Ep. 40 - Karen Archambault, Rowan College at Burlington County

What do wallets, walk-up songs, learning to drive a stick shift, and enrollment management have in common? More than you'd think.

This week on The Pickup Meeting, Kevin and Brody welcome Karen Archambault, Senior Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Success at Rowan College at Burlington County, for a conversation packed with practical leadership wisdom, student success strategies, and a healthy dose of laughter.

Karen shares how a professor's encouragement unexpectedly changed the course of her career, why enrollment management should be everyone's responsibility, and how redesigning advising, removing administrative barriers, and meeting students' basic needs can transform outcomes. Along the way, the conversation detours into favorite walk-up songs, lifelong learning, quilting, photography, driving a manual-transmission Corvette, and even twirling fire.

Whether you're an advisor, enrollment leader, student affairs professional, or simply someone who loves learning something new, this episode is full of ideas you'll want to take back to campus—and maybe even into your own life.

In this episode:

•  🎵 Finding your walk-up song 
•  🎓 Why enrollment management is about people—not just numbers 
•  💡 Simple changes that make a big difference for students 
•  🚗 Learning new skills (including driving a stick shift!) 
•  🔥 The surprising hidden talent Karen's colleagues may not know about 

Grab your headphones, hit play, and join the conversation—you might just leave inspired to learn something new yourself.

*The Pickup Meeting is a spinoff of the Adventures in Advising podcast!

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook! Also, subscribe to the Adventures in Advising YouTube Channel!

Have a question? Want to chat? E-mail us at thepickupmeeting@gmail.com!

Connect with Brody and Kevin on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And away we go. Lock the doors, mute your notifications, and tell your supervisor you've stepped away from your desk. It's time for the pickup meeting. I am Kevin Thomas, and beside me is the undisputed heavyweight champion of positive morale, the one and only Brody Brocheers. Brody, we have a great topic today. Great agenda. Why are you laughing at me? Just a wonderful party that we're gonna have for our guests of the show today. That was long, but really fun. I am doing my part, right? Like if this show fails, it is not gonna be because of me. It's gonna be because your intros are not as funny as mine. Well, I don't do the intros anymore. Exactly my point. Exactly my point. Are you doing okay? I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Let's go. It's it's nice outside. It's gotten really hot here all of a sudden. So I'm adjusting to that. Short sleeves again. I I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

It's nice like crazy in Conway, Arkansas today. And so that's just been the norm the last week or so. But here we are. Now, before we do the show, we typically will talk to our producer Matt and our guests. Yeah. And we really started to get into things today. And all of a sudden it's like, hey, we should record this, so let's start the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

So let's start the show. Can we talk about can we talk about the things we carry with us? And we're we're two guys. Spoiler alert, audience. We're two guys. And I keep things on me, you keep things on you. Like, what do you carry with you? I mean, we just talked about this. I do not carry a wallet.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I don't know what that means. Would like how where would where do you put your stuff? In my front pocket. I have my AirPod Pros too. I have my driver's license. I have my insurance card, a couple credit cards, I've got my heart procedure instrument description, and then that's it. Maybe some cash from time to time. And of course, my phone.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

What like all of those things are just singularly isolated in your pocket? Yeah, they're they're right here. Are you kidding me? This is the most unbelievable thing. Uh for our audio audience, Brody pulls out from his pocket just a bunch of junk that he keeps in his pocket. Yeah. Organized at all. This might this might speak to your life.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

I just think it feels pretty organized. Like I told you exactly what's in there. You did, but like, did you ever drop it?

SPEAKER_02 2:49

I don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

I have washed uh a couple of my my items here uh in the last 10 years or so. Like I'll forget to take them out of my pocket. When did you stop being a wallet person? Uh I just never really liked it in my back pocket. And so at some point in time, I just stopped carrying one.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I am on the same page here. Well, I well, first of all, I have a wallet. It's sitting on my desk. If you come to my office, please don't steal it. But it's one of these things where in the last two years I've moved from putting that wallet in my back pocket because it feels like I'm sitting on a dang softball, and instead I will put it in my front pocket, which then looks stupid. Yes, that's why I don't carry a wallet, and so I try to limit it some, but I'm not really doing a great job of limiting it at this moment. But then I got to thinking about like, why is wallet a thing? It's about it's about organization, isn't it? I think so. It's I I think that's right, but I can say this with no hesitation at all. I don't think I've ever bought myself a wallet. Ever.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I think that people just gift it. Yes, I got mine for Christmas, I'm almost certain of it.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, I think I've gotten mine from family over the years. I don't ever remember buying a wallet, but that's where my stuff goes, and there's a lot of stuff in there. I mean, Kevin, I'm old enough to remember that my wallet had pictures in them of people that I cared about. Oh, like you printed out pictures and put them in your wallet, and then you would show people.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

No, you used to get pictures that were that small, they were called wallet-sized pictures.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Oh, I see what you're saying. I kind of vaguely remember this being a thing, and I I I think I would prefer that to be still be a thing over the well, let me get out my phone and look up stuff on Facebook and show you some pictures. Like that's the words for me. But yeah, I yeah, you are old.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Uh look, we we this is off the script, but I was thinking about this because I don't think that what I carry in my pockets is all that exciting. I mean, if it's winter, I might have some lip balm. Like I you might have lip balm. But the other thing I was thinking about is what's in your car. Like to me, I know some people, people very close to me, who will remain nameless. That it feels like when I get into the car that that's where they live.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

And this isn't this isn't me, and you're not naming people, so I'm gonna assume it's Kat. Yes, okay. I said it, not you. So uh but Kat, as you're listening to this, calling you up. Luckily, she stopped listening, so I think we're good now. We lose an audience like crazy here. Your wife has given up on us.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

But my car's pretty clean, I keep it clean. I do not like to eat in my car.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

I will from time to time, but I think we've done episodes where you've talked about your healthy diet that you eat in your car.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Well, I mean, if I'm on a long trip, I might eat a snack or two, but I generally won't eat like a meal. Don't ask me to eat a double cheeseburger and fries in a car. I generally won't do that. But I always have CDs with me, like I'm a physical media guy.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

I don't I don't think that I'm much different than sorry, I'm jumping back here. I'm going back to the initial conversation. I don't think mine is much different than you as far as what's in my pocket and what I carry with me. It's the phone, it's the airpods. I have those on all the time. It's keys uh to the car and whatnot. But in my wallet, like I could not take this stuff and put it in my pocket. Like, what if I go to Target, man? I need my Target card.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

I don't even know what that is. That's what my credit card's for. That's what your phone is for. Doesn't Target have an app? I don't know. I'm sure they do. Yes, they have to have an app. I they probably do. When I go to Costco, they won't let me in without showing that that screen on my phone.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Yeah, Target is not membership in that way.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

