Teaching Out the College Closure

US higher education continues to experience challenges, and sometimes those challenges lead to institutions closing. In this episode we revisit the topic of institutional closure from the lens of the receiving institution. Guests Jackie DeMolee and Hannah Rounds talk about the University of Iowa’s role as the closed institutions’ records repository within the state of Iowa. We learn about the two categories of institutional closure, about the regulatory triad, and ways that receiving institutions can minimize harm for students and assist the closing institution.   

Key Takeaways:

• Both “abrupt” and “orderly” institutional closures can feel sudden for those experiencing them. Providing empathy, giving grace, and being patient with the closing institution’s staff is important. Having a plan or procedure in place in advance will also greatly assist the receiving institution. 
• Digitizing catalogs can go a long way to help students have a soft landing wherever they wind up; being able to reference requirements and course descriptions is important!
• As a receiving institution you have to remember that the students who are coming to you for their records are likely going through a traumatic experience and at the same time have to learn a different system for requesting transcripts, etc. Be patient, provide resources and support, and help students in any way you can.  

Host:

Doug McKenna, University Registrar
George Mason University
cmckenn@gmu.edu 

Guests:

Hannah Rounds, Curriculum Analyst
University of Iowa

hannah-rounds@uiowa.edu 

Jackie DeMolee, Registrar Services Coordinator 

University of Iowa

jacqueline-demolee@uiowa.edu 

References and Additional Information:

For the Record - S4E6 - Considerations When Closing an Institution; 10/29/21; Guest: Ramie Nation

