S3 E21: Podcasting as a Transformative Communication Strategy

Dr. Leigh McCue, Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Philip Wilkerson, Employer Engagement Consultant, join Dr. Rachel Yoho to discuss how podcasting can be a transformative communication strategy – for your course, research, department, or even as a hobby to make professional connections. 

Resources: Please check out the Mason Mechanical Engineer, hosted by Dr. Leigh McCue and Philip Wilkerson, where Dr. Rachel Yoho was a guest on their podcast in this crossover episode collaboration!

Mason Mechanical Engineer Podcast Links: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5N29nLkCvKt9euupjWex39?si=6a9313a7c7424311 

Positive Philter Podcast Links: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yr4WIxoB6qgdgU0n5cxBt?si=ae8daf52a5af4a09 

GMU Podcast Links: GMU Podcast Directory Form: https://forms.office.com/r/sLn6Xhs9NBm Podcast Club at George Mason RSO Join Link (students only): https://mason360.gmu.edu/PodcastClubGeorgeMason/club_signup 

Other: HigherEd PodCon Website: https://www.higheredpodcon.com/

Check out our website!

Transcript

Rachel: 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Keystone Concepts and Teaching podcast. I'm your host Rachel Yoho, and I'm very excited as we continue to bring you episodes about evidence-based teaching practices to have two guests today from different areas, and we're going to be digging into podcasts. So a podcast episode about podcasts, if you will. And so with that I guess we'll just jump right in. Thank you so much for joining us. If you wouldn't mind starting us off with just maybe a brief introduction about yourself?

Leigh: 0:39

Sure. So, hello. Thank you so much for having us on your podcast. My name is Leigh McCue. I'm Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at George Mason. Have a podcast called the Mason Mechanical Engineer. In my research emphasis these days personally is really on maritime robotics. But that podcast I mentioned, Philip Wilkerson, who is also here with us, co-hosts it with me.

Philip: 1:00

Yeah. My name is Philip Wilkerson. I work at George Mason Career Services as an Employer Engagement Consultant. Also a proud Mason alum. And so with that being said, I'm in multiple spaces. I also co-host the podcast, Mason Mechanical, but also I've been podcasting on my own independently for fun with a podcast called Positive Philter which has allowed me to connect with so many people around various spaces around George Mason University. So just using podcasts in my personal life and also connecting with great people like Dr. McCue in my role as an Employer Engagement Consultant to elevate careers.

Rachel: 1:37

Yeah. That's great. Thank you so much. And thank you both for joining us. And so I think that, you know, Philip, your introduction there really leads us in quite well to what we want to talk about in this episode because we really wanna talk about engagement and specifically podcasting as a medium for communication. So whether that might be in higher education broadly, or even perhaps, maybe in a specific course. So can you tell us a little bit, as you've been developing these both personally or professionally, and especially related to your work in higher education. So can you tell us a little bit about your perspectives or strategies about podcasting and also about engaging students?

Philip: 2:21

Yeah, so I forgot to mention I got like multiple hats. I probably could have done like a five minute intro. I'm also a PhD student myself and getting a PhD in Communication. And so I think it's perfect alignment in regards to how we explore different modalities of learning. Not everyone that learns is a visual learner. I've learned over time that I am a audio learner, and that, for me, listening to books on tape or podcast have been great ways that I've not only shared what I want to, you know, share, but also for me personally, how I wanna learn. And so I think that in regards to the student experience, as a student myself, I subscribe to a lot of podcasts on topics that I'm interested in to learn as a working professional. I use podcasts to learn about what's going on in higher ed. As a adult, sometimes I listen to the podcasts of young people and students to see how they're living and navigating their lives. And so I think for me, just having those different touch points, allows me to learn. But I think also additionally, for the student experience, I think this also gives'em an opportunity if they're their own podcast creators, to not only share their voice, but also to practice the things that we're teaching in our classrooms. If they're a student that is in communication, what better way to practice communication than by hosting your own podcast? So I always encourage students if I meet them, to listen to podcasts that are of interest to you, but also create topical areas of things that you wanna share with the world in a learning aspect. So I think it's just a 360 model that podcasts can benefit the student experience, in regards to engagement.