You don't need to do that at Target, though. No, I understand that. But that's what I'm I'm just saying. There's gotta be an app that you can do that for Target too.

unknown 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

It has your Target card on it.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Yeah, you're probably right. I don't know. This segment's brought to you by Target. We don't know anything about you. Um we both carry our phone, which kind of yields to the next conversation. Uh, how many phone numbers do you know that uh that are in your phone? Good golly.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

I so I'm assuming Kat, right? I'm assuming you're wife. I know Kat's number. My kids' numbers are dicey. Like, I think I could get them to you, but I can get the they're they're similar, so I could get the numbers mixed up. It's weird what I do remember though. One of my dearest high school friends who I visit in Florida, like I can remember her home phone number. My mom's my home phone number growing up. Like, I can remember that number. Do you remember numbers? No, that's probably it.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

No, I don't remember numbers at all. Uh, I would say I would be able to get one correct. That's it. And that that's all I got. And I I know this. I have like 200 and something phone numbers in my phone. Yes, I don't know why I know that. Seems weird, but I do know it. And I think I have one that I can get right. And I'd probably be more likely to know at least the area code, right? Like 618 coming from southern Illinois. You know, 270 is coming from western Kentucky area, which is what my phone is, right? 270 number, because I've just carried it with me forever, even though I'm in Arkansas. But I don't know numbers. And I feel like that's weird. I feel like back in the day you had to. Like, tell me about it, grandpa.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

You did you did have to know them. I mean, they had these things called phone books where you looked them up if you didn't know them. They it got delivered to your house. Like, how would you call Target or Costco or any business?

SPEAKER_02 9:01

No, I remember phone books. That that I got down, but like it it's also one of those things you just didn't use the phone in the same way. Now, I read something the other day that like landlines are coming back more. That's crazy. I know. I think people are trying to disconnect again. Security? I don't know, I guess. But I think it's different type of landlines. We're gonna have to do some investigative reporting for before our next episode to look into the comeback of landlines for the pickup meeting.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, I watched Gen Z a Gen Z segment that Lewis Black did from the Daily Show a few months ago. Just popped up on my timeline, and he was talking about how uh folks are moving to the dumb phones again. Dumb phones? That's what they call them.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Huh. Interesting. I remember there's a couple universities that did it, and and at SIUE they did, where generationally they handed the old phone, like the the rotary phone, yeah, um, to graduates of that particular year. And at that point it would have been like 2015, and they're like, Can you dial a number? Or can you dial this number, like dial the phone number of your friend or your parent or whatever? And then they gave them the rotary phone, and they're just sitting there going, What do I do? Like they're trying to hit the buttons instead of spin the buttons and go through things. It's kind of amazing.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

I remember my first like flip phone, and it was nice. I got it when I moved to my job in in DeCalbut Northern. Yeah, it held music before the iPhone. You could put like an SD card in there, and it held music. I could play music. The pictures looked pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

We're always continuously learning, and I think that's what it is, right? Like, we we we grew up on the phones we grew up on, we learned the uh the uh cell phones as they've come along. Like, what do you think you're still learning right now? You're learning a bad time to take a beverage break, is what you're learning.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah, I I don't I mean, I'm I'm constantly learning about everything. I've been thinking yes, so I've been thinking about supervision a lot. I know this isn't on the script, it's not, but I've had a couple of conversations with leaders, folks that are reporting directly to me here recently about supervision. And I feel like in my career now, it's really the only specific thing that I know that I have to do is supervise people. And I I feel like I'm constantly learning how to be a good supervisor. I I'm never not learning about that. What are ways in which I could be better? How could I be more supportive? How can I run a more effective meeting? How can I make sure folks feel good about the work they're doing? I I feel like I'm constantly learning about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

I really like that. I do. I already know all those things, so let's talk about something else. You've learned all there's needed to learn. No, I you know, I think as I was reflecting on this topic of like the things that I feel like I'm learning right now. Um I I was talking to our inaugural guest, Tara Warden, the other uh night on the phone, and and I don't think this is her quote. I think it came from somewhere else, but I'm not certain what. And and and it really kind of stuck with me that I think for a very long time um I've been focused on getting things done and doing things and being top of the level I can be at professionally, doing what I can do personally, all the things. And she said, uh, she goes, I feel like right now the thing you're learning is how to be a human being instead of a human doing. Wow, I know I really liked it a lot. So I don't know where it came from, but I'm gonna credit Tara in this one because it felt so wise. But I think that's where I'm at right now. I'm learning to be a human being again and really just taking in breathing, taking in just existing in a moment, not needing to know what's next, not needing to know all the answers. And I am terrible at it. And I Matt, I I nearly slipped up and threw in some words there. I am not doing well at it, but I'm I'm learning how to be better at it. That's fantastic. I know.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

I it it's it's scary too to learn new things. It's good for you to be stretched that way. I mean, it it is it is true, right? So I think I'm a good supervisor, but some days I'm like, I don't know what could I be doing better. So you read, you you see an article, you I mean, and we're all just a bad thing away from not being anything, right? We're all replaceable in our work. So I mean, ooh, boy. We we need to bring on a guest, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

But and and so as we wrap this up, I think to my point, like or to your point, like with that constant learning, finding those outlets to grow. Um, yeah, you know, we've talked about this in recent episodes where um professional development can come from a lot of different areas. That's right. And and I will say right now, for me, professional development, because I'm not going to conferences, I'm not out and about, I'm not doing things, it comes from the community that I'm with, you know, the community that I'm a part of. And so it's like LinkedIn every day. I'm reading great information from people that inspires and says, Have you thought about are you doing these things? I I'm getting a ton out of that, and so I just think there are different ways to be learning, and I that lifelong learning can be scary. It can be, but I think it's exciting. Yeah, you're Mr. Positive. I am.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Am I welcoming our guests? I I don't I don't you're welcoming the guests. Oh, let's do it. I mean today we both love our guests today. We both know our guests today.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

That's wonderful, right? Yeah, we both know, we both adore, we both love. And we are welcoming to the pickup meeting Dr. Karen Archibald, Senior Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Success at Rowan College at Burlington County in New Jersey. Welcome to the show, Karen.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Hello, I hope you'll see.

unknown 15:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Man, it felt like we were at a Swifty concert there. That was a lot of female yelling. Or the Beatles.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

That track around with me so that I can, you know, whenever I'm having a bad day, I can just play that in the background. That would work for me.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

There it is.

unknown 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

It's one of these things where every time, so I keep we talked about this, I keep the headphones with me. And if I'm walking on campus without purpose, like I'm not going to a building that's within a couple minutes, I'm putting that thing in, and it's the soundtrack. And every time a Rudy song comes on from the movie Rudy, it's just like, God, why doesn't that come on every time I walk outside on a college campus? It would be the most wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

That that would be kind of fantastic. You get, I think you need like so a couple years ago, I was doing a professional development uh thing with my team, and I had them um all come up with their walk-up music.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Oh, lovely.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