SEEHO College Closures

AACRAO Institutional Closures Report

AACRAO Professional Proficiencies - Knowledge of Student Records Management

Transcript

0:00

You're listening to for the Record, a registrar podcast sponsored by Acro, I'm Hannah Rounds curriculum analyst at the University of Iowa and I'm Jackie de Millet Registrar services coordinator at the University of Iowa and this is teaching out the college closure. Hello, welcome to for the Record. I'm your host, Doug mckenna University Registrar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Today we're going to revisit a topic from an earlier season with a slightly different lens. So way back in season four in October of 2021 it was episode six. It'll be linked in the show notes, Raymond Nation shared her experience with being the registrar at an institution that was closing. And today we're going to hear all about the receiving institutions, experience of institutional closures. So let's bring on our guests for today from the University of Iowa. Hannah, Jackie.-- Welcome to the-- podcast. Thanks for having us Doug. We really appreciate being here.-- Thanks,-- Doug, great to be here. Awesome. Would you to kick us off, introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your institution? So, Jackie, let's go to you first. Sure. I'm Jackie and I work as a registrar services coordinator at the University of Iowa. My role, primary duties involve working with closed institutions and how we intake them at the University of Iowa as repository. A little bit about me is that I've spent almost seven years at the University of Iowa and I have previous experience in the North Dakota University system as well as admissions offices. Athletics, academics, residents life. I'm kind of like your higher ed pro.-- You've been all over? Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.-- Well, welcome Hannah. So I'm Hannah Rounds and I've worked at the University of Iowa for about 10 years now and I've been in the registrar's office since 2017. I currently work as a curriculum analyst on the degree audit team, but I came to the registrar's office and worked on their course in classroom scheduling team first. So last May, I earned my master's in educational policy and leadership studies with a higher ed and student affairs focus. Thank you. And that's where a lot of my interest in the policy aspect of the college closure started to arise. Very cool and we'll dig into that somewhat throughout the conversation. So, welcome to both of you. Thank you for being here. Tell us a little bit about the University of Iowa itself.-- What is your institution like?-- Thanks, Doug. So the University of Iowa is in Iowa City, Iowa and we are the state's oldest institution of higher education. We're classified as an R one research university. And we're also known for being a member of the big 10 conference. Iowa offers more than 200 majors to its over 31,000 students. We have undergraduate graduate and professional programs and Iowa is known as the number one public university for writing for the disciplines. And we're also renowned as one of the best academic hospitals in the US. And for listeners who may be wondering why are University of Iowa staff here to talk about college quot? It's because of our role as the state of Iowa's student record or closed institutional record depository, which Jackie is here to talk more about today.-- So-- the University of Iowa is designated by the State Law Chapter 264 as the repository for closed institution academic records, which means when an institution closes or has been closed, we obtain those records to make them available for historic purposes or also for transcript requests when necessary. Let's be clear just in the state of Iowa, right everywhere around the globe, everyone sending their stuff to Iowa. That's funny. Ok. And to kick things off and sort of provide some of that framing for the episode today. Let's start with the CEO report. Is that how you say it SHEEO that was issued on institutional closures. And maybe you could highlight some of the findings from that report, the report that you're referencing the XO report which stands for State Higher Education Executive Officers Association and over the last year or so, Xio has issued three different reports. A longitudinal trip part series highlighting college closures which represents an increasing area of concern for higher education. In their first report, Xio revealed that over 467 institutions closed between 2004 and 2020. And while closures were a concern. Prior to COVID-19, research from Xio revealed that the pandemic has exacerbated the inevitable. Scholars noted that a lot of the emergency funding provided to institutions may have been a band aid on things but isn't necessarily stopping the problem. So as a result from their report, we're seeing a few things, for example, we may see more trends leading to college mergers, but because sometimes closures are inevitable, we're seeing these continue at a steady pace which means that the risk to students, staff and faculty increase as well. Ok. There are a bunch of different reasons that an institution would or could close. So do they all look the same? Like are closures pretty consistent? Are they like you can see it coming? You know that it's happening? There's a plan out like what are the ways that closures differ in the way that they transpire? So there are two types of closures and I'll cover those first bug. But I also want to come back to your question, you know, can we forecast closures or what do higher ed leaders want to look out for? If a closure is on the horizon. And so first, I'll just go ahead and go over the two primary closure types. Um Those are orderly closures and abrupt closures and a little bit of over two thirds of closures are orderly. And that means that adequate notice is provided to students, institutions took the time to formulate record policies and establish teach out agreements. And for our listeners because we call this teaching out the college closure. I'll just note that a teach out agreement is an arrangement between institutions of higher ed that provides a clear pathway for students to transfer and continue their program of study. Elsewhere, on the other hand, we have abrupt closures where hasty or no notice is provided to students and the worst case scenario is for staff and students might be those closures that take place almost overnight. Staff or students may receive an email the day before a closure. And