How Many Students Have You Lost Through Onboarding?

Learn how Victor Valley Community College Created a Culture of Care to Keep New Students

Your marketing and media campaign numbers exceeded expectations—inquiries and applications are way up! But enrollments are lagging way behind. Prospective students are complaining they can’t navigate the onboarding process and that the college staff is rude and uncaring. What can you do? 

Learn how Victor Valley Community College built a Connect2Success Center that supports onboarding new students. Not only does the Center prepare students for the college experience but ensures new students show up for class ready to learn.

Join Interact's Dr. Pam Cox-Otto and Dr. Diane Walleser, as they have a conversation with Victor Valley Community College President Dr. Daniel Walden for an engaging and enlightening podcast to hear firsthand how Victor Valley fosters student success. 

Transcript

Podcast Intro  0:00  
Well, community college marketing might be like herding cats. The interact communications team of two year experts has your back. Welcome to the Community College marketing masterclass, where we explore the latest conversations happening in higher ed, including the trials and triumphs and recruitment equity, guided pathways retention and beyond with more than 25 years of experience working with nearly 1000 Community Colleges nationwide interact is proud to share best practices and insights from experts around the country. Tune in now for another great discussion with your host.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  0:36  
Welcome everyone to interacts podcast joining me tonight is Dr. Daniel Walden who's the superintendent president of Victor Valley College in California. And with me also is Dr. Diane Walzer who is works with me at interact. And together we do a wide range of things for interact. So Dan, tell me about Victor Valley and what's been going on with you particularly during COVID. And, and all of the changes that's been that have been happening in education.

Dr. Daniel Walden  1:10  
Well, thank you, Pam, it's great to be with you today, you and Diane, as well, and just talking about some of the good things that have happened here. You know, the pandemic was not something that I learned about in President school, wherever that was. They never trained us, they we've been taught how to deal with emergencies, active shooter drills or earthquakes. But at no point in all these many years, where we trained in how to deal with a pandemic. And so everything was new. And you know, like the rest of the world, we made it work. And it worked pretty well actually.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  1:54  
Well, it actually shows how quickly colleges can engage in change, when when they need to. Sometimes, we feel like we're large ships, and it takes every lots of time to turn the ship. But But I think community colleges show how quickly the ship can be turned. When there's a reason to do it a powerful reason.

Dr. Daniel Walden  2:16  
I was just delightfully surprised. I didn't know how it work. It was just everybody stopped, turned on a dime. And we went from everything is normal to fully online within two weeks. Wow, it was amazing. Wow.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  2:40  
Well, you so you've been trying some new things as well, like I understand you've got to connect to Success Center. Talk to me how that about how that's played into the student experience. And what, what, what led you to that.

Dr. Daniel Walden  2:53  
So the Connect to success, just for your visual is the word connect the digit two, and then success, all as one word, so connect to success. That's our Brandon, how we brand it. One of the things that led us to create it. So it really is a call center in one sense of the word, but not your typical call center. It's a very specialized, and highly trained call center. And so we don't really refer to it as a call center. As far as the public's concern, it's our Connect to Success Center. And one of the things that was a motivator was we were doing all of this advertising and social media, you know, most a lot of it with you guys, and interact. And we started getting all these responses. And it's very interesting how we do and community colleges, we will send out the mailers to the neighborhoods, and we'll advertise on the radio, put up the billboards, do our social media thing. And then to be surprised with hundreds, even 1000s of responses, and I'm not prepared to deal with them. And just sending people you know, on the just Well, the best you can. Here's the responses just stacking up. One of the things it's always been a problem for me is in my work with community colleges is how people get the runaround. And I you know, I'm the Chief Executive Officer that's in title and function. And in the law, that's what I am, but I have sort of changed the CEO to the chief experience officer. I see myself as responsible for the experience of the students on the campus. And that even starts with the experience that the employees have as they work here. Do I want them to have a five star experience, I believe if you have employees with a five star experience, they'll give a five star experience to your clientele, which in this case is our students. And if you give your students a five star experience, they're going to connect to the institution, they're going to engage with the institution, and they'll be more likely to be successful. If you, you know, we like to go in those nice places where you can shop, and they meet you at the door, and they walk you through, you know, you can go into some stores, and they'll say, Well, it's so now 13, you know, all the way to the end, we're down there, well, do you know how many things are on our 13 in like, our big hardware store, or whatever, and to try to get Didn't you find yourself walking down an aisle 13 Trying to find it. And I just wanted us to have something where we can have immediate connect to the success of the student, you know, I get frustrated with our, you know, just like my TV at the house, the cable company, or the the satellite company or your Wi Fi company, and you try to get a hold of them, and it's just through a whole loop of, you know, hit this number, then that number, then you gotta listen to this and that. And what you want to say is, you know, I'm frustrated things aren't working. Just let me talk to somebody. Right. And that's why we created the Connect to Success Center, it was the idea of one call, one email, that's it, you get to talk to someone, and you get a response.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  6:42  
Well, and that's very wise, because we've, over the years, for some reason, we've, we've thought that if, if you call me or you walk in, or you send me an email, that as long as I answer your question quickly, and kind of get you out of my way, quickly, that I've taken care of you, right, you call when does a semester start? I say, you know, August 12. And you go, okay, and I we hang up, I don't know who you are, I can't call you back. I don't know what you need. Beyond that date. There's no relationship, right? Yes, you took care of me. But you haven't I, we don't have a relationship, you you, you answered a question. And I can get my phone to do that. If I say Hey, Siri, which I'm not going to do, because she'll talk to me, it's never good. So that idea that you really want to make this something that connects and makes it into a relationship. That's why is because there's so many people that marketing creates the interest and the excitement to reach out, they reach out, they don't have any kind of connection, and they go away. And they go away thinking it's them, not us, when it's us, not them. And that, that realizing that that was an issue. Smart. And I can't help myself. So we helped you, ha,

