Student Success: Engaging with Students to Achieve Results

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It looks it looks really good and on in 321.

Alright, and we are alive. Hello everyone.

How's everybody doing out there? I'm just gonna see much participants virtually.

Coming in and taking virtual feet. So welcome to today's webinar will give it just a couple of seconds here.

For everything to get up and running so.

That might be from you.

At least that's what it sounded like at the moment.

Everybody, so if you want to do your what typically happens your roll call in the chat and that's great. Say Hey, where you from. I know the favorite thing to do is always mentioned the weather where you are. I'm streaming live to you from New Haven, CT, where today it's actually really nice day. I think it's about 80 degrees. Not bad. We had a good Labor Day weekend. I hope all of you did as well. So if you want to just let us know how everything is going in the chat.

Maybe where where your where you're calling from where you're tuning in. From and what the weather is like and so on. And so forth like I said it's always funny because somebody built Portland beautiful at 75 and sunny beautiful. Hey, we're in Chicago, great OK little windy so and so forth and then somebody from Flagstaff, Arizona or Houston chimes in and says it's a 118 and it's been like that for one month straight.

Takes the cake so cool alright. Will get going welcome everybody. Thank you all for joining us today. This is this is our virtual conversation for this Lake community, and beyond. Our applied to alumni series. This is the third installment of applied to alumni series, which is managing the lifecycle in slate today. We're going to be talking a little bit about student success, engaging with students to achieve results.

Couple weeks ago, you heard from our very own Aaron Gore. We talked about in the very beginning of the student. Lifecycle students at high school level talking boutslate.org colleges and high schools working collaboratively usingslate.org which is great last week. We heard from a really lovely panel of admissions folks talking about the new admissions normal and some of their strategies and what they're doing.

Obviously, in light of the pandemic and the new normal so it's great to hear from them this week. We're going to be talking a little bit the next stage of that's life cycle. Once they're there. Once they are enrolled at your institution student success advising retention efforts and will take a look at some some some opportunities slave to take advantage of and then next week. It's a wrap up or applied for alumni series. We're going to be hearing from our general manager of advancement John Kelly.

He's got some great advancement folks from this slate community who are going to be talking a little bit more about kind of lifetime cultivation, engaging with potential donors so welcome. We're happy to have you all today go over a little bit of housekeeping so for your information. This webinars being recorded, and will be made available for viewing after we will have it available on thetechnicians.com website for your viewing if you'd like closed captioning turned on upper right.

Corner of your screen right hand corner screen. The CC button at the share window if you want. This in full screen. You can do that by enabling the full screen button. Also in the upper right hand corner of your screen.

If you're experiencing any audio video issues or if one of us look. Maybe looks delayed if you need to re sync simply just refresh your share window.

And post your questions in the chat, which you are all excellent at we will take some time at the tail end of the hour to make sure.

To get all those questions answered, so feel free to post your question in the chat throughout and we will prune some questions at the end. So awesome to today's esteemed panel. We have one Sable, Vasquez sable is the director of perspective student services at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, OSU. It is a easier way to say all that from Ocmulgee. Am I saying that Right Fable?

All G, of course I message.

It's Ocmulgee it is.

Logan Creek Yeah, we have a lot of tribal.

Language towns and cities.

Got it of course I messed up on the first try. Opol Guy Oklahoma and we have John Cherry who's the senior associate director of enrollment operations at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford, OH. The two states in the country that start with O and a little bit of alliteration there with Ocmulgee Oklahoma in Oxford, OH, not done intentionally. So welcome to both of you sable. I'd like to just give you the platform to start. Just tell us who you are, where you from, aside from what's listed there, and.

And a little bit about OSU it and your role there.

Congrats.

Great yeah, stable Vasquez, I am from Oklahoma Ann born and bred. I've been here at OSU 8049 years. I think today is actually my 9 year anniversary. I got a lot of emails about that so.

Thank you, I'm the director of perspective student services, OSU it. We lead Oklahoma and technical education an our mission is to fill the skills gap. One highly qualified graduate at a time. So that is our focus. We are apart of the Oklahoma A&M system. We do have OSU enter name but we are a completely separate branch in a completely separate location from the main campus in still water. Sometimes people get confused and think that we're a.

Department on the Bay campus. And we're not where our own separate branch in our own separate part of the state, and we have our own separate mission, but we are happy to be part of that system. We are a small public institution. We have around 2500 students, so we are pretty small. School Ann. In my role, I oversee all of recruitment and then I oversee portions of Student Success. Obviously, student success is a shared goal, an.

You know priority for everyone across campus, so only oversee portions of that and take claim on those. But we like to look at it as we are re recruiting our students semester after semester until they graduate.

Not that well, said well said great John Jerry.

Thanks again, my name is John Cherry from Miami. I've been at Miami little over three years now at work in the enrollment operations Department. When I first start at Miami, the enrollment operations Department was very much so admission based. It's just been the last year and a half or so that we have really started moving towards. Our office is taking Slayton using it in more than just admission which was the priority at first.