there are also stories where students have shown up to a class and found a note on the door or staff go to their office to find the doors locked because they are so sudden they naturally correlate with worse, worse student outcomes in relation to student enrollment. Students who experience an abrupt closure over an orderly one are less likely to reenroll and finish the credential that they started in the first place. Yeah, that's got to be a terrible experience for them. Yes. The one thing we know from taking in records is that just because an institution is closing, orderly doesn't mean it feels orderly to students or staff or administrators or individuals that are in taking those records. And so, you know, like in the example of Iowa Wesleyan, when they closed, it was orderly, but there were some very, very heavy feelings of it being abrupt too in some ways, not just to students but also to to staff and how quickly it happened. So you know, how are we defining how chio defines orderly and how people define orderly made very different than how it actually plays out in, in real time. Yeah, and the experience of closing is always going to feel a especially an institution that's been around for a little while having to come to terms with. There is a stop now that you are aware of whether that's, you know, three months in the future or six months in the future, that's still, that's no time at all really? Now it's a lot more time than showing up at class and having a note on the door which I cannot imagine I did want to know. So we talked about how colleges close for a variety of reasons and the final step in their lifeline may be anticipated by early warning signals. We might see administrative pay cuts, reduced faculty or staff salaries, hiring freezes layoffs, a reduction in academic programs. However, despite telltale tip offs, like all of those, some closures do come as a surprise. And one of the key examples of these was the closure of Mount Ida in Massachusetts in 2018 because that followed sunny reports of enrollment increases and other financial green lights. So it did come as a shock to the community, which I just want to mention because Massachusetts is one of those states. When we think about the regulatory triad and how all of those pieces work together. They have done a lot of work to create legislation to protect students in the closure process. When an institution closes abruptly, what are the ways or are there ways that you can minimize harm for the students and staff who are experiencing that abrupt closure? Sure. So I think I've been fortunate in that in the time that I've been at the University of Iowa, we've experienced two closures and they have been quote unquote orderly. So we've had a little bit of, we've had a little bit of time to go through that process, whether that's three months with Iowa Wesleyan or nine months with Aib um out of Des Moines in 2016. So I honestly don't know what it looks like to take an abrupt closure. I have a process. I imagine that in that scenario very strictly that we would follow the same kind of process that we do right now. But I can also imagine it might take a little bit more time for us to make those records available because of how quickly that would happen. Um, I would also hope that we would have some sort of communication usually and I would have alluded to this anyway. Usually we do have a little bit of notice. Uh, not necessarily a ton when the case of Iowa Wesleyan, I knew the morning of the announcement before the announcement was made and they actually contacted our library who had forwarded it to me in the morning and the person from Iowa Wesleyan who had reached out to the library here had reached out the night before. So somebody knew it was coming, they just didn't know who to reach out to. And so it made its way to me by like 8 a.m. 815 or something like that, that morning of when the announcement was made. But I would assume that I would go through the same kind of process. It would just be a little, little bit crazier on our end, no doubt, let's back up a little and talk about some of the regulatory pieces that are in place and that the governance structures around institutions. And so, and I'm gonna throw it back to you. Maybe you can explain what the term regulatory triad means to the listeners. So the regulatory triad is comprised of three main systems. And depending on how each system functions across different levels, it's going to impact students differently as they navigate the closure process. So all three of these branches work together and determine student outcomes. So first, we have the federal branch, which is most recognizable to people through the Department of Education, but it might also consist of resulting federal legislation or watchdog units who are keeping track of how those systems are working for the benefit of students or not. The second one we have are state agencies. So each state has its own policies, systems and laws that students have to work around. And in states where there have been more closures, there might be some more guidance. So Massachusetts represents a state that has enacted legislation for students and has a fiscal stewardship and consumer protection focus. And finally, we have the accrediting agencies which also play a part in reviewing higher education. For example, depending on the accreditation agency, they might require institutions to have a teach out agreement in place in order to be accredited. The most important takeaway from this is that depending on how well all of those systems work together, the regulatory triad is going to impact students. But a lot of those protection policies result from controversy, say more about that. Why would legislation that protects students be controversial? Or is that the controversy? I think it really comes down to how federal and state agencies really, this legislation tends to be reactive from, from what I've learned from the research state and federal agencies are establishing legal precedent as they go along and we unravel all of these implications to students. So in other words, in the case of Massachusetts, when Mount Ida closed, I believe there were seven different lawsuits against Mount Ida and they were all dropped for various reasons. But because it was so controversial, the state government took it very seriously and enacted new regulations and protections for students. So again, it's part of that sometimes reactive versus proactive. Do you know if Iowa has legislation in place to protect students from similar harms? I don't know if Virginia does. So I wanna say their policy is specifically related to 264 which is well, of the maintenance of academic records or scholastic record records. There might be something required about teach out it, teach out may be required when an institution closes. But I can't remember. I feel like I've, I feel like I've heard that from someone but I've never actually because that's not,-- unfortunately, that's not my my area.