Systems in Sync: How NASH and Networked Improvement Communities Are Redesigning Transfer

What happens when higher ed systems stop working in silos and start transforming transfer together? In this episode, Juliette Price of the National Association of System Heads (NASH) spills the tea on how Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) are helping universities rethink transfer through collaboration, data, and equity-driven innovation. Tune in to hear how systems across the country are using improvement science to close transfer gaps, amplify student voices, and finally move from talk to action.

Host

Loida González Utley

Director, Recruitment and Enrollment Services
Texas A&M University–Central Texas
loida.gonzalez@tamuct.edu

Guest

Juliette Price

Senior Improvement Science Coach
National Association of System Heads
jprice@nash.edu

Email us at transfertea@aacrao.org!

NASH Website: https://nash.edu/

The NASH Improvement Mode: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/beyond-transfer/2022/12/21/nash-improvement-model

Transcript

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You are listening to Transferte, a podcast for the Agro community sponsored by Agro, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. I am your host, Loya, and today we're talking big systems, real change, and what happens when higher ed leaders stop admiring the transfer problem and start solving it together. I'm joined by Juliet Price, a powerhouse leading the charge in improvement science for the National Association of System Heads, AKA NAS. Buckle up, because this one goes deep into what it takes to move the needle for transfer equity across the country. Hello, Juliet. It is so nice to be with you again. Uh, it's been a while. It has, but it's good to be with you too, Loya. I'm so excited to be here today. I am, I, I am double excited, uh, to have you on Transportee. Uh, for those of you that don't have the pleasure of knowing you yet, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure, yeah. So my name is, uh, Juliette Price. I am the, uh, director of a very newly formed center. It's called the Center for Post-secondary Improvement at NASH, the National Association of Systems of Higher Education. So that's like all of a mouthful. Um, but, uh, but I guess I would say. You know, I'm, I'm a forever student and admirer of higher education, public higher education in particular. I actually started my career many, many years ago, uh, working for the Chancellor at SUNY, the State University of New York, which is, um, still the nation's largest, most comprehensive system of higher education. 64 campuses, about half. Million more now. Uh, students who attend every single year. And, um, you know, the, the big thing we always thought about ourselves, the differentiators that we were, we were a true system. So we had everything from 2-year institutions, 4-year institutions, uh, doctoral granting, hospital systems. We were all one system. And, um, that's where I really came to learn about systems and systemness and, um, looking at problems from a system view. Um, I actually left higher education for a long time. I worked, um, in K-12 reform, and then I actually, uh, worked in, uh, health. Care. I still do work in healthcare. Um, so I, so this, this project that I'm, that I'm working on that we'll talk about, um, this is about year 3 of this project, and so it's been a little bit of a, a homecoming for me to come back all the way to higher education. So I'm so glad to be. We are so excited that you're back in higher education because wow, the work that has been done has been incredible. But for listeners who are unfamiliar with NASsh, give us an overview of like its mission and why transfer is such a priority for it right now. Sure, yeah. So Nash is, um, like I said, the, the National Association of Systems of Higher Education, which I know there's like a lot of the role of like groups in higher education, but where Nash stands apart, um, is that they're really pulling together folks who lead systems, and that's not just the Chancellor, the president, you know, whatever the name is, um, but really the staff that, that, that run those systems and The concept is really pushing against this concept of systemness, right? That together, systems can push boundaries and get results faster if we work together, and there is something just very inherent about being part of a university system instead of a standalone university or college. And so Nash's big idea there is really just that in order to maximize on that concept of systemness, you know, We have to investigate it. We have to push it. We have to know what it means and what does this look like. Um, I can say, as someone who used to work at a system office, it was hard to know, um, who your peers were. There wasn't really a peer to peer network. You know, the colleges, they all had their peer to peer network where the admissions officers would all come together. The provosts would all come together. But there wasn't a place for people who were running systems to come together and say, Yeah, how, how do we set policy? How do we set practice? How do we learn from our bright spots in our system? And so that was sort of missing, and that's really the void that Nash is looking to fill. I would also say, um, you know, I said this a very long time ago when I was first in higher, and I think it's still true, right? Um, you know, Finly speaking, no one cares what's going on at Harvard, right? Harvard enrolls, I think it's like less than 0.1% of the American going public, right? And so, it's not really a useful model for us, um, as we think about how do you do things at scale. Um, what is interesting, though, is NAS brings together these systems that educate 7. 