Leigh: 4:04

And I would riff off that and just say, you know, in my mind, the department podcast that we have really was designed both to expose students to opportunities and resources, but also showcase student driven opportunities and successes. So the example I give all the time, I actually first podcasted with Philip Wilkerson when he was a guest on the podcast. He and Ann Garner, his colleague, came on our podcast in order to talk about career services. We're trying to put out an episode for students so that they could, you know, listen at their own convenience and understand what career services can do to support mechanical engineering students. And it remains our most listened to episode. So, you know, we said there's something here. There's really a nugget here in terms of being able to pull this career services thread. So often now, Phil doesn't co-host every episode, but whenever he co-hosts, it's very much to showcase employers and career pathways for mechanical engineers and really being able to pull that thread. I'd say that the flip on that is we also try to really showcase the students. So we had an episode once where we interviewed a couple student leaders on campus so they could talk about their RSOs, their registered student organizations, and use it as a way to try to recruit students to the RSOs and showcase the opportunities that students are providing to other students. And every year we do an episode at our annual Capstone Day. Mechanical engineering seniors do this big two semester design build project as their culminating experience of their undergrad curriculum. So every year we do an episode where I interview a bunch of those students just to really like hype what they have done, celebrate their accomplishments. We talk about where they're going to in the workforce or grad school or what have you. And it's, you know, again, just a really nice way to celebrate the students. So again, that 360 approach that Philip just mentioned, we can be providing services to the students and then also using it to showcase and celebrate the students.

Rachel: 5:51

Yeah, these are great points. Thank you both for sharing. I think, you know, obviously there we see a few really important things about how people prefer to learn, how you want to take in information, and also how we communicate and even just find who our audience is. And so as we think about this, I kind of wanna take our conversation, expand it out a little bit into higher education broadly. Certainly we have a teaching and learning context. So we might be thinking about podcasts as an opportunity especially if we take a universal design for learning approach. You know, if we're thinking critically in our classes and how we're teaching about either how students are taking in information or how students are demonstrating their learning. One of those ways, maybe they're listening to an episode of a podcast for some of their learning, like you were mentioning, Philip, you know, having that be a content area to learn something even course related, or maybe they have an option as an assignment to produce an episode of a podcast which producing, as I'm sure Kelly would also agree here, our podcast producer, it's a lot of work. But with that, we might be thinking about how students would use that as a different type of communication strategy to demonstrate their learning. As long as we put some bounds on perhaps the duration of that episode. But let's expand this out a little bit more into, what does this look like for higher education? I know we were talking just briefly about the Mason Mechanical Engineer being sort of that highlighting and communication for maybe prospective students, current students, but what else does this look like to each of you for higher education?

Philip: 7:25

I think to be transparent, I think the podcast, has an influence on every stakeholder within the higher ed experience. So thinking about, there's a benefit at every aspect. You know, if you're a student, there's a learning from other people, producing, experiential learning. That's there, right. From a faculty and staff member this is a great way to supplement your curriculum. You know, being able to provide a different modality for your learning and what you want to teach. For an alum, this is a way that alum always say they want to give back to the university. And you think about it, time, talent, and treasure. They ain't got the money, you know, to give out the treasure, but they can give back their intellectual capital and share their story and share, you know, it's almost like virtual mentorship. Like they're getting to get their voice out there. And then other stakeholders, I could just keep going. I think there's an aspect where if you think about this tool of podcasting, it can serve a function to every various stakeholder across the university in higher ed in different aspects. And thinking about it from like a marketing strategy, right? We always think about like marketing strategy, who's your audience? So I think everyone can identify their different various audiences for their podcast. What is their agenda? Everyone can say, okay, my podcast has a very direct agenda of sharing how great George Mason is so that we can get enrollment. That could be one. Or, you know, departmental ones, you know, like CHSS is gonna launch a podcast. We want to show that this College of Humanities and Social Sciences has really good career outcomes and to display that agenda of career outcomes. We interview alum and the alum share what they're doing. Thus, it's going to be toward that agenda. And so I think we're seeing that across all sectors, across the university of people using podcasting as a modality to share their agenda. And to reach the audience that they want. And so I think before people said it, you said it earlier, it's a lot of work that it's almost like think about your audience and your agenda before you start producing. And then it could, you know, hit all those different pockets in higher ed and serve a function, accordingly.