That's a and and then I had them like we played the song, but I didn't tell them who it was. So they did like they had to guess whose music was whose and all of that. And um I will, if I know something is like coming up, I only have a six-minute drive from my house to my campus, and I will blast my walk-up music and I will carry it with me. And I like sometimes you need that. So do you know what your walk-up music would be?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, that's a great question. I uh maybe a I don't know. Where the streets have no name by you too is pretty good. Okay, Fool's Gold by the Stone Rose is pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

I mean, I shouldn't ask you a music question, Brody, because you'll end up with like 40 answers.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

So yeah, that's true. What what I did learn is I'm not as good a supervisor as Karen because she does cool activities like what's your favorite walk-up song, and has people pick it. So I'm I'm learning new things already.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

See, I will say they they almost all got me right. So I was like, Oh, okay. Um mine is The Fighter by Jim Class Heroes.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Oh, that's fun.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Yeah, I I I am going to say, I don't know that I'm asked a lot of questions anymore. I'm kind of done for the episode, uh, because I'm gonna be lost in thinking which song it should be, right? Like, there's just so many options.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

There are it took me a while to come up with what like I gave the assignment and then I would like I had the deadline looming. I was like, I don't know what mine is. I can't I can't have given this as a task and then not know what mine is.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

And then I was just I was listening to stuff and I was like I love how applicable this is though to Brody's conversation of how to keep growing as a supervisor and doing these things, and there are a number of people that are listening, they're jotting this down right now and saying, Oh, I'm gonna add this to the next like we've got to do that activity. Way to go, Karen.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah, um I've added value in the first like two minutes.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

So we don't have to do anything else. No, that's meeting, folks. I hope all your meetings. No, wait, hold on. Yeah, you messed that up, Kevin. You don't do it. No, I wouldn't. I I can't do your your outro, it's terrible. I mean, it's not terrible, it's like I would do terribly at it. Sorry. Oh, thanks, Kevin. Now I know how you really feel. We are all over it today. Uh, Karen, you've been at your current uh place since 2015.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Wow. Uh arriving as dean of enrollment management and growing steadily until you became senior uh VP. You have bucked enrollment trends with consecutive semesters of growth, build out a student success center, expanded dual enrollment partnerships, redesigned advising models, um, just kind of been an all-around amazing human. Way to go. You and your team, congrats on that. You're a past Nakata president, um, and stay involved uh with Nakata Journal and Journal of First Generation students. So, like, what do you do with your free time? No, that's not the question. Um, but you know, so for our audience, Karen's very involved in the field and very involved in what she's doing, but you've had it quite the journey here, uh Salisbury, uh Old Dominion, Trinity, Washington, Rowan, two master's degree, a doctorate, one in history, one in counseling, one in educational leadership. What line were you following here?

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

So I was uh I was on a faculty track because there's actually a school that I attended that doesn't show up in there because I started a doctoral program in history. And um I was in that program up at University at Albany. I was there for about a year, and I basically told them I wasn't gonna come back because I knew it wasn't right. I was like, I knew it wasn't the right fit, and I was talking to one of my faculty members who had been uh he was my faculty member for my teaching history class, which was a requirement because it was the kind of doctoral program where they weren't expecting to send people to elite schools, they were expecting to send people to teaching schools. And um he said, I heard you're leaving, and I was like, Yeah, I think so. And he said, Well, what are you doing? And I said, I have no idea, but I know I'm not, you know, I know this isn't it. And I said, But if I don't get a job, I'll probably be back in the fall because you're paying me to be a teaching fellow, so like that's better than nothing. And he made a comment and he said, I don't know where you're gonna end up, but if you can, you should do something working with college students because I've seen you teach and you're good at it. And I went, Oh, okay. And having absolutely no other direction, I started applying to every job on the East Coast that had anything at all to do with like late teen, early 20s age people. So I applied to nonprofits, I applied to private high schools, I applied to colleges because this professor said this is the thing you're good at. And I was like, Well, I have no idea what else to do. So that sounds good because that, you know, that apparently is a field. And so um I started in admissions. And when I started in admissions, I had already obviously I finished my my master's in history and the school that I was working at, again, not knowing really what I was gonna do. They offered the counseling program, and it was a counseling program with a focus in student development and higher ed. And so, you know, it paid my tuition, and uh, they paid my tuition and it let me put my student loans into you know, whatever the right word is for it. I didn't have to pay them for a while. Um, and I I ended up falling in love with the field, but I I really like my my Path, the beginning of my path was just falling into things because somebody said, You have no idea what you're doing, so go do this.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

It's kind of amazing that this is a theme of a lot of episodes, and and so you know, it's just this constant encouragement for folks that are listening or folks that you interact with, uh, and audience members, us on the show today, to let folks know when they do a good job, right? Like, I mean, your life was impacted because somebody took the moment and said that. And I'm reflecting on uh we recently had a campus visit, and one of our admissions counselors got on stage and like had the command of a senior level administrator in that moment. And I hadn't seen him in a couple weeks. And in and I was, I said, Remington, like you were unbelievable on the stage, like it was so good. And he goes, No one's ever said that to me before. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like it's those moments, and I don't know what Remington's gonna do with that, but like if that person didn't say that, like, what are you doing today, Karen?