25% of the American going public, right? So yeah. So this is a scale game, right? And this is, this is where most of America receives its post-secondary education. Um, again, no hate, no shade on Harvard, but that's not a great place for us to look if we're thinking about how do we scale ideas, how do we understand what the majority of Americans are experiencing in post-secondary. So that's really the role Nash. Um, please, and your question about why does Nash care about transfer? Well, as you know, for most Americans, they do start their collegiate journey at a, at a two-year institution, and they look to transfer, right? And so this is a major flow, it's a major pathway for, um, individuals who are looking to achieve that post-secondary degree, um, You and everybody else knows the numbers, right? This is a transfer podcast. We all look at those data points from the Community College Research Center, you know, but if 80% of students are intending to get a bachelor's degree when they start that 2 year journey, and if only 25% of them, you know, eventually transfer to a foreign institution. We'll talk about the completion rate a little later, but like, just take that, right? Like, how do we go from 80 to 25? The thing that I always say is like, we're leaving a lot of talent on the cutting room floor, right? Um, we looked at the numbers recently, every year, that is about that, that number is about 650,000 to 700,000 students that we are not, we're not helping make that jump. And, and they want to, right? Which we can talk about in time later, but, um, you know, that's a big Gamble, I would say for, for, and I sort of sit back and say like as a taxpaying American, like, that upsets me, right? That we're needing so much of this talent that we need in our workforce. Um, you know, I'm a small business owner, you ask any small business owner, like, people are dying for talent. And here's this group of people who want to achieve a degree and we're just not letting it happen. So I think there's a real public urgency that Nash feels on this. The other thing I'll just say is, you know, colleges are are of crying bloody murder about enrollment, right? We, we are seeing declining enrollments across the board. Obviously, this breaks out a little bit more geographically and whatnot. But, but if you're not helping students transfer, I can't take that cry for help very seriously, right? Like there are students who want to be enrolled and you are not doing everything that you can to enroll them. I don't want to hear this sort of like, oh, there's no more students. There are plenty of students. We need to focus on how to get them, um, to where they want to go. Yep. And so as a call, uh, to auction, um, Nash then forms something really interesting called a nick, a transfer nick. So what is a nick and why does it even matter? Yeah, so I think with, um, what was really innovative, and I mentioned about 3 years ago, um, you know, the transfer problem has been around for ages, um. We actually, uh, we actually found an article, and I believe the date is 1850, I kid you not, and it's it's an article in a, in a, in a newspaper talking about the transfer issue, right? The students are starting their collegiate journey in one place and they couldn't get, so like this problem has been around forever, and I think what I would say is if you look longitudinally at the data, you are not seeing that we are making progress up around this issue. We're making, we are tinkering around the edges. I don't look at 1%, 2%, you know, as like a huge improvement. Um, so this problem has been around for a long time, which I think is an interesting thing. Um, what Nash did a couple of years ago was in, in, you know, kudos to the leadership, um, Nancy Zimmer, uh, Ed Nash, and, um, Dan Knox, uh, really came together and said like, OK, so we understand that this problem exists. Like, what if we change our approach, right? And I think oftentimes. The approach to fixing transfer has been either a statewide, statewide legislation that is advanced by legislators that may not understand the issue and the depth that they need to understand what could fix it. Um, that causes a lot of really bad secondary outcomes and just, you know, chaos at the campus level. The other thing is you see a lot of these, um, work groups, right, a system or a state will like launch a work group, right? And we all know this, right? There's like, You probably believe the work group team. There's like 100 people. Most of these people are really removed from the problem, you know, this is like a senior VP or maybe even a college president who may understand the issue, but they're not close to the problem, right? And so they have these pretty conceptual ideas of what's going wrong, but they don't have the day to day experience of what are transfer students actually facing. So you put together a committee, the committee meets, you know, there's a lot of catered lunches, and then there's like a 10 point plan, right? Like, I always joke about this, but I worked for the governor for quite some time and put out 10 point plans all the time, right? And you just knew that like the second you put out the 10 point plan, like no one cares, right? And it, it doesn't get implemented, it gets poorly implemented, like, whatever, right? So that's the traditional model of problem solving in higher education. And so this is where Nash said, like, why don't we try a very different approach? And the, the big idea here was, what if we bring over this methodology of problem solving that exists and is used in other sectors, and that is improvements. Improvement science is the base problem solving methodology, um, in healthcare, which is where I work, um, in military management and software development, like manufacturing. You can look in other places, and this is how other sectors problem solve. It's a very rigorous method. Um, it mirrors very much the scientific method, so you find it a lot in the hard sciences like healthcare, manufacturing, things like that. And so that was a big idea. It was like, well, if that process is working so well, like, what if we kind of pull that in and and try to see, can we do improvement science and public higher education. And so the NIC, the Nash Improvement Community is just that. It is a community. Of systems and campuses who are learning improvement science methodology and they are applying improvement methodology, uh, to the problem of transfer. And so we are in, we're in year 3, we're about to launch year 4 this fall, um, will be year 4 of the, the transfer. And if if listeners, if you need to know one thing about Juliet Price is that improvement science is her passion. She loves improvement signs, and I've had the pleasure of working with Julia in the very first cohort. So this is really exciting. Now, how, so the, so the Knicks are, are, they come to fruition, right? We have a, a Nick. So how does Nash use the Knicks, um, or that model to tackle some of the transfer issues? Yeah. So it's a great question, and it's a The reason, and, and you're so right, I love improving science. I've been passionate about it for quite some time. Um, to be