Keith Paul (Northern Essex Community College) on The New Blueprint for Student Belonging

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Keith Paul to discuss student engagement and retention, and how to leverage data to improve student outcomes.  

Transcript

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Shauna Cox (00:05):Hi, and welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, your go-to podcast for conversations about transformation and innovation across higher education. I'm your host, Shauna Cox, and I'm excited to dive into today's conversation. Today I'm speaking with Keith Paul, who is Chief Marketing Officer at Northern Essex Community College. We explore student engagement and retention and how to leverage data to improve student outcomes. Let's get into it. Welcome to the Illumination podcast.

Keith Paul (00:34):Thanks, Shauna. Glad to be here.

Shauna Cox (00:37):We are here to chat about communication channels with today's learners, particularly with more traditional age students, I would say. So I want to kick off our conversation and first ask, how have the communication expectations of say Gen Z, gen Alpha even evolved compared to earlier student populations?

Keith Paul (00:57):I'll use myself as a reference. Gen X, where we grew up with the telephone, the actual telephone, rotary dial, and all of that. I was in a conversation with a colleague yesterday who shared that they have some Gen Z kids and they teach all ages. But a stunning development I think is emerging culturally amongst our youngest friends is they're talking on the phone, not quite like I just described, picking up the phone and dialing a number, and you have the long cord that you stretch through the kitchen so that you think you have some privacy. It's more like FaceTime, that kind of thing, but actually speaking into the device rather than just texting or doing something on social media. So aside from that, that's an interesting trend to see happening, but they want snackable, fast, authentic content and mobile first. Mobile first. If it's not a text, it's got to be a damn good email, or you have to have some really unique and engaging social media content.

(01:56):And if you're going to do memes, you got to do 'em well. You got to use simple language. You got to not use jargon. It's got to be two-way interaction if you can personalize. So if you are in an organization that has more than a basic CRM, use it. Personalize, actually, I take that back. You don't need more than a basic CRM. You can do it with constant contact. As long as you upload names with your email addresses, you can do that level of personalization. And it goes a long way. People like to hear their name and they want to be recognized. So I think if you can do it in an authentic way, as an aside, if you listen to a lot of commercial radio, there's a trend now, at least in my market, I'm assuming it's in others, particularly in morning shows or evening drive shows, the on air talent is doing reads for ads, live reads, and sometimes they work because the talent actually uses and advocates those products. But when they don't, it is glaringly obvious and it's actually cringe-worthy. So I think above anything with all of that, it's be authentic. Just be authentic. Be authentic.

Shauna Cox (03:09):Yeah, absolutely. And mentioning the personalization we have that so commonly in our everyday life, Netflix, Amazon, any recommendations, all your social media, everything's kind of catered to you. So what lessons from the private sector can higher ed apply to create that more connected student experience at the institution?

Keith Paul (03:31):Really using technology? Well, you don't need to be a well-funded,

(03:38):I'm in a community college. We're not what you would consider well-funded by higher ed standards, right? We're not a Harvard, we're not a UMass. We work in our lane and we make it work well for us. I think the advantage there, at least with money and with marketing is we have tight geographic service territories. So that really stretches a buck a long way. But when it comes to technology, you don't need to go buy the flashiest CRM, get what works for you and use it well. Just know what your features are and ask yourself, how can I use these to customize and personalize? We're not doing anything dynamic yet. I would love to, but we are doing as best we can to use our content in as many ways as we can.

Shauna Cox (04:18):And touching back on a point that you mentioned earlier, you talked about authenticity, which I think is so important. And when we talk about meeting students where they are, I think that that's a common thread throughout higher ed, but what does that actually look like in practice when you're looking at various communication channels?

Keith Paul (04:36):Well, here at Northern Essex, we are New England's first Hispanic serving institution, and I'm using that as an example of how to answer your question. And that was back in 2001, and when we crossed that 25% threshold, I think it was still 25 back then. But anyway, we're cruising towards 50% student population, and that's because where we are in Massachusetts, north of Boston, we have the largest concentration of families from the Dominican Republic outside of the DR in New York City statuses in H. We also have a lot of Puerto Ricans and Brazilians and others, but with a large Hispanic population and meeting students where they are, Hispanic families, decisions are made by the family. So this is not a student who, what you might traditionally think of, I'll use my nieces as an example. Actually, she's a junior in high school and right now she's looking at colleges right now I've noticed and amongst my high school friends or my college friends who have similarly aged kids, there is a trend now, and I'm not entirely sure what it is, not being a parent, where students now are starting to really obviously choose southern schools.

(05:44):Much of my nieces experience through high school, she was convinced she was going to go to Harvard as she does well in school, and she's like, oh, well, Harvard's the pinnacle and I'm going to go there. Over the winter break, they went down and toured a bunch of schools down south, and right now her first choice is Alabama. That's not a luxury that community college students have. It's they live and work in our service territory. They don't have either the first generation, they don't know how the college experience works. Life gets in the way. I don't mean that to sound pejoratively. It's a community college student. They're living life. They're not that traditional four year when I majored in parties at UMass. But so they have those responsibilities, they're caring for their extended families, whatever it is, they're holding down a job. They're caring for their family, their kids.

(06:41):I had a video shoot last week with a student athlete on our nationally ranked basketball team. They just came back from the NJCA tournament. He revealed in the interview that he works full time and is enrolled full-time and is able to contribute to a nationally ranked basketball team. So it's all the unique things of providing students where they are. There's a word for that, equity on what they need to succeed. And I'll use our basketball team as example as we use academic coaches to really help keep them on track. They're required to meet with their coach on a regular basis, one, to make sure that they have what they need to succeed as a student, but also for any tutoring or advisement or any of those kinds of things they need. So all of these things, there's whole, I don't know, a wide variety of tactics, tools you could use, not just on the marketing side, just on the retention side, just to really zero in on what a student needs to succeed. And it's different than it was my own experience going the traditional four year residential path is it's very different. I didn't have to worry about my next meal. I was living in a dorm. I didn't have to worry about a roof over my head. I didn't have kids. So these are all factors that we just have to think differently about and adjust how we're bringing higher ed to those audiences.

Shauna Cox (08:00):And I want to expand on that idea of the tools and tactics. I think they're really important. We've talked about the student experience, but I want to talk about the people behind that student experience. So how can institutions design systems and strategies that are responsive to the student's needs without overwhelming the staff resources?

Keith Paul (08:18):It's kind of the 80 20 rule, and I think that still holds true with a lot of community college students, even though they have different needs than traditional four year students, is you can reasonably expect 80% of your students to be able to figure it out. And that may be a plus or minus depending on your institution or your particular population. But if you focus on really, really helping the 20% or rising tide lifts all boats. So if you're developing the models with advising, with tutoring, with coaching, with hours of availability, with a third space where they can be between classes or they have to kill time before work or whatever it is, if you're providing at least basic, comfortable, desirable amenities for them, they can leverage to achieve their study goals, that's what you got to do. By zeroing in on that 20%, you're going to help the other 80, but you really can't boil the ocean by focusing on that smaller group.

(09:14):You are going to help the others. It's just rolling up your sleeves and focusing that effort on the highest need. You're going to help everybody. And some of it, my previous institution, we had a story that we love to tell that kept a student who had to drive, I think 20, 30 miles each way to get to class. And he had one barrier to being able to be in class, and that was being able to put gas in his car. So the college foundation gave him a gas card problem solved and the kid graduated. It's kind of thinking those ways, and there'll be more. Right now, Northern Essex is in a study with Bunker Hill Community College in Boston on looking at doubling Pell to see how that helps. So there'll be more information coming out about that later this summer or into the fall, but it's promising.

(10:01):It's what are the barriers that prevent folks from getting into education Here in Massachusetts, the state government likes to brag that we are the most educated of the 50 states in terms of population per capita. I think we've just crossed half on folks who have a degree who live in Massachusetts. What does that mean? The larger national conversations, or traditionally the conversation was you got to go to college, you can get a good job. And that is becoming not so true anymore, especially with population changes. You have that happening. We have a massive retirement cliff of all sorts of vocations across many sectors, particularly trades. I think just in my lifetime, I've seen the shift between when I was in high school, those kids went to vtechs, those kids went to community colleges. That's flipping right now in Massachusetts, the vtechs are in high demand.

(11:00):They have wait lists because folks are realizing, oh yeah, no, a traditional academic degree might not be the thing for me. I might be better suited as a tradesperson. Plumbing might be my bag. I might be an amazing electrician. And folks are starting to realize, well, if I have one of those trade degrees coming out of whatever VO tech program, technical program, community college program to do that, they're often making much more money than somebody who's stepping out of here with an associate degree or even people stepping out with a bachelor's degree. We need so many more of those people, right? Society is going to need them to whatever extent we can, not just students where they are in life and what the support they need to attend a post-secondary education in whatever it is. It's recognizing that a trade might be a solution, and there's plenty of opportunities. You look around, we have solar coming, we have wind, and we have community colleges here in Massachusetts that are focusing on those things. So it's being able to pivot, offering those kinds of different things rather than solely focusing on academic. So social needs of the sport needs, but this is the actual, what's your actual interest? We shouldn't shoehorn you into a business degree, and I'm, I'm not picking on business degrees, but yeah, okay. Pick a vocation that might be what is actually best for you for a variety of reasons.

Shauna Cox (12:21):A four year degree isn't the end all to be all. And it's not to say someone might not get it, it just either might not be for them or they might want to get it later on, then it can stack into it. But giving them the ability to choose what they want for what they need right now, I think is really important. And to your point earlier, focusing on right now is so critical, but I think at the same time, it's really important to kind of be future forward thinking. So what emerging channels or approaches will play a larger role in shaping how institutions are engaging with their learners throughout that whole student life cycle?

Keith Paul (12:56):That solution is still figuring itself out

(12:59):With all the changes with social media. I mean social media, yes, you got to do it. You got to do it well, you got to do it authentically. Meanwhile, you have the things happening with X and is blue Sky going to get critical mass, mass done still out there? But because right now that space is a little fractured, we don't know what's going to happen with TikTok. So you just got to be able to pivot, pay attention, and have your teams ready and trained to use those platforms in an authentic way and doing it strategically. I think I can confidently say as a marketing industry, we're moving away from the birdshot approach to social media where you take the same thing and blast it out on every channel. So everybody kind understands now that that's bad practice. You can have the same story on all channels.

(13:50):You just got to customize it for the channel. And we've been doing that, primarily focusing on Instagram and TikTok for our prospective students. And we know Facebook is all of us old fogies, so we are using that as more of a community bulletin board. That's the kind of approach we're taking with Facebook and LinkedIn. Here at our institution, we're trying to grow our corporate education division, so that's an obvious place to reach that audience. So we're not posting student events on LinkedIn. Our students are not looking at LinkedIn and even events that we promote on Facebook, it's is the community interested in this? Are our local alumni interested in this? That's one of the first questions we'll ask of ourselves. We are also, right now, we've identified here at our institution, five or six different tools across the college we're using to text students. That's a problem, right?

(14:42):Because we don't have any oversight into what everybody's sending to the students. So the fear, and I think the reality is probably we are overwhelming with too much information because there's no coordinated approach to it. So we have an effort to identify how we're texting and what tools are texting and how we're going to text. There's another number of other needs that folks would like to text. So it's like we're trying to identify those, but also identify best practice. One bad practice example of texting we've identified is, oh, well, we have an event in a couple days and RSVPs are really, really low. Can we send a text blast? They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

(15:22):But we use those to open up conversations around, well, okay, do we need to help you with the communications plan to help drive awareness to this thing? We have email newsletters, we have digital displays, we have an announcements page on the website. We have Blackboard. It's like, how are we using all the tools that we have to really get the message out there? Because we all ingest information differently. So if email works for me, Shauna, you might prefer a text or you might prefer to scroll through Instagram. You just don't know. So you've got to be smart about how you're working it. And we do know, I haven't done this in a couple of years, but the media prep survey has proven over and over and over again that students still want email, but it's got to be good. No more kitchen sink emails, no more negative language. You got to do this by then. It's be helpful. Give them some runway. Don't give them last minute demands. If it's targeted, concise and well-planned email is amazing. Doesn't matter which LMS you use, use it. People will laugh when I say this, it's nobody reads anything anymore. And we have an English professor here who is studying that phenomenon, and there's lots of articles out there, something around the topic of Is reading dead? I think it's still being figured out

(16:38):Young students just because of social media, because a variety of other factors tend to sit down with a book less than they used to. Okay, why is that? So do you have to pivot and teach differently? Because you can't say, oh, read chapters two through seven tonight. How do you think of that differently? And as a marketer, it's knowing that folks don't read. How do I shift how we communicate in a way that is more readable for them? And one change we made to our weekly newsletters is they used to be junk drawers, right? And internally, I would call it the CVS receipt of emails. And that's because we would literally put anything and everything folks submitted for inclusion in newsletter, which instantly made it not usable.

(17:21):So we've just implemented some simple rules. It's like, okay, if you're promoting an event, it can't be more than three weeks from now. If it's an event, it has to be on the website calendar. If it's anything else, it has to be somewhere on the website or depending on who the audience is. And we just want a quick little blurb and a link so that we can add multiple things so that folks can scroll through and see what does or doesn't apply to them or what is or isn't of interest to them so that they can get some use out of the newsletters. And I'm excited that for employees, we've got the readership up to 40% for students that hovers at 30%. Those are pretty damn good metrics for email. Just trying to make things a little bit more useful, a little less, I dunno, onerous.

(18:06):Another thing we've done for employees, we just in the past year launched a new internet and the killer feature that we used to help accelerate adoption is we let employees blog. And there is no real vetting or screening or anything like that. They can just blog. And the newest six, I believe, show up on the internet homepage. So we encourage them. Instead of sending a campus ebus, we don't let them do that anymore either, because that got overwhelming. If you want to get stuff out to everybody, blog about it. And as a sweetener, we said, and it'll automatically show up on the internet homepage for time as newer blogs knock you off the homepage, that's going to happen. But we'll also automatically include you in our newsletters so they don't have to submit it, they don't have to ask. It just gets done. So we're just really trying to create some automation wherever we can really cross pollinating wherever we can to really help students and employees understand what's happening.

(19:03):There's a lot happening on our campus and it's overwhelming, right? My team can't keep up with it. So we try to build these mechanisms that help us, help them, help us, help them, help us by introducing easy to use tools. And the latest, I've used a previous version of SharePoint and it was horrific. I hated it. The current version, amazing. It's like if you've used Word once, you can use SharePoint. That's the fixes that Microsoft made with the tool, and it made it useful for us. It didn't cost us anything to develop a new internet other than staff time. So it's really just trying to think differently about your resources.

Shauna Cox (19:39):Yeah, I love that you're not putting everything in one basket and you're adapting. It's important to adapt to the different needs and wants because I am avid reader at the same time. I scroll through everything and everything needs to be fast. Totally makes sense. And I love the work that you guys are doing there. Those are all the questions that I have for you. But before I let you go, we do need a restaurant recommendation based on where you are. But I know for you, we're going to tweak it a little bit, and you're going to go from campus area, Boston, and then where you are in New York because you travel there a lot. So someone's in Boston and New York where they need to go

Keith Paul (20:16):In Boston, make time to go to the north end. That is the old Italian neighborhood. You can go see Paul Revere's house. It's still there, but you can also get an amazing Italian meal anywhere. But my favorite is Giacomo's. Their menu is heavily influenced with seafood. All the pasta and sauces are made in-house, but there's a catch. They only take cash. And if you're an early eater, you have to be in line by four o'clock. So if not an early eater, you're okay. So if you're in line after the first seating is done, you'll get it within short time. But there's also no dessert, no coffee. They have beer and wine. It is amazing. It is worth it if you were in the north end and because they don't have dessert. So if you're in the north end, you're going to see, and if you're new to Boston, you're going to probably hear something about the rivalry between Mike's pastry and modern pastry.

(21:13):Skip both, walk a couple blocks over to Bova, there'll be no line, and it's better. So that's my Boston recommendation. Amazing. And New York. My New York recommendation is actually a Connecticut recommendation because I live in Massachusetts and because I find myself in New York City on a fairly regular basis on Interstate 84 in Connecticut, in Vernon, Connecticut, there is a Jewish deli called Rinds. It is amazing. And anytime I'm driving that way, I stop at RINs if either if I have time to eat or they have a lot of to-go options. So those are my recommendations if you're in those areas.

Shauna Cox (21:49):Amazing. I love it. Keith, thank you so much for the conversation. It was great chatting with you.

Keith Paul (21:54):Great. Thanks, Shauna. This was fun.

Shauna Cox (21:58):This podcast is made possible by a partnership between Modern Campus and the Evolution. The modern campus engagement platform powers solutions for non-traditional student management, web content management, catalog and curriculum management, student engagement and development, conversational text messaging, career pathways, and campus maps and virtual tours. The result innovative institutions can create Learner to Earner Lifecycle that engages modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency. To learn more and to find out how to modernize your campus, visit modern campus.com. That's modern campus.com.