Dr. Daniel Walden  8:10  
you did help me and that was one of the big motivators. I previously served for almost two decades in the largest community college system, or district in the nation. And, you know, we were always struggling with how do you talk to a real person, when you have 250,000 students and 10,000 employees, even as an employee, it was a real challenge. And it wasn't until I got higher up in the organization and got the really know people and then thought, Okay, this is how I can really get something done. Talk to this technician or talk to this person on this floor. And that was the way to get it done. But calling from the outside. You know, just a lucky day. If you can actually get through to someone or somebody picks up a phone, one of the things that we noticed was, we have a one stop center on campus, and it's it's a fabulous entity, you walk in the student comes in from off the street, and we have everything there. There's someone there to help them and financial aid. There's actually someone to greet them when they come through the door. It's a wonderful in person, place to come and be served on the campus. We thought, well, why not do something like that digitally? Something that will work for people calling in or even if they're responding to an interact at that they can actually call a number or send an email and get a response right away. So we, you know, in the pandemic thing, we created a virtual one stop because we had to close down our campus. So we had this virtual thing going on where we had people sitting waiting to answer the phones, but not really trained specifically to do do that. But providing the services, it was it was just as a pivot we had to do, you know, for the time made it necessary. But the idea here was is that we create a one call one email place, that is the primary point of contact for the campus. Anyone calling in from the outside, you could call in, you're given an option right up front, if you know the extension, you can dial it, if you want to go through a director, you can do that. Otherwise, you just wait on the line, and you get a live person. So it's was an entire office, we found a location on campus, I told our staff that was putting this together, I said, I want you to find a room with a nice view. Something that we can create with it, put the best furniture in there, make it a bright, warm place to work, it won't have public access, but I want the people in the room to be happy to be there. And then, and I want a friendly warm workspace. And and so they found this room and they we fully you know, we equipped it. And then we hired all brand new people. None of our existing employees were put in this call center. We hired two supervisors. And then we've hired since I believe,

six technicians, and maybe planning to hire more. My point is however many we need to hire to handle the workload. That's what we'll do. And so we have done that. And it's just fantastic. I know that we opened last, this may be jumping ahead to one of your questions. But we opened last started taking calls the end of November in 2021. And as of the beginning of March 1 part of March, we had answered over 10,000 phone calls. And 9000 of those were resolved the very first time, there was a 90% success rate, that students didn't have to call back a second time to have their issue resolved. And sometimes it was through a warm transfer to the appropriate department. And what we mean by that is we don't just transfer them. We let the technician get the right person on the phone. And then while the person is on the phone, then the technician allows that person to help that student in our survey data that we've been we constantly give this out that goes out with every one of the calls that comes in. We've had the technician resolve the issue 100% response rate. Well 100% Have have said of the student said the caller said the technician resolved my issue 90% said the technician was very helpful. 85% said the technician was courteous 55% said they felt more connected as a result of their interaction with Kinect to success. And then wrote things like overall great experience with very little bit wet, very little waiting. My technician was excellent etc. There is a feature on there that if the student or the caller doesn't want to wait, they can get a callback. And our callbacks happen within 15 minutes. And nobody ever has to wait over 15 minutes for a callback. Or you can just wait on the line, as it'll tell you, you know gives you the information wherever you are. The system is all wired up. It's got a reporting system so that every call opens a ticket. Every email opens a ticket. And that ticket stays open until the call the collar is satisfied.