But now we have slate for current students late for graduate students.

So my my role is working with.

Admission, but as well as you know, registrar financial aid and just really helping out when in terms of operations of how, how to get their stuff done in the most efficient way possible.

Great yeah, great thank you both for being here and being part of the conversation. Yeah it's funny because you know you're looking at your titles or you find you guys on the website and director of perspective student services and senior associate director of enrollment operations. They have called their admissions folks right? But as both of you said you know, and I think oftentimes this happens with admissions, your if and when needed. Maybe it's like other duties as assigned, or maybe it's just.

Rest through your karere you know you kind of expand outside the reaches of the admissions office.

From a from a student facing perspective, right kind of hang on to the students that you recruited Sable. You said it very nicely, recruiting them or you know you build this. Build this reputation in this skill set within slate. John perfect example, right where they start needing you for other things, right? For your for your slate technical acumen that goes outside of the admissions office. And really, that's what we're going to talk about. So you know there is a rapidly growing number of slate.

Partners that are utilizing slate beyond admissions will set right and we can loosely define student success will talk about it in a couple of slides, but you can kind of loosely define student success as really what you're doing with the currently enrolled students after they've enrolled right if we're talking about retention and Advisement and persistence and graduation rate.

Study abroad kind of you know you could technically student success could be this fall encompassing really, really topic. But we have a growing number of schools that are utilizing slate to manage those processes within slate right whether it's able in a shared instance right utilizing the already existing database.

Categorizing new student success efforts or any case like Miami, Ohio, where they say, Hey, we you know, we've got some resources dedicated just for this segment, so it's a standalone database, so that number is really, really growing their schools. Kind of doing all the above. We're going to dive into a couple of really nice use case examples that you guys are going to provide but some are using it for enrolled student communication document management advising early alert systems or intervention systems.

And study abroad like I said, so, so yeah, we're going to dive into a little bit about about that with you too, specifically and then just kind of as a whole So what I wanted to kind of open up with and forgive this slide for the kind of Doom and gloom statistics that it's showcasing but I wanted to talk a little bit about landscape because I think it's important going into this these conversations that we're having definitely for this series from applied to alumni scope so if you look at the numbers this is from a research.

Report that came out, it was showcased in Eckinger report online and its relatives. It's got some relatively recent crisp data about financial well being, let's say of institutions, and you can see here.

The on the surface. Some of this stuff. You say OK, this doesn't really look good, right? OK, so first first time fall enrollment have seen significant challenges. 30% of all four years. All four year schools are looking at less tuition revenue per cleaner. By student. We talk about funding, whether it's state or local lose state or local funding, losing state or local funding. And then you know, this challenge of endowment.

Shrinking, so we kind of look at all these things. Said she's you know OK this is not not the best painted picture for higher education at all, right? But to pivot?

It's also an opportunity to look for other ways to maintain the health of the institution, right? You know, the witchy data that came out along time ago? Everybody knew that the demographics were changing in terms of new incoming freshman, you know the availability of graduating high school juniors and seniors and in the pit is OK, fine. So how can we? How can we put re re allocate resources? How can we look at other ways of making our institution successful if we can no longer count?

On maybe the robust incoming freshman classes that we've been used to or that has always been kind of the main focus, right?

Because if we're thinking about college, is disabling ever just talking about this just prior to starting you always it's an interesting position to talk about it because colleges and universities operate an awful lot like a business, right almost all or some way, shape or form tuition driven right there, reliant on tuition dollars to continue funding. So sure, you know, from a business perspective when you look at something like retention or student success.

It's it's obvious from a business perspective. How can we retain students at a better rate in order to increase revenue right or maintain revenue? Or look at it as another revenue stream, right? However, let's take away the business perspective and say OK, but by the way, you know the institution of higher education is really to like help students grow and graduate and go be, you know, wonderful citizens in the world, right? Learn how to make positive change and impact the world so.

It's kind of two fold. I don't know if you either if you have anything to add to that, but it's just an interesting landscape because it's it's changed and by the way, this is all these statistics in this conversation we're talking about. This is all before March, right through March 2020 into this and now it has com pounded an amplified this situation tenfold. Let's say probably more, right? So I don't know what my thoughts on that. Either of you disable.

Yeah, definitely.

You know, like I said, take the business aspect out of it, and I think that it has to be where we do more personalized contact. You know, we can't just hammer out email after email and expect that to make a difference because it's not going to. You know, we need to pick up the phone and call our students text. Our students make that individual contact with them. I'll give an example. Just last year I started my I wanted to get a higher degree than what I have now and I started an online program at a school out of state and I was really excited.

An after one semester I stopped out like I did one class an I stopped out. I was re evaluating an it's been, you know, almost a year later and I have not once been contacted so you know it comes to that point where at what point are you a student at this school and what point are you? A number at this school? And so I think having that personal personalized contact with their students is really important. For some institutions it's a lot easier. You know. I'm a small school so we have more people and it's more realistic for us to be able to make those individual.