honest, because I've seen it be one of the only things that can really unstick very challenging problems in complex situations. Um, there are non-complex problems that, you know, we need to all solve in our day, and that's not an appropriate use of improvement science, but when you're thinking about complex systems like public higher education, All of the little things that have to go right for a good outcome to occur, that's really where improvement science can help, right? Um, and I'll just give you, you know, an out of sector example in this, um. One of the trainings I went through when I was learning was, um, at GE Aviation, right? So GE Aviation builds jet engines. That's all they build. They do not build the planes. Already, I think there's a lesson learned in that, right? It's like stick to what you're good at, right? Like he doesn't build the plane, they just build the jet engine. Um, and Boeing and Airbus do not build engines. They just build planes, right? So there's an ecosystem of like who does what well. The GE Aviation builds these, um, you know, massive turbines that we all obviously rely on. Uh, Lloyd and I were just discussing, we both got off of planes recently, right? We feel very confident that when we get on a plane, that jet engine is going to function. And, you know, for the majority, when you look at the statistics, like, you do not see a lot of plane crashes due to engine trouble. You see other reasons that caused plane crashes, which is important to understand. But ultimately GDA aviation has one job, and that is to build that engine, right? There are 90,000 parts in an engine, right? And so, wait, it's complex, and so it's, you just think about it, it's like they don't wait until they put the thing on an airplane and they tell a pilot like, Have at it. Let us know if this works, right? Like, right, there are all these points in the process where they are understanding are all of these parts doing the thing we want to do to get to our ultimate out. And their methodology is improvement science, to pull that into like our space, I think there's too much conversation in higher ed around that ultimate outcome, whether it be enrolling a transfer student. You know, graduating our students, that's almost like not an important conversation. We need to get into that nitty gritty of like, no, 90,000 things have to be in place and go right. How do we know before that 6 year mark, that things are getting better, right? And that That's what a lot of improvement science does. We focus really clearly on concepts, right? So we don't kind of sit around and go like, OK, what are the three things policy-wise that would make transfer rates increase? We look at process and we say, OK, what does it actually look like? And we go really small, and you know, this way, right? It's like, we go like, OK, what is the process between an admissions decision being accepted by a student and that student sitting for their first advising session? Just that, right? Like, just map that out. And what the teams realize, and this is a powerful tool that we use called process mapping, what the teams realize is either they don't know the entire process, there are pieces of it that they are unclear on. Or they start realizing that it's highly inefficient, right? That, that we're farming out, um, a final decision to a department head who doesn't really need to make that decision because it's not gonna impact, you know, what courses are available. Whatever. You start to unpack, and what you realize is that there's a lot of inefficiency in the system. And then the teams that are working on these problems, they are really granted the authority to just Just try stuff, right? And so, to your question about like, how does this work? In a Nick. So it's a 12 month period, we have 4 action periods. So every team has 4 opportunities. These are 45 day periods. They're very fast. They take on 3 tests of change. They take on 3 pieces of the process to just try something different and see what happens. And so, these are very small. Tasks to change. No one gets hurt, right? One big part of improvement science is that you're minimizing risk. You're making sure you don't announce something campus-wide system-wide before you know if it's even gonna have an impact. And the teams, you know, they just get going, right? And, and later, you obviously participate in the team, and I think you can, you can vouchs like, it's empowering to go to like a two-day retreat and be told like, no, no, no, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. You know best. You are closest to this problem. You sit with these transfer streams, you know the thing that's bugging them. And so, like, just try something different, and then we're going to gather data. We'll be back in 45 days, we'll look at the data. Are we any better off? What did we learn? And then we just keep this cycle going. And Your original question, you know, what does that look like over time? Well, in the 1st 2 years of doing all of this testing, 352 tests of change were executed, right? And so then we're sitting, Nash is sitting on the backside of that going, OK, OK, we're looking at all the testing, we're understanding what was tested. We're also understanding what tests led to improvement. And that is really important because from all of that information, we can start to see. What are the practices that really work? What are the practices that move the dial? What are the practices that don't move the dial, and then that gets shared within the mix. So there's, there's very rapid learning that happens, so people aren't continuing to test the same idea that they won't move the ball down. But Julia, you mentioned this is 12 months, and that's a long time because, you know, sometimes it's just more convenient to change a policy, it can happen really quickly or apply for a grant and get some money and create some just some positions that might be quicker than 12 months. So how does this approach differ or benefit? Yeah, I think what I think what people in the beginning, maybe not realize, but very quickly, they realize that the, the approach to problem solving in higher ed today is really broken, right? Because even if your campus agrees, let's say everyone on your campus agrees that we could do better by transfer students, right? The next, the next step in that like problem solving mindset, tends to be like, well, let's look around and see what everyone else is doing, right? And then