Dr. Diane Walleser  13:56  
So you can track it to exactly never lose it. You never

Dr. Daniel Walden  14:00  
even if we transfer do that transfer to a manager to get something resolved. As far as let's say it's a deep financial, complicated financial aid issue. And it goes over to the manager for financial aid. It doesn't go to a technician goes to the manager who has signs that are supervisors in the connector Success Center monitor those tickets, so that that bin stays empty. They don't allow those to sit around. And they make the right calls and say that's there. The students waiting. And it's really been an amazing thing that's happened and just talking about being a caring campus to make people feel like Wow, this place cares about me. That's what this whole connect to Success Center is. And we've set it up so that when we get responses from our say, say our interact, media advertisements, right Okay, so we use you guys, and you're great about, you know, getting responses for us, we've been really excited to find out, you know how well we've done with this social media, when the response comes in, sometimes the techniques, there's a group of, they kind of rotate on and off to make their day a little more spiced up. So they're not just sitting on the phone all day. So they'll go over and they will respond to these inquiries. If somebody indicated that they would like a response, they get a call back, or they get an email. And so we're following that through, we have a team of people assisting right now, because we are still in the early stages, right? We've, our first phase was, let's make sure the calls get answered. And that that all works. And then there's these other phases where we want to go later. And we'll get more into that later on, if you want. But one of those is that this center is able to do all the response for any inquiry into the campus. Whether it comes through email, or whether it comes to somebody saw the billboard, they call the number they whatever they did,

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  16:12  
you know, you're you're offering National Quality response at a college level, which you, you know, I been doing this a while, and I don't hear that very often, right, it's normally, let me You know, I worked with a college one time that literally would let their phone box fill up, before they would start answering the calls. Or they'd say, we're going to respond to all of our emails on Friday, because we don't break up our workday. And they, I understand why they're doing it, they're trying to manage the load. But in doing that, they're basically putting off students and saying, You're not important enough to me to actually respond to you within within a day or the same, you know, the same morning or afternoon. And that's a message that that my God, we don't want to send to students who are, who are vulnerable and are wondering of colleges for them. If we don't treat them like, like, they matter to us. We don't matter to them. So, you know, you're doing the kind of thing I expect when I phoned Delta, the health helpline on Delta, you know, do you want to be called back, we'll call you back in X number of minutes. That's phenomenal.

Dr. Diane Walleser  17:29  
So I personally have set up two or three one stop centers at which in my in my career, and never have we achieve the success that you're talking about. It was all aspirational. And so I really have to commend you at what you've accomplished in such a short period of time. So for other leaders out there that are want and need to do what you're doing, what advice would you give them? And I mean, this, you know, did you walk in the office one day and say we're going to have a connect to Success Center, talk about the evolution and how you brought your team along? And how you got this off to such a successful start?