Contacts, but for US it's all creating a relationship. When you're recruiting the student and then you're developing and growing that relationship and growing with the student as they are your student until they are finished. And so I think it has to be.

A little more personalized and like you said, take the take the business out of it and look at him as these are people that are trying to better themselves. And how can we help them on that journey?

Right right? Yeah yeah, well said.

You had said something earlier which caught my attention to, you know the admissions process right. The initial enrollment funnel. Getting them to enroll right at OSU? It. That's that you're recruiting.

Hello.

You know, just take that word and reuse it over and over again semester after semester. Just re recruit and re recruit every recruit to make sure that they know what their expectations were at the start. From the point of recruitment that's maintained, they still have the same expectation of engagement and personalization link you said, which is hugely important for students today. Highly, highly personalized experiences. They want to feel the Fit and the love and they feel the positive vibes so taking that.

That business conversation out of it is so important. For sure. John anything you want to add.

No, I you guys cover it really well. I I think there's the so on my end I don't work with students directly as much as you know, stable does, and so for me I have to remember that.

Sure.

Sure.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah, spot on, you know the personalized and dynamic messaging to make sure that they're getting the right information at the right time or the the touch point that they need. Whether it's high touch or resources that are available to them using actionable data, right? Like you said you put, you know, take the take the data that you acquire in slate, which looks really good, unbiased. 'cause I work here, but you know, so it's really good at that and housing that. Take it and drive.

Whatever it is, communication drive, some type of effort through that now.

And again, it has the focus. We were in a world where.

The students aren't just orona spreadsheet. I think you know the fact that I work in slate all day everyday, and that's that's what I do. It like it just said, I need to remember that they are the real people on the that make up all this data and so the data we we have we need to use to create those personalized touches. And I I think each student is in is an individual that they need to be contacted in the.

The way that.

It affects this not only the pandemic, but again just kind of the shift in higher Ed. This is become a seismic shift, but all everything is affected. Recruitment, retention, advisement, student affairs stuff, right advancement, everything is being affected by this, so it's important to really focus on kind of your sector that that you can wear. You can have an effect on it. Yeah cool. So let's define success a little bit right? So defining success.

That is best for them, but then also what you say to them 'cause you can't say the same message to all the students for it to apply. You know you gotta, you gotta section off the different groups of students. And you know if there's students worried about finances, you know, really. Approach them with finances. If their students that are having a hard time adjusting to being away from home, that's going to be completely different. Message. You don't want to bother them bombarded the same group with the same message. 'cause it's it's not going to work.

And so I feel that even though we are, I think re recruiting our students is a great way to to put that. We can really use, you know, the research, right? The right message.

What does success mean in in each of your worlds from a student success perspective? 'cause like I said earlier to student success, is different, probably by institution, right? Some of them have some schools have complete. Office is dedicated to it and everything from Advisement to study abroad to crew development and others. Have you know a retention core committee and folks who work with students to provide resources or make them aware of resources on campus or what?

What's success from a student success perspective at OSU? It? What does it mean at OSU it.

Wow.

Well for us successes, job placement. So for our students because we are so we're focused on technical degree programs and filling the skills gap. And that's what our mission is. And so for us it is. If our students are employed time that they graduate or shortly thereafter we track our job placement rates of our students before graduation, even and so.

That's kind of our indicator of success for students. That's ultimately why most of them choose to come here, and so that's kind of how we track success as a University as a whole. I like to remember, you know, for for me, it's more so.

Sure.

And this might be kind of cheesy, but being in perspective, student services like I still meet students before they become students, and then I'll see them over and over again for a couple of years. So it's that, you know, the aspect that a lot of us get started in admissions and recruitment because we feel like we're making a difference in someone's life and following that process all the way through. And like I said, it's pretty cheesy, but it also feels like a very successful. I'm doing my job. I feel great about it. I'm going to keep doing this because I get to see them from, you know, the first time they step on campus for a tour all the way through graduation. And then.

Knowing that they have a lucrative job waiting for them when they're finished area. Not that success for me.

I'm with you, I'm with you, did it, even if it did come out, it's it's fine, makes you feel very, very good when you see I mean it's a huge part of a young person's life and a pretty critical time. So yeah, not only the admissions process, you'll get. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy you came here, you're coming. Oh my God, I can't wait to see you on campus. But then the persistence through Oh my gosh, four years from now you're watching walk across the stage graduation. It's beautiful but totally agree John, what about from your perspective?

Miami of Ohio.

Yeah.

I very similar, you know I I think the eventual goal of many institutions is the job placement aspect and so if if you're not going to college to, you know get the degree to then have the education and knowledge and know how of what you're going to do.

Then I think higher education has missed its mark, but I think the push to go into the into the selected field at a student wants to go. I think there's there's the journey of how students get there as well, so it's not just hitting the books, doing the research, you know, getting that first job interview, getting that first job, which is the goal, but I think there's also the success is the road that a student?

Case two when they get their first job So what? What did they do while at?

Make sure.

