The Connected College Podcast with Elliot Felix

How can broad education + targeted skills + social capital lead to success in college and beyond? How can students combine getting an education and getting a job, especially in the age of AI? How can students play the short game (i.e., targeted skills) and the long game (i.e., broad education) as they think about the careers they want to have and the lives they want to lead? We discuss these questions and more with Ben Wildavsky, Author of The Career Arts.

How can you solve the "need a job to get experience but need experience to get a job" conundrum? How can you help students find their purpose so they are more motivated, engaged, and resilient learners? Can you do this all in a way that levels the playing field for students and employers alike? We dive into these questions with Dana Stephenson, Co-founder and CEO of Riipen, an experiential learning marketplace that connects colleges and universities to companies through projects that build students' skills and relationships and help companies find talent, get ideas, and make progress.

How can the right combination of curiosity, collaboration, community, and classes equip students to be changemakers? How can you expand the definition of and participation in entrepreneurship and what are the outcomes? How is AI changing education and work to prepare students for change? We dive into these questions with Cornell Suhartono, current Berkeley student, Samiha Singh former student and now a McKinsey consultant, and Laura Paxton Hassner Executive Director of the Berkeley Changemaker® program.

How can colleges and universities improve the employee experience and in turn increase student success? What do institutions need to do differently in terms of strategic planning, professional growth, and leadership development? How can institutions take on the tough decisions and conversations that come with cuts and consolidations? We dive into these questions with Kevin McClure, author of The Caring University as well as a faculty member and department head at UNC Wilmington.

What's the role of technology in student success? How are online and hybrid learning and ubiquitous connectivity changing experiences? How do you make decisions about what's in the enterprise tech stack while leveraging personal devices? How can you use data to connect coursework, co-curriculars, and more to a career path? We dive into these questions with James Vasquez Associate Dean for Strategy and Operations at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.

What role can engaging companies in your community play in enabling student success? How can experiential learning help students not just learn skills but ways to apply new ways of thinking and working? How can students learn to work with people with different perspectives and backgrounds? What does this say about the future of higher ed? We discuss all this with Risa Dickson, President at University of La Verne.

How can experiential learning help students grow personally and professionally? What industry partnerships best enable that growth in a learn and earn model? How do real stakes with real people and real metrics drive success? We dive into these questions with Nick Bayer, Founder and CEO of Saxbys, where they've turned running campus coffee shops into a platform for experiential learning – with measurable learning outcomes.

How can colleges and universities be intentional about their governance so they are prepared to make decisions they've never made before, with higher stakes, in less time? How can boards strike the right balance between hindsight, oversight, and foresight? How can they create meaningful metrics on outcomes and the processes to achieve them? We dig into these questions with Steve Charles, Founder of the IMMX Group and higher ed board member (Note that Steve's views are his own. He's not speaking on behalf of any institution.)

How can public-private partnerships transform higher ed? What can institutions and industry partner on? Why are partnerships on the rise? What the best ways to identify, structure, and manage partnerships? What should you be on the lookout for as you partner in the future; for example as you look to partner on AI? We dive into these questions and more with James Sparkman, founder of the P3EDU Conference (www.p3edu.com) and partner at Alpha Education.

What role can entrepreneurship can play in student success? How can colleges and universities embed entrepreneurial skills into their culture and curriculum? What are the events and programs to run? How can the right spaces support these efforts? We dive into these questions with Mary Ryan the Vice Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London and here all about their Enterprise Lab and global entrepreneurship ecosystem.

What role can marketing play in student success? How can it can increase alignment within the institution, improve awareness among students, and destigmatize or normalize getting help? How can it bust silos and build a connection to the brand? We dive into these topics with Jaime Hunt, former CMO at higher ed institutions and now consulting with institutions at Solve Higher Ed, host of the "Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO," and the author of Heart Over Hype.

How can you implement evidenced-based practices for more engaging and equitable teaching and learning across research universities? What systems and process within them need to change? How can universities collaborate with peer institutions and with employers to get better outcomes? We discuss these questions with Julia Michaels, Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships at UERU, the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities.

What role can mentoring play in student success? What are the surprising attributes that make for a good match? How can mentors connect students to other support on campus and online? How can data inform effective mentoring, reporting, and retention? How can working with a partner bring expertise, consistency, and scale? We dive into these fascinating questions and more with Erin Mayhood, CEO of Mentor Collective.

How can you get beyond the doom and gloom headlines to talk through how institutions can be more hopeful about their futures? How to build trust in those futures? What role can pilot programs and projects can play? We discuss these with Greg Pillar, Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs at Gardner-Webb University and author of the white paper “Rewiring the Academy: Leading with Hope in an Age of Chaos” and the "Field Notes from the Academic Edge" Newsletter.

How can you transform higher education through human-centered design? How can you listen to people and gather insights that inform and inspire changes to programs and policies? What role can design play in helping institutions get real results to improve their student experience? We dive into these questions with the Radka Newton, Michael Doherty, and Jean Mutton, co-editors of the great book Transforming Higher Education with Human Centered Design.

How can you go from disparate technology systems and student services to a unified, personalized, and interactive digital hub to better support students? How can these bring together the services and information students need to drive engagement and retention while saving time and reducing costs? What is the role of AI in supporting students? We dive into these questions and the digital transformation needed to make it all happen with Chase Williams, CEO and co-founder of Pathify.

How can you use the data you already have (but aren't looking at) to predict student success? How can you create incentives to drive the adoption of high-impact practices? How can you build caring, mentoring relationships that increase student success? We dive into these questions with Jeff Doyle, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Southwestern University and prolific blogger/poster of "Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed."

How can you combine people and an AI-powered virtual assistant to provide wraparound student support? How can you do this in way that makes things easier for the staff and faculty supporting students rather than adding more platforms and passwords? What are the right student success measures for institutions and how to you tie detailed data to the big picture? We dive into these and other questions with Melvin Hines, co-founder and CEO of Upswing.

What are the competencies employers want and students need? How can you redesign your general education curriculum to deliver on those? As you do, how might you integrate AI, foster experiential learning, and engage with industry? We talk about all this and more (like a 90 credit hour degree!) with Brad Fuster, Provost at San Francisco Bay University where they are really reimagining what a university can and should be.

How can you reimagine student employment as experiential learning? What projects can students work on to learn and grow while helping their university? What skills and relationships can they build along the way? We dive into these questions with Julia Allworth who founded and leads University of Toronto's Innovation Hub which trains students in design thinking and deploys them as consultants on projects improve the student experience.