Dr. Daniel Walden  18:07  
Well, the first thing is, I made it my priority. So what I said is, okay, I'm president of the college, I have a whole operation going we have, you know, these are current numbers prior to covered we had over 18,000 students annually. Now we're down to about 15,000. But we're working our way back up. And we're one of the few colleges in California community colleges that actually is growing this year. Most are already down. But you know, it was it was it was the idea that I was going to make that happen. And I was going to see that the financial resources, were committed to it. So that it did happen. I mean, when you talk about hiring this many people, and opening a new center, it was no small financial commitment. But you have to think about what it is that we'll stop doing. So we can start doing what's really going to make a difference. People are always saying give me more money, I'll give you a better service. Well, what about the things we're doing? Do we really need all these other things going on? And putting money in these places? Why not put money where it's really going to make a difference? And one of the things that I think we need to know about one stop centers, you know, those people are in there working and they're working hard. You're a financial aid technician, you got a whole stack of food and stuff you're processing, trying to get through, working through all the bugs, the mistakes they made when they were filling out the forms and so on. And all of a sudden you're sitting there and you'd get a cold call from the outside. Well, you got this big stack of stuff or maybe another student sitting across the desk. And so you pick up the cold call, and I think it was you guys that did Some of the research on this that came back with this information that most people were getting referred, go look at the website. And it was really, I'm so busy, I'm trying to do this, it's important what I've got to do in your colony from the outside. And this is available on the website. So they're just pushing people off, to go try to search through a website. And this was one of the things that really was a motivator, it was that in creating this connected Success Center, we I thought, what a service we can provide our own personnel, if they don't have to take cold calls. They can do what it is that they're assigned to do. And then when there's a real problem, you give it to the manager, and the manager says, I need you to help student X here with this issue, then they can do that it's not a call coming off the street in the middle of a busy day. That's what the call centers for connected Success takes care of all that. Imagine the burden that takes off of all the people in the one stop center. They don't have to take cold calls from the outside, that most of those things are handled, as we said 90% of 10,000 calls were handled at that very first level. Normally, those would have been going to the to the one stop somebody in the One Stop who's already busy, who's already overloaded. And if you talk to him, they say they're already overworked. So here they are, they are feeling this way, and having to field all these calls. And what happens, they don't pick up or they just, you know, refer quickly to the website, or you need to be calling another office on campus. And students get the runaround. When I first became president here, I think it was in my first address I started in January of 2009 2019. And so my first address to the full college was in February and I asked the question, I said what would happen at this college, if not one student was ever given the runaround. If every student who walked on this campus, or inquired at this campus, did not get a run around, but they actually got served.

Think about as an employee, what if you as an employee needing to know something? Never got the runaround? How would you feel about working here. And from the beginning, that was the tone that I was trying to set for the college. Because I think actually is President one of your jobs is to set the tone. So I was doing it by in my very first address, where I had all the employees there, I only get them twice a year. So try to be careful what I say. Even though we did I do President chats all the time on Zoom. But I don't get, you know, I may have 150. And on a real if it was a real hot issue by maybe 250. But we've got 833 employees, so I get twice a year that I get to talk to all of them. And that's the tone I tried to set and that's what we've followed through with in really trying to develop a caring campus.

Dr. Diane Walleser  23:12  
I think what's fabulous is that you're able to hire new people, because the biggest mistake and I made the same mistake because of budgetary reasons, is I moved operation people into the contact center or the the one stop. It doesn't work. Because they're not. They're good processors, they may not be good people person. So how did you, you know, it sounds like you've made the right move and getting the right people in the right places. And getting that all started in a positive way.