-- I, I think it's going to be interesting too as we move forward with some shifts and shake up in the accreditation process and, and policy like there are conversations going on now about abandoning regional accreditation and letting any accrediting body accredit any institution. And I don't know where that's going to land, but it will definitely have an effect on one leg of the regulatory triad. I, I keep wanting to call it the regulatory tripod, which I guess all three of them work together to hold the thing up that that works, but that's not what it is. It's called the Triad. My bad. I can say that I believe North Dakota doesn't have anything. We reached out to State Board of Higher Education during our process of presenting at, um, Maro and, um, never heard anything back from them, but I, having worked in the system, I'm like, I like 99% sure that the reason why I didn't hear back was a couple of reasons and one of them is they don't have anything. But the other is that I think there's always this consternation about the potential of an institution closing. There's um I mean, that's been going on for years, but they have 11 state institutions, two universities and nine colleges slash community colleges and they, they think they have too many. So, so there's always a conversation about that, but I was talking to the registrar at N BS U Phil and we were, we were chatting about that. Yeah, at um Maro that because I said that we hadn't heard anything back. But anyway, this is a start. Let's talk about Iowa for a second. Now you've mentioned that the University of Iowa is designated to be the receiving institution for records. Say a little bit more about that. It's in law. What does it mean? So chapter 264 designates the University of Iowa as the repository for closed institutions, scholastic records or what we know as transcripts, our office and the office of the registrar coordinates with those closing institutions or closed institutions. Sometimes we get them after they've been long closed. We currently hold 30 closed institutions. We've obtained two that we're closing in what I like to call real time, um, since 2016. Um and we've obtained three other institutions that were long term closed in that time period in the last six years. What that means for us is that we hold a lot of records in the state of Iowa for closed institutions. It's also a lot of work to make those available and digitized. One of the other things is when possible. We also not required by law, but we try to obtain, we can catalogs, we know through research that catalogs, you know, as part of the transition for students who aren't able to graduate from institutions can be helpful um when they're going to transfer into institution into other institutions. And you know, based on research that Hannah knows, we know that the success rate of students who attended closed institutions for their progress to graduation isn't always great unfortunately. And so we try to collect those catalogs in order to make it a little bit easier for those students to produce that documentation when they're looking to transfer from an admission standpoint, so that they could possibly get credit to help them pro progress to graduation. Hopefully, what does it look like in practice like when you are receiving documents. What are you getting like? Are they big bankers boxes worth of paper? Is it digital files? What, what does it look like? And then what do you do with those? What, what is the process? Typically, I would say what we receive when an institution is closing in real time? In my experience has been digital paper and microfilm slash micro form of some sort. Um That's very common and then I think we tend to get more paper catalogs than we get digital catalogs. For whatever reason it is a little bit, it's a little bit of a game. So we get paper transcripts that we may already have digital for. So we try to take record of the paper that we received and compare them to the electronic that we received to make sure we're not doubling up. Um We include our, its team. Um One of the things that Hannah when talking about our institutions specifically about our institution is that we have our own student information system called Maui. And so we work very heavily with our its and our software developers to make this process possible on the digital side with creating students in our student information system and then getting those records uploaded when we have digital records. In the case of Iowa Wesleyan, they had two different sets of digital records, some that were copied from microfilm, going back to 1950 up until the eighties and then their most recent transcripts were like normal PDF what you would kind of expect from a transcript from 1983 until present. Um So there were kind of two sets of records that was 40,000 students. And then we received nine boxes of paper, bankers, boxes of papers and we do sometimes get rogue documents. Some institutions have given us whole student files. Um We found out some things about nursing schools because we hold a lot of nursing schools that per accreditation in the state of Iowa, they have to maintain nursing files, the whole thing, the the admissions application, the transcripts. And so we go through and we actually destroy a lot of the documents that aren't transcripts. So admissions applications, fitness records, in fact, from, from like 1920 things like that. So we, yeah, we try to ask for just the transcripts but we still with Iowa Wesleyan, we received, we received trans official transcripts that we sent them for students file that they didn't pull when they were going through and pulling the record. So I saw from 1960 something, an official transcript we sent Iowa Wesleyan that was in with the students record from Iowa Wesleyan. We try to do as much as we can to ask them to just give us transcripts. Um We also are very cognizant of the fact that we are asking a lot of them. We're asking a lot of staff and potential student employees to go through and