Leigh: 9:36

I agree wholeheartedly. And Philip had actually submitted us for the Higher Ed Pod Con that just happened earlier in July in Chicago. And it was really, really an inspiring conference to go to. So it was a whole bunch of people in academia who came together to all talk about what they're doing in their academic podcasts. And there were people who were using theirs for alumni engagement or public engagement, or student support, or having student podcasts to nurture the student communication skills, or research showcases. Kind of all these things that Philip just mentioned that you can do with a podcast. And I think one of the other unique opportunities, which I'm biased'cause it was the session we were in, but the session we were in was showcasing cross campus collaboration. So just like this podcast, you know, the Stearns Center, Career Services, Mechanical Engineering, all coming together on an episode. I think the ability to really showcase these sorts of partnerships and they can look like a lot of different things. Giving a shout out to who we shared the stage with at that Higher Ed Pod Con, we were with Christopher Perfect and Marcus McWhirter at Austin Community College, who were looking at communications and drama and theater and how those pieces come together and how you can support students in that way. I feel like I'm a little bit all over the place, but I really think that there's a lot to be said for the breaking down these academic silos and what you can do with the podcast to unite people again, to deliver the best experience and the best opportunities to our students. And I would like to believe that Philip and I are a nice example of that. I always joke with podcast guests when they come on our podcast that they wanna be on an episode that Phil is co-hosting'cause he's way more charismatic than me. And so having that dynamic where like, I can kind of nerd out on the technical side, but Philip is really great about saying, you know, well, what does this mean? What, like, how does this impact the world? It's a nice complimentary perspective set.

Philip: 11:23

Yeah I just wanna tag onto that, like George Mason University specifically is so large, there's so much going on and there's no way possible. But I actually, as an employee, listen to the Access to Excellence podcast by President Washington. And I listened to that and I'm like, wow, there's so many different professors here. I don't even, I would never meet these people and I learn all these different things. And so it's a great way for me to understand the nuances of this very large system that is a public R1 institution. I think we also, there's a gentleman that has a podcast and I don't wanna mispronounce his name, that has one about the registrar, right? And I'm like, I don't have, I don't know nothing about no registrar, but now I can understand the hidden curriculum that's going on there. And it just makes me feel more informed about what is going on within our community here. And so that gives me power in higher ed and collaborative power. You don't know how many times I've introduced myself to a campus partner based on a podcast, say, Hey, I listened to your podcast. Now can I introduce myself? I'm Phil Wilkerson. It's a great conversation starter and a great way to understand new people and break down silos as we see. You know, you could work at George Mason and never meet someone that worked there 20 years. Both of y'all worked there for 20 years. But for me, I felt like I've connected with so many people in pockets of the university I would never talk to because of this collaborative modality of its podcasting. So for me as an extrovert, it is the greatest tool for connection and collaboration.

Leigh: 12:56

And producer Kelly is making sure that we give the right attribution. So yeah, the registrar's one Doug McKenna with his For the Record podcast.