Dr. Daniel Walden  23:47  
So a little dirty laundry. So we had, we had a help center on campus. And help desk was what it was called. And it had, I want to say four or five people working in it. But then they all we offered a supplemental retirement package. And so all but two of them left. Well then I was told that two people that these two people were really good. So I said, Okay, well we'll hire four technicians instead of six. And we will put these two people over there. If you're telling me they're good. Well, they go over there. And within a week, one of them is calling the union and saying, oh, you know, we're really duplicating what they're doing over here. And this is really in our job description. And when I found that out, I found that out in the morning. I said, get those two people, put them back over at the help desk and somebody in it can figure out what they can need to be doing. But I want them out of there today. I did not leave that in there for one more day. And I moved them out. I didn't advertise it but I'd moved them out and said oh you know what really? That was a mistake you're needed over here. That's how we save face with them and their union. But I did not want them poisoning this new crew. By the way, as President, I usually only interview in final interviews, you know, top level supervisors, and executives. But what I said is, I want to be the final interviewer for every person we hire, and that connect to Success Center. So I actually did all the final interviews myself, I mean, I had somebody with me, but I conducted those interviews, and I made, I said, I'm not hiring anyone that I'm not excited about. If they don't make me feel like I want to jump up and dance around the room, then they're not, I'm not picking them for this job, because they gotta love people, or they're not going to work in this call center. And so that was, I mean, I've just put the biggest priority on it. You know, anytime you want to do something, you got to find somebody who will feed the baby. Well, I decided that I was going to feed this baby. And, in fact, I have a report to a vice president, but I have in that Vice President is now leaving retirement. And I'm not going to replace that position for about six months. So during that six months to call the Kinect to success, supervisors are going to report directly to me, I'm not handing them off, I'm not throwing them around campus where, oh, you're here today, and you'll be over there tomorrow. And when I replace this, I'm going to do a reorg. And when I do the replacement, I'm going to have a special assistant to the president who is the vice president of innovation and Special Assistant to the President. And that's the person that this center will report to, and that person's job will be to accomplish my agenda as president on the campus.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  26:51  
You know, it's not about managing the workload, it's about managing the student experience and the potential student experience. And if you begin with how can I manage my workload, instead of how can I make this person realize that we are here for them, and we're going to support them every step of the way. It's not that those can't exist, but they normally don't, you have to begin with, I work for students, and I want them here and to know that I'm all in on their success. And that that's a big difference. And it's, you know, clearly, clearly, you've been able to launch this and pull it and and do it in a very short period of time. Thank goodness, because the the, you know, you're you're in the minority in terms of being able to, to be in a growing situation in California, so many are dealing with still with double digit downturns in their student enrollment. And this clearly is a good part of your success. And I gotta say, I as CEO of interact, I'm very proud that we've been able to do the kind of media buying media support that's driving people to your front door, to give you a problem, a good problem to solve, you know, it's good. You're, you have the issue everybody wishes they have that the only reason you have that is that you went through and solved. You know, I hate driving people to a shut door. And so many times when we do very good marketing, I feel like I'm driving people to a shut door. And at the end of it, folks that aren't taken care of are going to say I'm not college material. Clearly, I can't figure out how to get into this college. And you've taken the tack. That's just not going to happen here.

Dr. Diane Walleser  28:41  
That's unusual. So Dan, have you been able to notice any improvement in your applicant conversion rates?

Dr. Daniel Walden  28:51  
So, you know, it's so new that we haven't had? We don't have the data yet? To actually tell you what that is. But we're we are working on that one of our challenges actually, has been our reporting system. I don't want to use the name on the podcast, but we have a particular reporting system that somehow it's not working smoothly, the data is somehow skewed. And so we're not really able to rely on it. The way it's the way it's supposed to work is I'm supposed to get a report every month that's full of all the analytics, that tells me every single thing you know, about how many calls came in, how many how quickly where they answered, how many were resolved, how many were, what happened to the tickets and so on and so forth. And so in, in lieu of that while we're trying and we are working on that issue. But while we're doing that, in order to get data, we're using it we're using sort of a multi tiered data analysis, where we're looking at using the data from our ticketing system in conjunction in conjunction with data from our user experience surveys, and that's how we're result we're getting the data that we're making decisions on now. So we know how well it's doing, while we work on a permanent solution with our, our analytic software.

Dr. Diane Walleser  30:20  
So the enrollment numbers, though, kind of are a positive indicator that something good is going on, though. So you're getting some good indicators that you're, you're gonna see some positive numbers.

Dr. Daniel Walden  30:34  
And it looks like they were growing 6% This year, which just just going down the hill here from the high desert, where we are the very first community college district Do you run into when you get the bottom of the hill, the chancellor there told me there's a multicloud district, that they're down another 15% this year. And then when you move one district over, that has three colleges in it, they're down, one of the Presidents told me she's down 50% from her pre COVID enrollment, and so that every college down there is down until you get probably 45 miles away, and then it maybe not so bad. But I think the very fact that we are 6% This year, it's pretty amazing.

Dr. Diane Walleser  31:24  
Yes, we're not hearing stories like this, let's just say that.