provide that the things to us that we need, otherwise they are things that we'll have to take care of. And I, I imagine to at working with people who are operating under a significant amount of duress and distress because they are closing. And so the level of uncertainty and all of the emotions going through are one of those things that, that you and your team have to deal with. Let's talk about your team for a minute. Is it just you, do you have a team? How many people are we talking about processing these 40,000 student records? Yeah. So it's a little bit of a team effort in terms of how we get records into the system and make them available. Um When it comes to the paper records that falls on me, we just recently hired a student. Um the team of the team that's worked on this has expanded and contracted over time. So we used to have a couple of students and a couple of staff members and then it's just been me and then Iowa Wesleyan closed. And so I, I just started a student employee to help with some of the Iowa Wesleyan. And then I've tapped when available, um some of our customer service or student services um individual front line workers for when they have some downtime if they want to help with the projects and they kind of fill in as they see fit. So it's not necessarily just me doing it alone because I do wear other hats with PSEO and stuff like that. Hannah, what if any is your role in the actual receiving and processing of documents? This is a great question, Doug because I'm really just here for the research. But I think Jack Jackie. Um so and just a little bit about how we, we got started on this is I, you know, I'm not a lawyer, not authorized to talk policy for the University of Iowa, but this was a project for my law in higher ed class. And Jackie and I connected after an open house last year and she mentioned she was very busy with closed institution records. And since I had been looking into legal precedents for my law class, I said, I think we have a conference presentation, we should talk more and Jackie had mentioned earlier, you know, some of the re due to some of the research I know or I am aware of it had helped her learn that we should collect transcripts as much as possible. And so I think that's a really important connection, just how networking in our own office, this policy interest I had with the actual position and that Jackie holds and how we kind of merge our interests together and how ultimately that it makes us, it makes for a stronger office. I think we're constantly in dialogue about these things and now that we have presented at a conference with me on the policy side and Jackie on the, this is how we interpret policy and how my role is informed by policy policy. We have sort of become people who others connect with when they hear about the closure process because we were really interested in learning more about it after seeing so many articles about there that might highlight the student experience and the faculty experience or the community experience, especially with Iowa Wesleyan. But we weren't seeing anything about how registrars are impacted. We weren't hearing the staff voice. And so that's sort of where we came together and merged our interests and started to connect with the staff. And A RL is actually a really big part of that. We used our young professionals caucus message board to connect with some folks and have some real conversations about what we could learn from them and how it, it would benefit our understanding of what we do in our office. Let's talk about that for a couple of minutes, you reached out to people who had experience with being at a closed institution or had known someone. What were the solicitations for input like there and then who responded? And how many people did you talk to? And what kinds of things did you learn? I wanna give a shout out to Jackie also. I know she's recording alongside me, but I learned a lot from Jackie and so many of the initial conversations we had were so helpful. And one of my favorite things as I learned more about this process, thanks to Jackie's work was Jackie is doing really important work to make a very hectic process run smoothly for staff at these closed institutions. So when we think about the distress they're experiencing, I just want to give a shout out to Jackie for all she's doing and make sure she gets some recognition for her hard work. And I don't know if she wants to talk more about her role with Iowa Wesleyan staff. I can certainly talk more about the people we chatted with as well. Let's talk about the people we chatted with. We the imperial. We let's talk about the people that you chatted with first and then we'll uh focus on Iowa Wesleyan specifically in a minute. So when you reached out, who responded and what kinds of conversations did you have? So when we reached out to our to acros Young Professionals caucus network, we heard from a handful of people and we learned some really fascinating and interesting things and I also, I just wanna make sure that they are, they are thanked. We're not going to name all of them or discuss individual conversations, but I do just want to give them some recognition for the time they took to discuss their experiences with us. Some of the things that we were told were, were that students have will have the most questions about transfer work and tuition when they're trying to graduate. We had some really interesting conversations about when institutions close, they might often host transfer fairs for students. And I think Jackie did a really great job articulating with some of the people we talked to that you may want to carefully consider the person you're sending to some of these fairs. You may not necessarily want to send your most bubbly admissions person. You may want to send the person who's the expert on transfer articulation. Because there that's going to be one of the most pressing questions that students will have. And some of the things we learned from talking to individuals was a lot about maybe the, the feelings that they experienced which I think were alluded in which are covered quite a bit in the the previous podcast about what are the feelings of experiencing a closing institution as a staff member and for the purposes of Hannah. And I, we really, we treated it very holistically talking to them and then when making a recommendation or making our recommendations and thought points, I guess at um Maro for our presentation was the kind of support that staff members