869: LIVE From Ellucian Live 2024 - with ⁠⁠⁠Leroy Doubleday⁠, & ⁠Wilmani Humphries⁠, Ellucian⁠⁠, ⁠Nichole Pollard⁠, ⁠Frederick Community College⁠, & ⁠Sarah Prince⁠, ⁠Prince George's Community College⁠

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience Podcast where we make education your business. Dr. Joe Sallustio back with you on another episode of the podcast here at Ellucian Live 2024 in San Antonio, Texas. Fresh off an incredible panel with my amazing colleagues across higher education and Ellucian. We had a pretty good sized audience and we got to talk all about financial aid and enrollment and the synergies that have to exist in probably the most incredible pressure-filled time in the history of higher education as the government has decided to change the FAFSA on us for the first time in 40 years and not make it work at the same time.

So we're all dealing with the struggles, the configurations, the flow, the communications, and ultimately trying to serve students when we aren't sure how. And that is what makes it hard. FAFSA filings are down by almost 30%. And you know, we still have adult students that have to do FAFSAs too. So we think traditional a lot of times, but we have all sorts of students that need to complete a FAFSA. And we have to find out how we can work closer together in enrollment and admissions to make it happen.

So I brought that panel here to the podcast. We're going to have almost exactly the same conversation again, except this time I don't have to give any answers. You all have to give me answers. So let me bring you in one at a time. First on my left, Will Humphries, he's Solutions Consultant at Ellucian. Will, what's up?

Will Humphries: Nothing much, nothing much. Happy to be here. Thank you, Joe.

Joe Sallustio: We're happy to have you and that deep voice here on the podcast. I feel very inadequate. My voice feels very high-pitched right now. Oh, we have with us Lee Doubleday, old friend of mine, specialty account executive at Ellucian. Lee, we've known each other for over 10 years.

Lee Doubleday: I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Joe.

Joe Sallustio: Lee is one of the people in my life that does the sound effects for me. Actually, as I'm walking down a hallway, he yells things at me, which is great. It brings the podcast, follows me wherever I go. And next on the list here, we have Sarah Prince. She is director of recruitment and admissions at Prince George's Community College. What's going on, Sarah?

Sarah Prince: Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I wasn't on the panel, so I'm glad that you guys invited me.

Joe Sallustio: You're on the panel now. So do you know what questions I'm gonna ask? You guys all got the prep, right?

Sarah Prince: You didn't get the prep? No, I didn't.

Joe Sallustio: That's why you gotta stay ready so you never get ready.

Sarah Prince: That's right. You don't need to get ready if you stay ready.

Joe Sallustio: Correct. And last but not least, Nicole Pollard. She's Associate Vice President for Student and Financial Support Services at Frederick Community College in Maryland. There you go. We're representing us. We've got Georgia, we've got Maryland. Your institution is in?

Sarah Prince: Also in Maryland.

Joe Sallustio: Also in Maryland, and you live in DC, so we're all over the place. Guys, I would say we had a pretty nice panel, a good discussion talking about synergies and enrollment of financial aid. I'm going to start with Sarah, since you weren't part of the panel, but you're here now. What are you dealing with right now in your world, admissions, recruitment? It's a crazy time.

Sarah Prince: Yeah, it's a crazy time. And I think a lot of what was discussed in the panel is similar to the challenges that we're dealing with, but I think the important thing that was resonated is that it's not just an admissions issue, right, and as the director of admissions, it's an enrollment management issue. It's an institutional issue. But the more we collaborate and we discuss things with each other, we can be tactical, because we have to be. Our strategies or the things that we did 20 years ago, 10 years ago, last year, aren't necessarily gonna work. And so we're really dealing with being able to communicate with our students and meet them where they are, wherever that is, our adult students, our younger students. I have a decent sized dual enrollment program and so they're in the mix as well.

Joe Sallustio: You know you said something that I'm gonna pass to Nicole. You said meet students where they are. We get that, we get that in enrollment, I think we get that in financial aid. People say that in higher ed though and then don't know what it actually means. What do you think about that statement? Meet students where they are. What does that mean now in the context of higher ed and its value?

Nicole Pollard: So I think one of the things is, unlike a lot of my colleagues, I really truly do believe students are customers. They have choices. They have choices in modality. They have choices in the brand that's offered, whether it's online, whether it's abroad. They have a lot of choices and we need to know what it is that we need to know our customer. And maybe this is me coming from the world of banking. You gotta know your customer. If you don't know your customer, how are you going to give them the product or sell them the product that they need?