Dr. Daniel Walden  31:29  
And we have. So I'm all like, just wait and see, because what we have been working on since December has nothing to do with this year, we've been working, I've had a team of people working intensely, from last December, all on the fall of 2022. And that's where I really say and just wait and see. Because we think it's gonna really happen this coming fall. And we're gonna really ring some bells, in regard to how you can get back numbers, I don't know that we'll get back to students we lost because I believe most of them went on to do whatever else they're going to do in life. But we, we can get these numbers back in other ways. One of the things for the future of this program of connect to Success Center is you know, we want it to become the hub for the whole virtual digital matriculation of students into the campus, we're not going to take away that face to face one stop still there. But they're free to really help people that walk in the door without having to go through the virtual elements like phones and, and email and so on. We want this connected Success Center to be the central hub for the for that part of it that digital matriculation to house everything that incoming or prospective students need with Kinect, as it says to successfully matriculate into the campus. The goal is to become the central hub by providing wraparound support, and truly embodying the caring campus. So that it isn't just one call, one email, but it's one call is all. Yeah. And to do that, one of the things we expect to see is a whole nother division of this connect a success that focuses just on current, our returning students and their needs. So that you desire to be the, we want to be the primary source of information that allows those current and returning students. Now right now we're serving everyone, but the focus has really been on new students. And to have a whole nother branch that specifically is dedicated to returning students, making sure they're aware that they can access to campus resources that they get the nudges that they need. You know, did you know that you just need two more classes to actually graduate or that kind of thing. So where we've had just technicians, I can see us move, actually hiring counselors that work just in this digital environment, hiring financial aid, people that work just in the digital environment. So that this is a so you have this total wraparound thing going on. And you know what, I'll knock out as many walls as I need to knock out and hire as many people as we need to hire. Because I actually am crazy enough to think this will work. And it will more than pay for itself.

Dr. Diane Walleser  34:44  
You are on your way. I'm gonna get geeky on you though here. Do are you using a knowledge base or what's behind all of this and helps your staff understand all the answers to the questions or how are you what's your infrastructure behind it Support for your your technicians.

Dr. Daniel Walden  35:02  
So we hired these two supervisors last spring. So like, way before the call center ever opened. And the first thing they did was to develop training manuals. And I hired some pretty qualified people. One of the supervisors was the special assistant to the CEO of AT and T, and handle those highest level complaints that get passed everybody else. And finally, they end up on the CEOs desk, because they're going to court or they're going to do something. And she was the person that handled that, I was able to somehow snag her out of the waters and pull her in here. And her and then we hired another young lady that, you know, that just had all the qualities and they have, they have just been the perfect two people to get in and work together, they complement one another, they get along, they built this whole thing together. And so what they did is they created the training manuals. And then over time, there everyone is everyone's knowledge base is increasing. So that they're learning a little more about financial aid a little more about, I mean, they're not, they're not, at this level, they're not handling the deep issues of financial aid, that's going to go over to the one stop and be assigned to a manager who will give it to a technician, or handle it himself, or herself. So but but as It's morphing, they're released, these people are really getting smart, they know are born, they know more about the college than I do. I'll tell you that. If I really need to know something I'm gonna call the connect the success, or you just

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  36:50  
call them. Yeah. And you know, the fact that you brought them in not only this, the staff were the technicians, but the supervisors, meaning they knew they had they, as they looked at the problem, they said, What do I need to know to answer the questions and to train people. And that means they got the knowledge based on being an outsider, as opposed to when insiders do this frequently, they either dive too deep, or they think it's very clear, because I developed this. And it isn't clear, because you know, you you understand it because this is your area. But it other people as you try to explain it, it's not clear to them. But with all of these folks coming in from the outside, they brought the saint they brought a willingness to understand it. But they also brought the question the right questions that are being asked by new students coming in. So it's it's not, you know, I've talked to financial aid folks and and counselors, and sometimes you ask them what you think is a simple question. And they deep dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in terms of giving you such detailed information, that not only is it too much, but it didn't answer my question, because they know it so well. It's it's not clear in many ways. So bringing these folks in, it means that you built the system around, not from an insider point of view, but from the outside or what you need to know to help them point of view. And that's, that's brilliant. When you

Dr. Daniel Walden  38:29  
put it when you put insiders in. And we're all like this, I'm like this too? Well, we've always done it this way. Or we tried that before. I didn't have to hear that. I've not heard that one time from this group. Maybe because they'd never tried it before because they weren't here before. The other thing that I did, I hired only people with an entrepreneurial mindset. I wasn't interested in hiring employees. When I hired these people in this center, I wanted to hire people who come to work like an entrepreneur, like this is my thing. How can I make this better? Because this thing is depending on me, and this is my shop, and I own it and empower them to do that. And so I asked every single one of them in their final interviews, I said, What do you want to be doing? I first of all, ask them, what would I was president say about you in five years? And then that gets some really good responses on that. But then I said, What do you see yourself doing because they were mostly younger people. Not really young but but younger in their 20s or maybe early 30s. And I said, So what do you want to be doing like 10 years from now? They none of them wanted to still be in the call center. And I made sure that I didn't hire anyone who saw themselves as someone sitting just answering calls they want to Go somewhere in the institution, these people are going to feed other positions, as I get openings at higher level. And this entrepreneurial mindset that they're allowed to develop over here is going to come into the and infiltrate the campus as these people get promoted. And I will always be hiring, I'm telling you, but as long as I'm President, I will hire every new person that goes into that connect to Success Center.