Miami University what what hurdles did they have to push through? How did they grow as an individual? How did they grow to be not not just part of our economy but how do? How can they make our world a better place?

And I, I think there's there's a lot of kind of self discovery that goes along with.

With with higher education, I know for me specifically I.

Sure.

I think in college I learned mostly what I didn't like. Then what I did like an. So I tried a different fields, did a lot of different things and I think you know I learned that the the dreams that you have as a kid aren't always.

What you end up wanting to do when you become an adult and so?

III think it's hard, also you know just outta college or.

Not much experience in terms of work, you know employment. Some students are definitely the exception to that, but I think it's the fact that.

No.

Push students to be lifelong learners, so even when they're done with their time at Miami, and although they still want to become better, they still want to become six successful, but you know, not not just successful in their job, but also successful in their, you know, their, their their social economical kind of life, and so.

I think for Miami and I and I I would say 4.

Sure.

Many institutions, it's to make a better person that can do an impact. You know a global impact.

To really help with, you know.

The local community.

Yeah, it's cool to hear both. You say you know graduation rate and job placement rate. Sure, get you know.

Keep them there right to make sure they grow. They achieve what they're supposed to achieve to graduate, but then helping them get a job again. Kind of We're going to flip flop back and forth from that business. Kind of perspective to those statistics are also vitally important right when they are searching for an experience.

That they're paying for and their pet in summer paying a lot they want. They want to see those outcomes before they make that type of investment right? They want to feel really, really good about the investment they're making before before making the decision. How. How, likely am I to get a job, you know, am I going to be able to be taken care of via all these resources during my time at fill in the blank an? I think the families are getting so much more well educated on that, like the the market. This is the perspective students and families they have so many resources.

To help them make an educated decision, but they're also asking the right questions to to make sure that they make the right decision on where to go. So So what do you guys have kind of at your fingertips? I know you know both of your titles, like we're saying earlier, you read him and he said in admissions, plus right? So you guys are you help out with the missions. But then there's this other other duties as assigned. So what resources do you have available? Or do you guys work closely? Kind of cross departmentally with advising folks.

Financial aid, you know. I'm thinking of those those people say, but can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Yeah, we.

On

try to do everything as much of the collaboration as possible when their current students we work a lot with financial aid, the bursts are and then all of our academic areas in our schools. They have a position that is called a program support strategist, and so they're basically like.

Sure.

An advisor slash retention specialist and so they focus on their specific students for their programs. So we kind of supplement each others work and what we're doing. And so there are big partner with us on who we work within the academic areas. A student success facilitator position underneath me as well, and that person kind of takes care of all of our early alert functions.

And then do that person in the assistant director will. Do. You know all of the student success workshops and events and all of that kind of thing. But since were smaller institution, it's a lot easier for us to work together. We're all for financial aid and admissions and Bursar and registrar role in one hallway together. So you can just jump in and grab each other. We are on campus so that makes it easier now to that we can talk to each other's office is like before so we have a lot of collaboration.

Yep.

I'm across campus and I I think that's the way that it has to be for it to be whatever your efforts are to be successful. It can't just be one or two people for the entire effort of the campus, it has to be everyone across campus working together, and that can include your faculty, annuar, administrative assistants and everyone. I think everyone has to kind of take some ownership that.

At this point in time, we can't afford not to all be working tored this one specific thing, so we try to make everything a collaboration as much as possible.

Hello.

Uh huh.

Yeah, yeah, now it's well said spot on, you know the community effort, right? Or it takes a village kind of thing if if there's that buy in from the staff and faculty and everybody on campus that makes things so much easier, right? 'cause everybody's on the same page you were caring at down to the person level about these these students coming in John, what's your perspective? Because you, like you said earlier. You're a little bit more behind the scenes. You're building a lot of this out. A lot of days spent.

In slate entirely, but but from like a technical structural standpoint, right? You're not on the phone reaching out to students individually, which is just a different perspective, but I'm guessing you probably have a lot of collaborative conversations with multiple multiple departments. And the thing I was going to say to you know, Miami of Ohio, is couple different locations of across Ohio, right? So we're not just talking about in Oxford.

Correct, yeah, so late lately my my position has been working more with.

The current students enrollment side, so I work a lot with the birds. Are the financial aid.

We we do share our break room with the admission office so most of our most of the office I work in is geared towards.

Really supporting the undergraduate admission office.

Yeah.

I'm kind of the one off that I'm able to really collaborate with the one stop and so our one stop. For those that don't or haven't heard that term. It's kind of the earlier the office where students go to ask really any question their financial aid questions that scholarship questions. Do they have registration problems? Do the data they have to pay their bill? So it's kinda like the one stop shop for for students. And so I've really been working with them and they are, they are they are in front of students all day, everyday and so.

My background is in admission so I I do have that the experience of what you know.

Yeah.

What the admission counselors are are are doing with students, but then at the same time, it's. It's. It's great to collaborate with the one stop because they're working with current students and what? What are our current students questions and? And so it's been fun to really customize what we can do for for those offices just based on their interactions with with students.

Yeah, yeah, and what department's are encompassed within one stop? Is it every? I mean is it everybody?

It's it's everybody minus parking and housing.

Bar, so we're talking.

Sure.

Yes.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

But they're they're. They're in the same. They're in the same building though, so you have to go across the way and you can sign up for a free meal plan and get your parking pass. But yeah, it's it's registrar financial aid burst our student success. Our student success office is there as well, and so are our Department is is called in rural management and student success, and so it kind of encompasses quite a quite a bit of.

Just the enrollment side of whether their perspective students are current students.

He

Yeah, sure, now that's that's that's interesting and what alright? So then, let's give it a little bit come March, right? How is this changed your day today? You know. Obviously it upended the end of the semester for both of you, summer summer has been. I'm guessing it's been interesting just because there's so much planning about the unknown. There's how re pivoting in making this doable right to so that we can start back up and maybe have a phased approach, John.

I know you guys have a. Is it a delayed start? But what's your? You know what's what's changed as a result of this as it relates to student success efforts, right? If it's if it's hard to.

Keep students engaged an show. Give them that really high customer service touch when they're on campus, right? What happens now when it's you know nobody is allowed to come with the situation that we're in?

No.

Yep.

Right, yeah, so every I mean we are an on campus like the experience that students want is being on campus and so are our big pivot has. How can we? How can we bring those same experiences but making virtual so that this student doesn't have to be on campus and you know? And so how how are classes being taught in a way where it's not just you know like like this where it's a slideshow and talking heads?

OK.

How can it be more involved, more engaging?

Because we.

We are. I mean, we're a 17,000 students in the middle of a corn field, so we got to the experience of Miami is it's it's it's.

Yeah.

What this does students make of it, and so I think for us it's definitely been been tough to.

Yeah.

To recreate that in a virtual kind of setting, so I think Kovid's really been difficult for, you know, for institutions that really rely on being on campus 'cause we before this all happened, we we really didn't have an online platform. I mean we had an online platform. We have some online classes but.

Yeah.

Word on campus institution. I mean, we're and so when we had to pivot it was it was something where the Provost kind of just said, Hey.

We're doing this.

OK.

So do it and gave us, gave everybody a deadline to to just alright we.

Do it and do it quickly.

Yeah.

Every everything is going virtual and so I think and then in our yeah do it and do it yesterday. And so when when we got the notice of you know hey everything is going virtual it was it was kind of one of those where office had a little bit of the calm before the storm 'cause we knew it. We knew it was coming.

Yeah.

Yep.

And our office deals a lot with, you know all of the virtual stuff. And of course we have slate that that runs a lot of our sign ups and and everything. And so it was waiting for waiting for the decisions to be made. And so I think we had. We had a little bit of calm, maybe the first couple days but then it ever since then it's it's just been go go go. And I mean going. Even though I'm working from home you know it's it's hard to.

Yeah.

Do you know? Keep up with everything that's.

That's that's changing.

It's a challenge.

Uh huh.

Gotta be on and Sable. You guys have some practicum program you know clinical right? I guess some type of internship experience where they gotta be there, right?

Yeah, I'll kind of echo at John said we're in an on campus campus are programs. I'm literally in. Everything that is published about us and that we put out in promotional materials or in everything that we are hands-on learning application.

You know, like him, we have online classes, but it hasn't been. You can do you know, however, many programs completely on line, like we only had two so. But all of our other programs are.

Completely hands on. We do very little theory, very little lecture and pretty much anything is in the lab or lab based or like you said we have required internship students do so.

No.

It was a total game changer for us in March. Luckily for us you know we're a trimester institution and so when we left for spring break, we only had three weeks left of our semester, so we're kind of in a better spot than a lot of other schools that point. So at that point, it became, you know, success for us and for students at that point was pretty much a pep talk, you know. Hey, I know you don't want to do online. You've never done on line. You don't wanna try it. That's not why you're here, but we have to do.

Bro.

Some online I'm so finish this semester and then we'll see where we are after that. So it was a lot of pep talk talking to students that didn't want to do that type of learning format. So we got it. You know? Luckily, it was just three weeks, so we got him all through. But then for us you know we have our summer semesters. Usually two weeks after that, so we did push our summer semester start date back about a month and then we've pushed our fall start date back to so we actually haven't started our fall semester. We start.

On September 21st and we did come back to.

What did they name it? They came up with some fancy name for.

People rent.

Right?

Uh huh.

We did come back in the summer with hands on instruction, but it was they had to change the percentages for lecture and lab and redo every course description and all kinds of further huge adjustments for us and.

Really more so for our students that just don't thrive in that environment and didn't want to give it ago. And so that's been a lot of conversation that we've had to have with them. Choose 'cause some you know, a lot of students would choose to. Well, take a semester off and we'll see what's going to happen this fall. Well, our programs are locked step, and so it was OK. Well, let's have this conversation.

If you missed the summer semester, those you know core classes that you need this summer won't be available again until next summer, so the potentially pushing back your graduation an entire year and so just having those conversations was definitely interesting, but.