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Like, I mean, that's that's I have no idea, but it goes the other way too, because um, when I got promoted to senior VP, one of the first things I did was I shot him an email. And I said, That's awesome, you probably do not remember me because I was on your campus for a year. Like, I I other than this one credit teaching history class, I I never had him as a faculty member. I was like, You probably do not remember anything at all about me, but you had this impact on my life. And he wrote me back and was like, I only sort of remember you, but I'm but but like, but he said exactly that of like, you don't know the impact you have on people until somebody tells you. Yeah, and like his response to me was like, I'm gonna carry this. I'm gonna, I did my job. I did it, you know, I did my job well, and so I think it goes like you can you've gotta pay that forward too. You've gotta you've gotta say thank you, you've gotta appreciate the things that people do for you, including telling you when you did something well.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah, yeah, that that first response brings me to a point too that we've heard this a lot from guests is that moment of pivot doesn't happen when you're just 18 years old either. You thought you were gonna teach history, you thought you were gonna be a history professor, and now you've spent your entire career, right? You've been you you were at you you arrived at RCBC in 2015 as deep enrollment, you're now the senior vice president. That's a decade of deepening at one institution, all because of that pivot. And I think that's really fascinating. But even as we start to talk about this now, you've been here a little over 10 years. Why did you stay? And what what what did staying teach you that moving on couldn't have?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Sure. So um I think for me, if you look at this, it's the longest I've ever been anywhere. Um, prior to this, the longest I was somewhere was for eight years. Okay. And when, with the exception of one job, which I will say was my favorite job I've ever had, best job ever, um, with the exception of that one, which I left because my family relocated, um, with the exception of that one, every time I have left a job, I left because I felt like I had done everything I could do in that job, right? Like I had come in with a list of stuff I wanted to accomplish and I accomplished it. And so like I hit a point where I kind of said, I can I can sustain this, but I've never been good at being happy with sustaining. Like I've always, you all were talking about learning new things, and I've always wanted to like keep pushing myself, keep trying something new. Um, I have a tendency to say yes to anything somebody suggests as a like here, could you try this? I'm like, Yeah, sure I could. Um, because I want to learn something new, and so every other job I've had, I reached the point where I was like, this is kind of all there is, like, this is the job, and I know how to do the job, and I'm I can do it, but I'm I'm kind of done. Um, and here, especially the first 10 years, like this the past year, we've had a lot of um upheaval and and turmoil. Um, but prior to that, there was never a time that I didn't feel like I had the the freedom and the opportunity to say, I had this idea, I want to try something new. So I've had a lot of opportunities that were created because I said, Yeah, I'm wondering if we could do this as an institution. And I've been in the position to be able to say, I'll put my time into it to try this new thing. And because I I've been willing to do it, this place has continued to chat to challenge me because I've been, I've just constantly found new challenges and been able to apply it. And I think a lot of that comes from um the very wide scope of my job, that there's almost never something. My my job is everything outside of the classroom that our students experience. So there's constantly new stuff somewhere in that portfolio.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I guess you you know, I I think uh, you know, Kevin talked about being a human being instead of a human doing, and I talk about wellness and happiness all the time, and we do have to have boundaries in saying no, but I appreciate what you're saying. And it's the way I've tried to approach my professional life too, and that is sometimes yes is just the right answer, right? I mean, it is. We we have to try new things, we have to be curious about the work that we're doing, and that means kind of stepping up from time to time and saying, yeah, I'll give this a go, or yeah, I'm gonna try this, or yeah, this can be done better. And I really appreciate that about your response.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Well, thank you. And I think I've gotten better in, you know, the older I've gotten, and it really I think it has to do with for the first 40 years of my life, yeah, my number one responsibility was to achieve, right? So as a student and as an employee, my number one job was to achieve.

SPEAKER_04 28:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

And then I became a mom, and achieving is no longer my number one responsibility. And so more recently, I've gotten better at drawing boundaries, at saying no, at recognizing what I actually want to do versus what I'm being asked to do. Um, but I'm still, I mean, I'm still I still say yes to most things. I'm just more likely to ask the question first, yeah, what is this gonna, what is this gonna be taking me away from? And I know one of your prior guests who I happen to love, um, talked about knowing that every time you're saying yes means you're saying no to something else.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

And I think it it took me 50 years to to get there. Um, but now I'm I'm more comfortable in that space of saying, what is saying yes to this mean? Yeah, you know, what am I saying no to? Um, but I I do honestly, I think I've stayed here because I've been able to do new things and I've been able to continually improve what we do.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

That's great. I love the callback because I think this was a Rebecca Hapes episode. It was.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

You know, I love Rebecca.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

So good. So wonderful. Uh so when we do the Administrators Institute, and Brody and I have been a part of this conversation, one of the things that occurs is there's a definition problem. And in you and I have titles that have enrollment management on them. Brody has been involved in things that are enrollment management. And in I will say, Brody, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn. Sometimes that opinion has been a little bit of a four-letter word, right? Like, as far as like the experience that you had within that in that. And so enrollment management means very different things at very at different institutions. And so, how do you think that plays out at your campus? And how is that different from what people usually picture when they when they hear that phrase? And and maybe the other part of that is like you just recently did a strategic enrollment management plan. How has the various parts, but maybe advising specific, played a part of that in what you're trying to build at your institution? I know that's a long question, but it's a good one. It was it was really two questions into one, but we're we're doing what we can.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Well, see what see what happens. See if I get to both parts of the question in my answer.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

He's learning to be a better interviewer.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

So when I came here as Dean of Enrollment Management, there were actually two new positions that were created. It was Dean of Enrollment Management and Dean of Student Success. Um, and I saw myself in both of them. So I applied to both of them. And I ended up getting hired for Dean of Enrollment Management, but that was the one that didn't have advising in it. And I struggled the the way that the positions were split, it was basically a like, we want these two positions to be equal. Right. So we're we have whatever 14 departments and we need seven in each, and we're we're gonna mix them up so that there's seven in each. Um, when I became VP and then still senior VP, I got advising back. And I think for me, it's always been about the student's whole experience. And one of the things that is like community college specific in where it came from, but I think it's true everywhere, which is um when community colleges were founded, we talked about access. We talked about did you get the students in the door? And as long as they walked in the door, you had done your job. And then we hit a point, um, and the you know the literature calls it community college 2.0. You got to the point where you were worried about your graduation rate. Did they graduate? Did they have a family sustaining wage? Did they have the outcomes that actually make coming to college worth it? And I think especially when you're talking about first-gen students, you're talking about low-income students, if you get the first two right, you get them in the door and they graduate, but there's nothing better on the other end of that graduation, then you you haven't you haven't done your job, right? Like, yeah, they've got a piece of paper, that's fantastic, but they're still working the same job at the same wage that they were when they walked in your door.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

So to like circle back around to your actual question, to me, um, I gave a presentation years ago where I kept repeating the line um, happy students make happy alumni. And that framework of like, if you're a happy applicant and you're a happy admitted student, you become a happy enrolled student and a happy retained student and a happy graduate and a happy donor at the end of it. It is truly like as I don't love the phrasing of cradle with grave because it's kind of depressing. Um, but it is that, right? It's it's the full life cycle of the student. And I think where conversations about enrollment management have gone wrong for years, decades, whatever, is that they've talked about it as if enrollment management is about administrative functions and admissions processes. So if it's all about that access piece, did you get them in the door? And if you got them in the door, then you managed enrollment. But that ignores retention, it ignores outcomes, it ignores the student in a lot of ways. Like it's that's a numbers game, not a student game. So when I think about enrollment management, to me, it's really about what is the student experience? So when we put together our SEM plan, yes, we absolutely have the front end, what's you know, what is the increase in our new student enrollment, right? What's how many new students have walked in the door? Because we're a tuition-driven institution. We can't not have a focus on new student enrollment. But we also included the questions of graduation and satisfaction and retention and outcomes, and like all of that is in our SEM plan. And to me, it's just looking at the full student experience. And I even had some folks on my staff who were like, Well, but shouldn't the SEM plan come out of admissions? I was like, no, everybody's got to be in the room, every every single person. And um, you know, I have tutoring reporting to me, I have our testing office reporting to me, I have our business engagement office reporting to me. So the folks who go out and build new partnerships with businesses across the county uh reports to me, um, counseling, disability services, student life, all of these things. And my goal in getting our SEM plan off the ground was that every single office, and therefore every single staff member would have something to cat to like latch on to so that they could say, I see myself there, and not in a not in a um in like an arbitrary kind of a way, but in a way where it was, oh, there I am. I'm right there, I show up, I matter. Um, because you know, you put together a SEM plan that doesn't include tutoring or doesn't include the test center, and then you have to include them in every meeting, and they're sitting there going, Why am I here? This is a waste of my time. This I'm not I'm not part of this.