Dr. Diane Walleser  40:27  
Dan, what do you think the Connect to Success Center means for your students, especially low income, first gen students, you must have serve a very diverse population. And those are the ones that get hot, really, really stopped out by all the barriers. So this must, what's your thoughts on how that will help them.

Dr. Daniel Walden  40:50  
So this whole thing is equity driven. All about giving everyone an equal bite at the apple, whether you're short or tall, somehow, you're gonna get the same bite of the apple. It's not just the giraffes that are going to get this bite at the apple, we're going to create a ladder, or whatever we need to do so that you get high enough on the tree, that you get to bite the apple. And that, to me, this whole thing is about equity. This is about diversity, it's about equity, it's about inclusion, it's about giving the people who normally get the leftovers to give them as if they were walking into Nordstrom. And maybe they never buy anything in there, but they get to go in there and you get anything in the store that anybody else can get, you're gonna get the first class treatment, just like somebody with money or somebody with privilege, or somebody who knows a board member, or whatever. You don't have to know a board member to get treated. The five star experience at this college, you're gonna get it at this center, because we're with programming. And you know what I call over there. The other day, I had a Vice President with me, and I said, let's call the center and let's see what kind of response we get

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  42:18  
your own marketing research.

Dr. Daniel Walden  42:21  
I have a president friend, and I'm thinking about doing this. He's in Texas, but he he hires 20 Student shoppers every year. And he doesn't tell anybody who they are. So not even his own, you know, confidential group, at the college, the vice presidents and so on, do not know who these shoppers are. And they're out there, he meets with them three times in the year. And they give him feedback on their experience on the campus. He's one of these guys, they go around the whole college goes around, saying I love you. So that's his, his motto is I love you. If you if you love people, you give them you know, you're only interested in the things that's gonna lift them up, and help them in life. And if they feel loved, though, they won't leave, they'll finish. So that's just as just another way of saying, I love you. Because we're doing, you know, the work of love is the effort of reaching out and doing something about what you say you feel, which is love. Are you willing to do the work of lots? Otherwise, it's not really love?

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  43:32  
That's all right. You know what, I was wrong. You're not national class, you're world class. That's amazing that I mean, one, that commitment it takes for you to take that on, because a lot of presidents will assign it to somebody and and say, you know, go do it. And this shows what presidential focus can do first of all, and having and having a real focus on caring about students and showing that you care about students. Because we you're right, we use caring, but we frequently don't say love and that's, that is actually the difference between Okay, experience, a good experience, and a great one is how much I feel the love from the college, showing me that I matter to them. That's, that's world class stuff.

Dr. Daniel Walden  44:24  
We're building the caring campus. It is not built, but we're building it. And I just think that it will. Over time, we will, you know, they I think Peter Drucker said something like that. And I'm sure you've heard this that culture eats strategy for lunch, or breakfast, whichever meal you're having. If you don't, and culture doesn't change overnight. culture changes when you go in and you stay and you keep doing the right thing saying the right things. And you get about fit 15 to 20% of the people with you that are passionate about what you're doing. And when that happens, you know, you're on your way, because there's about 60% out there, they're just waiting on somebody to nudge them. You got the other opposite in the 15 20% on the other end that are the naysayers and they want to kill everything that happens. And they gather around the water coolers, but you get momentum like that and get the 60% with the 20%. In the, in the early part, the passionate people that change agents, and then you've got 80% of your institution moving in the right direction and the others, you'll they'll either just go off and crawl in a hole, or they might even change their mind, or they'll retire or do something else. But you did, but did make that happen. It takes time, people got to know that you're here long enough. That is not going to change. I had someone just recently been here for many, many years come and tell me, I retired, I'm leaving because I don't like the direction of the colleges is going in. And you know, he's failing. 55% of his students has been doing that for years. Like that, that's okay. To fail. They only have 45% IQ. See, that's not okay. I'm not I've not been personally on him. But what he's feeling is the pressure of everything that's happening around him. Because we're we're trying to go after this Aspen Prize to be the number one community college in the nation be recognized as such, you know, our aspirational statement is, and this is in our educational master plan that we are the best at what we do. And because we are the best at what we do, we are also recognized for it. And so if you're really good at it, somebody's gonna recognize you.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  46:52  
Well, that journey alone, calls everybody to a higher to a higher level of excellence. You know that the million years ago, I wrote a speech for my president and the I learned that what the word mediocrity stands for mediocrity comes from the word media of Chris, which is the midpoint in a journey. And it's settling, you're no longer uncomfortable, and you're not there, but you're willing to settle. And what you're doing is saying, we are never going to settle, we're going to be we're going where we're heading for the best that we can do. And, and anything less than that is not okay. And and you're right, the people who aren't willing to give that aren't will sort themselves out. They'll, they'll decide they don't want to make the effort or, or they won't, this isn't the commitment they're willing to make. And that's okay, that this is a place where the students deserve our best. So for you guys to, to call out that you're going to be the best at what you do that that's what you are. That's, that's what the students deserve.