don't, don't get whether intentional or unintentional. And that's not only just institutionally but also supporting yourself. You're going through that because the focus of the staff members is so keenly and uniquely focused on the students and getting them where they need to be oftentimes that those individuals gave them like put themselves in the back seat for a little while, while their lives were in the balance too. Right? And so those are some of the conversations that we had,-- we spoke with four-- individuals or four. OK. Yeah, we learned about the unique experience of immigrants to the United States or international students and how international students face unique pressures to decide on when their institution closes. They face so much pressure to immediately decide on the new plan of study elsewhere. We talked about how it's often overlooked that those students or staff who are international may have unique documents that they had to obtain from their home countries that they aren't easy to come by. And so we talked about the importance of one of the staff members. We talked to discuss the role that she played in hoping to organize a document pick up day just for as a unique way to support students and staff in that population closing institutions tend to have a high number or a higher number of potential international students as well as minority students um as they're recruiting to try to alleviate some of their financial woes. So even in the case of Iowa Wesleyan, as Hannah was talking about, they had international students who were thinking about transferring back to their home countries. And so they were able to get their transcripts, but they also needed all of the catalog information for all of their courses. And so one of the first things I did while its was work was try to scan as many of the more recent catalogs as I could so that I could make those catalogs available to those students, particularly international students for their transfers. And that's not just one class that's three years of that six semesters or classes or more for those students. So it really going through and hunting and pecking pages in PDF S is, you know, the ability to make them available in total so that they could be given to those students for their pursuit was really important. That was something I learned having not done. This was my first institution to close in real time. Other institutions I've taken in have all been previously closed for like decades. Let's talk about Iowa Wesley. We've alluded to it. You've mentioned a couple of aspects of it, but let's do sort of a deeper dive into the overall process is sort of a case study for our listeners. What was the timeline? Who was involved? I think you mentioned how you receive the documents and then where are you in terms of processing and making those documents available? Is that an ongoing thing? Was it a distinct period of time? Those types of questions? So maybe start with the timeline and then we can dive in from there. Sure. A brief time Iowa Wesleyan University announced their closure at the end of March of 2023 during a crow's annual conference, I was virtual. My boss was in, oh, it was Colorado, right? It was in Colorado. Um They set a closure date of May 30th. I would argue the closure date was the second week in May just given what I know. And then just as a brief timeline, um we began processing transcripts on June 21st for those who are requesting, they stopped their office of the Registrar stopped processing transcripts on May 11th. So there was about a five week time period where there were no Iowa Wesleyan transcripts being moved just as by way of our processing time with more leg time, we might have been able to do it a little faster, but I'm really proud of how quickly we did it. Our initial assessment was that we were going to do it early July after the fourth. Um but we were able to move it up a little bit. I want to pause for a second because March 23rd announcement to May 30th closure and that's considered an orderly closure, not abrupt like two months really because you're at the end of March, you got April and all of May. Correct. Yeah. So technically Iowa Wesleyan was an orderly closure and that's if we don't count the two weeks that their office of the Registrar could not process transcripts and just when I picked up the records the week after the 11th, so they had graduation the first week of May and they did grades and degrees the next week and then, um, they had no electricity, no phone lines, no access to emails, um, at a certain point. And so when I picked up, when I went to pick up records, the fall, I think it was May 19th, I was picking up boxes from a dark building. See, this is a fascinating aspect of this because like I, I hear all right, University of Iowa received documents from Iowa Westley, but now you personally are driving to a darkened building and picking up physical boxes and putting them in your car to take back to your office like that. Just a different feel of there's a lot more texture there.-- It's less, you know, and-- I mean, I don't mean to brag or anything, but I brought them cookies when I picked up the box because I knew it had been a rough, rough few months. Um, and I worked with them kind of every, just in terms of timeline. The second I found out, um, there was a contact person that I reached out to. I also notified the State Department of Education, which used to be called Iowa College Aid. I reached out to that contact and let them know because they need to be aware of it. Um And then we scheduled a meeting for the following week virtually to start working with their registrar's office as well as their its staff and our, its staff, our transcripts and verifications team. Our registrar was at the first meeting and then my supervisor as well, Kurt Graf who is kind of new to taking on me and what I do. So it's good to have them in those meetings. We met about every two weeks with their registrar staff until graduation and we had a good plan by then and then their its and Rits kind of met in between there so that they were working together. And this is just an aside when we talk about college closures and, and some Hallmark traits of closures, Iowa Wesleyan hired their, its staff last year and I think they did it knowing that this was probably going to happen. They hired people who probably knew how to do this really well. They did, they were pretty fresh to their roles, but they knew what they were doing. And they had also