SPEAKER_03 35:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

So that was really, you know, my approach to enrollment management is that enrollment and enrollment management is everybody's job. It connects with every faculty member, every staff member, every administrator, every janitor, every everything. Yeah, um, and I I've told the story to my team about the janitor in my master's program at Old Dominion. And I remember her, she was assigned to our floor, and it has been a long time since I was in that program, right? It is 30 years since I entered that program. And I remember her because she always checked on me, she always wanted to know how I was doing. She knew she knew my name, she knew my office, she knew everything that mattered in my presence on that floor. And she was part of what kept me enrolled there. She she made that place welcoming for me. And so to me, that's that's what we get right and wrong when we talk about enrollment management, is we we got to get away from enrollment management is only about data, or it's only about statistics, or it's only about the entering class. Because it's about all those things, but it's about a whole lot more than that.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Setting the tone, Kevin. Like George, let's go. So let's talk about advising specifically, Karen. You you redesigned the advising model at RCBC in ways that we've seen have contributed to the graduate increased graduation rates. What specifically changed and what did you have to reorganize, dismantle, reprioritize to make that possible?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Sure. So it was actually it's a pretty simple approach. And I would say our program has changed. We're still shifting the attitudes and behaviors of our students. Um, because a couple years ago, we were so badly resourced that not a single advisor had a caseload. Um, the only people who had caseloads were the ones in specialty programs. So, like our opportunity fund had a caseload, um, but they're state grant funded. They're they're not coming out of operational dollars. Um, we didn't have enough advisors to have caseloads. And uh what we did was we more than doubled the size of our advising unit. And we shifted from an entirely walk-in model to a caseload-driven model. Um, we've still got a lot of students who walk in, and I've got a lot of uh people who want to make students happy and struggle with saying, we're not, you know, we're not doing walk-ins, I've got to make you an appointment with, you know, Kevin's your advisor. You've got to, I've got to make you an appointment with Kevin. So that's kind of where we are right now. Um, but the model is designed, it's it's not perfect by any stretch. The caseloads are too large. Um, but we went from if we had had caseloads before, they would have been caseloads of over a thousand students for each of our available advisors, and they're now around 400. So they're not perfect, they're not ideal, but they are now manageable. And they weren't before. It was not possible. And I sat down our advising team and I said, you know, before we before I told them that we were adding all these new staff, I sat them down and I said, you know, you guys have been beat up a lot. You've been told that it's your fault, you've been told that these long lines of uh walk-ins are your fault. And um, the truth is the college did not resource you to be successful. Yeah, and I said, I want to see our students have an advising experience that we can be proud of. And it's not that you all don't know how to do your jobs, it's not that you all aren't capable of being good advisors, but we've put you in a model where you can't be good advisors.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah, that's not an ad a thousand to one caseloads aren't advising problems, they're system problems. Yeah, right. I mean, that's just reality. Absolutely. You can't even aspirationally think about meeting with a thousand students in a semester. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

It's not possible. And we what we did was we ran the numbers, and I came up with a budget ask that um I didn't think I was gonna get, honestly. Like when I when I made the ask, I had written um my then director of advising, I had asked her to do the math, you know, tell me what it would look like. Um, we pulled from a model from a community college down in Texas that had six points of contact. And I said, do the math for what it would look like for six points of contact. Um, and over the course of their their associate's degree, give me what it would look like for six points of contact. And she did the math. She was like, There's no way we're getting this. And I looked at it and I was like, Yeah, there's no way we're getting this. Um, and I don't know, I I don't know why. Like, I don't know what, I don't know who got told no the year that we were told yes. Um, but we really doubled down on advising as a priority financially for the institution. And I'm sure you've both heard that um, you know, that that phrase of, you know, show me where you spend your money and I'll tell you where your priorities are. Yeah. And this is, you know, the at the experience of our students was it became a priority for us in a way that it just it wasn't funded to be a priority previously. Yeah. So I put, you know, the the work of changing the model um after the finances and after the you know the lines are approved. That is, you know, it's in that phrasing of under her leadership, but that is my my advising folks. That is, you know, my now associate dean of advising, um, my you know, past directors of advising, my advising team. Um, they are they bought in and and we doubled, you know, we we put them in a position to be successful. And I I think they I think they are the reason why anything changes. You know, from for those of us in our positions, we can say, this is what we should do, or this is what we have to do, or this is what it's gonna look like.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

But you can only force so much. You can't you can't make people, you know, uh if you're a remotely effective leader, not a manager, you cannot make people do what you want them to do. They have to, they have to be part of it. Yeah, and that's um, you know, I I think there are times, there are probably a lot of times, when I fail miserably at that because I'm like, come on, we're just gonna do it. But it's the advising team that gets it done every day. That is that is all that.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

You hear that, listeners? You shoot your shot because the worst that can happen is it gets blocked. But if it doesn't, and you all of a sudden get everything you asked for, it's a pretty golden day. Uh Karen, I'm gonna transition a little bit to transfer students, and because I know that this is something that runs through almost everything you've published and everything you've presented on dissertation, chapters, conference work. What is the thing about the transfer student experience that higher ed still gets fundamentally wrong?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

So there's one big one, and I don't think it's really I don't think it's really the higher ed community, it's the system that we all live in, which is that our numbers are all based still on first time full time. And so I I gave a presentation years ago um where I started with a picture of uh President Obama and he was president at the time, um, and I I flashed the word failure across several times, and I got like gasps in the audience. And I said, I don't think he's a failure. I said, and I'm not talking about his presidency, I'm talking about his academic career. And anybody who says, but look at his law degree and look at, you know, he got his bachelor's and he got his law degree, but his bachelor's degree was never counted in anybody's success rate because he started at Occidental College and that's not where he graduated from. He he was a transfer student. And so that fundamental piece of there is no incentive, especially for higher end, uh more elite institutions who worry about rankings and numbers and things like that more than the average institution. There is no incentive for them to do right by their transfer students. And when they do funding, when they do uh scholarships, most institutions look at it and say, Well, you've already saved your money. We don't have to, we don't have to give you a big scholarship. You're a transfer student. You already saved money by going to your community college. And the problem with that logic is that that assumes that it was money they had to save, put in the bank, and use when they transferred. But in reality, it was money they never had. So they didn't, they didn't save anything. They just didn't go into debt. And so the expectation that transfer students will be willing and able to go into significant debt for two years because they don't have a choice. That's, you know, there's again, there's there's little incentive for the senior institutions to do anything to really upend the system. Um, and I I was I I became an advocate for transfer students because that was my first job. I was a transfer admissions counselor. Um and what I saw on my campus was that my students who were coming in, they didn't get, and this was, I mean, this is 20 almost 27 years ago. Um, so they didn't get a first-year experience. They didn't get any kind of uh real orientation that spoke to what their their lived you know, lived experience was. Um, you know, they got me as their first advisor, and I didn't know what I was doing. You know, I had been on the job for 20 minutes when I had my first student to advise. Um, and I was just very fortunate that I had a dean of students at the time. I didn't report to her, but these functions reported to her. Um and she she was and is a mentor. Um, she's still somebody that I will I will call and say, hey, what do you, you know, what do you think of this? And I went to her and I was like, my students don't have X, they don't have Y, they don't have Z. And she said, okay, well then, you know, go make it happen. And so I became an advocate for transfer students because somebody told me I could, but also because there was all of this gap at the institution. And I learned through that that that gap existed everywhere because there was really just there's no incentive, except a moral one, an ethical one. Um, and I think there's an incentive, there's a huge incentive to recruit transfer students because they are a cash cow. Yeah, um, but there's no, there's little to no incentive to do right by that.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

I think the thing that's really hard, and we've had this conversation with previous guests in a similar vein that that talk about community college work and transfer work and and things that are going on there. And and I think for all three of us that sit in this chair and a lot of the people that are listening today, um, that think, okay, well, institutionally I can control what I can control. But I, you know, it's one of those from a national narrative and what you're talking about. How do we push an organization to get to a point that if they put some momentum behind transfer students, they could make them super powerful? And I'll keep doing our little bite of at a time, but that's not solving the problem. It's not making it significant in that way. And transfer students get left out and kind of forgotten that way, and that's super unfortunate.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Well, and it's you know, the the landscape has changed a bit because there's that financial incentive where there's with the the smaller high school population, yeah, you're there's a need to recruit just to make the class, right? They've gotta recruit transfer students to make the class.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Um, but I think available, you know, you all are not on the east coast. We've got Princeton right here in New Jersey. And a decade ago, Princeton did not accept transfer students at all. They they would not if you tried to apply as a transfer student, they would say, We don't care about your community college if you don't have the grades and the uh sats from high school, you're not being admitted. And they did not accept a single credit in transfer. They now have built out whole systems around getting those students in the door. But there's there's no incentive to make it meaningful meaningful for them. The incentive is all the financial one, and I mean, Princeton has done phenomenal work in engaging with the community colleges and really buy, you know, getting buy-in from the community colleges and and creating pipelines for students and all that, but there's still they're still um every institution still struggles to make meaning of what do transfer students really bring to my campus beyond the financials and filling a seat.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah, we better sort that out fast too, because I mean it continues to evolve in ways that are really I mean, everywhere I've worked, transfer students have been such an important part of the ecosystem. It's it's crazy to not think about it that way. And that that change or die attitude better come because this is a population that's not going away.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

No. Well, and the you know, the more expensive every other institutional type gets, the more families there are who say, I just I can't make a choice other than the community coach. It's all I can do. That's that's the only thing I can, only thing I can I have, that's the only option I have.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Yeah. Let's talk a let's talk a little bit more about your population and some of that money piece and some of the things you've done at RCBC, right? Mostly first generation, mostly commuter.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

You've established commuter.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Yeah. You've established a food pantry emergency fund. You're a co-founder, co-advisor of the Alpha Alpha, Alpha Alpha chapter, which is the first gen honor society. So this is really about basic, comprehensive, basic needs support, redesigned advising, emergency funds, support that is kind of built into the student organizational piece. All of these have a financial well-being component at their core, right? How do you think about the money piece at your institution? Is this a student affairs problem, an enrollment management problem, or something else entirely?

SPEAKER_00 49:58

I I think it's an institutional problem. And when when we looked at the data around who drops out, you know, who who leaves and doesn't come back. Um, and we work with an organization that does a lot of outreach to our stop-out students. Um, and what they found out was that the number one reason why students don't continue is financial.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

And the number two reason and number three reason, if you really look at them, they're financial too. Because there are things like I needed to work more hours. Right.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

Um, or I couldn't balance everything. Well, that's because you needed to work more hours, you know, because you financially you couldn't make everything work. So when we looked at it, um, it really was the question of we won't have students if we don't think about how do we take care of them. Um, and we're we've been lucky that we've gotten a lot, you know, we've sought a lot of grant funding uh from the state and also from private foundations. Um, our food pantry has never spent a dollar of operational funds. It's been entirely funded by foundations and by by the uh the institution's foundation, by external foundations, and by the state through a grant. Um, and same thing with the emergency fund. Those are not operational dollars, so they don't fall on the backs of other students to make, you know, because that's that's the challenge, right? If you're if your entire institution is struggling financially, you can't raise tuition dollars to try to solve those financial problems because they can't afford it. Um so you know, we've we've been able to find those sources to try to provide that wraparound support. Um, you know, and we for when we first started it back in 2019, we launched the food pantry. Um, you know, we really kind of struggled philosophically about how much are we a college and how much are we a social service agency. Um, and we really, you know, I had a lot of conversations on campus around, well, how far are we gonna go? How much support are we gonna provide? How how much can we do? And not feel like we've gone sideways on, you know, from our mission. Um, but the truth is these are the reasons that students leave, these are the reasons why students can't continue. Um, and some of it is the actual supports that we provide on campus that keeps them here. Um, but I would argue that it's more often it is the fact that they believe that we care about them because we're not solving their problems with a $250 emergency fund gift card, right? We're not we're not feeding our family of five with a bag of groceries a week from the food pantry. Um, but we're we're giving a band-aid, but we're also giving a support system. So they have somebody to meet with, they have somebody to help them apply for SNAP benefits, they have somebody to help them figure out, you know, is there more financial aid available because I lost my job? Um, and you know, all those pieces fitting them all together. So I this, you know, our students struggle financially. It is a given. We, you know, the great majority of our students come to us as a financial choice.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Some of them choose us because they've determined that the money elsewhere isn't worth it for the first two years, but most of them choose us because they don't have any other choices financially. Um, and so we we have to have that as part of our equation. We we have that conversation every year when we talk about tuition increases. Um, you know, and we have we have a state program that provides free college to a certain level. Um, and we've tried every year to make sure that our tuition increases stay within the allowable increase for that program, so that students who started as free community college can stay free community college, that we haven't gone past what's allowed. Um, but I don't I don't think we can have a conversation, especially about community college students. I don't think we can have a conversation that doesn't include their financial picture. Um, and I think one of the other things that we're just getting ready to launch, which is unusual for community colleges, um, is really thinking about our scholarship model. Um, several years ago, we got rid of our scholarship application um because we decided that as a from a need-based perspective, there's nothing that a student can tell me on an application that I don't already know. They're telling me that they want me to, you know, consider their grades. Well, I already have their grades, and they want me to consider their financial situation. Well, I have their FAFSA, right? So, why am I prioritizing students who can find the information? You know, you're you're more likely to find the student who is second generation, third generation, wealthier, whatever, because somebody told them there's probably scholarship dollars available.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

So several years ago we got rid of that. Um, and now we're redesigning our funding model to basically create our sweet spot of students who are not getting enough state and federal aid to pay their bill, but want to be here and don't have the money. So we're, I mean, it's not huge money because we're not a well-resourced institution, but finding that piece that says the student who is on the on the fence and saying, you know, and this is to Kevin's point uh question from earlier about the you know, the sort of connection with enrollment management, those students are on the fence and maybe can't be here without that thousand dollar scholarship. So it's really to me, it's really about designing whole systems and thinking about how all these pieces interact. And for me, that's like the joy of my job because my job sees every one of those pieces. They, you know, they're I'm part of every single one of those pieces outside the classroom. And we use our faculty as advocates to talk to students about, you know, if you're struggling, here's where you go. It's in every syllabus is a language about what if you need help? What if you need financial help? Where do you where do you go on campus? Um, so I really think it's systems. It's it's how do you how do you recognize the challenges that your students have and then build your systems to respond to those challenges instead of expecting students to change to meet your system?

SPEAKER_01 56:18

It's so simple, but it's really innovative too, in the sense that your job is just to remove the barriers, right? Like let's go.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Yep. I mean, one of the first things we did here, and it sounds so silly, but do you have a burser on your campus? Yeah, we don't have a burser, we have a student accounts office. Yeah. We had this conversation about what the heck is a burser and how would a first generation student know that a burser was where they went to pay their bill? He said they wouldn't. So why are we calling it that? And so it's like the simple little things of like, why would you use language? Why do you expect your students to learn how to navigate higher ed in order to navigate higher ed? You just want them to be able to get their degree, yeah, you just want them to be able to learn, and so it's a lot of it is those little things that like we've we now have full year registration, we don't have a graduation application anymore. There are these like small things that are huge for the students. We graduate more students than we ever have before because we no longer make them fill out a form to tell us what we already know. We know if you finished your degree or not. Why are we making you fill out a form to tell us that? So it's it's these little like administrative hurdles that when you're talking about a population that does not have time to get through administrative hurdles, what can we do to remove the hurdle?

SPEAKER_02 57:43

It's amazing. There are so many questions that we still have remaining, and we've run to a point where we've got to we've got to move to some some life and fun questions. Okay. I think you declared, and we kind of talked, Roddy and I talked about this at the beginning, and I don't know that we answered it super well, but it was we were learning. Uh, you declared 2026 your year of learning new things. You made this decision in January. What did you actually sign yourself up for and how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 58:08

Um, so I think it's going good so far, although I think I'm pretty terrible at all the things that I'm learning.

SPEAKER_01 58:14

I don't believe that for a second.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

It kind of started, um, it kind of started last year because my as you both know, um, my daughter's involved in theater. Um, and I I bought myself a really nice camera to try to get better pictures of her when she's on stage.

SPEAKER_04 58:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

Um, and I found out that I am really bad at using this new camera that I I don't understand. So it kind of started last year. Um, and I started trying to understand this camera, right? And trying to understand what to do with it. And so when I came up into like December into January, I was like, I I have to really like actually try to learn this instead of doing 10 minutes a week of me, oh well, let me go watch a YouTube video and never apply it to anything. So it kind of started with that. Um, and I'm I'm I understand a lot more than I did when I started with the camera, although I will say I'm not I'm in the understanding phase, I'm not yet in the application phase. Like I I think I take an okay picture now, but it's not fantastic. Um, but I also have uh I took a class to learn how to sew. I took this four-week class to learn how to sew and quilt. And I I have never sewn in my life. Um, my mom had a sewing machine, and it was like, why would anyone want to do that? Um, but I decided that I wanted to, and that I think I'm actually pretty decent at. I I made my daughter a quilt for uh Valentine's Day, and that's awesome. She uses it every day, she loves it. Um, and it hasn't fallen apart yet, and it's like four months old, and it's been through the wash a few times, and it's still all in one piece. So I consider that a victory. Um I took a calligraphy class, uh, which I am that I can see progress. I am still not good at it, but I am getting better at it. Um, and my most recent thing is that I'm learning how to drive a stick shift.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Oh, because I do an amazing race.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

That well, what what it is is that my um you both know my dad passed away a couple years ago. Yeah, um, and my mom is giving me my dad's car. Oh, it's a Corvette, it was his dream car, it's a 99 red Corvette. Wow. And my childhood was spent going to car lots with my dad and looking at Corvettes and like always sitting in the passenger seat, right? I I was not old enough to drive it. And then when my dad bought this car, um, he didn't let anybody drive it, right? It was his baby. He it's probably the one thing in life he loved more than he loved us. Um, but he so he bought this car. So I'm getting this car now, and I don't know how to drive the thing. So I I started out with taking a three-hour stick shift driving lesson um and only stalled out like two or three times. So I saw that as a victory. Um, and now I just have to figure out how to practice so that I'm I'm supposed to uh get the car towed down. My mom lives a little over an hour away, so I've got to get the car towed down here and make sure that it's road safe and all of those things. Um, and then I'll be driving it. And I I it might be terrible, but I will be driving the car. So that's that's where I am so far.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Um I love it. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

That's and it's all it's all stuff that like I made, I made this big list of just like everything I could think of that someone might want to learn, and then just started crossing off the things that I was like, I don't want to learn that. I I don't know who like someone would want to learn that, but it isn't me. Um, and then started just picking things out and like, can I find class for that? Can I find, can I find somebody who will teach me about whatever? And the um the stick shift driving was actually the the lesson was gift. So um that one was a Christmas gift of like you, if you're gonna get this car, you gotta learn how to drive it. Um, because you know, completely destroying the clutch seemed like a bad idea. So so yeah, so that's what I've been up to. And I don't know yet what's next because I'm I'm just did the stick shift class uh class last Sunday. So I gotta figure out what's I've been trying to do something like pretty much each month or so, um, with and trying to maintain all of them. So I'm still doing all of those things.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

I love it. And and here's what I love as we're heading into the lightning round. I love that the car was red because you're a secret Cardinals fan. Let's go to the lightning round. I knew that that was coming, so you would not have a rebuttal, like it was just there. So your top three Yankees fans of all time.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Sorry, yeah, of your lifetime, of your lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Of my lifetime or of your lifetime, your lifetime. My lifetime. Uh well, first is Don Mattingley. Yes, without without a doubt. That's that's easy. That's easy. My you know, I I have to I have to say they're a cheater because I went to induction for him uh at Cooperstown. My dad and I went for for induction, and he was already in the top anyway, but that was that was like a life moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

Um I know it's hard because there's a lot, because like, you know, I love Reggie. I love Reggie as a kid. Um, but I think I actually I will go with Bernie Williams, not because he's a great player, though he is, um, but because he's also a classic, classically trained musician. And I love that. I love that he has these two things that are so different, and that you know, he he's he he's got like both sides of his brain going. Um, and he played the uh Star Spangled Banner at the induction when uh when uh Jeter was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and it was just it was a moment. It was like chills. Chills. It was amazing. So but but it is um I I have been told that uh the world was connecting for me because I I grew up in North Jersey, I grew up in Yankees country, but I now live in Phillies country. And uh when Mattingley you know came to the the Phillies before he became uh interim manager, but you know, when he came to the Phillies organization, I must have had 20 people text me like, look, look what's happening, your your worlds are colliding, it's all working out for you. That's okay. I'm still not gonna be a Phillies fan, but yeah, I'll cheer for Donnie, but it's you know, I'm still not a Phillies fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

So it's funny because in Evansville Mattingley's like John Mellencamp, I I remember going to youth basketball games when my nephew's nephews were playing and he was with uh a woman who had kids that age, and you just would be sitting right next to Don Mattingley, you wouldn't say anything other than just hello, and he'd say hello back, and I'm like, oh yeah, see, the thing is like if it was not my lifetime, I would throw in Phil Rosuto for exactly the same reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

Phil Rozudo lived a town away from me when I was a kid, and we'd see him just out and about. Like we'd be we'd be shopping in the center of town and be like, Oh, there's Phil Rozudo. Yeah, and so like there's people who were alive during my lifetime, but weren't players during my lifetime who who make that list pretty, you know, pretty easily if I get to expand the list.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

So, how about this historian, counselor, or enrollment management? Which one shows up first on a hard day?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

They're kind of the same thing. Um, like I like I I still teach history of higher ed. Yeah. Um like that's that's one of my one of my areas um as I I teach history of higher ed. And I I am a big, very, very, very big believer that the

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

the the past informs the the current and the future um and so if it's a student issue i you know that the counseling piece has to be in the forefront like if it's a direct this student has an issue thing the the counseling piece has to be in the forefront um but i i think they all they all fit together because it's you know i i i always think about what came before what did we do before what worked what didn't work what failed what's what survived um so i i don't think i can ever get away from being from having a a a historian's mindset um you know that's just that's like ingrained all three of them are like ingrained in me counseling the counselor piece is probably the least because my program wasn't really a counseling program it was a student development program so you know my my favorite theorists show up with my historian background and my enrollment management pieces they all they all kind of sit together this is probably my last one hidden talent your Nikata colleagues have no idea about okay um see there's there's the one that I always use for icebreakers so it's possible that people know this already um but I twirled fire I did not know that yeah so I I actually I have a I have burn scar from when I lit my cutoffs on fire in the early 90s um because I was a troll in high school and I twirled fire wow somewhere there are old VHS tapes that have video of me twirling fire coffee tea or something else what was that coffee tea or something else like uh iced tea okay i don't drink coffee at all um and i actually drink uh i i actually consume almost no caffeine at this point i i went off caffeine a couple years ago because of uh you know a uh medication that i was on it was like if you drink caffeine while taking this you might die and i figured that was a bad idea yeah i went cold turkey off of caffeine and i i have it very very rarely um but i've never been a coffee drinker so i'll i'll drink like caffeine free iced tea uh pretty regularly but that's about it fat and water okay i love that this is an episode of the pickup meeting where non-coffee drinkers outnumber the coffee drinkers oh gosh i only drink caffeine i don't know like i don't i don't understand the appeal of coffee i don't get it either i don't get it like i had it and i would say i had it once and i spit it out because i didn't well and i didn't know i was i like picked up the cup and i thought it was my tea and it was not it was coffee and i literally spit it across the car and was like i why would anyone drink that it is it is delicious nasty terrible well we've come to the end of this episode and karen you made it you survived thank you for being a part of this journey with us can i get that cheer again for for surviving uh if that's paying attention we're not producing the table concert is over thank you again kernel for being part of our show we're so glad to have you and uh you were you were fantastic it was great thank you it was great to see you both love getting caught up yeah fantastic bye bye so how great was that so great so good there's so many takeaways as far as just applicable things that as administrators as leaders that we can do and uh and that that's why I love anytime I get a chance to interact with Karen I'm always having takeaways of things that I can do better so I'm always doing what she's doing which is learning yeah the the year of learning is I think a really great takeaway from the session today and I loved her approach to enrollment management that first response I think really hit me right in the face it it was a a great a great approach to what I think enrollment management is and so I I just yeah fantastic all right so we got a top three today and uh and for our audience that uh normally like how do you guys come up with these top threes we make crap up uh and but normally we make crap up in advance and today we did not no we didn't I know so here's what we're gonna do top three favorite Nikata presidents all right so bro no I'm kidding I'm kidding we'll do that we'll do that we we've had quite a few on the show uh so that's setting up for a bad thing so what I'm thinking here is and I think you're gonna do better than me at this let's let's move back to the conversation of walk-up songs on the cuff off the cuff right here right now like let's do this top three walk up songs that you would pick gosh darn it it's that's crazy look I have to say this because I think about this I'm a runner and there's a song on my running playlist that has probably been played in my headphones more than any other song and it's a song that nobody knows but it's it's amazing it's it's a song called Pounding by a group called the Doves or just Doves they're a British group and it's just a great running song and I would add that to my Stone Roses or my uh you two where the streets have no name it has to be one of those three I think those would be my top three uh the ones that stand out for me um and and and this is gonna date me some um one is the the Legion of Doom when they used to come out in wrestling as an oh my god and like it just would play this like the guy like yells and then it just plays some guitars just crash I would love that one love that one but I I think beyond that I I I really like the idea of Weezers say it ain't so oh that's a great choice and then I get into a little bit of like just like some of the songs that I like I'm a big music or a big fan of like theme songs and tracks from movies and I love test drive from how uh uh how to train a dragon like I would put that in there like and and I love that but if I have a runner up to that and I'm going more like bands I think I would steal from Mark McGuire I'm going guns and roses welcome to the jungle that intro it would just be unbelievable. I thought for sure you'd have a Garth Brooks track no if anything I think I would move to like some turn bike turnpike troubadours or something a little matt carpenter like so that you would just really be mad at me.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:50

You just talked about Matt Carpenter my least favorite cardinal of all time of all time golly I know you did it I know we're gonna have to end there because I I you disgust me that's it for this edition of the Pickup Meeting gang we hope all your meetings whether formal or pickup style are as fun and as meaningful as this one until the next time let's just do good and be nice you're like flashing cash that's amazing