And one of the things in financial aid that I've noticed that I've learned over years - because I've been doing this for a couple years, couple, couple, ten - one of the things that I've learned is students don't know what they don't know until they don't know it. And it's our job to try to like pull that information out of them, ask those leading questions, and ultimately guide them to where they need to go. So if they're coming in and they woke up this morning and said, "I think I want to go to college today," it is our job to meet them there and say, "Okay. Did you think about payment? Okay, did you think about what program you're interested in?" Have you thought about how much it's going to cost and what do you want to do with the art degree? And just having those conversations and getting them in front of the right people.

And in financial aid, one of the things that we, I always say it's a shared responsibility across the campus. It doesn't matter whether you're an adjunct professor or the president of the college. When we administer Title IV aid, it is a shared responsibility. So what financial aid people know is they know about retention because of default rates. They know about retention because of SAP. They know about the admissions pipeline because we can't compensate people in order to get, we can't get bonuses because you got 10 extra students, right? It violates the rules. So they are completely connected from beginning to end, which means they have to know the students in order to serve them effectively.

Joe Sallustio: I agree. Let's go over to the guys here, Ellucian. You're talking to higher ed and helping with configurations with financial aid. You're talking to higher education and hearing about what needs and wants and desires and problems we have. What do you guys, what's the conversation sound like from your customers, from your potential customers?

Will Humphries: Yeah, you know, we kind of talked about this upstairs, Sarah, about meeting students where they are. Sometimes that's not always, you know, people being available to talk to people. Don't like it. Yeah. And so, you know, how do we provide personalized guidance to students 24-7? Because the chances are, and like, you know, I know you both know, because you're at community colleges, you know, students are working. You know, they have lives outside of school that have to work together. So, you know, how do we improve our processes internally to accommodate our students and meet them where they are? Sometimes not always, you know, a people problem. It could be a technology problem or at least technology to help supplement, you know, some of those issues.

Lee Doubleday: I agree. I mean, what I've seen, to what I'm hearing is ultimately across the higher education spectrum, institutions are being forced to do more with less people, less money, less resources, less students. And so really it comes down to where can an efficiency be found for that department, for that office? How can we get the student from enrollment to aid disbursement quicker? What can be done to make things ultimately easier for that department so they can support students, right? It comes down to process, making it easier. Why are you keying things in? Can we take out some of the manual entry?

Joe Sallustio: I feel like you're taking us to church now. I'm sweating thinking about keying things in.

Lee Doubleday: So it's just making things easier for those...

Sarah Prince: Yeah, removing barriers for students.

Lee Doubleday: And work smarter, not harder.

Sarah Prince: Exactly. That way happier employees, their interactions with the students are going to be more positive.

Lee Doubleday: Exactly. That was a percent. I mean, you can actually meet with the students if you're not pillaging over an Excel document of a thousand lines of data that could have just been a quick...

Nicole Pollard: To clean that up because the data's... You can't put in bad data. Then increasing the risk of exposure, so you got to make sure that it's correct.

Joe Sallustio: You ladies dealing with staff right now and the pressure... I mean, what is... I'm having very similar conversations to you all and it's very hard for me to explain it. I said this in the panel, it's very hard to explain this to other departments who, other departments or other leaders on what these conversations sound like. Cause I have staff come to me and go, you know, with emotion going, "I just can't," or "I'm not sure," somebody's coming in, you know, students are going, "Give me my package." And it's like, can't. What are you guys doing? What are you ladies doing to have these conversations with your staff to try to keep them balanced? I don't even know how, you know what I'm trying to ask you, but it's a hard question to ask.

Nicole Pollard: So I think one of the things that, I'm a very people-centered person. From a leadership standpoint, one of the first meetings that I, I meet with everyone who's new, and when I acquire a team, I meet with every single person on my team and my reporting line. And the first conversation that I have is I say, look, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna work on three things. The first thing we're gonna work on is trust. 100%. The second thing we're gonna work on is trust. The third thing we're going to work on is trust and everything else will follow.

So for me, the foundation is building a solid foundation of trust because if you're if you don't trust me and I don't trust you, you're not going to be honest with me when there's a problem. And I've seen that you're not... I'm not going to be honest with you because I don't trust you to do what you're supposed to do. So I'm going to go around you. So we have to build that relationship first. People are going to make mistakes. Right. So we have to be able to give grace. When I came to my current institution, it was not an atmosphere where trust was there or where people felt psychologically safe. So I spent a lot of time building confidence, encouraging people to take some risk, calculated risks, but encouraging them. Like, and it doesn't mean that they didn't make mistakes. There were mistakes to be made, but them knowing that, know what, Nicole's gonna have my back as long as you're honest with what you're doing and you're not just reckless, we'll figure it out, right?

