SEASON 2, Ep. 4 Thriving Amid the FAFSA Chaos: An Interview with Nathan Ament, Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admission at Knox College

Nathan, VP of Enrollment at Knox College in Illinois, shares his unique journey from high school band director to higher education administrator. He explains how Knox achieved a remarkable 60% enrollment increase despite nationwide challenges, crediting key strategies like partnering with EAB, streamlining operational processes, building a regional recruitment team, and introducing the innovative "Knox Box" admit package. This personalized approach, sent to both domestic and international students, helped triple international enrollment.

Nathan highlights the importance of focusing on yield, analyzing data, and understanding the perspectives of students and families. He also stresses the value of financial modeling, securing board support, and fostering a transparent, supportive team culture. Beyond his role at Knox, Nathan co-hosts The Admissions Director's Lunch cast, where he shares practical insights for admissions professionals and counselors.

This podcast is sponsored by Viv Higher Education

About Viv Higher Education

Viv Higher Education is a Boston-based, female-owned comprehensive marketing agency specializing in higher education. With expertise in strategic planning, creative asset development, and media campaigns, we focus on enrollment-centric initiatives. Our approach is grounded in industry best practices, ensuring precision in reaching target audiences. We have extensive experience in marketing to diverse groups, including high school students, Hispanic, military, LGBTQ+, international students, and online learners. Navigating the complex landscapes of university environments is second nature to us, and we prioritize fostering collaborations that yield mutually beneficial outcomes. With a personable, nimble, and highly responsive approach, we deliver tailored solutions to empower organizations to achieve their objectives.

Website: https://vivhied.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/viv-higher-ed/

Chapters

• 1:36 Nathan's Journey to Knox College
• 3:29 Enrollment Success at Knox College
• 4:14 Strategies for Enrollment Growth
• 6:58 Challenges and Solutions
• 8:46 Leadership Principles in Higher Education
• 15:19 Future Plans and Institutional Identity
• 25:00 Cultural and Staff Engagement
• 28:27 Nathan's Podcast and Conclusion

Transcript

Hi, Nathan. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today? I'm great, Suzan. How are you? Yes, I'm so excited to chat with you and I am good.

I'm ready to jump right in. I want to hear everything about your higher ed journey. How did you end up at Knox as VP of Enrollment, what got you there, I'm super curious. Yah, It was a long journey. I actually started out, if you can believe it, as a high school band director, so that was what I went to school for was music education at my alma mater, Augustana College, which is just up the road here from Galesburg, Illinois.

And was looking for a different band director job. And then a friend of mine from the Augustana admissions office called and said, Hey, an admissions counseling job just opened up here. Would you be interested in taking that while you look for a band director job? months.

23 years later and seven different institutions and two different companies. That's where I've ended up. So I've worked primarily in the upper Midwest. Like I said, seven different institutions. I've done regional admissions counseling. I've been in leadership roles for the last three of my institutions.

 But I did take a vendor partner sabbatical and worked for a CRM company for a couple years. Also worked for a higher education marketing company for a year. And then was one of the few individuals that actually went back to a college campus. And then that's when I took my Southern sabbatical when I went to actually down to Louisiana.

 I was at Loyola University, New Orleans as the vice president for enrollment down there. And then we were looking to get back up to the Midwest. This opportunity opened up at Knox college about a year and a half ago.  And our,  boys are,  in high school at the time. They're telling us they're going to go to school in the Midwest.

So we figured we would move back here. Despite my wife really loving the Southern temperatures and not being all that keen, On winter, but here we are back in in winter and loving the experience at Knox college.  we live actually in Galesburg here where Knox is located and loving the small town living.

 Amazing. I love how you say sabbaticals because those are supposed to be less work than you usually do. And it sounds like your sabbaticals are quite work intensive. So there you go. Yeah. And last season, I had the chance to interview Kimberly Zimmerman, who is on your team at Knox. And I just really enjoyed the conversation with her and learning about the institution, which I wasn't familiar with.