someone goes to a conference, right? And I'll just, you know, throw, uh, Alaska State University under the bus. It's like, they hear a great presentation from Alaska State. And it's like, ah, yes, we just got to go do what Alaska State does, right? And then they You know, best case scenario, they actually understood the invention. Normally you kind of do, kind of don't, but more importantly, you don't understand the context, and you're pulling over an intervention into your context, that is totally not the same as somebody else. And to your point, it's so much easier to, you announce that it's system-wide, you announce that it's campus-wide, whatever, like, you make a big deal out of it. And no one actually knows if that's the right intervention. No one actually knows if this is the thing that the campus really needs. And the other thing I talk a lot about It's like, once it's in a press release, it's gonna have to work, right? Because no one's gonna, like, in 12 months be like amendment to that other press release, this failed miserably and made everyone's like, right? And so we're kind of like, yeah, so we're sort of stuck in this catch 22 of like, you need to announce something. It immediately needs to be board policy and by the way, once you announce it, don't ever, don't ever ask a follow-up question on did it work? And then 2. Like, certainly don't tell me that it didn't work because that's gonna look bad on me, president, or me, board, like whoever, you know, whoever these players are. And that's a really broken model for for problem solving, right? And so we flipped all of that on its head. Small test to change, no press releases, no money. I mean, it's funny. Someone just asked me this the other day. They're like, Well, how much average money does the campus spend? I said, No, we're in year 3 and no one spent any money. Like they're you don't. Just spend money necessarily to get results. And I do think that it's a little broken in our heads, like, to your point, it's like, we need to grant, we need this, we need that. And it's like, what if we just got all the people around one process and said like, how can we make this easier? What steps are redundant? What isn't working for you? And let's just test against that. And so, by flipping the problem solving methodology on its head, You know, and we have teams that now the policy is campus-wide. It is becoming system-wide. Like, you get to that scale, but I always talk about like, you can scale success, you can't scale failure, right? And so if you have early success and you continue to prove that it's working, you'll get to scale. The opposite is where most of our You know, problem solving skills wise like, let's just announce it. And then eventually 6 years down the road, we'll figure out if it worked like that. We're wasting a lot of like time and energy. Well, and then there's a manipulation of data, right? Like you can say that something worked if you manipulate the data enough to make it seem like something worked. But, but then we go back to the same question and I, I shared frustration. Did it actually work for the students that were serving, or did we just put it on uh this press release and then we had a follow-up press release six months later and said, yes, you know, I can prove that it worked, but it But, but the numbers nationally show us otherwise. They don't lie, and I'm so glad you said that Loya, cause I think, you know, sometimes we'll get teams where, you know, maybe leadership is only half bought in, and they'll say, well, we have all these great programs. And like, my number one, you know, retort to that or just like clarifying moment is like, then why does your data show me that you are not making progress? Having programs, doing stuff. It is not the same thing as getting results for students, right? And I just think, and this I see this in other sectors too, it's like, we conflate working hard. I know everyone on every campus cares about this, who cares about transfer student success. They're working too, I would argue they're working too hard. And they're not getting results. And so part of this process is also to like, pull that upside. There's an emotional side to change and change management. Yep. It's OK to say you're overwhelmed. It's OK to say you're doing too much. But part of the problem is like, we need to undo that a little bit. And figure out what are the practices that you could do, low cost, easy to do, that would actually deliver results, because no one likes going home feeling like they just spent 12 hours at work, and then they don't see the numbers. Like that's not a good feeling for anybody. That leads to burnout. And, you know, this is something I think we talk more about in healthcare than we talk about in higher ed. It's just the workforce burnout is real. And yes, there's a lot to do and they're diminishing resources, and I don't want to pretend that isn't so. But the number one cause, the root cause of burnout is because people are not seeing the kinds of impact that they got into this game to do and then, you know, IRS or or or healthcare. Like, people go through so many years of schooling to be in this industry. It's not because it was glamorous or was gonna pay well. It's because they care about this. And so if you're working too hard and not getting outcomes. That's burning, right? And so, I would say that's another like really interesting nugget about improvement science is like improvement science isn't always about adding more. It's also about stop doing stuff that doesn't matter. And our teams have really embraced that. I would say like teams who do 2 years, definitely in the second year they start looking at like, I'll give you an example. Tabling at your local community college. Probably every 4-year institution does it and thinks it's a high impact, yeah. I can tell you that is a waste of your time and energy. We have had multiple campuses trust this because think about it, right? In the age of Amazon, in the age of, like, you can go online in the middle of the night and find something and say, click now, buy now, and it's in your cart and it's coming you. Where in that world would a one person sitting at, like, you know, usually it's like in the cafeteria or like where, like, for two random hours on a random, like, how are you going to magically find the people that are trying to come to you? Like, that is not,-- I-- call it blind recruitment. We're lying. I love that. Yeah,-- we're