Changing the Odds for College Students with Dr. Kevin Walthers

Dr. Kevin Walters, president of Allan Hancock College, discusses why the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) metrics miss the real story of community college students. He shares a clearer way using the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond data to count success that includes transfers, certificates, persistence, and the systems that help more students finish. He also unpacks strategies that have increased student success at the college. 

Key points:
• Dr. Walters’ path from first-generation student to community college president
• Why IPEDS graduation rates miscount community college outcomes and why the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond data is more accurate
• Using outcome data to spark better teaching, retention, and counseling
• What unit load reveals about momentum and time-to-completion
• Promise scholarships that incentivize full-time attendance
• Auto-generated comprehensive education plans as part of guided pathways
• Performance-based funding focused on outcomes rather than rates
• Building a student-centered culture through stable leadership and teams
• Equity gains when completion efforts match the community’s demographics
• Expanding local access through Cal Poly degree offerings on the Hancock campus
• Practical take on A.I., classroom assessment, and workforce readiness

"The most exciting piece of the Richmond Fed data [as opposed to IPEDS) is our success rate is 41%. If you take that, of students that transferred, students that got a degree, students that are still there, students that got a certificate, 41% of those students. Keeping in mind that some of those students had no intention of pursuing a degree, but they were there for the first time. So 41%, that's way better than the IPEDS number--that's down in the 20% range. But it also shows we can improve." - Dr. Kevin Walthers

Continuous Learning Institute:
A resource hub for higher education professionals to support college student success. Subscribe for updates.

Student Success Podcast Homepage:
Access show notes, resources, & transcripts

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Al 0:03

Welcome to the Student Success Podcast. If you work in high red and want to learn ways to support students, check out today's episode. Welcome, Dr. Kevin Walters, president of Allen Hancock College.

Kevin 0:19

It's good to be here, Dr. Al Solano.

Kevin Walters’ Path To Leadership

Al 0:22

So tell us uh a little bit about yourself.

Kevin 0:26

Um I'm uh originally from Texas. I grew up as a as an Air Force kid. We moved around a lot. And uh you know, uh a million years ago, I was working on my doctorate to uh in in uh higher ed in education, leadership, and policy. When uh I think I was gonna be a K-12 superintendent or high school principal, something like that, that was my career choice. I'm a first-generation college student, and so you you know, for uh for my generation, that first generation college student, their their uh their goal was to be high school teachers, right? That that those were the kind of professionals I was exposed to. So I thought, you know, well, someday maybe I'll be a principal. And uh as I was finishing up my coursework, uh had this great opportunity to go work for the Utah State Legislature and worked on higher ed policy for about seven years and found my way working uh over to the Utah State Board of Regents, and then ultimately um the College of Eastern Utah, um there in Utah and Price, Utah, and uh kind of headed off on a higher ed journey and it's been great. It's a lot of fun. I've served as the as a senior official in the Utah system, as the chief act the chief administrative officer for both of West Virginia systems, and now I'm in my second presidency, 13 years at Allen Hancock College, 15 total, and just really love the work we're doing.

Al 1:55

Well, thank you for that. So recently you've been highlighted by the American Association of Community Colleges. They they have a publication, the Community College Daily, and that's been uh passed around quite a bit.

Why IPEDS Misreads Community Colleges

Al 2:10

A lot of people have been sharing that, and it's regarding uh student data. So take us through a journey of of uh how you got to that place.

Kevin 2:19

Well, you know, um two Novembers ago, so November 24, I was at meeting, and um of all places, the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank was doing this presentation about how they've been evaluating success rates for their local colleges, and their stance was look, IPEDS doesn't do justice to community colleges. I mean, IPEDS was built for the kind of students who went to college in the 1960s, which were middle class, white, predominantly male, um, and they were going full-time. That was not a uh that that's not our student body, right? And so they came up with this new model, and they were they were doing all of the colleges in their region, and that includes um uh South Carolina primarily, and they they were talking about look, we should give you credit for students who graduate, we should give you credit for students who transfer, we should give you credit for students that get a credential and students that get uh that are still there. Even if they're still there, we're gonna count that as a type of success. And and they said instead of monitoring it along the way, we're just gonna do it, we're gonna take a snapshot. You know, in in the fall, we're going to count all of your first-time students, no matter where they came from, right? Even if they had been to another institution and came to the college, what happened to that student four years later? And I thought about that, and I'm like, yeah, we can we can do that at Hancock. There's no reason we can't recreate that exact same template and share it with our faculty and staff to talk about the the work we're doing. And um, so we we rolled it out uh January of 25, um, the first draft of it, and then we were able to um talk a little bit more about it this past convocation for for the fall of the 25-26 year. And and you know, it it shows that we've we have some some some good outcomes. It also shows we could we've got room for improvement. So we're really excited about using this tool to reflect the kind of work we're doing with our student body.

A New Snapshot Success Model

Al 4:30

So what's an example of how IPEDS had counted, for example, student completion, what that number is or was compared to what the Richmond Fed number looks like?

Kevin 4:46

So I I'm a good example of um what's wrong with the IPEDS system. I went to Eastfield College right out of high school and I went there for one year, and IPEDS only count if you get a degree, right? And and you have to do it within three years. So I got 30 units, transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. And so in the data for Eastfield College, I show up as a failure because I didn't graduate there. And then at the University of Texas, where I did graduate, I don't show up at all because I wasn't a first-time, full-time freshman at the University of Texas. So so there's no way to count that. And IPEDS doesn't account for transfer. So if we were looking at how you know this model that the Richmond Fed came up with, I would count as a success for Eastfield because I show up at the University of Texas in my second year as a transfer student. So that would be, that would be a success. And I think that's the most important part is that having, you know, when you rely on your entire cohort being first-time, full-time freshmen, um, the difference in the number of students you're counting is for us, we we'll have something around 300 students in that cohort of first-time, full-time freshmen

Transfer Students Count As Success

Kevin 6:10

compared to all first-time students who show up on our campus, will be 1,200 to 1,500 students. So we're counting, we're counting a much bigger cohort. So that means we have, when we're saying that our outcomes are better on the new cohort, it's not just better cohort to cohort, it's better for a larger number of students.

Al 6:31

And how are your colleagues responding to to this?

Kevin 6:36

Uh my colleagues on campus have been very uh very interested in this. I think it sparked some conversations around campus because now you can start to um you can start to ask questions about, oh, you know, what am I doing in my classroom to uh to improve retention? What am I doing to ensure students finish my class and and and don't stop out during the semester? Um so that's been a good conversation, and we're really new at the like this is really the first full year we've been talking about it. So we're saying I and I think the other side of it, what I think the um the most exciting piece of that data, um our success rate is 41%. If you take that of students that transferred, students that got a degree, students that are still there, students that got a certificate. 41% of those students, keeping in mind that some of those students had no intention of pursuing a degree, but they were there for the first time. So 41%, that's way better than the PEDS number that's down in the 20% range. But it also shows we can improve. But where I like to compare it to is when you look at if a student during that four years just goes full-time one semester, for the students that went one full-time one semester, the success rate jumps to 54%. And I mean that's huge. That's a that's a 25% gain in the outcome rate that um, you know, all of a sudden we're talking about more than half the students having a successful

Using Data To Change Teaching

Kevin 8:10

um outcome four years later. And that's something then we can talk to our faculty and talk to our counselors and say, look, if we can encourage students to go full-time, we know time is the enemy. So let's help these students get through their path more quickly. And uh and I think that's been a really eye-opening statistic for for our campus.

Al 8:33

Yeah, uh, at any given campus, as uh at least the ones I work with, uh part-time students could be 80, 85 percent of the population. And so one of the ways we've been trying to address that is through uh a unit accumulation campaign. So that we're not saying out the gate, you well, you better come here full-time, although I mean that would be uh ideal for them to be there full-time, but rather, hey, so you're taking six units, you know what? Consider taking nine. You're taking nine, consider taking twelve, and here's why. And then let students decide, right? So are you are you doing is that kind of your next step as you look at this data and that one data point about one full-time enrollment uh at a semester that makes such a big difference? Uh what's kind of your your next step to given that that data, that data point?