Joe Sallustio: So the trust goes beyond the tactics at this point, right? I can't do anything but we're gonna work together on this. You trust me, I trust you, so we can rise above the aggravation and frustrations.

Nicole Pollard: Exactly. And I think that's the... if they feel supported then they will do pretty much anything I need them to do. But also boundaries. As a leader, one of the things that I do, like I work all hours. It's ridiculous.

Joe Sallustio: Yikes!

Nicole Pollard: But one of the things I do - not recommend it. But one of the things that I do, I've also learned to do recently is even though I'm typing up email at four o'clock in the morning, because I am an early riser, I delay send because I don't want them feeling like, my gosh, panic in the morning. Do I respond? What is, is there a problem? Nicole, AVP said... First of all. And it sets a precedent. Because if I'm emailing you at 3 o'clock in the morning... Same with the weekend. I have something, if it's that urgent, because as the director, you're the one signing the PPA, I'm going to pick up the phone and be like, hey, I need something right now.

Nothing... I also say no one in the history of financial aid has ever died because they didn't receive a financial aid award notification. It just has never happened. So it could be urgent. It's important. But it's not life-threatening. So how do we navigate this problem and just bring that down and work smarter like you said Sarah instead of harder.

Sarah Prince: Yeah and I think an important thing too that you mentioned that's happening now in higher ed is I think there's been a shift in not just I think the community college space where we live in but even in the four-year institutions where there's a lot of change happening and it's great especially from a leadership standpoint because the leadership styles of the past have have sunset in some regard and I think that's been helpful for my team. Because like you said, the trust factor, right? And having those open lines of communication and letting them know that it's my job to make sure you do your best work and I need you to focus on the things that you can control. But when there are things that you can't control, I need you to communicate that to me because I can't help you if I don't know what's happening.

And so, my direct reports may be a small subset, but their direct reports are a large portion of my team. And so making sure that communication flows. And then just kind of keeping your ear to the murmurings of the other things that happen that impact work because the same things that are impacting the students academically are also impacting your staff at various levels. You know, I've got grade five through 15, 16 on my team and so there are different challenges that they may be experiencing outside of work and you have to be sensitive to that and how it impacts their day-to-day especially when you're asking them to do more with less and fewer resources.

But it's really helpful at events like this, at Ellucian Live, where you can really look at where can I create opportunities to relieve some of that pressure that's been building since the pandemic and kind of show them that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. But the integration of, you know, individuals from the college here, from our IT department, HR, the bursar, student accounts, having all of us here at the same time, really honing in on what are things that we can integrate into our strategic enrollment management plan that we can implement efficiently and effectively. It may be a long-term fix, but some of these integrations and implementations may create things that definitely ease the burden of the folks that are really boots on the ground. Like I speak to students all the time if I need to, but the day-to-day, right? That's part of your job. And you can spend less time uploading something that can be directly imported through an integration.

Nicole Pollard: I'm going say one of the things that I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about just integrating and using technology, leveraging technology. Frederick is a very interesting area where I want to say like 15 years ago, it was 90% white. And now it's we're on track to be a minority-serving institution by 2029. And when I learned that I was like, wait, we don't have... we don't hardly have anyone that speaks Spanish. And my Spanish is very poor nowadays. So I can't really help you, but how do we serve that? I can't go out and hire. Yeah, I've got to change the model in some ways. Right. I need to find some other technology that's going to help support that.

And also, because I do have disability access services in my portfolio, I need to make sure these things are accessible to my students, because we're also close to the Maryland School for the Deaf. So I've got to know who my students are and what they need, and how can I leverage that technology? That's when we implemented student forms. I had that in a previous institution and I was like, wait, paper? What is this thing you refer to as paper?

Joe Sallustio: Well, let's start the insanity.

Nicole Pollard: Exactly. And then we're talking about my previous institution, when we implemented that system, we went from, I think, a four-week turnaround time to a 48-hour turnaround time in verification. Imagine that. Now, if you're not dealing with these convoluted workflows in this other system and then you got to send out a manual email to a student like hey fix this and then of course they don't do it right the first time, right? And so in some places they're still mailing documents. That's gonna take not just the... it's not just pressure on your students but it's also pressure on your staff because why would I want to do that? Why would I come to work every day to do this manual stuff when I can just go on TikTok and enjoy life and learn how to do Excel magical Excel things.

Joe Sallustio: It's fuzzy math.

Nicole Pollard: Right. So I think that that technology piece is a huge piece but you have to be intentional. You have to create a plan when you're talking about the enrollment management plan. You have to be very strategic in how you put all of those things together.