just like asking-- my strategy. Yeah. Well, think of how many hours, the time it takes to like pack up a van with all your materials, go there, sit there all day, not be in the office helping people who are like, there is significant cost to that. And so we had a lot of campuses, like, again, in their later years start to be like, OK, what can we stop doing? And I will say that tabling has been one of those activities. People are starting to say, like, there is no ROI on this. Whereas creating really tight transfer intents with your two-year community college partners so that we You know, at the 1530, and 45 credit mark, here are the students that are trying to come to me. I don't have to go table. I can email, text, call directly. And guess what? The students react to that so well, because now you're not just saying like, Hey, are you interested? You're saying, Hey, I know you're interested in coming here. I know this is your program of study. Here's What I'm concerned about for you, you don't seem enrolled in the right classes. Whatever. Right? Like, it's in healthcare. We call this personalized medicine, right? We call it personalized medicine. This is personalized transfer medicine, right? Once you really know who's trying to come to you, you can create much more robust supports in a way that's more efficient, has greater ROI, and then you're stopping this like nonsense of just like tabling and hoping that the right person wants that. I'm so glad you brought that up because I, my critique has always been with tabling. I mean, there's there's a, there's a presence factor, right? In in certain, in certain moments and certain times where there's you want to show presence, but tabling every single week for X amount of hours, it is, it is way too much and it's definitely a waste of time. Um, let's dive deeper into improvement science because we're talking about it, we're getting excited about it. Now, I truthfully start sweating when I hear improvement sciences or read about it because Juliet used to tell us that we had to sit in the river of discontent. And that is really hard to deal with when you are um trying to make a quick change, um. And that was one of the toughest mentally, uh, you know, uh, mentally challenging parts of improvement science, but there, there are a lot of benefits. So what has been the most surprising or powerful um part of improvement science as it applies to transport work? I would say, um, Yeah, it's such a good question, and I think the thing that's coming to my mind thinking about your experience later and thinking about some other folks, uh, within the Texas A&M system who's participated is, yeah, that river of discomfort is real. And the river of discomfort refers to, you know, as you have these 45 day cycles, as you're testing, right? We use the plan to study act method of improvement, so. You know, you're at a workshop, you come up with a small test to change, like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna pre-advise students even before they get their admissions, um, decisions so that they know which of their courses are gonna, you know, come over. Um, we're convinced that this is the thing that might work, right? And then you do the action plan for 45 days, you measure and then the most important part is actually that part because That's where you sit with, well, this is the idea that I thought would work. I tried it, and now I have to sit with the results. And this is the part I would say if we're gonna break the cycle, if we're gonna break the abusive cycle of problem solving. This is the hardest part, because you're right. It's like so often there's like an initiative that gets announced and there's a press release and then like, you never come back. And maybe you do, but it's in years. This isn't a very short cycle. This isn't a 45 day cycle where you have to sit face to face with the data. And that is really hard for people, because oftentimes, the mental model in your head is wrong. And that takes a lot of personal, you know, as you were saying, like, it's emotional and it's hard to always, because sometimes you're so convinced that like, this is the problem that students are having, and if we just fix this and then you try it and it's like it doesn't do anything. Or sometimes the opposite can happen. It can work so well that I've seen people feel a lot of guilt of just like, I can't believe, like, people say this to me, it's like, this is You know, I'm, I'm retiring next year, and I just can't believe I spent this whole time never asking this question of like, are our students better off? And so it can be hard in both ways, and that is like really the river of discomfort of sitting there and saying, like, I have to be honest with myself and my teammates, and I have to let the past be the past. Like, I can't worry about the fact that I've been here for 15 years and never thought of this. I also can't, you know, some people have a hard time saying like, what about all the students I let down? Like, you kind of have to sit and just say this, I have to let this wash over me. You have to like sit with this new knowledge, and then the most important thing is what you do after that, right? And there's resistance to that too, because like if I'm if I'm a VP, I have to sit there and admit that that my 30 years of knowledge and education has been wrong for this particular problem. And there's in that in that part alone, I saw it with my own eyes that there were resistant people like saying, no, but we don't have a problem. We don't have an issue. Yeah. It is, it is, it takes, it takes a certain, and this is also why I like improvement science, cause like I said, I think that's, it's one of the tools to break us out of our bad habits of like, I just believed this. I went to conferences and everyone was saying it was this. We do get into the mindset of groupthink. I think we all have to be honest with each other, like, yeah, we start looking around, like, well, what's Alaska State doing? What's Arkansas doing? What's New York? And it's like, we get focused on everybody except for ourselves. And it's and it's the deep work of holding ourselves accountability, accountable for the students that we serve. And a lot of times, especially in this, you know, transfer, we have not been serving them very well, and that can be hard to sit with. And I do think. I, I think this is a methodology that helps people break out of it pretty fast. And I think you