take place at the student level with that, and they either work their way through it or they give up. And so, that put us on a path that took four years of detailed granular work, I did have a recorder of a number of the events which helped for writing the book. But I also am a social scientist, I study organizations and I was able to draw on years of, of knowledge, a lot of library work this this is a three year effort to put a book like this together. And so summarizing, it is often difficult because there’s so many components to making the case as to the mismatch of a generation. And it’s not just a critique this book, it was an effort to also identify things that could really move us forward as a nation. And I want to say one of the universals, whether we’re large or small institution, is the universal is the administrative structure, the underlying bureaucratic structure that we house and we it is reinforced by the migration of professionals across the institutions, so that we are really quite similar in the way we function and work, we may have slightly different reporting lines, different patterns of how they work, different policies, and certainly different emphases and distinctiveness of our campuses. But one thing that holds universally, is that we are a traditional, administrative bureaucratic organization following the model of about 100 years ago, created by Max vapor. And added is universal. And that’s part of the discussion in terms of Generation Z, and the transition that we’ve seen in other industries outside of higher education. And that was part of our mission as well. And the rise initiative was to look outside of higher education. So with that, as an introduction, I hope that’s helpful and allow you to turn to Sharon. Yeah,

Heather Shea
I mean, the thing I took away was that the book uses your institution, as a case study, but it has so much universal applicability, regardless of the institution that you’re that you’re approaching this kind of inquiry from. And I really appreciated the I appreciated many things about the book, but I really appreciated the ways that you kind of talk about some of the specific institutional barriers, but that they are really universal barriers, and that there are models out there. Often, as you said, from outside higher ed, that may be more useful for us to consider.

Scott A. Bass
You say that because I did try to explore. And there are a number of articles, people use different terms. For the experiences they had, we came up with the term pinch points. For students, we had what was called a Bermuda triangle where things would go and get lost other campuses had other terms among students that would want to campuses use the name of their campus and the word shuffle, and was the words that students use. So I did, that’s why my library was very helpful in putting together and drawing from other campuses. In terms of their stories and their successes, there are a lot of very successful models, which I should mention, parenthetically, in terms of, actually, we had one, one of our ministers came with the idea of a silo busting Award, which would give every year but among the community colleges, there was there’s a great deal of awareness, maybe because of the the dire need to be responsive to do that. And ironically, among the institutions that are higher in the traditional pecking order, there’s less at times less attention to these issues. So vulnerability, seriousness of this often creates action, I should also one, one last statistic is to mention that, as an industry, just among four year colleges and universities, we call it four years. But of those that really graduate in four years, at least from the public’s is about half, it’s a little more in the privates. So half don’t make it in four years. When you break it down by gender. Women are more likely to complete the degree in four years. And then we break it down by race, and it gets terrifying is that among black men, only about 20% complete the degree in four years now, that all picks up at six years and eight years, but we’re still talking about a tragedy in terms of the way our industry functions. And if we were a private institution, a private company, we’d be out of business. I mean, you can’t serve and have half of your people graduate promising with a term of four year degree, it’s not four years. So these are the kinds of realities that we need. To face and say down away and and what can we do to change this reality, which is not new. In fact, it’s gotten a little better in terms of graduation rates by race, and gender, but still infant dismal and long standing reality that we have to confront. Thank you.

Heather Shea
Thank you. So, Sharon, let’s, let’s, let’s hear a little bit about your experience and some of the most common institutional barriers that you experienced that hindered student success and, and how those particular barriers impacted the student experience.