hired a career, a director of like career and internship services, um which also would have been important for students. So they kind of made some hires that if you were going to spend money and knowing you might close, those are probably places you'd wanna put money. So that's just a fascinating tidbit. We had its work independently with our software developers so that they could successfully transfer digital records into the system. And then our transcripts and verifications team, we worked out messaging to say when transcripts would be available and how the process would work to process those transcripts. Um One of the unique things that comes out of this that I don't think I realized before now is that when we intake student records, how students receive their transcripts is different. Usually we process on our own in our office, we don't go through a third party vendor such as, you know, the National Student Clearinghouse or Parchment, they use the National Student Clearinghouse. And so the cost of transcripts uh has changed or changes, the students are learning a new process to get their transcript that they may not have experienced before, especially when they order their first transcript through the clearing house and then they come to us and we have a different system, how we bill them is different for those charges. So there's a lot of differences that students have to have a, there's a learning curve to that. And so there was a lot of customer service support on our end to help those students going through, you know, a challenging situation, figure out how to get, how to best get their records and unanticipated transition situation. Correct. Correct. Now, you said you reached out to a contact at the State Department of Education. Is that a requirement for you? Is that, is that just in your standard operating procedure to notify or is it actually the responsibility of the closing institution? Is it kind of both or is it just because you know, the person. Yeah. So, I don't know if this is written, this is not written in law, but as far as I know, technically what's supposed to happen is the closing institution should actually reach out to Iowa College Aid or what was the Department of Education? Sorry. It just transitioned recently. So they're supposed to reach out to this contact at the Department of Education. Um, and then I should be notified from there. However, most people don't know that it's not really a known thing. So it tends to be that I, people know to some extent we're repository. So usually they'll just contact the University of Iowa. And then I let, I let the Department of Education know, I don't know if they do. I've been meaning to talk with that contact about what they do specifically and then we haven't had a chance to touch base because I just don't know. I'm like, I know they need to be notified in some capacity. There's probably a good reason for that. But I was always curious and I'm genuinely curious about what they do when the school contacts them and what their process is not why they need to be notified. But what that drives and then coming to us, we had another closure, a very small online school like a seminary school that announced its closure and was in teach out. Um And that one I received this summer or last summer and that one I heard from by the Department of Education. So that one came to me the appropriate way, quote unquote the official channels. Um And then we worked with them to transition their records in December. So, so yeah, this is so fascinating and I, I want to ask like 100 more questions about like those first zoom meetings that you had or virtual meetings with Io Wesley and staff. But I'm going to pause and we'll, we'll do a higher level question about sort of general themes and what have you learned? And what would you recommend to another institution that may not be designated by the state as a receiving institution but may wind up in a receiving institution situation in my experience, I think the a few of the most important things are figuring out a process. I think that's what makes us successful. And I felt very good about the process that has been developed not to pat myself on the back. But some of it has some of it has come from the Afro closed Report, but some of it I use from the Acro report to create processes. But I think that having a process is really important. Another thing is I think those catalogs are really key. And one of the things that I could recommend to either a receiving institution or an institution that might be closing is the electronic version of those like I think I scanned 80 I scan them all because sometimes we do have to go back 20 years. But as many digital catalogs as possible, especially as you're getting ready to close for those, particularly the students who are attending. So at least, you know, 56 years of them, I think six probably be good. But that's something that I think ends up going to the wayside. I think digitalization is sometimes hard because depending on the institution, depends on how much money and time they have to focus on digitalization of transcripts specifically. But that's I think, and then as Hannah alluded to earlier, the the transfer fare really stuck out to me as I know admissions people and they have big personalities and I just kept thinking who is being sent to these institutions and what are they bringing to the table and what is what is really needed for these students? And I just kept thinking like, yeah, like experts and maybe institutions are already sending the right people. I don't want to infer that they aren't. But I just kept thinking I was like, oh, like I can just imagine, you know. Yeah. Yeah, those were kind of my two take two main takeaways as at le at least it relates to the work that I do. I wanted to support Jackie's point about the catalogs. I feel like frequently, it was almost surprising how often I heard that catalogs aren't required for institutions to hold on to or provide in student records trans, but they are the things that are going to save students making sure they get credit and continuing their programs of study in major ways. Because when a closure happens from the conversations we had with people and they're trying to figure things out for students in the best way they can, they might be willing to be a little bit more flexible in their teach out agreements. They might be willing to let some stuff transfer in as a service to that student and to uphold their part in the teach out