actually were in the, in the session where, um, someone, yeah, was on there, it was the last year and they were like, I can't believe I'm about to retire. And it just like, I this is overwhelming to me. And I had a very emotional reaction to it, but I think it's, you know, it's it's about what you do next, right? And it's about just breaking you out of that. I think that has been, I think that has been the biggest thing that I have seen bring over to higher ed. I think, um, You know, that the whole concept relates to another concept that we have in improving science called your degree of belief, right? What is your degree of belief in an idea or an intervention? And a lot of people, and I think this is also because Ted is also academia, if that makes sense. It's like we are both the academy and the people doing the thing and like, so we can get pretty obsessed about like reading the journals, and the journals, the journals don't tell you what to do. The journals tell you about the problem, right? And so that is hard because I think people are so used to staying in that like problem analysis world. And then when they have to start implementing implementing solutions. It is hard. It is very hard, but then, you know, that constant challenging of like, what is your degree of belief in this? Why did you have such a high degree of belief in it? Oh, it's cause that like, You know, conference famous person gave her, and I just think it teaches us to be smarter about like, OK, I can listen to a conference presentation. Let me just, like, check myself. That's not my campus, that's not my environment. There's probably some factors I don't understand. What can I take back? And I think what it's teaching people is like, you know your campus best. Focus on that, you know, don't focus so much on, you know, what everyone else is doing. I'm a, I'm a big yogi, and, you know, we always say like eyes on your own map, like eyes on your own, it doesn't matter. Like, yes, someone is doing like a crazy arm balance that you can't do, but you don't know anything about them. Like they've been at it for 40 years. You just got here. I'm cracking you. I'm cracking you up because you. Telling my mom, you're my kid. I'm worried about you. I'm not worried about them. They're not my kids. Yeah. And I would say, I think higher education, and I feel like I can say this because healthcare does this a little differently. Higher education does a very bad job of distilling out from the field. What are the, what are the interventions? Versus like, what is the common problem that everyone is facing. Like, I do try and read at least in chance, like, I try and read a lot of the like articles that are coming out and like, you know, journal articles, but also just like, you know, news articles. And it's like, I, I think we do a disservice by we lump everything together, right? We, we just sort of like, there's the real group things that I see there, whereas in healthcare, I think there's a more precise version of this. So I'll give you an example, right? Like. Treating sepsis, sepsis is, um, you know, uh, usually a hospital acquired, although it can be acquired in community, um, very deadly, deadly pathogen that you can, you can, um, catch it, and it can kill you. I mean, in a very short amount of time, right? And so it's like very important that we all understand sepsis, we all understand what it looks like, how to treat it, and get it done, right? And this is a problem, like, actually, the United States has like a pretty elevated sepsis rate, and so, What we don't do is say, OK, you need to have the front desk woman do this. Then you need to have the surgeon lady do. We don't say that. We, we extrapolate from the problem and say, here are the 4 things that you absolutely need to have right. You need to get your diagnosis in order. You need to make sure everyone is looking for the symptoms, and then this is what the surgeons need to do. That allows anyone, whether you are the Mayo Clinic, huge hospital, or like itsy bitsy teeny tiny community rural hospitals to say, OK, these are my, what we call care guidelines. Now let me take that and make it mine. I see what has to get done. Let me make it work for me. In higher ed, I don't see that. I see a lot of like, well, Alaska State University did this. These are all the things I need to do. And it's like, no, that's not, that's not gonna help. The one transfer example I have just on the top of my head is like transfer center. I think for a while we're starting to get very popular, like, oh, we need one place for everybody who works in, that's not, that's not right. That's not right, or sustainable. Maybe an approach that your campus takes. But don't tell me about the Chancellor Center. Tell me about what happens in because what happens to your point about like, what happens if you aren't on a campus that has the money to do that? So are you just like all out of luck? It's not helpful to say do transfer centers. What is helpful to say is, here's what we do in the transfer center. Here's here are all the activities. Here's what we have seen be successful. Here's the measurement set that we like that's the stuff we need to be doing. And this is where I do see the biggest difference between healthcare and education. Education is still talking about transfer centers, and healthcare is talking about like, here are the key cares. Pathway pieces that you need, you all figure out how to do it. But if you don't do these four things, you're not, you know, going to crush your sepsis problem. Well, and and somebody who has gone through this process with you, I think if you peel back the layers of it, this all started like the Nicks and everything for equity, right? So to provide an equitable space, so, so let's think about equity for a second. I'm I'm sitting on this thought for just a second. We have to create solutions, right? And Care guides that are equitable that any institution of any size, uh, in any region of America can use as a guide to move transfer forward. That's right. Did I say that right? That's absolutely right. I think of it sometimes as a Christmas tree, right? Like if you want to have a Christmas tree, like, well, you, you need like two basic things, right? You need the tree, and you need the, whatever they call that thing, the base that holds it like. Now you have a Christmas tree. If you want to put ornaments, if you want to put lights, if you want to have a spine, but you need to start with the basics, and that I, I completely agree with you, Lloyd that that is true equity, is to say, here's what everyone needs to have in place if you want to add stuff after that. You know, I think that the, this is where I always get myself in the hot water, but here I go. The AI conversation, right? It's like, oh, AI chatbot. Let me be real with you. If you have shitty processes that you are now just using AI robots to convey to your students, you're just doing harm faster than if you didn't have an AI robot. And that's what I mean by like Christmas trees, like the get. The core stuff right, and that is not stuff that AI is going to do for you. That is stuff that you need teams in a room talking to each other, that vulnerability, the data, the river of discomfort. Once you get your processes to a point where they are highly reliable, Yes, apply AI. Of course, I'm the biggest fan of like stop having humans do work we don't need to do. But I'm seeing a lot of stuff where it's like, no, we're just gonna slap AI on it, and it's like, no, that's actually like not, that's only gonna make the problem worse actually. Yeah, I feel like that about about uh in my past life when I was in the automotive business when we we were creating um social media um uh yeah, social media pages, and I, I remember somebody was like, oh yeah, you just scheduled posts, and that's it, and I'm like, no, no, no. So if we just schedule posts and leave it and drop it, we're actually not conveying any messaging to clients. You have to engage with them and respond. You have to monitor what they're doing. You can't just bring up a page and slap some content on there and and not engage ever again because then it's going to be it's going to be counterproductive to what you're trying to do. So I, I think that's what came to mind, um, and, um, and. In this transfer, Nick, you mentioned like y'all are tracking a whole bunch of stuff in the back end. What are some kinds of data or like outcomes that y'all are tracking or meaningful ones that you can that you can share and think of? Yeah, so I will say, um, top line, you know, the two things that we're really thinking hard about and tracking, um, what we would call transfer and enrollment. So how many, you know, incoming to your students actually make the leap into the four-year institution. Now, tracking that is pretty difficult. There's a very high bar. I would love to get to a point where we actually understand the percentage of that 80% that are making it. There's still some room to go, which we can talk about transfer intent forms. But what we're looking at right now is just transfer and enrollments, right? So I would say the national average right now, you know, for the, um, Community College Research Center. You know, in the last couple of years, we're doing like + 2,+ 1,+ 3. Those are year to year averages. Um, I'll highlight Texas first because that's where you're from. We're the best I know. But I'll just give you like 4 examples, right? In Texas Prairie View, um, at A&M, which is an HBCU, um, they did a whole bunch of improvements. They saw a 16% increase from Spring 22 to spring 23 in their enrollment. In Kentucky, um, Sky, uh, Community College, uh, Community and Technical College, and, um, Western Kentucky University, that's a standard feeder care, um, they saw in one year a 57% increase in transfer, yeah. In Illinois, at the University of, um, Illinois, or band in Champaign, which is a D1, very large institution, they have seen a 22% increase in transfer student. Like, that's a ton of students. That's not a very small school, that's a very large school. Um, and then, you know, we've seen, and we, we have these results for, um, about 90% of those who participate campuses that participate in the NIC have seen, um, campus-wide. Enrollment jumps. We have some campuses that are seeing, you know, they're still testing in specific departments or schools, and so they're seeing the enrollment jumps, but not yet on the campus basis. So I just think, one, the results speak for themselves. But I will say something that I'm actually even more excited about because I love a top line, but topline, uh, outcomes have to improve, and that's great. What I'm almost more excited about is what we have discovered is that we really need a measure set to understand how trans. Is working before you get to that outcome of enrollment, or if you're looking at retention and, um, completion, you know, that's a long game. You're, you're, that's a long waiting game, you're waiting. And so one of the things I'm most excited about is that we've really started to narrow in on, um, what a, what a set of measures could look like, where a campus who could could come into this work and just say, OK, I'm just gonna see, I'm just gonna take these back. Um, I'm gonna use some of these measures that NAS. Innovative, and I'm going to ask my own campus, you know, how are we doing against this measure? And ideally, that is going to jumpstart, you know, a lot of conversation. Um, and so I will just plug it because we're, you know, we're a couple of weeks away from the acro. Oh,-- I know-- what's coming. It's exciting.-- I know what you're gonna-- say. It's really exciting. Um, we're gonna be talking, so we're doing the plenary session on Monday. We're going to be talking about right now we have 4 interventions, the high reliability. It's a fancy way of saying, in all of this testing, we have seen that these 4 interventions really move the dial. And I think even more importantly, we're going to be talking about what does that measure set look like. Each of these interventions has a measure set where any campus can take this home and say, Hey, quick question, how are we doing on this? Um, That way you can start to see what part of the system is not working optimally, and that's where you can focus your improvement. This is, I would also just say, this is the hill that I will die on potentially about the difference between higher education and healthcare. Healthcare has a very, very robust and agreed upon set of measures. We all measure sepsis the same way. We all, right, like, yes, we still have outcome measures, you know, those are very high level, you know, just, you know, readmission rate. So how many times does someone leave the hospital and come back within 7 days? That's like our graduation measure, right? That's like our, our North Star. But what we do a really good job of in healthcare is we have this really