Yeah.

We we push on where?

Yeah, sure here. Here we are. Writing class is about to start and some institutions you know already started. Yeah and good questions coming in. So one good one and I segue you know. So what do you use in slate right? What do you do in slate to tackle some of these efforts, right? How do you keep engaged? What tools do you since late? What are you doing right? Basically so sable actually pitch it up to you first.

You've got.

It Concierge I'm going to mess up the type C urge messaging service, telephone, little bit about that and I've got you. I'll push them just let me know when you want to go to the next slide.

Yeah, OK, so we have. We use late in many ways and I saw someone asked earlier about purchasing something separate for student success and retention and we have looked into options for that. But you know we talked about. We have a ton of budget restrictions right now and so buying something completely separate is pricey. It could potentially it's really amazing, but we're we're finding ways that we can utilize slate for Student Success.

That we won't have to purchase something separately an we are better known institution, and so the more and more that we're able to get slate and banner to talk to each other, the more that will be able to do so. For right now, we're going to stick with utilizing Slayton anyway possible. And we love slate and I do have to say that this year was supposed to be my first time at Summit and I didn't get. We didn't have it, so I'm super bug. So fingers.

But

Sorry, I'm sorry about that next year.

next year, but we do have what we've set up as a concierge messaging system. Anet set up just like a regular comp low would be, but it's based off of a survey like almost everything that we do, we have a survey at the beginning so we will survey our new students when they enroll for.

They answer the survey and answer questions based off of things that you don't traditionally ask, just to make sure that they are getting all the resources and information sent to them. So we asked some questions you know are you going to be on campus? Are you interested in off campus? Are you a computer? Do you have health insurance coverage? Are you underinsured? You have dependants all different kinds of questions and then we use those survey results to build live queries within our messaging.

Do you want to do that? Yeah, thank you for an example. So we build live queries with each different message. So depending on how they respond to the survey will depend on which message they get. So it's not like sending blanket messages to every single student about every single resource that we have available to them. So for example, this one. I think it's asking them if they have a dependent. If they have health insurance and this is one that we send them about prescription. So if you.

Potentially have a hard time filling prescriptions because you don't have money for you or for your child. If you're underinsured then this message goes out to that specific audience.

An we time it out so they don't all go at the same time. We space them out throughout the semester depending on messages. They need an air times when they might need that and so it's set up just like a regular comp low, but it's for our currently enrolled students and it's things that they might not receive the information from a specific office or from an advisor or from a faculty member so they can message arrange. Excuse me from housing assistance. We do prescriptions.

Food service programs.

What does weatherization around here? A lot of people have to have fingerprinting services done to to interview for a job, so we have millions about that. We have millions about emergency utility assistance for people to help you know, pay their electric bill if they're getting a bind. So we have a lot of different of those resources. That was not our students, but only if they've indicated they might potentially need that service. So it's not just bombarding every student with every message.

Check so they get so you know I'm, you know, food insecure or you know gapping in healthcare coverage or something like that or my dependent. So I'm going to get this email. I click it and then you guys do a little something with that data, right?

Right?

Yeah, we we can. It just depends on which the messages. Some of them we track more than others. So for example we really use the student timeline wherein that all day, everyday recruitment and.

In student success, and so, just as an example.

This student and I went back a couple years to find this. Just because I remembered this one off the top of my head.

In your interactions you, I mean you guys have the data tracking reports for all the messages that you send out. Or you can go by individual timeline. So there are things in there that we can utilize specially in our messaging. I like to say you know, don't just set it and forget it and think Oh well, everything's going automatically well. There are other ways that you can use that information and so for this specific student you know in just under a month time period you can see that they were reopening some of those emails over and over again.

And so we were looking at this student because they had been reported in early alert system and so this just gave us, you know that they weren't quite performing in class as well as they had been, and so we go back to their timeline and check this and use this information that they kept opening those same emails over and over and over again. And so we do the additional outreach job to that student.

You know how you were reported in early alert, but we wanted to kind of talk to see if there's something else going on that we can help you with and you know, come to find out that student had just recently become food insecure, an homeless. We needed to find them emergency housing as quickly as possible. And obviously when someone is dealing with those types of situations, they're not going to do well in their coursework. That's not their main focus at that time, and so that's kind of how utilized the tracking reports for our messaging and to kind of, you know, if you really looking at the information, you can see what students are in.

Interested in these miss systems? And they're not always going to reach out and ask someone for help. Sometimes that's our job to read between the lines and see how we can help them.

Yeah, and at this point, after the kind of data comes back to you at that point there's some type of human intervention, right? You know you pick up the phone or email them back. Personally, say hey table, you know, let's talk a little bit more about this. It's not then just another automated email. So this stage you would kind of say, OK, let's do some human intervention to actually talk to this.

And then, depending on the interactions or if we're not able to get in touch with that students, sometimes you know if they.

Sure.

OK.

Depending on their class schedule or what program there in, you know they have the same faculty for two years, so we can kind of have conversations with them to try to piece together what what's going on and work from that angle too. 'cause not every student is going to talk to someone you know they've never met me. They're not going to come and want to explore their their life situation, but maybe that faculty member that they've had for two or three semesters in a row could kind of step in in that position they were willing.

Yeah no, I agree and then talk to me a little bit about the early alert system. You've got the custom tab set up right?

Yes, so we are early. Alerts are reported by faculty into banner. We don't have it going directly into slate, but then we utilized slate for our tracking of our early alerts. So if the student has early alerts or their repeat early alerts, we can go to. We've created just the tab where we can go and see the early alert and the interaction and comments, and we just kind of use that for our own purposes for.

Tracking students and monitoring how they're how they're doing going forward.

Sure, sure, and it's a good point. You know there 'cause I get this question sometimes do well, you know, should sleep be the system of record for stuff like this you know, and maybe it should. Maybe it shouldn't. Every situation is different, but you brought it up that you know that it's created or it's conceived in banner, right? But then slate can become this kind of central data repository where the feeds come in.

Daily or whatever nightly that you know you. You pull the right pieces of information from the various other systems on campus where slave becomes this more or less one stop shop where you can.

Absolutely.

Uh huh.

Pull a lot of information. Yeah no, it's great. It's it's using an effective tool in slate right? That deliver functionality is really robust. It can be dynamic and then pulling the data to do something with that. It's it's really, really cool. So nice. So John, Let's pivot a little bit to you. So we talked a little bit about sleep becoming this one. Stop Segway unto you. Know Miami is one stop system, right? So from a technical perspective, you guys have taken a different route.

Where you've built out this really nice structure where slate does kind of become the one stop for everybody. From the portal perspective or from you know, linking out to different reports. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah, we we.

Drive.

Needed a platform for communication. I think that was first and foremost kind of why we were looking into slate. You went to begin with was because of the liver function and so we got Slayton and we were just be ready to go. We got we were able to build out all of the you know the the billing emails that we need to do the reminders an.

Just make sure we are actually communicating with students and then it came to the point where our one stop needed to transition their their system and so they were looking at other systems an.

The director and I just had, you know.

Yeah.

Yep.

A water cooler conversation about it and and just like hey yeah you know slate slate can do that functionality. It takes a little bit of custom work to get it to where you need it, but it can do it. And So what we ended up doing was we we used slate to be the one stop kind of ticket tracking for students and so every time a student either comes into the lobby.

Win the lobby was open when they came into the lobby. We would track him that way if they called in, we wanted to make sure that we track that conversation. You know, if they emailed in, you know we want to make sure. We also tracked you know all of those and so.

Oh yeah.

We were able to kind of build a dashboard which which is what that is where staff can go in and see what emails they need to respond to. So we use the inbox feature for the emails that come in for our lobby. We use the events module.

Uh huh.

And then for any any other ticket tracking on there for like the internally created though that that's forms. And so we needed A1 one place so that we could track event registrations. We could track form submissions and we could track in inbox and so that the portal was a great way to just kind of have that. And so regardless of how a.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Student Contacts the one stop. They know that they can go to one place to kind of track it. That way nothing falls through the cracks. That was kind of one thing we didn't want to happen was a student you know, reach out with with need an nobody responds to him so.

And nobody was four. Or you know that that they say it's, let's say it's not connected, right? If you have siloed department's or something like that, where I go to financial aid one day and then I have to go to the Register of the next financially. Doesn't know that I talked to the Register in the cell. You gotta go back, you know, like I can't help you until I hear from them your you said any any object, encounter, right, email, phone call they walk in every single one of those pieces of data, right? Those actions is documented somewhere in here.

Right.

Which is awesome, right? It's this becomes this mega Mega Aggregator of interactions, which is pretty cool.

Right, right and similar to disable, you know, we sometimes we we are on that timeline kind of looking up, you know what? What students you know have the letter we sent him are they? Are they coming into the office to talk about finances and like Are they having all these issues that you know it should be? You know an early warning tracking system would be fantastic for the first stuff like that where you can just you know before before they come to us. How can we go to them with?

With with with help.

And you know that.

Yeah, yeah, less less reactive proactive yeah.

Right?

Sure.

Exactly, you know in the timeline is great because it stores everything every time you every time a student submits a form it there's a record of the form submission. Every time they send an email, there's a message message received in the great thing about custom tabs. As you know, we even have a tab on the student record that's just about you know, one stop visits and one stop tickets so they can click on that tab and you can see every time a student has interacted with the one stop.

Go on there and so yeah. And so this is just a kind of some examples of what are.

System looks like and so once you clicked on one of those numbers on our main screen with, this was something where we wanted to be able to be at A at a glance you know what? What is it? Take it about and so the cool thing is that when a student emails us.

And the email us with you know their their Miami email account which is which is what they are there.

Yeah.

Their slate record is kind of based around once the email with that email address, it links directly to to their student record, and so right away when we get there email we can kind of see some general information about that student without having to go digging which made it made the one stop.

Yeah.

Hopefully we so we've had this going since January, I believe is when we launched a lot of this, so right before right before covid hit. And so our goal for measuring success was really to see.

How do we respond quicker? Can we respond better? Can we respond to students with?

More helpful information, and so how we're going to track that. You know, we still haven't.

Sure.

We're still collecting the data, but this has been great for the one stop staff. Just do a quick look and be like, Oh, this is this dude. This is kind of.

Yeah.

Yep.

This is what the student type is, and so that when they go into the email they don't have to go digging for. Oh, this is a graduate student is an undergraduate student campus. Are they on 'cause My Miami University we the main campuses in Oxford. But then you know we have we have a campus in a regional campus in Middletown Regional campus in Hamilton. We have our graduate students they study on our Voice of America canvas and we also have a campus in Luxembourg. And so we've got.

Yeah.

Sure.

We got campuses all over and so this system was really built to bring all of the students into one 'cause we are at the end of the day we are one Miami and so we use the same systems and so the staff that we have are here to support all the students and so we needed a system to put everybody instead of being a siloed campuses.

Yeah, yeah.

We were able to do it and so this this is lost. The screen here was just just the ticket so you can see that there's the the form submission that's on there. It's it's pretty basic what the student wants, and then the nice part is everything at the top is just autofilled based on once the ticket is connected to a student, and then there's notes and what the ticket history. So if we need to go back in to take history.

You know?

You can just click on it and it opens up the two to what that ticket was so that we're not hunting for any previous conversations.

Uh huh.

Yeah, yeah, really cool. So from an administrative user perspective, you built out this very nice interface to for the user to say I've got what I'm come to look for and I've got kind of this. This Birds Eye view a snapshot, right? I've got the type again like you said, maybe some history details so that you don't have to go looking back into much granular detail. It's awesome awesome, so we got. I want to make sure we got we have some time for questions that was rude. Both examples.

Practical examples were really, really fascinating. Thank you for sharing those. Put both of you are doing is awesome and unique. One question came in I think is really appropriate. Did you roll this out to all like the student services or student success folks at once? Or did you guys do like a phased approach? Was that timeline like sable? Maybe start with who was it was a quick. Was it over a year?

Who the early alert? Using slate for early alerts tracking was over?

I want to say 6 semesters an three different student success facilitators, so.

Time.

Yeah, that one was a little bit of work. We still don't have that exactly functioning the way that we would. We would like to for the concierge messaging. It was just as soon as we could get it all lined out and set up to go out just like a regular communication flow would.

And then utilizing the tracking information, that's just kind of the case by case. So our student success facilitator and then our assistant director and myself are the only ones that really will will dig into those situations as needed.

Sure, sure, OK and talk a little bit are either kind of comment on this. What about Ferpa issues with one step will say Ferpa and maybe HIPAA stuff, right? As you are enveloping more users from more Department since late. What's the strategic conversation that happens? Or is it happening at another level of where those?

Those user permissions are being brought up.

I'll say we have had some faculty ask that same question for our early alert tab. It has restrictive access, and so we're able to kind of manage who can see that for our our student workers that work in recruitment, they can't see any of that information. They have different.

Yes.

Access as well. So we yeah we don't have any issues with that.

Yep.

Yes, you've sanctioned off access by role or by permission, maybe by realm. Something like that. There's a couple of different ways to to tackle that. It kind of depends on the institution and these big segments of users that you want interacting. Somebody also brought up like. So what about student workers or tour guides? Or like peer mentors or something like that?

These are all customers, so the last one here. It just came back up. These are all custom built functions in slate. Is there any pre can student success functionality or data sets an it's an excellent question. I'll respond to that. A lot of this is just like slate itself. It's very processed, built.

While some of the things you know the functionality's in slate are deliver, for example, you're still going to build that kind of drip marketing campaign. For example, you still have to build things out, so similar statement with student success efforts, a lot of it is processed, built, and really kind of have to fit the mold for what exactly? What you're looking for, right? Like we always say for those who attended. You know, launchpad in the past.

There for every single there there are no two identical instances of slate, right? Everybody is unique and everybody has their own nuances, which is part of the nice configure ability and customization of slate.

Looks like we might have lost John. Might Ohio might had some.

Weather or something like that? Hopefully not that bad. We I don't want to.

Run out of time so Sable Anjan. Obviously I'll say you know. Thank you so much for sharing your time. There are some really good questions in the chat and maybe we can. We can follow up with you guys to to to connect with other partners. If you guys are willing just to talk a little bit about some of the other additional questions. Thank you all for attending. This was awesome. Thank you so much to Sable and John for your time. Thanks for coming back and joining us after a long weekend the next.

Upcoming events that we have is actually next Tuesday, September 15th at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. It's going to wrap up our apply to alumni series. Where are general general manager of advancement. Sean Kelly is going to be joined by some advancement partners for cultivating lifelong engagement. So thank you all both so much thank you all so much. Thank you both so much. Have a great rest of your day, have a great rest of your week and will see you later.

Bye.