 Sounds like a really charming liberal arts environment that's getting a lot of things right.  Talk to Kimberly really a lot about inclusivity on campus and how really an emphasis has been placed on recruiting really diverse students. And then now from you, I know you've had incredible success with your enrollment progress over the last year, which is especially impressive given that we are now in fall of 2024. Last year was the FAFSA debacle year and many institutions shrank as a result of that. But you grew by 60 percent and we are here to talk about that. What did you do? Tell us everything. How did you pull that off?

 A friend of mine who's also our consultant with our partner firm we work with EAB. I don't know if I'm supposed to name drop partner names. Yeah. There's only a couple in this industry. And so it's a pretty easy way of spinning the roulette wheel and figuring out which one you're working with.

 Seth Harris, we worked together at the Lawrence University admissions office a couple of institutions ago, but he coined it. He lovingly said to me at one point, I think we're presenting together and he said Nathan did everything everywhere all at once in the course of one year.

And that's really what we did. We. Basically flipped everything upside down.  We focused first and foremost with onboarding that new partnership, which was a big deal for Knox. They had been with the same partner, both for marketing and for financially leveraging for a very long time. So there was a lot of work that had to go into, doing all the marketing materials, getting all the data analyzed on the financial aid side of things.

The institution had also just gone under a brand. Brand awareness campaign, I guess they're trying to figure out what was going to happen with their brand. And then they came up with new marketing materials in the form of new branding, new look. And we had to implement that. And then we had some staffing issues, which Kimberly was right in the middle of that.

She had quite a few open um positions on her team. We had some open positions in the student financial services office. And so we had to go on to kind of a hiring spree. I was lucky enough that I was able to convince three folks from my former institution to, to join me here at Knox, which is, was like an immediate win and that, I had some familiarity and we were um able to get them into the roles where they could hit the ground running.

But then also just figure out where we wanted to go strategically establish a regional recruitment team and then also just do a lot of operational process changing. We completely changed our reading process in the office of admissions. We simplified it, we made it more efficient. And then we also just made it easier for the counselors to email students to get in front of students and, figure out which students they should focus on.

  All that to be said, everybody will say last year would actually worked the best, u on top of the generous financial aid strategy we adopted with the Board of Trustees was this thing called the Knox Box. I don't know if Kimberly talked about that in her podcast last year.

I think it was probably just a little too new at that point.  But one thing that we created was this awesome box for all admitted students. That was big and purple and called it the knox box. 

We did  local things like from a local coffee shop some popcorn. But everything rhymed with the Knox box. So we had Knox socks. We had the Knox Fox. We had purple pop rocks. And we sent this thing to not only all of our domestic students and all the students that were admitted domestically, but we send them overseas which is something that is a little unique in that not a lot of schools will send admit packages or admit boxes overseas. And Knox has always had a very robust international student population. We knew we needed to continue to build that. And we just didn't quite figure it would have such a dramatic impact. And we tripled the number of international students in this incoming class.

Yeah, we went from 49 students to 150 students    Congratulations. And was the strategy with EAB focused on international as well? Or did you specifically more market to domestic? I would assume domestic. So that's why I was astonished when you just said that. Yeah, it was domestic. The only thing that was Translated over to the international students was the scholarship structure.

 We had a substantial increase in the amount of our scholarships. And we didn't do a different  structure or strategy for the international students. So we really front loaded our scholarships this last year, mainly because of the fast load debacle, as you mentioned that was something that we were really trying to, Get out there, get the students attention put the money in the hands of the families that they can make a decision without having to wait for whenever it would inevitably was. 

We never thought it'd be quite as late as it was, of course.  And that was specific to the international students that you did or both. That's important with FAFSA. But then with international, did you also do scholarships? Or increase the amount of scholarship dollars.

 Yeah, so we made it. Sorry if I wasn't clear Yeah, we made the same scholarship structure for domestic and for international. Yeah, it was and substantial scholarships.  Yeah, \ so many schools want international students But they want them to pay full price or need them to pay  full price and it just really limits the Appeal, right?

And then also on the domestic side, we're able to get ahead of it by just making compelling offers and probably also increasing the number of applicants you had overall, if you overhauled your enrollment marketing as well. Yes, we did. And not only increase the number of applications, but trying to complete applications in a more timely manner um and  get decisions out more quickly, if that makes sense to a two week turnaround on decisions, if they were complete and not make the students wait around.

 We have surpassed our goal, the way we had built the model with the EAB we knew we needed 3, 300 admits and we ended up with almost 3, 500 admits when it was all said and done which was able to push us then over and increase the yield by three points, which was pretty substantial, especially given the circumstances of all the external challenges.

That's incredible. Congratulations. Super inspiring to hear about it. And since this season really focuses on entrepreneurial leadership in higher education, we're trying to tease out principles, right? Leadership principles that our listeners who are often, up and coming higher ed administrators or VPs can replicate on their campuses.

And it sounds like one principle was you brought an expertise that you didn't have before. So that's important. And then you moved. Quickly and decisively. Would you agree with that? Yes, when you say that, it sounds a little foreboding. But yes, we did. We moved very quickly and very decisively. But I don't want to confuse that with moving quickly and asking for permission later.

I have a very supportive president here who is a newer president. Mainly this is his first presidency. But we talked about this. We put everything on the table. Not only with him, but with the senior staff and then also with the board of trustees, it wasn't going to be, oh my gosh, we're just trying to get more students at all costs.

It was a. Purposeful strategic move to say no, we do want to increase financial aid. We do want to increase the scholarships And bringing board members along and presenting them with a couple of options and saying here that you want to do enrollment growth. And here are some options that the data is showing and Where do you think we should land?  And they picked the highest one, which we were surprised by, but also encouraged by that they were saying, no, we are ready. We want to see Knox grow. And you're showing us that this is the path.

So let's move. If this is what our new firm is saying, our new vice president is saying, and then our almost new, somewhat new president is saying, then no, let's go. And make this happen and then figure out a plan and how we continue to move forward on this growth. And the building consensus is another leadership principle, right?

That's really relevant in higher education because we have to influence people across the faculty, the board, staff, even students, alumni. And doing that fast is just incredibly challenging in a relatively non hierarchical environment. So still, it's impressive that you moved so fast and could build consensus at the same time.

Yeah, it You have to have a good team and you can't let um perfection be the enemy of good. I know that's a cliche but you have to be able to say, let's look at the bigger picture here. What do we need to get out in front of these families? Let's not get bogged down in the details of wordsmithing and email, or making sure this brand is exactly the right way. Let's continue to go out. But also just, doing ah ah things with an error of logic and humility. And it was fascinating to me that I was also going through the process as a parent at the same time for the first time with my son, my oldest son.

And so I was seeing things from other institutions that we would like, whatever else. And so. just coming at it and constantly, I'd ask my team to constantly look at it from the family's perspective and say that might make sense to you here because this is  the Knox speak, but like, that doesn't make sense to a family or what are the things that families worried about right now that might not be exactly what we're worried about and how is that, Affecting how you're making decisions or how you're putting a brochure together or writing an email or whatever else.

 yes, I mean, I think building consensus to constantly then swarm around like the student's impression and the student's perspective and the parent's perspective. Is really key and reminding folks about that of why we're doing this. And how, if you do it the right way and keep thinking about it and how would you do it if it was your child or how would you do it if it was your niece or nephew people all of a sudden just wake up and go, Oh yeah, no, that email really is too long. No, we need to shorten that up for make that process easier. So that obsession with the student and the family as a customer. Constant interaction, ah. . And it sounds like also some financial modeling and research that went into presenting the options to the board was important.

 I hear a lot from higher ed leaders who were able to do ambitious initiatives fast that market research piece is important and that you will never have 100 percent of the money. Certainty that the risk that you're taking is going to pan out. So did you have to also make the case sometimes with people who were more hesitant, perhaps to change things that no, we're going to need to try this and see how it goes.

This is a test and then we can iterate. Did that play out at all? Yes. Hundred percent everything from internal constituents of the faculty to alumni to some other board members, whatever it was and say, we're all making the best laid plans here, but especially given that year and, We were educating at the beginning of the cycle, quite a few folks around the FAFSA, but by the time we'd gotten through the cycle, people were well aware of what was going on with the FAFSA and just saying, we're trying our best to pivot.

We're trying our best to be responsive. you know, We could harken back to the pandemic and take some of the playbook, from that. But, for the most part just saying, yeah, these are external factors and we're doing our best to make sure that we're sticking to our plan, but we may need to change our plan.

 We may need to, now double down on something else because this isn't panning out. But I think the word when I was going back to what you said about the financial side of it I financial aid optimization firms like to use the word model quite a bit. This is what the model is, or this is what our projections are for.

Whatever it is, headcount, net tuition, revenue, a discount rate. But you being able to say, no, this is actually a simulation. We're doing our best right here to simulate results based on last year's cohort. And last year's cohort is not going to behave the same year as this year's cohort.

There's going to be a lot of similarities because a lot of your markets are the same. There's a lot of whatever else, but given the goals that I have been given me, when I got into the job, into the role, we really had to push ah umm that simulation to make sure that we could get it to a point or get to that goal and then had to make some other assumptions along the way.

So I was very upfront and saying like. I'm not looking into a crystal ball and saying this is how it's going to be. No, I'm simulating results through, basically through a strategic analysis with our partner. And this is how we think it could go if all things were equal. But On a regular year, all things are not equal.

And certainly last year, it was not. Now luckily we were able to exceed that goal. The international students came in because of some changes we made operationally, also with the scholarships. But there was a lot of things that , I kept reminding folks about that, we're doing our best.

This is what we're simulating, but we're just going to keep moving forward as best as we can and try to be responsive, but know that. At the end of the day, people are not buying widgets. It's a human making a college decision. And these decisions are going to be influenced different than the cohort last year.

Yeah, because there are different things happening in the market and in political environment. And generations are behaving differently, even maybe from year over year based on technology and all the things. So that's a really valid point um. What things are you having to advocate for now?

Perhaps seeing the growth that is possible through the strategy that has been developed. You know, Downstream what has to change for the student experience or just even how the campus is resourced in taking care of international students better or larger numbers? What conversation is, I could imagine maybe that's the biggest problem now.

  Yeah, it definitely was something that our international admissions team had to, you know, lend a hand in the onboarding process, the matriculation process over the summer. They went to O'Hare in Chicago where we had all the students flying into and they helped out with the, the move in weekend and things like that.

 yeah, I think long term, those are the discussions we're having right now about what type of support, either with, Staff or with having maybe some more students here, like over the holiday break or whatever it is because they're just more students period. But you, like you said, those are really good problems to have.

that's kind of what year two, we're trying to see if we can do it again. Because a friend of mine's always said one year is a dot, two years is a line, three years is a trend. So that's what I've been trying to really focus on and say, no. Let's repeat the success we had last year.

Do we have a path to success? Let's do that again. And then do we have a path to success for year three? And continue to be reactive and make some of these decisions and support these students. But then long term, where does the college want to go? 

 We're trying to get back to where we have capacity in the form of residence halls. Cause we're a four year residential institution where we have capacity in the classrooms. That number seems to be between 1400 and 1500 students. Going into last year's cycle, we had dipped below a thousand.

So we had. Excess capacity before we had to do any type of building or adding. So we're in this period right now, but what the president has also done is put together an ad hoc committee with some board members, some other members on campus and said, okay, what do we think the right sides of the college should actually be?

  📍 Is  there a sweeter spot of like just under 1400? Is it 1400? Or do we need to push over 1400 if we have these pipelines? And then what does that mean from infrastructure? Are we going to continue to be four year residential?   Those are all questions you just put on the table and figure out where we want to go.

But all of these, like you said, are excellent problems to have when you're in this period of enrollment growth, when you have the support from an administration and from a board.  Yeah, that's really exciting. And that sweet spot around capacity, that question is really fascinating and looking far enough ahead to understand what's our sweet spot today.

What's our sweet spot going to be in five years? How are demographics affecting that? And even within, the 2020s that we're very much in now the question of what's happening to higher ed and how differentiated do we have to be as institutions to continue drawing the same number of students?

And to that end, what have you learned from your prospect pool last year and from this new incoming freshman class in terms of, what does NOx stand for and what's the NOx difference? Are conversations happening around that today and then into the future? what's that going to look like?

 I mean, Excellent questions. And we're, talking about that. I think the differentiators with Knox are things that I think are table stakes right now. Like we talk a lot about experiential learning. We talk a lot about  the the framework and the hallmarks  of a small private liberal arts school, and that we have a lot of personal attention and whatever else.

I think the thing that Knox does very well, and we need to talk more about is that we've been doing it for a really long time, because like we've been really involving students in immersive experiences, whether that's a term,  a special term, whether that's research projects , at the undergraduate level or, whatever it is or study abroad.

And we have to really say no, we've been doing this really well for, decades. And this isn't new to us where I think at a lot of other institutions, it might be. But I think the other thing that I really appreciate about Knox, which makes it easy to market and easy to talk about is that it's a traditional four year residential institution.

And that's it. Like we're not trying to add graduate programs. We're not trying to add online programs. We're not trying to chase weird revenue things or whatever else we can say. Like we've been doing this since. Since 1837, essentially, but we've been doing this for a very long time. And we have a thread of social justice that runs through our, veins.

We have we were started by abolitionists out here in Galesburg. And these are things that we've been doing for a really long time and we're leaning into that. And as soon as you identify what your niche is and identify and know who you are in the marketplace and you're not trying to dilute your position within the marketplace, you're only going to be successful because then students know who you are.

And what I continue to see, and again, I don't really have a lot of data, we're just hearing this anecdotally, but I can see it in the data and like where our students are cross applying to, like where they're also applying to where they're going to with the clearinghouse data. Is that more and more students are going to a flagship institution.

They're going to a four year public institution. They're not going to our private liberal arts competitors in the numbers.  We're recording this, late fall, but I haven't gotten this year's clearinghouse numbers yet. So I'll be fascinated with these larger numbers to see where our students went.

But I think that students are really starting to look at if I'm going to do small, I'm going to do small really well and look at schools that understand that and bleed small. Or if I'm going to go big, I'm going to go to a big flagship and do the Saturday football thing and whatever else. And that I feel  a school like Knox is positioned really well because we're at the other end and we understand our identity.

The schools that are in the middle, I think That's a harder road for them because they're trying to be everything to everybody, not that they can't be successful, but that just means your marketing and your strategies have to be that much more complex and strategic because there's, there's just more things that you're trying to do to differentiate yourself in this gray middle.

Yeah, I love so much about what you're saying. I interviewed Leo Lambert last season, former president of Elon, and he said, make sure that the main thing is the main thing is the main thing. What you just were talking about reminds me of that. And don't add every bright and shiny object that, Other institutions might be adding don't say the same thing to everybody, know who you are and focus on that.

And when you do that, maybe you're not going to be differentiated to the same extent as other schools, but what you need is a solid enrollment strategy and going after the right students with the right messages and you're still going to be in a strong position.   I've talked a little bit about some schools who are choosing blue ocean strategy versus schools that are choosing the red ocean.

This reminds me a little bit about that where it's no, you can swim in the red ocean, saying the things that many other schools are saying, but have a really solid understanding of who are your audiences and how are you going to get them there? There's something entrepreneurial in focus.

Like It doesn't have to be new. It's we're focused and that's what's making us entrepreneurial as well. Very much so. I do have to be able to spin all those plates, do them all at the same time, which goes back to the, everything, everywhere, all at once.

And that's where I think a school like Knox was doubling down on their strategy to Chicago students, the inner city, Chicago public students. And we looked at the data. That's where the most of the students were coming . from. Well, It become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you can look at the data and, make any assumptions off of that.

And that they were then just going back to the schools where they had applications from. And I said, that's all fine and good. We should continue to do that. But then we also need to go to out-of-state markets. We also need to put some, folks back in Denver. We need to put somebody in Dallas.

We need to put somebody in St. Louis. 'cause we've lost um market share there. We also on top of all that, we need to go into Western Illinois, where we're not getting our share of these students that maybe want to be 45 minutes away from home. They don't want to be a plane right away but they still want to have an experience that maybe is different than what their rural high school gave them.

 Maybe they don't want to go into the trades, the trade schools and the trades alone have done wonderful things to grow and to bring back their enrollments. But in some of these areas here, there might be some students that, really do want to major in theater. Or they really do want to major in art or they want to go to med school.

But they don't want to go to University of Illinois to do that. They would rather go 45 minutes away to a small school where they can also play a little football or whatever it is and be here.  But you have to be able to do all of this and balance all of these strategies. And in my experience, and again, I feel like I'm, haven't been around that long, been around a long time, depending on how you look at it.

Our profession enrollment managers are very traditional individuals, and they like to do one thing one year, see how that goes, and then do we repeat it the next year. Okay, that worked, and we'll do one more thing that year, and then go to the next. To your point about being entrepreneurial, you have to be able to try to do all these things at But that's hard.

That's really tough to do. And you didn't mention in your list the international growth. That I wanted to figure that out. Because I have been in board meetings where it's should we grow by doubling down on our own backyard? Should we do something that, the Hispanic students are Top of mind for many institutions because they're a segment that's still growing.

So should we have a Hispanic strategy for the Southwest, even though we're in New England, or should we grow international? How about you figure out how to do a little bit of everything? That's hard, but it's probably the way. Yeah. And again it's, and it's hard on your staff, right?

Like your staff, like to get behind one goal, right. and say like, this is what we're going to do. But when you start to say, no, we're going to do this and this and X and Y and Z. And it really dilutes the message a little bit and how to get them fired up. But if you can say like, no, this is the strategy is that we're going to try all these different things.

This is your role in the strategy, regional counselor. This is your role, local counselor. This is your role. And then these are all the tools that can help you technology, whatever it is, strategy from a marketing firm, financial aid policy, they can help you in all of these areas. And we're going to, build that and make better connections with students.

So then you can have these conversations, but we can do this all at once. And then these little building blocks just all start to add up. Absolutely. Last question before I ask you about your podcast, which I want to hear more about because you just mentioned getting staff to rally around multiple goals at once and can just imagine that potentially some people who had been at Knox for a while were working harder than they had before um last year because this growth probably didn't happen without people working hard.

 What is an entrepreneurial leadership principle on the cultural side,? right? Where we get people to work harder. Is it that we just really need to remind them why we're doing this? What the reward is at the end of it? Or how did you do it? Because I think culture is such an important piece to strategic leadership and entrepreneurial leadership as well.

Couldn't agree more. I don't have all the answers. So if any of my staff is listening to this, I don't have all the answers I try to just be as honest and transparent as possible. First and foremost communication is key and transparency around communication is also very important.

Some of my staff probably would roll their eyes if they're listening to it because I do I try to do every Wednesday, a whole division call with the entire admissions office and student financial services, both areas I oversee just from 1130 to noon  on Wednesdays and say these are the updates.

I got updates from the senior staff, which is the president's cabinet .  I got updates from Kimberly who's in admissions and then Lee, who's in student financial services. And so everybody generally knows what is happening at that point, and then also just saying, if you have any questions or you need to reach out to me I'm accessible.

I'm a gchat away. We have a group me for the whole division. So if something happens after hours, I can put a message out to the whole division, or we can just put up pictures of somebody's grandbaby. I think that's literally just coming through right now or of somebody's grandbaby and a cute photo because it's a Friday afternoon.

Right. So also making sure that your culture is reflective of the institution. Knox is a very casual place. Western Illinois is a fairly casual place. The majority of the campus at Knox was wearing Knox gear. Could wear jeans, cute boots or tennis shoes or whatever it was. The admissions office was in suits and the admissions office was in ties and dresses and things like that.

So they really had a grudge against that and they were resentful of that. So I said, you want to wear jeans? That's going to make you more comfortable, certainly make you more relatable to a family, ? I'm also going to get you some gear. So the office is going to, buy you two shirts.

We're going to buy you a nice backpack that has the Knox logo on the back. So when you travel, you're, showing off the brand a little bit as well and try to make sure that you're just comfortable and repping Knox the way you want to rep Knox. And then finally just, making sure that, you know, everybody has good days and everybody has bad days.

 We are getting very close to the Thanksgiving holiday. And because Thanksgiving is a week later this year, there's a lot of folks that are pretty tired, especially in the admissions office coming off of a long travel season.

And they still have a week to I gotta read application still or whatever else, or in student financial services, we're in a term system here. So the term just ended trying to get winter bills out, like things like that. And just say, give us a couple more days, and then take the time off.

People need the time with their family, with their, whatever it is with their spouse, their dog, cat, whatever it is.  Where you don't have to be on, all of the time. And then I find that people then will step up and kind of police themselves and figure out a good rhythm and how they can work hard and how they can be productive in their own way when they know what the goal is and you've given them some freedom.

Sometimes you have to check people occasionally, but usually it's just from a human perspective of Hey, this is off, something's going on here. You haven't responded to emails in a while, what's going on with you and usually It is something external in their lives that are happening and they appreciate the empathy.

So love it. That's a radically human culture you're building and how tangible to talk about the gear versus the suits and the backpacks. And I think that's really interesting and Probably good nuggets there for others listening. Tell us about your podcast. You have a podcast called the admissions director's lunch cast.

Is that the name? That is correct. That is correct.  Tell listeners about the show? What, why should they check it out? I'm definitely going to, but yeah, they should check it out. If they want to hear a couple of old friends, give each other a hard time, but then bring on some awesome guests um from the admissions landscape. So it's really meant um, it was created in the pandemic as a lot of podcasts were but it was great in the pandemic because my friend teach Mattel, who we worked together at Lawrence university and then stayed connected after we both went to different institutions You know, we saw in the pandemic that we were not doing the conferencing, right?

We are not doing the idea sharing. And so what we wanted to do is tackle a topic every week, and then take it from two different perspectives. So we have an influencer and we have a practitioner. So usually that's a school counselor and independent counselor. Somewhere in that counseling community.

And then we tackle the same subject with an admissions professional. So either admissions director and admissions counselor somewhere in in that area. I talk about it from both sides to get their perspective on either side of that, figurative desk, if you will. We actually just wrapped up our eighth.

 Season nine will drop in the spring. We do a couple of other events. We hosted our first lunch, cast lectures on this past summer. It was a small event. We had 30 individuals there. Or we did some Ted talk style lectures and we. Really dug into some events for a day and a half idea sharing and then for our community because you know Every podcast has their own community.

We don't put it behind a paywall So we make it free But we just kicked off lunch cast live which happens every other Wednesday And we take one of our former guests and we just have a live free for all on video conversation that then gets dropped into our feed, but then we have a question and answer session.

That's just for that group. So it's a really great community. We have been humbled by the amount of people that listen to this. We passed 15, 000 streams earlier this fall. And we just have a good time, but we really pride ourselves. And it's the last thing I'll say about it. I could talk for a long time about the podcast, but  we really pride ourselves in trying to lift up voices in the admissions profession that maybe people haven't heard of.

 There's a lot of us on LinkedIn that are pretty active um, that are out there as thought leaders. But there's folks that are two, three, four, five years into this profession that do have some, Really valuable insights and we're trying to get those folks onto a podcast and we try to make it as comfortable as possible To get those voices out there.

That's really amazing. Congrats on all that success as well I love that higher ed is perhaps the most collaborative sector.  We share openly with what we could consider our competitor institutions and we're colleagues and supportive of each other.

So that's really awesome that you have created that outlet and that resource for others. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on this podcast and for sharing all of your great insights here. It was a real pleasure to have you on the show.