Sharon Alston
So Heather, there, I did read the hard copy of the book. And I was able to mark it up and highlight it, and use out of it. Um, there are actually a few that come to mind, I think, and Scott touched on these, but certainly, the fact that we do operate in silos, and that inhibits how we communicate with students and inhibits, it limits the quality of communications with students. We don’t use current good methods to communicate with students, we’re still using email, kids don’t read email anymore. Adults don’t really want to read email anymore. In in speaking about financial issues, hidden costs, we do fully fund students. But Scott, you might remember that some years ago, we formed a working group, and we looked at what are the hidden costs of having the true hallmark educational experience at AU. And I think the figure that we came up with was that it’s about $5,000, over and above the, the cost of attendance, in order for a student to have a good experience. But I think that the biggest barriers, I think I’m speaking with your ah cracy really connected or tied to be the misalignment of our academic regulations. And federal regulations. Specifically in the area of financial aid, there’s a misalignment. The academic regulations are in place, of course, to be helpful to students and their well attention to support students. Financial Aid, on the other hand, is heavily regulated by the Department of Education. And we are audited every single year. And we have to report every year. And so there are consequences for non compliance. And so there’s a there’s a little bit of a conflict here. So there are a couple of instances that that come to mind. The first has to do with satisfactory academic progress. So I’m thinking of a young woman who came to the University very, very talented student, very, very gifted musician, but she was interested in the sciences, at least upon the initial entry, she had gotten a merit scholarship because she was so talented, and then whatever the Merit Scholarship didn’t cover was filled in with need based financial aid. This young lady encountered some challenges with a calculus course in her first semester, it lowers her GPA. In the second semester, she saw that she was having some issues with chemistry, and decided to drop the chemistry class and was actually feeling pretty good about the fact that she was doing okay. She could function comfortably. She took a class in music and was working on a paper about the I think it was about the around the design of pianos or something like that. And was really doing great with that paper, in effect, some luck, so that the professor was very interested in felt, you know, here’s a gifted student, I want to give her some additional time to make this a true A paper. And so he gave her an incomplete in order to allow her some time to, to finish. Well, guess what, she had dropped her credit level. She now had the incomplete she was really not making what the federal government felt was adequate progress toward completing her program. She’s not making Satisfactory Academic Progress. She lost her financial aid. And so this sort of set off a whole series of conversations with the donors who gave her the scholarship. You can imagine the stress at the family home that there wasn’t a lot of money. You can imagine the student stress and add to that the fact that the faculty member that gave the incomplete was out of the country. And this young woman had to file an appeal in order to have her financial aid reinstated. You know, the good news is that the financial aid ultimately was reinstated, but it was reinstated only for one semester on the condition that she complete the conditions under which the A was reinstated in order for it to continue. Now, were there communications with the student, probably yes, there were emails or whatever. But again, students don’t read email. All the stress could have been avoided. If there was better alignment with that, you know, that academic regulation and the federal regulation, another has to do with the repeating courses, the federal government actually does allow for students to repeat a course and receive their financial aid. And this is important because there are students who are looking at very competitive professional schools, right, let’s take the pre med, for instance, you want to get the best GPA possible. So we have the case of a young man who took organic chemistry, he earned a C, and then decided this isn’t good enough, I need to retake this course. Because I’m required to get at least a B in organic chemistry. He took the course a second time, and got a B minus. Well, that was not sufficient to meet that requirement. When he wanted to take the class, again, to get the B. Department of Education regulations would say nope, we’ve already allowed you to take that class, we allowed you to repeat it, you passed it both times, we’re not spending any more money here, you’re not getting any more money. So this young man actually ended up full time status at AU will take you up to 17 credits. So this young man added that class again. So now he’s taking upwards of 17 credits, it was covered by his financial aid, but because he was taking a course overload, his GPA suffered. Now, the inequity in this is that a student who is not an aid recipient could take repeat a course as often as they want to. They’re paying for it, it puts the student at a competitive disadvantage. So those are a couple of examples of, you know, barriers and challenges that we’re putting up for, for students, sometimes well intentioned. But ultimately, it hurts the student.

Scott A. Bass
Let me just follow up on the student, the the gifted student. One of the things that the complaint from the student was nobody helped. And it was him or her with this process. It was a lone factor faculty member, I believe they went to the financial aid said go talk to the chair, the department chair department refused to assist the student. And the bitterness of the family, towards the institution is just the first year students going to have to make an appeal to the federal federal government. Now, when she was asking to financial aid, why, why didn’t somebody Catch this? Why wasn’t there a flag in the registrar’s office? There was no flag, you know, This shouldn’t have happened. And the response, when I recall being told was that that the financial aid office indicates to all students what Satisfactory Academic Progress is. And it’s that was the students responsibility to meet satisfactory academic progress. So that reminds me, Sharon one of the eye opening experiences you provided us was, what exactly do students receive by email or flyers or whatever, even before they arrive on campus? And how you identify them. And I know you created a website eventually. But the point is sure, the student was told about Satisfactory Academic Progress among what turned out to be as many as 90 other communications at that time. So maybe go through how you did that? How that little light bulb in my mind what we did and then what happened following so maybe that’s a useful experiment example of trying to do something but that having a consequent or having worse consequences than you so.

Sharon Alston
Yeah and Scott, as you pointed out, I mean, when you know, we all get overwhelmed and so imagine being a high school student being first generation student for instance. And you know, the university is excited. You know, the university community is excited to welcome all these new students to campus and everyone wants to add their their welcome to provide their information. But what it led to was, as Scott pointed out, we did this exercise. And we had a group of, you know, stakeholders come together. And we said, what are you sending out from the time a student deposits until they show up on campus. And we started with little post, it notes that we had to move to big newsprint, it was well over 90 different communications within the span of those several weeks, between May 1 and mid August. And you can imagine that families are in and out, they’re on vacation, whatever, but you’re getting all these emails and all this stuff that’s pouring in, and you might see it, read it and forget it. It’s just overwhelming.

Scott A. Bass
So with that information, we set out to try and manage this better and bring that down to so that at least the other units knew what they were sending out and timing sequencing. There was no, nobody knew what they were doing across all these different offices. So we attempted to do that. And my understanding things improved, we had a website. In the year I stepped down, there was another review. And again, it had it had gotten more organized. And I was told that actually it had bounced back. And there were 130 communications that had gone out that year.

Heather Shea
Oh my gosh. So

Scott A. Bass
it is, hey, you’re in.

Sharon Alston
It’s an issue of data governance. And I and you do touch on this in your book, too. There were no controls over the database. And so everyone had access to information. And so in order to get it under control, we I’d like to say we wanted to rely on the kindness of strangers, we had to rely on each other, to be honest and forthcoming, but because there was no data governance, people could just go in at any given time that they wanted to, and pull the information that they need, and pull the list and send information just so it’s an ongoing challenge.

Heather Shea
Yeah, that’s it. That’s, I think that’s a really important case study. And if if folks are watching today, and haven’t yet mapped the communications, as you all did, you know, from the point that a student commits to coming to the institution, up to, and I’m looking over on my corner of my desk here, because I have a pile, I have a student who is about to become a first year student, have a pile of hand delivered letters, right, which have gotten a lot more attention because there’s physical copies, but you know, at least a dozen or more emails that have come to me as a parent. So I think that’s a really important example of an effective strategy that institutions can can employ. Scott, can you talk about some more strategies beyond communications, that kind of eliminated?

Scott A. Bass
I think the most important task in any institution is to is assessment. In other words, you don’t know what to do unless you have information from the various constituents. So you, I didn’t know we would have a problem with 130 communications going out from different offices. And then worse yet is then blaming the student, and we told you so and it’s your fault is that it’s just there isn’t a a perspective of walking in the students shoes, because nobody has an omniscient view of all aspects of the setting, and so many different players. Now, you mentioned the national organization, you attended, there are 40 different providers on the administrative side of the institution alone, 40 different entities. And I attempted in the book to chart a number of them. And I didn’t know had I known at that time, there were 40 I think I came up with maybe 29 and myself just going through websites. So there is a fragmentation, a level of granularity that goes on that is invisible to most members. I don’t think the President is aware of what’s going on. And then I look at the different software packages that we use on campus to support each of these different specializations that were created, engineered and designed without inter operability. We have an A you actually look at the charts as 49 We’ve added a 50th to our databases. The enterprise systems are interconnected, but on the student side go through all of the different offices that support students and maintain their own records. And you can be assured either by regulation, or by choice, nobody else sees those records. So a student could have that this is a, this is the kind of thing that we’re worries me a student may have had excessive binge drinking at night with a group of students. And fortunately, we have a policy, that there’ll be no penalty, the student who reports, because we’re talking about someone who’s going to die unless they get their hospital.

Heather Shea
Medical amnesty,

Scott A. Bass
correct, we have medical amnesty. So fortunately, if a student then is taken to the hospital, but that remains, nobody knows when the next day rolls around. And perhaps if the student doesn’t show up in class, or if the student does that, all is not well. Nobody knows what’s going on, except the handful of people that were involved. In the incident, perhaps it was reported, there was an incident to the President, that someone’s taking the hospital. But for the most part, nobody can help manage and support and assist in any of the other divisions because it’s, it’s private financial aid, private information, even as promised, I don’t know the financial issues. And on the other hand, if we when we are notified that there’s a change, we don’t need, we don’t know the details. But if there’s a change, the student is lost financial aid, or, or it has been reduced, that’s going to have a whole bunch of implications for everybody on campus. So we are really, really siloed. And so when I start thinking about how we can do better at this, through the rise initiative, we did look outside, and if you want me to go into some of the discussion of some of the ideas, besides

Heather Shea
giving an example or two, I think that would be really helpful.

Scott A. Bass
So that we found out about in our place, and everyone, if they did an assessment, we came up with about 60 items that were chafing students, either from the staff or for student points of view. And we were able to make adjustments and improving them. I mean, we we have a one stop center, which a lot of places have. But from the students point of view, it’s the first stop center. And so they the way I say first stop is that some of the details that are involved in these things only can be done by the expert in the specialized office. So that’s, you know, it’s better, I’m glad we have a one stop center, but it isn’t, and the students see it as such. But when we come to these kinds of structural impediments, we can adjust our offices make them work, better, flow communication better, and we’ve done a lot of it. But when it comes to somebody having responsibility for the success of the student, having accountability for the success of the student, on one hand, everybody’s responsible, but that means nobody is responsible. And so a student can drift. A student, you know, sometimes it’s nobody’s nobody’s fault is that one case was a student who was depressed and, and went to the, on his or her own to the counseling center. They did an assessment, it was not a crisis, the student was then scheduled for an appointment. And in two weeks, student went back things got more and more student was very sad. And finally the appointment came up. And the student got an an urgent email saying that the counselor was ill and was out for the day and that we’d have to reschedule. Student ever reschedule and just dropped out eventually. So it’s complicated and it’s not any necessarily anyone’s fault, but it’s understanding what it’s like to be in your settings, not not my setting. And to do that involves a lot of conversation of all surveys of students. We did learn through survey the differences in the sense of belonging between black students and whites. Students, we learned through the surveys about the culture of the setting, and how different students felt that the institution cared about them. We learned through journaling projects. One of the case studies in the book was a result in in who wrote Well, I thought it was a transfer student. And I changed, the title could not be identified. But those were her written journal prompts. It was a weekly journal of how she became came to the school, it was a dream school so excited, and how, eventually, through loneliness, and lack of connection, just ground down. And it’s in her words in the book. So the things you can’t necessarily control. But the idea that is well used in other human service agencies, is the idea of case management is that there is a cross chain trained individual who is the point of contact, and we did that through initially through guides, but it was not it was an earlier stages, you’re having a guide, is really having someone who has the authority, and has the accountability, to communicate with the specialists in there, it’s not to take the jobs away from the specialists. But it is to have a timely flow of information. So somebody has a broad overview. So there’s two, there’s three, two major components of that. One is the creation of a case manager as we know it in other places. The second is what I call the timely flow of actionable information, that’s different than the information that these 40 or more specialists have in their divisions, it is a and this may involve because we doesn’t exist is a redesign, using perhaps even AI to synthesize what is urgent, essential, and it needs to be immediately given both to the student, again, student awareness, and to a case manager to work through that issue. So it is useful, actionable data we do not have, and you have your specialists has their information. But nobody else has that who has a broader view of the institution down at for example, with the the woman and or man or woman with the financial aid problem, there was nobody to talk to outside of the group to say, we will provide a temporary financial coverage, these things get to me much too late. Let’s take a look, we’ll cover that until you find out about Don’t you worry, tell your parents that you don’t have to drop out of school, we will cover you until this gets resolved. That needs to be clarified. There simply tools we have that could easily be done in very difficult turn to be crisis situations. The student who who’s who eventually dropped out, perhaps there could have been someone to, you know, a peer counselor or for a phone call coming in, in the student that that that chronicle was actually in the book, who just kept going down, down down, was actually a call from her guidance counselor from the community college. That was the most important communication to help her work through the issues. Now maybe her parents said something, I don’t know how it happened. But that’s what made a difference is somebody who cares, who really cares about you, and makes that and has the time and the energy and the resources and the information to do that. So that’s one of the things and it’s then packaged in what’s called the chief experience officer. And one of the places we spent a lot of time with we took an entire bus load to the leadership of the campus from Washington, DC, and we went by bus to the Cleveland Clinic. So why would we do that? Actually, one of the vice presidents argued that we should take the bus because that will help bond us a bit who really don’t know each other that well and and have to work together. And so we rode the bus for you know, eight hours, including one of the board members press share the board came with us, we spend time there understanding how they transform that much larger scale, how they transform, this very bureaucratic, very large organization in terms of the patient experience. And we spent they took us through all kinds of details for an entire day. And then we looked at how can we learn from that and part of that was this notion of a chief experience officer. That’s someone who is at the at the press Students discretion works directly with the president or chancellor of the campus. And is job is to look, campus or in this case, clinic wise, how every single function serves the goal of the President to put patients first in terms of their care, their communication, the message training for everyone, including the most famous surgeons was around empathy,

Scott A. Bass
to take the time to talk to the patient, and have empathy. And so we were meeting with some of the docs and they say, Look, you know, it’s improved my it takes time, but it’s improved my my practice my care of the patients. So it’s just little things do we round, we don’t, we don’t faculty don’t do rounds, probably do the names. But knowing the student caring about the student, and what’s known as a relationship centered culture, a foster that, even before they arrive, are important things to do. Even one example that has been shown at another institution was a students came in that these are likely to be first generation more vulnerable students, students of color, they’d write an essay about their experience and their, their fears, their worries about success in the institution, students have the same background, advanced students, maybe third or fourth year, would write an essay about how they overcame the obstacles that they encountered, and gave that to the incoming class, incoming group, they then were asked after the thought about and talked about in the met with the students then wrote an essay to future students how they need to think about coming into the setting, and how they can be successful, they found that was very helpful. But these kinds of techniques of bonding, to bring people together, having pizza with the students when they first arrive, building relationships, is an important component. And I said, then assessing the setting, and making, making serious changes to improve the culture and climate of the setting is what I think is paramount at this time. And I guess, let me mention one other point for for your audience is that this generation of students is different. They are the first to be have the opportunity of the smartphone. The benefits of how organizations changed, have changed to provide service and communication and alliances that that level, much of the bureaucracy made things simpler, I still can’t imagine how in the world, I can go to the supermarket, buy food, and then get points and then go to a gas station has nothing to do with that supermarket. And I can get a get a discount per gallon of gas instantly. I may just push a button, you want it Yes. And I get I get the gas, I see it change the price. And I get now if we can do that level of technology, and we can even communicate with the office next door.

Heather Shea
well, and I think and I think part of it is the it’s part of it as the institution, but I think some of it is also helping students figure out some of these, you know, they almost need like their secret decoder ring. And Sharon, can you talk a bit about some of the tips and advice, though, that you would give to students and maybe those you know, family support members, parents, caregivers who are who are in their lives in about ready to either embark upon college or who are facing challenges today?

Sharon Alston
Yeah, I’m putting on like my parent hat because I went through this a little bit earlier than you had there. But it’s a good experience. Um, I think, you know, I’m listening to what Scott has said, find a person. Um, Scott was very good about instituting or creating the guide positions, we now call them first year advisors. And so the first year advisors, in effect are the person. But even if the institution doesn’t have that, I think it’s important for students and families to find a person. I think for parents, I think it’s paying attention to the communications information you’re getting from the institution. Think it’s encouraging your students to pay attention. I think it’s Pitt, pay attention to your kids, and be in contact with them and listening, listen to what they are saying to you about their experience. But I think that ultimately it really just comes down to finding your tenure people. And I think about my, my colleague at the university who walked the campus and for those families that she met she was the face of the university, she remained in contact with them, they would reach out to her whenever they their kids ran into difficulty. Certainly one of the things that makes me the happiest is the young woman that I adopted, I call her my other daughter, I met her when I went out recruiting. In San Francisco some years ago, she was a first generation Latinx student. And her mom was very concerned about her coming all the way across to the East Coast. And I said, I promise I will take care of her, I will take care of her. And I stuck to that. And you know, I was in contact with mom and contact with the daughter all through four years, and we remain in contact today. And she graduated, she graduated with a great job. I take no credit for that. She was very talented, but it just comes down to people making connections and whether there is a formal structure for that or not. I think it’s it’s fine. It’s finding people, you know, when you go to orientation, if there’s an administrator that you know, that that you seem to connect with, on some level, make that connection, keep that business card, keep that phone number stay in touch.

Heather Shea
Yeah, yeah, I was always at a previous campus that I that I worked at, the Dean of Students would always tell us tell parents or family members pull out their cell phone and would actually give his cell phone to everybody in the Orientation audience. And it was like, if you need to call someone, it’s an emergency. Right? Obviously, you can call me. And I thought that that level of connectivity was really an editor’s one example, right of like you said, with a young woman you mentored like it, that we care, right? We are here in this business, because we care about students. And our institutional structures don’t always help us do that in the most effective way as as we would like them to do. We’re getting close to running out of time. But Scott, I do want to give you a moment to just talk briefly about policy makers, because I think there’s another layer here, you know, it’s institutional barriers. And we’ve talked a bit about, you know, policies like FERPA as well as financial aid policies. But what do you think the role should be for government agencies, and then, of course, professional associations, and trying to support the policy changes that are necessary for us to move forward to a less administratively adrift campus?

Scott A. Bass
So I think the the main message is, how do these professional organizations which are many, engage in a conversation about the challenges we have in meeting the needs meeting the needs and expectations of a generation of students, having that conversation opens the door again, there’s so many other immediate issues that are focused in each of the discrete professional units. But there’s a broader message, we are all in this together. I mean, our goal is to see the students have success, to not just graduate but to have a wonderful learning experience and enriching learning experience to grow as part of the experience, not just to get the degree, it’s more than that. So how can we have a national dialogue that recognizes we’re not doing so well on it? I would add that so that’s, that’s among the, the, the national organizations and and that’s a long term kind of conversation. The other place I look to his accreditation, is accreditation is a is is done, I’ve served on a credit rating committees going on the campus and done accreditation reviews. And one of the components in that is the meeting with students. Now generally, and, and in my case, the the schedules work that all of the representing all the different divisions that we break out into the various silos, and when we meet on a campus, we were all available at that time slot, and we said, let’s all just sit down with the students. Well, it turns out a total of three students showed up of undergraduates of which two were reporters for the school magazine. So the going back to the question questions, how to students participate in these things. We really didn’t have much of a view the student perspective, but accreditation couldn’t be done a little differently. That would require the the provost and whoever’s the vice Provost vice president, whatever the title is in student affairs, to that there’ll be a protocol that would be done by the Accreditation produces the protocol. And we would use that, to come back with an assessment, we do a survey, where both of us work together and identify issues that are really going on on our campus, that seems to me to be a key accreditation piece. And I can tell you, it didn’t happen on when I was on when really no students and no graduate student showed up at all, at the graduate session, none. And generally, at some places, the students are primed. They’re told what the you know, the talk about before they bring a cherry pick group to talk to the accreditation agencies, I’m saying that’s not the way to do this. And to do this do recognize these components are absolutely interrelated in terms of understanding the student experience, get that information gets required an accreditation, and then we examine that on the site visit. So that’s just a specific example for I think accreditation, which is, you know, we take seriously because you don’t, you know, pass, right, financial Nabal US financial aid, or your you know, your accreditation status. The the most important group, of course, are your presidents and your Provost who are responsible can the board the board of trustees or board of advisors, whatever you have in your structure, is that this, when we get into really moving from a siloed structure, the one that’s much more aligned and interconnected around the student point of view, as we talked about in 1937, is that’s going to take a lot of time, it’s going to take some software, or a lot of software work agreements across the various divisions and flow of information. And that’s a multi year agenda. And each campus has their own unique culture and style of doing this. But that’s where the real rubber hits the road and where it needs to be done. And I want to say, parenthetically, again, for this generation, it’s not just that they’re a digital generation, they’ve gone through school shootings, they’ve gone through a pandemic, they’ve gone through a racial reckoning, and now seeing the rebound and the reaction in terms of that they’ve seen the emergence and growth of the far right and extremism. They’ve seen a, an event at the capitol that on all of our cell phones, that was just an unbelievable environmental crisis. We have weather fire, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, drought, enormous heat, enormous cold, that’s their lives, they understand that and they’re, they’re worried about this. And then we add this to a war, a sovereign nation enjoys baited by nuclear power. This is their world, it’s crushing. The wonder they’re vulnerable before they arrived in before the pandemic, half of the the more than half of the women said that life in the last 12 months, they felt life was hopeless. This is serious stuff. And to assume, after the pandemic, we’re bringing everybody back and the business as usual in the office operate, and we offer more programs and more support isn’t enough, it is a fundamental difference. And so it’s not something that’s right now, it’s for the next decade, we already know the scores are coming in the consequences for young people. And we need to change the way we do business. And there’s a concept in in the social sciences of institutional leg Matilda White Riley did this and been done in mental health and other sectors is the importance for institutions to recognize this huge gap. And to now move the institution. My book is not about how to students adjust to the campus, it’s how to the campus adjust to the student. That’s the goal. And we need that national conversation. So those are my comments about the outside organizations and the inside leadership.

Heather Shea
Well, I am so grateful to both of you today for sharing the great work that you did together at American and then how this is really a case study for all of us who care about students who really want our institutions to do better by them, because of all the factors that you name Scott. Just, you know, give me a sentence or two as a final thought. And then if you would like to share how or where people can connect with you, if you’re on social media, or if they can find you on LinkedIn, that would be great, if not fine. And Sharon, why don’t we start with you find kind of final thoughts.

Sharon Alston
Final thought. I think that my big takeaway from all of this is really listen to your students. I’m very sensitive to the pinch point. I’m very sensitive to the fact that most industries would not be in existence today if they did not listen to their customers. And I think that higher education needs to adopt the same kind of mindset. I think that there’s a lot that we can learn from other industries, as Scott pointed out, and you’re at the Cleveland Clinic, we also had up a supermarket chain that came in, and they talked to us about their customer service. And I think the other thing is to be in the mindset of continuous innovation, right? Our students are changing, we need to change as institutions and with the innovation is don’t be afraid to fail, you may try something, it may not work. And I think that our senior level executives need to give us permission sometimes to try something and fail, and then reset and try again. But we have to keep trying. So my final words,

Heather Shea
thank you. So first, things first. Great, thank you. Thank you, Scott, what about you?

Scott A. Bass
So my book is really a simply an effort to put the voice out there, this is a took a while to put this thing together. I am writing articles as well, it’s very hard to write a 3000 word essay for me. It’s, it’s in, in a I’m a social scientist, and it’s a different kind of journalism. And I’m learning I’m trying to do it. But I’ve had a number of articles now published in different magazines, to the to the professionals in the industry. And I want to be part of a national conversation, I want to be part of developing some of the software ideas that would make sense for people who work in the institutions as opposed to private vendors that are working in corporations and then selling us products that are difficult to use and don’t quite connect. So well. I do remember a story that Sharon told me on that. And that I so I and so I have a center here at the university. Sharon is a fellow and and can do consultations to campuses. Another person is now a fellow who implemented all of the guide initiatives that we did at American University to provide technical support to other campuses. And a third person has just accepted a fellowship who did the transition from our general education program to a totally different experience in terms of a core curriculum. And how we did that, which is people describe changing Gen Ed is like moving a graveyard. So we’ve lived through that and that person is available for technical support. So I want to have more dialogue, and more communication. And I’m my email is is readily available, and a few campuses actually have begun a conversation.

Heather Shea
So great. Well, we hope that this episode sparks some additional connection and outreach in it. And definitely appreciate both of you sharing about the work today. Also just out as always sending our heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated behind the scenes work of our producer Nat Ambrosey thank you for making us look and sound great. And then thanks also to the sponsor of today’s episode Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms, with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. And you can learn more by visiting symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. If you will take a moment to visit our website and click on the sponsors link. You can learn more. While you’re there. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly e newsletter, please visit our website and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our list. Again, I’m Heather Shea thanks to all of our listeners and to everybody who is watching make it a great week everyone.

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