Kevin 9:27

Well, I think so. For us, we're the bulk of our new students are coming from the local high schools. Um we're we're uh uh a fairly isolated campus where the nearest community college to us is 45 minutes away, the nearest university is at best 45 minutes away, and you know, and tens of thousands of dollars away. Um and the next closest is 60 miles away. So we're the only game in town, and we want to make

Full-Time Momentum And Unit Gains

Kevin 9:55

sure we're excellent for our for our community, but with those high schools coming in, our feeling is they were going high school, they were going full-time, you know, back in May, you can keep going full-time, and we incentivize that by providing um promise scholarships. So we have a two-year promise program that will pay for tuition for students for two years, um, but they have to attend the major semesters full-time. That's um that's the uh that's you know, the commitment those students need to make is to attend full-time, to take math and English so that they can proceed on the way to success, because we know those are the things that build success. Um this is another tool. Um, you know, one other tool that I'm really excited about that's related to this but wasn't inspired by this is the uh uh we've automated student education plans. So every one of those freshmen who come in, they get their student education plan automatically handed to them. They're welcome to change it, but we know that students who have education plans are more likely to complete, and we know that they use those plans to map out their courses. So we want to be um

Promise Scholarships And Default Ed Plans

Kevin 11:08

we want to put students in the best place to be successful, and if they want to opt out of that, we have ways for them to do that, but we want the default to be what's the best for for the most students, and uh we think that's a really positive way of getting students to uh to stay enrolled and to complete. And we're seeing it, we're seeing our completion numbers increase um since the promise program began, um, even though our student enrollment is lower than when the student promise program began.

Al 11:38

So a few things that's sparking a lot of thought here. Um thing I wanted to ask, then as you know, the country is moving more and more into performance-based formulas for funding, Texas, California. So for example, you're in California, we're both in California. Uh given this student-centered formula, does that use IPEDS or uh does it use something more akin to what you've been talking about?

Kevin 12:13

Well, I think it's not using rates, and I think that's important. One of the things that I think is really important is, you know, I've never had an employer ask me for a graduation rate. They asked me for a graduate, right? That's what we want. We want graduates, and the student center funding formula rewards colleges for these positive outcomes. You know, we we get funding for every student that transfers, for every student that graduates, for every student that gets a certificate. You only get one per um you know, one per year. You can't stack those up. But it's important, it's important to us that we tie those good outcomes that we've been talking with students about. If we if we focus on doing the right thing for students, the money will take care of itself. And uh but that means we need to be intentional about what those things are. So um, you know, we're not pressuring students finish, finish, finish. We need the money, but we want to set up our our um we want to set up our college in a way that um encourages and incentivizes students to complete because that's what's best for them in the long term. And on the back end of that, we feel like you know our our funding will be fine as we do that.

Al 13:26

Uh tell us a little bit more, because campuses are trying to figure this out, right? The research is clear on this, uh, especially for students of color, if they if we can get them a comprehensive ed plan, right? Right. Not just an ed plan, you know, a simple one, but a comprehensive one. How do you manage to do that at your campus? Is it uh I've seen systems where it's done through technology and then they're able to meet with someone to help them with that. How does that look like at Alan Hancock?

Kevin 13:55

Well, what we're doing now is that at and this just started this year. Okay. I mean, literally this semester we started this, but we've

Funding Formulas And Incentives

Kevin 14:02

programmed our student information system so that when the student signs up and they say, I want to be an engineering major or a welding major, the system generates an ed plan for them and gives them the information they need and encourages them to go visit with a counselor. But they've now got that ed plan in their hands, in their degree work system online. Um, they can follow that along the way so that you know what we're trying to do, you know, for so many of our kids, they are um uh you know, they're first generation high school students, right? I mean, it's it's it's crazy to think that in our community, 40% of the adults in our largest city, Santa Maria, don't have a high school diploma. Think about that. They're farm workers, they're laborers, and they are very hardworking families, and they want their kids to go to college, but they don't have the tools they need to help guide their kids through college. So if we can set that up for the student, you know, the things that you and I did for our kids to say, make sure you've got your ed plan, um that will help those students be more successful. And and so I'm really confident that we're gonna see even more success now that every student has an ed plan, because we had counselors, you know, trying to do ed plans, trying to get students to come in, and and you know, students are busy, so and and they don't really do optional, right? Our you know, community college students don't do optional. So if you say you should do this, they're not gonna do it. But if we here it is, you've got this. If you want to change it, go see your counselor and we can get you into a different ed plan if that's what you want to do.

Al 15:45

And how how is it auto-generated? So you on the back end, you had people So I I want to go into welding, and so that that comprehensive ed plan is already in the back end and it just spits it out for a student.