Dr. Daniel Walden  48:02  
That's exactly what I was gonna say, Don't the students deserve that? I mean, if you know, some of these colleges that have been winning this Aspen Prize, they're just little Podunk places. I mean, they're out there in the middle of nowhere. One of them, not far from where I grew up in West, Texas, is Odessa, Texas, Odessa college. And, hey, we got mountains around us here. Odessa has nothing around it except oil wells, and smells like oil wells. And yet here they are a college in Texas, who gets from their feeder high schools, the lowest performing students in the entire state. And they turn things around where this legislature was going to close the college down. And in within six years, they're recognized as one of the top aspirin colleges and Aspen telling them just last year, you have the highest success rates of any community college in the United States. How do you take the poet lowest performing high school students and make them the highest performing college students?

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  49:14  
How do you do that? Well, you you focus on the data and you focus on service and cohorts. All of those. And I know good news or bad news. We were we've been the agency of record in the past for Odessa. And we were there when they were going to be defunded. And we worked through that piece and we were there when they passed their bond to allow them to do to build a kind of buildings, the the the kind of buildings and space they needed to be able to do those things. And I you know, I know the President and and that demand for success, that that we're not going to settle for second tier I will tell you I was in the audience when he told he told the the entire population of his campus, I hear a lot of you talking about what you what you have to do, we have to do this, we have to do that. He said, I don't want to hear it, I want to hear I get to do this, I get to do that. Because the students deserve us, embracing them, and being excited about the work we get to do for them. And it's not I have to, it's a I'm honored to do this. And that was part of their their shift. And that that presidential focus, he had it and clearly you do too, which is it's, it's fun to see what you're doing. And I'll just say I'm where we're all honored that we are a part of being able to drive people to your front door, and know that they're going to be taken care of in the way that they deserve. That's, that's, that's soulfood for for those of us here.

Dr. Daniel Walden  51:03  
Well, I like coming to work feeling like I'm making a difference. Yeah, if I could no longer do that, then I'll ride off into the sunset. But coming to work, knowing that you're making a difference, and students are going to be walking across that stage in June because you have to make that possible for them. It makes it you know, it's like they say you do something you love. And you never work a day in your life.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  51:31  
I think we're lucky. That's this is what we do. This is what you do. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. This has been a great conversation. And I have no doubt you're gonna get a few phone calls from presidents saying Help me Help me. Because what you're doing is the stuff that so many try and so few succeed at.

Dr. Daniel Walden  51:53  
I'm happy to share whatever that we have done with anyone else because I didn't get here without learning from others. So thank you, I'd be happy to do it.

Dr. Pam Cox-Otto  52:05  
Thank you, Dan.

Dr. Daniel Walden  52:07  
Thank you Pam. Thank you Diane.

Podcast Intro  52:10  
Thank you for listening to another episode of the community college marketing masterclass podcast hosted by interacts team of two year college experts for more community college resources, insights and downloads, including the transcript of today's show, visit interact calm.com That's interact c o m.com. And don't forget to follow interact on social media and subscribe to this podcast to keep your finger on the pulse of higher ed trends. That's all for today. Good luck herding cats out there, and we'll catch you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai