Higher Ed Social

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) serves more than high school and college counselors who help students and families navigate the admissions process. Shanda Ivory, NACAC’s director of communications, joins us this week to discuss how the pandemic might permanently change college recruiting. Will the days of college fairs in convention centers with thousands of students ever come back? Is it such a bad thing if they don’t? We explore those questions and talk about how admissions professionals can strike a balance between not getting stuck and the status quo and not going after every new trend that comes along. Links to cool stuff Shanda Ivory on LinkedIn College Admission Decoded podcast 2021 NACAC National Conference Episode 202 https://media.blubrry.com/highered/highered.social/episodes/HES-0202.mp3 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Google Play Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Stitcher

Morgan Campbell is only a few years out of college but already making a name for herself as a pioneer of TikTok in higher ed. She joins us this week to talk about how she built a successful presence for Indiana University and how her team plans to build on that strategy by expanding the use of vertical video on Instagram Reels and other platforms this year. We also talk about how TikTok seemed like a breath of fresh air during the pandemic at a time when it’s easy to fall victim to doom scrolling on other social media platforms. Morgan is a social media specialist at Indiana University Bloomington. Her work has been featured on Sprout Social and on Josie Ahlquist’s blog, just to name a few! Although she’s made her name in the higher ed world on TikTok, she finds herself gravitating toward another platform outside of work. Tune in to find out what it is!

Higher Ed Social founder and co-host emerita Jackie Vetrano joins Lougan and Jenna to celebrate 200 episodes. We talk about returning to work on campus, returning to pre-pandemic activities, and the media empire Jackie’s building through her podcast and Twitch streams — with a few diversions to things like hot tub Twitch and dads on TikTok. We are also excited to share that Jenna will be part of a panel on podcasting at organizations at the 2021 Podcast Movement conference in Nashville...

Bill Zimmerman, an instructor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State and host of the Happy Valley Hustle podcast, returns to the show to discuss his experience with a year of remote learning and how he hopes education will look different as schools fully come back in person this fall. He talks about how he managed — or sometimes didn’t manage — Zoom fatigue for his students and for himself and how the time in remote learning might strengthen the desire for...

Anyone who works in communications knows that it’s easy for productive conversions to turn dark and hurtful, particularly when it comes to issues like race and identity. Dr. Mordecai Ian Brownlee leans into the difficult parts of these conversations in his work as a leader, teacher, mentor, speaker, and more. He joins us this week to discuss the need for spaces where we can freely share our own experiences and learn from the experiences of others. We also talk about how to set a positive example on social media and use it to lift people up, rather than get dragged into the latest conflict of the day. Mordecai currently serves as the Vice President for Student Success at St. Philip’s College. Effective July 15, 2021, he will serve as the sixth President of the Community College of Aurora within the Colorado Community College System. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Morgan State University School of Education & Urban Studies and the University of Charleston School of Business and Leadership, as well as a higher education columnist for EdSurge. His mission as an educator is to work collectively with all stakeholders to create a safe and equitable learning environment that promotes student inclusion, student engagement, and student success. That mission comes through loud and clear in this conversation.

The Registrar’s office is one that even those of us who have been in higher ed for a long time sometimes struggle to understand. The profession has come a long way from the days of long lines of students waiting to register for classes and taken even more importance during the pandemic. Doug McKenna, the University Registrar at George Mason University, joins us this week for a dose of Registrar 101 in the most fun way possible. If you enjoy this episode and want to hear more from Doug — including the theme song we talk about — check out his podcast For the Record, which he hosts for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Many of the episodes on this show focus on traditional, four-year universities, but community colleges have the same responsibilities when it comes to social media, enrollment management, and many other aspects of higher ed. This week, we welcome Van Nguyen and Olivia Perry of Schoolcraft College just outside Detroit, to talk about the challenges and the opportunities of working at a community college. We also talk about how the pandemic impacted community college staff and students and chat about plans for commencement and how to pull off ceremonies that honor students and their achievements in a safe way. Van Nguyen is the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Schoolcraft College; Olivia Perry is the school’s Marketing and Events Coordinator.

We are very excited to have Dr. Josie Ahlquist back on the show to discuss her new book, Digital Leadership in Higher Education. We talk about the book and what leadership looks like during global pandemic and ongoing struggles for racial justice. No matter what’s going in the world, Josie stresses that higher education leaders need to show up authentically to their interactions with students. With so much misinformation out there, students need to know that they can trust their institution and its leaders before they will believe what they’re reading in an email or seeing in a video. Josie also reminds us about the importance of taking time to recognize the difficulty of the work we’re doing right now and the fact that we can’t vent to colleagues or celebrate achievements in the normal ways right now. That’s where the digital hug comes in. Josie talks about how she uses them and the power of building mastermind cohorts that are on part strategy session and one part therapy session.

Many of our organizations have spent the past year working on ways to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion on our campuses. However, that work sometimes stalls out before it even gets going because it’s such a big task that it’s hard to know where to start or how to keep the momentum going. That’s where Dar Mayweather shines. Dar is the founder of Good Mayweather Consulting, where he helps his clients confidently engage in critical conversations around diversity and inclusion.He has more than 15 years of professional leadership experience in higher education, business, and diversity & inclusion training. His professional journey began in the corporate world, then he moved to mental health, and now calls higher ed home. He believes in fast tracking his client's learning by utilizing research and lived experiences to develop actionable solutions. Lougan and Jenna talk with Dar about what these high-level concepts look like at a granular level — everything from time blocking and task prioritization to starting difficult conversations and resisting the pressure for quick, superficial change rather than something more meaningful. The tips Dar shares are important not just for DEI work, but for managing workloads and dealing with burnout in general. Dar is a first-generation college student. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice, a Master of Science in Education and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Educational Leadership while teaching Leadership to undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

We’re a year into the pandemic, and many of us are getting ready for commencement and everything that the end of the school year brings. Anyone feeling a little (or maybe a lot) of burnout? Ken Schneck has been there and joins us this week to share his journey from student affairs professional to an administrator in his mid-20s to a tenured faculty member and published author. Ken found himself burned out at age 35 and spoke up about what he was experiencing. The message resonated more than he ever thought it would and became the catalyst for launching his speaking and writing career. In this episode, Ken talks with us about that journey and the advice he now gives to his students in the Leadership in Higher Education program at Baldwin Wallace University. Ken also talks with Lougan and Jenna about how escaping the grind of administrative work allowed him to pursue a writing career and tell the stories of Ohio’s LGBTQ communities.

Dr. Liz Gross returns to the show to talk with Jenna about what’s happening at Campus Sonar, the company she founded to help organizations throughout higher ed harness the power of social listening. We talk about how social listening has changed during the pandemic, how going to conferences outside higher ed helped Liz see what our industry was lacking, how to run a growing organization that’s entirely remote, and much more. Liz is a recognized expert, data-driven marketer, and higher education researcher. She specializes in creating entrepreneurial social media strategies in higher education and has a passion for teaching, which she brings to colleges and universities as the founder and CEO of Campus Sonai. She’s also an award-winning speaker; you might have seen her at SXSW, SXSW EDU, the American Marketing Association Symposium, the Carnegie Conference, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, or one of many other conferences inside and outside of higher ed. She received a Ph.D. in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service in Higher Education at Cardinal Stritch University, a master’s degree in educational policy and leadership from Marquette University, and a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal communication from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

We’re back! And we have some great episodes in store for you. Thank you to everyone who responded to our requests to be on the show! For our first episode of 2021, Lougan and Jenna are joined by David Mee, vice president for enrollment management at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. David reflects on how the pandemic has upended how we think about enrollment management and higher education more broadly — and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Before joining Campbell University, David spent 10 years at Belmont University, where he worked with Lougan. Like many of us, he never thought that higher education would become his career, but he’s glad that it has. We hope you’ll find this conversation as inspiring as we did!

Ravi Jain from Boston College joins us on the show this week! Ravi serves as the Senior Associate Director of Digital Media & Web at Boston College. We talk with Ravi about being selected as an inaugural INBOUND2019 Fellow and his upcoming talk at INBOUND 2019. Ravi tells us more about why he’s become a short form video evangelist and how he uses micro-storytelling to tell the story of the different “cities” at BC. We also discuss why vinyl sounds better and the fun and agony of designing email templates.

This week, we’re bringing you an episode from Democracy Works, the podcast Jenna hosts when she’s not on Higher Ed Social. She talks with Nancy Thomas, director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, an applied research center in the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. Nancy argues that higher education faculty, staff, and administrators can be political without being partisan when it comes to things like encouraging students to vote or thinking about how political issues will impact their day-to-day lives. She also offers some advice for how to keep voting in your messaging mix this fall despite everything else happening on campus and in the country.

There’s a big stir in northern Maine this fall, and Dr. Melik Khoury is in the middle of it. As President of Unity College, he recently announced a plan to move fully to distance and hybrid learning — a move that included layoffs and furloughs for dozens of faculty and staff and the potential sale of the physical campus. Dr. Khoury describes these changes as not only essential to keeping the college open during COVID-19, but also as part of a bigger vision he has for what education should look like. He sees a world in which students can break free of the traditional campus model and get the information they need to solve society’s greatest problems right away, without waiting four years or more to graduate. Sound ambitious? It is, but Khoury stands by it and joins us this week to discuss. You might not agree with everything he says about higher ed, but it’s hard to deny that he has a vision and is passionate about making it a reality.

Like a lot of us, Corynn Myers is basically working two jobs right now. She’s serving as the lead on all of the University of Michigan’s COVID-related communications and managing a team that’s part of Michigan’s in-house creative agency. It’s a lot, but she handles it all with poise and made time to talk with us about how thinking like an agency has helped her team thrive and bring big results in enrollment marketing. We also talk about how Corynn and her family are copying during quarantine and why running is not for everyone, no matter how much we might want it to be right now. Corynn also talk about how working from home has impacted her productivity for better and her diet for worse — something else many of us can relate to right now!

Episode 33 starts off with an ice breaker, introducing Lucky Luke Haumesser, Assistant Director of Student Activities and Governments at the University at Buffalo. After our ice breaker session, we’re comfortable enough with each other to argue about the correct pronunciation of ‘gif,” and make animal noises. Move in week is coming up, and in his new role outside of Residence Life for the first time, Luke talks about the Welcome Week events that he’s helping to plan – including the overhead “interlocking UB” photo, break dancing, and all night pancakes. We also talk about IKEA and Home Depot, in part to celebrate Luke’s transition from a live-on position to his own apartment.

By day, Jessica DePaul is the Associate Director for Recruitment Marketing at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She previously worked at Rutgers as the Assistant Director of Marketing. She is a passionate marketer that is an expert in the latest education technology and trends, including virtual reality for campus tours and open houses. By night, she’s a makeup artist who has done everything from zombie makeup to more traditional styles. In this conversation, we talk about both sides of her personality and how COVID-19 has impacted her work in recruitment and in makeup. Jessica will be presenting at the eduWeb Digital Summit on Monday, August 3 at 4:00 p.m. ET. Learn more about her session at: https://www.accelevents.com/e/eduweb2020

Hey everyone! We wanted to share something special with you this week. Jackie Vetrano, who helped create our show, has started a new podcast called Jackie Watches Stuff. As you might know from previous episodes of Higher Ed Social, she’s missed out on a lot of great movies and in this new show, she watches them and discusses them with friends. Today, we’re sharing her first episode about Top Gun. That’s right, Jackie had never seen Top Gun. It’s a great episode, but a quick warning that there’s some explicit language and a bit of adult content. So be mindful of the kiddos and the workspaces. The first 4 episodes are available now at jackiewatchesstuff.com and anywhere you listen to podcasts. Don’t forget to follow the show on Twitter at @JackieWatches.

Leigh Hall is a professor and the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Literacy Education at the University of Wyoming. While studying at the University of South Florida, she realized she wanted to be a teacher and create a better environment for future students. She got her master’s at Vanderbilt University then taught social studies for 6 years in Houston before getting her Ph. D at Michigan State University. Her research on literacy at the University of Wyoming aims to help elementary and middle school teachers around the state.