agreement. So just knowing that this is a period where students might have a little bit more flexibility, but those catalog records are really what's going to save them. Um If they have a place that they can look to, that describes their program of study or the content of the courses that is going to be really helpful. And I think that's one of the interesting things that we learned from, from talking to some of the stuff that we did. I also one takeaway that I wanted to know and I'm not sure that I had a chance to say this earlier, but one important takeaway is that institutions which close abruptly when we've talked about the differences between orderly and abrupt closures, those students that are those colleges that close, more abruptly enroll more students. And Jackie had touched on some of those student groups earlier, but in general, closed institutions enroll higher numbers of students of color women, veterans who might be dependent on G I bill benefits low income students who might be relying on Pell grants and also adult students with Children. That's exactly the population of students that need extra support anyway. And it's like a double whammy for them. Yes, this is just a fascinating part of the work that we do and it really shines a light especially on the catalog and curriculum management pieces within a registrar's office because there are ways to digitize those processes and to create digital catalogs. Now, today Mason uses one but you know, historically, if we had to go back 3040 years, those are all still paper and to be able to provide, those are in a digital format would be a lift. And so I think that that's one really important takeaway, especially for registrars who are responsible for the catalog production is to make sure that there's a virtual option, a digital copy available. There was um within the, within the first, I think six weeks, we had Iowa Wesleyan Foley, we had a request for catalog information from 2003. And so I digitalized that one amongst the newer ones and it was a request for all classes. So just handed off all of the catalog information and not to go into detail. But it takes me about an hour to do it for each one give or take depending on the how the catalog is bound and, and things like that and how, well, my scanner is cooperating but, you know, 40 catalogs is 8, 40 catalogs is 40 hours, you know, like you're, you're going, going hard. And I think that's pretty, I think that's relatively efficient for a person. But yeah, I don't, are there any closing thoughts that you have? Are there things that you would say to staff, either at receiving institutions or staff at the closing institutions that might help or guide or any other sort of broad summary kinds of things? I think from my perspective, patience, empathy. And I think I said it earlier process is really important. You know, one of the things that I heard in conversation, especially probably mid conversation with Iowa Wesleyan was that from one of the individuals at Iowa Wesleyan was that we were the only thing that was working well for them in terms of process in terms of making sure that things were, were going well um and moving forward as they were supposed to. And so when I heard that I felt really good about how it was going. And like I said, it was the first school I had taken in in real time. And so that was nice to know that it, it works, but you have to give it some thought and you have to have, I think gone through some fire for a little bit to get to where you need to be. Nobody wants to think about closures, whether you're receiving or closing. But I think especially in higher education, it's really important. I think it is important as a higher, higher education professional to think about it at least a little bit because it's not, it's not something that can't happen, it can and it does. And may you be fortunate enough to not have experienced it as a student, faculty or staff member? Well, thank you both for your time and for sharing your expertise with this. This is a fascinating aspect of registrar that again as Jackie, you just pointed out, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about. We definitely don't spend a lot of time talking about. So I appreciate you being here and sharing your insights. Thank you so much Doug and I just wanna, I wanted to make sure that we took the time to think our networks and the people who collaborated on this with us just to learn more and what Jackie is doing is so important. A lot of, you know, a lot of this is new and there aren't many states that or universities that function as the state depository. And so I just want to give kudos to Jackie for all of the work she's doing and navigating some of these questions for the first time.-- Yeah, and-- paving the way well done. Thank you, Doug. We really appreciate it and shout out to Hannah for being like the fact and research person that I am not. So it's kind of a ying and Yang situation. That's awesome. Thanks for listening. I hope that you never have to experience an institutional closure either as the institution that's closing or as the receiving institution. But it's nice to know a little bit about the process and to be able to share in others experiences of it. So thank you to Hannah and Jackie for sharing. This will be the last episode before the annual meeting in Columbus Ohio in early April. I hope that you're planning on attending and I hope that I will get to see you there. I also want to take a moment to thank Sarah Reed for all of her many and varied contributions to for the record. Over the last two years, Sarah came in and provided a spark to the podcast and produced a bunch of really meaningful and interesting episodes. I appreciate her openness and vulnerability and the way that she brought those qualities out in our guests. Keep rocking Sarah. I look forward to seeing what's next for you in acro and in life. Thank you. And as always, thank you for listening. If you are enjoying the podcast, please forward it on to a colleague or a friend and if you're not enjoying it, a why are you still listening and b go ahead and forward it on to someone you don't like. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I hope you listen in good health and in happiness. All right. That is a wrap for season six. I'll see you at the annual meeting. I'm Doug mckenna. This is for the record. Ok. Yeah, we'll back.-- Ok.-- Sorry if I'm making the editing process more. It is not, it, it'll be great. Yeah, it'll be great.