Kevin 15:58

Yeah, it's like layered on top of our pathways programs, right? We've we've laid out all of these guided pathways programs for all of our

Automated Education Plans With DegreeWorks

Kevin 16:05

programs, and then that's we use a program called DegreeWorks that lets students do scenario building. So all of that database working together is able to generate the ed plan. Now, the caveat, I'm a college president, so I don't actually do anything. So uh we have some really smart people who take care of all that on the back end, and uh and I and I'm uh uh I just count on them to uh to make sure that that's working and they did they put a lot of work into it and have done a really nice job with it.

Al 16:34

Well, let's talk about that for a moment, being a college president. Um you said you're in your your 15th year and uh at Santa Maria it's uh 13, is it? 13 at the same college, that's correct.

Kevin 16:47

Right. And while you've been college president, how how has the we and we started talking about data? How has the data looked like? How has it been trending and uh what are some of the things that uh contribute to that, whether good or bad? You know, when I got to Hancock, we were coming out of the recession, and um this was a good college and and doing good work. Um I was able to take some of my um lessons learned, especially in West Virginia. Um we had a really good institutional research shop and did a lot of good work for Complete College America and for the National Governors Association.

Completion Culture And Equity Results

Kevin 17:34

And um I was able to take some of that experience and bring it in. And one of the things that um we learned in that process was completion's the goal. And we would report, I mean, one of the cool things about community colleges, um, I mean, I'll throw my proud dad moment in there. My kid's gonna graduate this spring from our college. He's getting five degrees. He's getting a degree in engineering, he's gonna get one in physics, he's gonna get one in chemistry, and I think math with physics, right? Um I couldn't even pass the basic courses for those. But that's that's it's super cool, right? He's gonna get these five degrees, but those five degrees don't make him more marketable, right? It doesn't, it's neat that he's got that, but really he's one graduate for our college. But our college was counting when they would do the press release. We're gonna be issuing um, you know, 1,800 degrees this this uh this spring at graduation, and the community will go, oh, that's fantastic. And I'm like, 1800 degrees? We're not that big of a college. Well, then I figured out the students are all layering these degrees together. I'm like, well, how many unique individuals is that? Well, it turns out it was around 800, like 815 total. I said, that's the number we need to talk about. We need to talk about the 815, which is still a good number for a college our size, but let's make sure we're being realistic about how many students were turning out. And so we really started focusing on completion throughout the throughout this the student journey, completion of individual coursework, completion of semesters, completion of whatever credential they could get along the way, and then finally graduation, getting that getting that degree earned at the end. And we've seen a shift in now in our culture where people are really focused on how many graduates can we have. And uh, you know, one one of the really cool things is when when we started looking at this 12, 13 years ago, in a community that's 65 to 70 percent Latino, our graduating class was still majority white. And we're like, and that that's our graduating class should look like our student body, and our student body should look like our community, which it did. And so we started working on that. We started working on, you know, we started using the student equity uh funds to identify it. What are the programs we need to help students complete? And one of my favorite things to talk about now is in three of the last five years, the number of Latino graduates that we had at Allen Hancock College is larger than the total number of graduates we had that first year. And that's you know, we we're setting records for the number of students graduating, but we've made our graduating class look like our student body. And um that's that was a lot of heavy lifting, and it doesn't happen overnight. But that's that's how you transform a community like ours where we're the only game in town, making sure that students are leaving with a valuable credential.

Al 20:44

Yeah, and and obviously it's really important to have a strong bench, right? Um the the team. But the the coach still has a role to play in that. And since you're you've been a college president for 15 years, what what are kind of some maybe I'll frame it like this let's say there's uh someone up and coming, they they want to be a college president. Uh

Leadership Lessons And Why Longevity Matters

Al 21:12

what are some lessons learned, some some uh tips that that you can give that person?

Kevin 21:19

You know, I think um somebody who's looking at this career path, make sure you know how to do the job you just came from really well. Right. Um we we we seem to have some folks who are on a fast track and they're trying to, you know, they got to be a dean, and two or three years later they're they're applying for VP jobs, and then two years later, there's a lot, there, there's a lot that these jobs entail that you just there's no book gonna teach it. You're gonna have to make some mistakes, you're gonna have to um, you know, learn the hard way, you're gonna get some successes that you can remember and bring forward. Um, you know, what I what I hope I'm able To do, I've had some people that work for me that have gone on to promotion jobs, to college presidents, and hopefully we gave them the space to make mistakes and the space to innovate. I feel like we've done that. But you know, the real key, um, you know, this is probably more a message for trustees, um, is longevity matters. You know, longevity matters. And I'm I'm at a point I'm gonna have a dean retire um this year, and I will be down to one manager on our team, one manager on our team that I didn't hire. And, you know, my my joke with the management team is is you know, that means I don't have anybody left to blame, right? It's it's it's all on me. But um, but you know, we've built this team of people that view student success as a priority. The view, how can we, every question we answer is how does it help a student? How does it help a student? And um, it's such a different mindset from what you see at a four-year university where there's lots of protection of the institution, and they want to, you know, we we don't want to get sued if we give a special arrangement to one student and not another. We take, you know, we we set everything up for as many students as possible, but we're gonna take those individual students and hold them by the hand and get them through the process that need it. So uh so I I I think longevity is so critical in these kind of roles, and when you see colleges that have lots of turnover, you're also gonna see colleges that are not really doing all they can. Um, you know, one other thing I would say about that is um um, you know, the core of what we do, the core of our faculty and staff and administrators is so strong that even when colleges are messing up, we still have this core of really good outcomes. We have students graduate, we have students transfer. But what happens is when there's lots of turnover and there's lots of tumult, the students on the margins are the ones who get hurt the most. And those are our those are the students we need to help the most, is the students on the margins.

Al 24:18

Yeah, I'm big on culture as as as you know, uh and and centering a kind of culture of dignity and kindness where where you can make mistakes and you can experiment. And if it doesn't go well the first time, well, okay. What happened? Let's learn from it and and move forward, right? Uh unfortunately, there's that's not the norm. And to your point, there are spaces where, for example, Board of Trustees will would not like the experiment, the learning, and you're out of here because you know it didn't go well. Um and and so it's really important because our institutions are places of learning for students, that they also be places of learning for those who serve them. Right? Just creating that space for learning. And you know, it's obvious to me that that you've done that, and it's it's evident in in the data, in the numbers, and and and I visited your campus several times, and it's evident in the in the culture. Um the other thing I I think presidents do is they're they're able to fight, you know, for their students, uh be out there, and and I remember reading uh uh that you were really trying to address this uh equity issue given the fact that you are kind of isolated, right?

Fighting For Local Bachelor’s Pathways

Al 25:43

You have uh San Luis Obispo, but it's you know it's it's not easy to get in, and it's not like they take thousands of students, transfer students, and then you see Santa Barbara. Not a lot of of people in your community are you know want to move, right? They they still want to be with their families, and you really fought for um community colleges to be able to offer bachelor's degrees. So tell us a little bit about that.

Kevin 26:12

You know, it's um I I think it's it's important. Even with Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, 45 minutes up the road, um, when you think about our students, um, you know, that's 90 miles a day round trip. Um, even before gas prices spiked. That was expensive. Plus a parking pass, plus, plus, plus, right? Um, plus you're not getting that full experience, you're not being able to stay for the later study groups. You know, you might have to get home for work. So even that commute, if Cal Poly had enough seats for all of our students, would be very difficult. We needed we needed some bachelor's degrees in our community. Um I think um, you know, I spent two and a half, three years, you know, really taking on CSU over there in Transigence about offering these degrees for our for our community. Um that's where I get passionate, is when when I start talking about our students and our community, um I get I get super passionate about that. And we spent a lot of time making the argument we should be able to offer bachelor's degrees if the CSU is not going to do that. Um and CSU spent a lot of time pushing back on that. Um we've we got every politician in our region, um, every business in our region was supporting us, all the chambers of commerce were supporting us. And and ultimately we had uh a legislator, we we got a the board, the the board of governors passed, approved our what we were calling a bachelor's of applied business, and then we had then it goes into this negotiating rule with the uh um with the CSU, which is completely set up in a way that CSU essentially has veto power over it. Um and it's supposed to be, well, we're gonna have faculty-to-faculty conversations and uh and and I know you're kind of a sci-fi geek. I'm not really a sci-fi geek, but I love the original Star Trek. And I went into those meetings treating it like you know the old Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If you have something that's not fair, we're gonna change the rules to make it fair. And um that that that uh um fight went on for months until uh our local assembly member uh Greg Hart got involved and filed a piece of legislation for us that said for Hancock College, if they get if it's approved by the Board of Governors, it's approved and just took us out of that process. And CSU woke up, they were like, oh, wait a minute, it sounds like somebody's serious about this. I'm not sure that piece of legislation really had a chance of passing, but I also think CSU didn't want to have that public debate in a hearing. And um, all of a sudden I'm getting a call from Jeff Armstrong, president of Cal Poly, offering to provide four degrees, Cal Poly degrees at our campus, which is what we'd wanted all along. Um and to Jeff's credit, he could have he could have just offered one, but he took the opportunity to say, no, we're gonna offer four degrees in northern Santa Barbara County. So now we're on this path. We've got one in sociology, we're starting another one in business this fall. In the fall of 28, we'll start a third one, and in the fall of 2030, we'll start a fourth one. Um those are going to be real-life Cal Poly degrees, taught by Cal Poly faculty with a Cal Poly diploma at the end. And as much as I value what we do, and as much as our faculty and staff do great work, um, a Cal Poly degree is a name brand degree that you can take anywhere in the country and lay it on a desk and say, I'm ready to work. And um, so that's gonna be transformational for our community to be able to have that kind of quality on our campus. Um, and we can do what we do best, Cal Poly can do what they do best, and students are gonna be the beneficiary of that. And and our local businesses, right? I mean, that's we need a pathway for students to be able to, you know, go and get that business degree and go to work for the local. Um, you know, we have some very large agriculture firms that need business majors. We have um city and county government and and banks and all those kind of things where those students will be um welcomed with open arms to uh to come in and get jobs that will allow them to continue living on the Central Coast.

Al 30:46

Yeah, that what a beautiful story.

AI In Learning And Better Assessment

Al 30:48

As we start to wrap up, I'm wondering your your take on AI, right? AI is just really changing the landscape in the workforce, in education, and it's moving so fast. Where where are you in that? Because it's so it's changing all the time. What you may say now may change in a week or two, but given today, what what's your take on AI?

Kevin 31:14

I think, I read a really good article written by uh a guy named Martin Mehl. He's a professor at or an instructor, professor, I'm not sure what they call him at Cal Poly. Um, but he talked about how you know there are stages of learning where you you don't know what you don't know, and you learn those things, and then you practice them, and then you learn to analyze them, and then ultimately you're you're a master of some kind of information or some kind of data. And he's and his point was AI removes those first three steps. And what we need to be doing in the classroom is teaching students how to use that tool so that when they get an answer, when they when they, you know, if you're asking a student to summarize a long document, AI is going to be a much better source, right? But the students need to know how that works. So it's up to faculty to do assessment. And I think that's where I think our faculty are coming around to that, that it's it's no longer enough to just give a test. It's no longer enough just to assign a paper. We've really got to think about how do we assess learning. And when we assess learning, that means we need to change a little bit, right? And um so I I I'm generally optimistic about what's going to happen. I I don't think that AI is going to displace as many jobs as people are afraid of. I think it's going to change jobs dramatically. And I think in the future, the people who will, you know, the person who will get a job is the person who knows how to use AI appropriately over the person who doesn't. And I think that's really uh really going to be the future. Um but to be honest, I'm also a little grateful that while I'm not planning on retiring anytime soon, I can see it on the horizon, and by the time it's really gone crazy, I'll be retired and it'll be somebody else's problem.

Al 33:14

Hey, so let's let's end on something totally different.

Barbecue Tips

Al 33:18

You're from Texas. So uh it's obvious uh and I've seen your social media that you barbecue.

Kevin 33:27

I do.

Al 33:28

So well give us uh a barbecue uh tip to take us home.

Kevin 33:36

All the time. Put it on the smoker at 225 and leave it alone. All the Traeger and all the people online, you got to start it at 180 for three hours and you gotta do this. Just whatever you're smoking, put it at 225 and let it go. And uh when it gets to the temp you need, you'll be fine. And you know, so if you're doing the steak, it might take a half hour. If you're doing uh if you're doing a brisket, it might take you a day and a half. Who knows? So I've had briskets, you know, go 22, 24 hours before they were done. Um it's uh you know, it's kind of about being patient. So um, and uh if uh sauce is nice to have, but if you need sauce, there's something wrong with your barbecue.

Al 34:20

Well, with that, uh Kevin, it's such a pleasure to have you on the student success podcast. Thanks a bunch.

Kevin 34:27

Thanks, Al. We'll talk to you soon.

Al 34:32

Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast. You can subscribe to the show and newsletter on the Continuous Learning Institute link below. And of course on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.