standard set of measures, well, heinous measures, um, where we're able to any clinical setting in America, say like, hey, how's your sepsis rate doing? And that really quickly will allow someone to say, like, yeah, actually it's bumped up against. You know, I would say a 2% sepsis rate is still probably too much sepsis, but like, hey, I'm starting to look at 57, 8%, like we need some improvement here because clearly something is happening. And that's the thing I would say like we're like so excited to bring to the field, because I think this is what's missing. And I would love for colleges to be able to pull this information and say, yeah, OK, how are we doing? Um, and then what we're also hoping to create at Nash is a little bit of a national repository. So if I ask you, you know, what is the average business day, um, between to turn around a transfer admission decision, you know, from student completes its, uh, completes their admission request and, and you turn around a decision, it's important that you know what that number looks like on your campus, but wouldn't it be interesting to see, like, well, how is everybody else? Yes. Yeah, those are some standard, some, some exciting things happening. I am so excited for all of the things that you have done. Uh, I said it wrong earlier. I think I said the, the river of discontent, but it's discomfort. And I think my, my comeback. Listen, if you've ever gone through an improvement science session with Juliette Price, some of you have that are listening to this podcast, I know because y'all told me y'all subscribe to it. Your brain will be fried and you will sit in an ocean of discomfort for a really long time. But you will become a better professional at it and you will never look at problems or at transfer the exact same way. And we need that.-- That's exactly what is-- needed. I agree. I agree. I have a friend who, she's been doing this work, and I always say this, and I'm sure you've heard me say this, it's like, we do this work, improvement, it is not any discipline. It has been around for 100 years, and we're all doing it on the backs of, um, the, on the shoulders of the person that came before us. And one of my mentors was Becky Margiata, who did this work for the 100,000 Homes campaign. They re-homed 100,000 homeless veterans using improvement science to understand what was going wrong in in large cities around why were vets not being housed. And, you know, her big takeaway when she got to her 100,000 veteran was two things. One, she took the word national. Uh, it's, it's still called the 100,000 Homes campaign, but it's not a national campaign. And then the second thing she said is, um, you know, what I realized is we're gonna have to train a billion problem solvers because it doesn't matter that I know how to do this. It matters that people in every single community in America know how to do this. And so that way, wherever a homeless vet, um, lands that they are. into contact with someone who can problem solve like this. And I think that's our challenge, right, yeah, we, and we are taking the mantle. We're, we're, we're offering, we have a lot of new offerings this year within the center. We're going to do a lot of training. We're gonna do more Nicks, you know, we've got kind of a whole suite of things because, yeah, I do believe we're gonna have to train, you know, maybe not a billion, but like a close to a billion, um, problem solvers in higher education. Absolutely. Um, I have some to wrap up some spill the tea quickfire questions. It's just 3, it's fun. I'm if if we have fun with it, I may do it every single episode. So here it goes. Uh, the first one, a myth about transfer you wish people would stop believing. Oh my God, I wish people would stop believing that students don't want to transfer. Oh, that's a good one. OK. A book, article, or podcast inspiring your work? Oh, I will say, I will recommend a book called Reset. It's by Dan Heath. Um, he's been, um, a longtime friend and colleague. He's written a lot of good books, but I would say this last book, Reset is, um, it has a lot of improvement science woven into it. It's an easy read, and it will inspire you to just try things different. Awesome. And advice for practitioners who want to bring improvement sciences into their campus or system. Just get started. Just get started. The time, the time is always right to do improvement science. Um, we obviously, as I mentioned, we're going to be doing a lot of educational opportunities, but it is not hard to start learning how to do PDSAs. Um, there's lots of free, uh, you know, resources out on the web to just learn how to do a basic improvement cycle and just get started. Awesome. Thank you so much, Juliet, for your insights, your work, your leadership, your contributions. I'm excited to see you at Tech and Transfer. If you are going to Tech and Transfer, Juliet will be the plenary speaker on Monday. Um, she is going to get so energized and ready to absorb all this knowledge that we're going to learn and all these wonderful things. Be sure to connect with her. I'm sure she'd love to meet you. I'd love to meet you. We'd love to take selfies together. That's what we do at Aggro, Juliet. We're going to have a whole bunch of sachets, selfies. But thank you so much. I will go ahead and link some of the Nash work into the bottom of this podcast if you're interested, um, and to follow, um, to follow Nash and the work that they're doing or to follow Transportee and Acro and all the things that they're doing, uh, hopefully a future collaboration between Nash and Acro, you know, this, this space is happening. Um, but thank you once more for your time. So appreciate it, Loya. Transfer isn't just a pathway, it's a movement. If today's conversation lit a spark, take it back to your campus, your system, your advising center. Whether you're a practitioner, a policymaker, or a student advocate, there's a role for you in this work. Start small, stay curious, and don't be afraid to test, learn, and adjust, just like the systems we talked about today. Thanks again to Juliet Price and the NAS team for showing us what it means to lead with purpose and design with equity in mind. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Transfer T wherever you listen to your podcast. Leave us a review and share with your colleagues who are ready to shake up the status quo. Until next time, keep pouring into your purpose. Never stop advocating. That's the date.