Rachel: 13:05

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think these are great points. I mean, we can think about not only what podcasting can do in each space, but like we were talking about sort of those strategies that go into this. And so as we kind of dig into this, I think the Mason Mechanical Engineer podcast it gives us a great example to really think about how do we consider a podcast or if a department, for instance, wants to consider a podcast, you know, what does this maybe do for our students? What does this do for any of our other goals? Or how do we balance the large investment of time and effort with some of the outcomes? So can you talk a little bit about the mechanical engineering department and some of the considerations there for you and for the department?

Leigh: 13:51

Yeah, absolutely. So I would be remiss if I didn't start with thanking the Office of Naval Research, who really were the ones who first gave us the opportunity to do this. So it was a little bit of historical context. The prior department chair was Oscar Barton. He had an ONR grant with a fair amount of emphasis on STEM outreach. He left Mason to go be Dean of Engineering at Morgan State, and his grant from ONR remained at Mason after he left. So we inherited this grant, and that STEM outreach component right around when COVID-19 was shutting face-to-face STEM outreach down. So when it became apparent that it was gonna take a while for us to get back to being able to do face-to-face outreach, reached out to the ONR program officer and asked if he would be comfortable with us launching a podcast as a way to try to meet some of these STEM outreach goals that the grant had. And the program manager was terrific. He was totally on board. He gave some good feedback and suggestions for how to make the idea better. And so it was just really, really supportive and that's as a department, how we got our start with it. And in my opinion, it's proven to be a valuable enough tool that even though we are now back going to face-to-face STEM outreach events and hosting STEM outreach events, again, there's kinda no reason not to keep the podcast going. We're at 35 episodes. We've covered a huge range of topics related to mechanical engineering, whether it's again, the career services side, workforce development. We've talked leadership with leaders in industry and academia and government. We've talked about a wide range of technical disciplines, from occupational safety to rust, to advanced manufacturing, to quantum science and engineering. I feel like every episode I'm learning something new, so I hope that our listeners are learning something new. It just really is such a nice way to engage with our constituents. And the lift isn't that big. I mean, we don't have the production value of some of the really nice podcasts, but it also makes the lift relatively reasonable. So, and in terms of talking to a guest, it's a pretty reasonable ask to them, you know, say, can you spare half hour of your time? And we want you to talk about you. And people are normally pretty willing to hop on a Zoom call and talk about, you know, things that they're excited about for a half hour. But coming back, I think to the root of your question of like, how do you gauge this return on investment, I do look at metrics like what are the age ranges of our listenership and where are they?'Cause I feel like really the over overarching goal of this is trying to bring in more mechanical engineers and hopefully more mechanical engineers to Mason. So when I see listenership in that like 18 to 20, 18 to 22 demographic, I think that's one of the Spotify bars in their assessment, that tells me that those are, you know, high school, college age students who are listening. And so I get excited about that. And it also will give you the geographic breakdown in recognizing that many Mason students, the majority of Mason undergraduates are coming from the DMV area. I get excited against when I see listeners who are coming from Virginia, DC, Maryland, West Virginia,'cause I figured those are people who are potential Mason students.

Rachel: 16:55

Yeah. Absolutely, you'll be less excited about my age range showing up in your listeners, but I'm there too.

Leigh: 17:02

I was also gonna say, maybe, you know the parents of future students'cause, you know, the 14-year-old isn't necessarily listening to our podcast, but their mom might be and might hear it and say, oh, wow. That sounds like a really cool career. You should be thinking about this as you're moving through high school and thinking about maybe taking AP Calc in your senior year and thinking about college applications and so on.

Rachel: 17:27

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So as we think about that, Philip, was there anything you wanted to add for that one? Based on your personal podcast as well. When you think about, you know, like what are your goals or your return, I mean, we might have listeners who are thinking about this for either personal interests or even their teaching. Like for if they wanna amplify their research or their own teaching strategies. So what does that look like for you?

Philip: 17:52

I mean, you know, first of all, I want to apologize if you get that 40 plus. That's me too, listening to the Mason Mechanical Engineer. I'll count as a student so you can say I'm a student. But I think one of the things I thought about in regards to podcast creation is that a lot of people think of this modality as, you know, the top one percenters of podcasters. You know, this is a monetized thing. You get money and they look at download numbers and they get very discouraged. And I would say to people only the 1% of people are this very top notch. So if you're thinking about going into podcasting as a revenue generating thing, I'm sorry to disappoint you. That's not in the cards for everybody. But I've always said this to certain people that podcasting is probably one of the best social capital tools, like a business card that they can be. There's been many times where doors have opened to people that would not probably gimme their time of day based on this modality of podcasting, Hey, I'd like to interview you people of status, people of higher levels of education and doors. So I tell people to think of that when you're creating this podcast is thinking about it is worth your value add if it aligns with that building social capital and relationship building. On my own personal podcast, I had a Dean miniseries where I got an opportunity to interview various deans at George Mason. Would they have given me their time of day? I hope so. I don't know. But you know, I reached out. You know, Dean Artis, Dean Rosell, all these different deans. I was like, hi, I'm Philip. I work at Mason, but I love to interview about your academic career. And they took their time to do it real quick and I was like, wow. Like I learned from these deans and now they see me around campus and they say, hi, Philip. And just builds familiarity. So telling those people as they begin to not be discouraged your first year or as you create this, it's not going to. Be the next greatest thing since sliced bread. It's a grind of consistency to continuously put out good content to connect with people.

Rachel: 19:55

Yeah, that's a great point. I think that really brings us to our keystone concept for today, is really looking at our communication strategies. You know, here, like we were talking about earlier, thinking about our audience. You know, that could be communication, whether it's podcasting or writing an article or creating a video or whatever the other strategy might be. But obviously thinking critically about our audience and what is our message to connect with that audience. Or like Philip, I think you were talking about, you know, our agenda there and how we use these overall to build connections, so I think that's really looking at our keystone concept for today. So with that, I'd like to open it up in case, are there other things you'd like to share? Other insights, tips, strategies, especially considering the audience for this podcast is mostly educators, perhaps full-time teaching faculty or or adjunct teaching faculty.

Philip: 20:49

What I've learned through communication strategies is that it's, you know, this content is good, but then it's really the post-production strategies to connect that really yields it. And what I mean by that is that, you know, you make sure that these podcasts are included in listservs or you have a directory of top episodes that you want to encourage people to listen to or series, or additionally I think one of the things, the strongest thing that I've learned over time, and this is, this is, uh, something that my late father-in-law told me that I've always, always taken to heart. He was like, you're the host. Ain't nobody here that listen to you. They wanna hear the guest.

Rachel: 21:31

True. I, I feel that.

Philip: 21:35

My, my father-in-law told me that that is the part where it's like your guests are the best marketers or ambassadors of this content. And they share it with their network and they share it with their people, and that connects, you know, new people to listen. And so for me is one strategy I've done is every time I have a listener, you know, someone listen, I make sure it's easy. Like, Hey, your podcast is live. Here's all the links, here's the graphic for you to share on your network. Please encourage people to listen. This is your episode, and I put the onus on the guest to really elevate that, and I've noticed that the episodes that have the higher downloads are the ones that are, like, the guests are more rah rah about it and getting it out there and putting in their various networks and channels and has it on their website and whatever. So I really try to dive into my post production promotional strategies for podcasts. So I would say that if it was a student, you know, make sure that you're elevating your guest. If it's a faculty member with the students, making sure that you elevate, you know, not only just do a podcast, but you do like a little writeup about that student and their journey and their story to make them feel elevated as a guest on that podcast. And then I think the last part too is that, like, I've seen it be as a tool for classrooms, is that make a list. I wanna give a shout out to gila Kaufman in my office. She teaches a college to career course specifically for psychology majors. And I didn't ask her to do this, but she took all the episodes that had like something to do with like psychology from my podcast, and she made a list of like, this episode, this is the guest, this is their career, and made it like a database. And shares that with her course. And so not every episode she's sharing, but she's sharing the ones that are relevant to her students and their career journeys. So shout out to her for that. But I think it's really the moneymaker is in the postproduction marketing strategies for a podcast to elevate it and get it to the appropriate audience that you want to get to.'cause some people, you know, build it and they come, some people are not going to know. You're gonna have to get it in different channels that will reach them, you know, and their modalities.

Leigh: 23:52

I just wanna add for educators who might be listening who are maybe excited about working podcasts into their pedagogy but don't know how, or are just like a little bit nervous about that sort of first hurdle to get over it. One thing I learned at the Higher Ed Pod Con is I'm struck by how many universities do have a community around podcasting. And I think, you know, Philip deserves credit for really being a source of a lot of that community at Mason. Um,

Rachel: 24:18

Yeah, definitely.

Leigh: 24:20

Anyone else listening to this who might be curious as to how they get started, the Mason Innovation Exchange does have a podcasting booth. And Philip, do you wanna talk about the podcasting club and community that you've built up some?

Philip: 24:33

Yeah, I mean, even when I just got to Mason, I like to just, I'm extrovert, like meet people. I would say, Hey, I got a podcast and shamelessly plug myself. But then I would learn that so many departments or students or others had podcasts. So I would like, every time I heard a podcast and it had any affiliation with Mason or alum or something, I say, Hey, I wanna make a little podcast directory. And I, you know, made a little Microsoft form and try to collect,'cause we have so many, I mean, I say over under, but I'm pretty sure if we have an extension of someone that's connected to the Mason community of some sort, we got like over a hundred podcasts. And I say that they don't have to be long one, short ones, you know, ones that are already done. They're not existing anymore, but we have a lot of creators using this modality. And, but then I realized there's a lot of students that want to use podcast, not necessarily, you know, in their curriculum, but they just want a community around it. So just recently we created a registered student organization entitled Podcast Club at George Mason. The faculty advisors, Buzz Mcaldrin, he's an actual communication specialist I believe in the Schar School. But then the group is a bunch of students that aren't even like comm majors. They're all kinds of different majors that just want to do this and curate content and grow. And so I just think that, to Dr. McCue's point, you know, building communities, this is not a solo effort. I don't think any podcaster would say this is a solo effort. And so building communities, building spaces, building hubs of learning and doing, you know, tinkering and sharing ideas of how techniques work is the best way to grow as a podcaster. And I, yeah, we are at a very good space in higher ed because we have all the tools available. You know, we have studios on campus. I think we pride ourselves on access to excellence. So like for those that are starting, they don't have all the bells and whistles, they can utilize, star labs, they can utilize the MIX to actually create their content, but have the equipment to feel like they can, you know, get better. So I think we're in a good space, higher ed, and you know, the libraries, all these things, the university space is just a great place to tinker and learn like, duh,'cause it's a higher ed right? To learn. And so we already have these systems in place. It's just a matter of the utilization of it and building communities and building awareness that these tools exist, these communities exist, and that there's people to connect with here.

Rachel: 27:01

Yeah. Well that's great. Well, thank you both so much for your time. And again, shout out to your podcast as well. We'll put all of the links in the show notes also as well as to some of the resources that we've just been mentioning. So be sure to check out the show notes as well. So again, thank you both so much for your time. I appreciate it. I appreciate your joining us.

Leigh: 27:22

Thank you for the invitation.

Philip: 27:24

Thank you so much and, you know, keep podcasting your podcast here at Stearns. It's amazing and I've listened to a lot of episodes and I feel like once again, this is a great opportunity to learn and be more connected to this community. So thank you.

Rachel: 27:38

Yeah. Thank you so much and please check out our episodes. We're posting every two weeks in the fall and spring semesters, so we have other great content coming up. Lots of topics across different disciplines and areas and bringing together people from different departments and resources and offices as well. So thank you so much and we look forward to catching you in a future episode.