Sarah Prince: You talk about equity and as a minority-serving institution, we're seeing a lot more diversity within our diversity. And you know, within my staff, I have some bilingual staff from a Spanish standpoint, but not necessarily French, Pashto, Dari, some of the things that we're seeing a need for. And even though we're continuing to diversify our hiring, I'm still kind of leading the charge in terms of we've got to create equity within that as well. Because if you're not going to compensate someone for that additional skill and if you're going to expect that person to always be available when you need someone, it doesn't necessarily create equity from a staffing standpoint. And it's also not equitable for the student, right? In terms of the time they have to wait for this one person, or in my case, three, that might be available to speak to them.

So creating things like a chatbot, right? That has that built-in integration, but it's conversational. It's not extremely formal or Google Translate powered. And creating things that, like you said, from a disability standpoint, you know what the students are looking for. It's really key and you really have to be honed in on what it is you're trying to accomplish because sometimes what happens is you create additional issues and I've heard this throughout a lot of the sessions. Like you think you're implementing a solution but you're creating more problems or you're in enrollment language, you're impacting yield, right?

I'm in admissions but I think about retention and I can get you as many students as you want but they're not going to stay if they don't feel welcome. That you're just putting a Hispanic face on a flyer, but when I show up, you don't have visibility within the institution of the programs that are there to support students like myself and make me feel welcome, or things that are available so my parents can feel welcome at your sessions. So it's definitely an equity challenge as well as a conversation that needs to be had in terms of, what do they say, equality? Is everyone getting a pair of shoes? Equity is everyone getting a pair of shoes that fit. And so it's important to have those conversations. Like, yeah, just because you're diverse doesn't mean you have equity.

Joe Sallustio: This is an important conversation for you guys to listen to. So much comes from this higher ed administrator to higher ed administrator flow. And as the solutions consultants, you're sitting there going, "Ooh, we got to talk about that." Why did you guys put together a panel on financial aid and admissions at this technology conference?

Lee Doubleday: Well, I mean, yeah, I'll start. So I know you very well, Joe, and I know you're a little bit...

Joe Sallustio: A little bit. Ten years.

Lee Doubleday: I want to say very, but no, I'm just kidding. But yeah, I mean, what I am seeing, and I'm glad you brought up retention, because a lot of times people think about technology like, from the student standpoint, we're improving the student experience, but we are also improving the staff experience. And in higher education, we know sometimes can be a revolving door.

Joe Sallustio: And so if we're making things easier for our staff to be retained, that's the bread and butter.

Lee Doubleday: Amazing! I thought you were waiting for that one.

Joe Sallustio: I was. Thank you. So yeah, I wanted to do a session talking about enrollment and financial aid because I think there is an attack on higher education as far as students believing they could go to YouTube for free and get the same thing. The way that enrollment and financial aid package together the value of higher education together is the harmony that we all need in this space and what students need. And so that's why I decided we should talk about this. And Will, you joined up here with Lee to do it because you've got the background in F.A.

Will Humphries: Yeah, pretty much. And so I was happy when they reached out to me. I was pretty excited about it too because, you know, the reason I asked that question earlier... I asked in the session in the panel, asked everybody, "Do you have regular meetings with your admissions office from a financial aid perspective?" And I asked that question because it had an impact on me when I first found out and learned what all went into getting a student. You know, and so I realized okay, if it takes this much work to get the student, I need to make sure I'm doing my part in financial aid to keep the student and to make it as easy as possible for them.

And so, you know, also I realized that I want everybody to realize how important it is from the financial aid and admissions standpoint to work together. I remember on my campus I started having regular meetings where I would present some aspects of financial aid to the admissions team, not so they could turn around and have necessarily a conversation with students about financial aid, but just so they understand what we're doing and maybe before they create a policy or change the process or procedure they think about financial aid and then vice versa. Before we change something or do something, we're thinking about the impact it can have within admissions. So it was very important to me and so I was happy Lee brought me in on it.

Joe Sallustio: Is the timing of this conversation... I mean literally right now today our teams are dealing with this issue, right? FAFSA, ISIR process, working, not working, staff freaking out, people calling in sick, mental health concerns, you know people throwing their hands up, negativity sometimes because you can't help the student, happy students, mad students, it's all over the board. So as you mentioned that, I literally just sent an email, FAFSA update, more than 7 million FAFSA forms have been submitted but there have been issues with the application, tax data, discrepancies that directly affects student aid index. And the list goes on.

Nicole Pollard: What are we doing? Our IT department is trying to put in PeopleSoft updates. But we just wait because there's going to be some more updates because it's not right. The Department of Ed didn't give them the specifications they needed. And how are we going to communicate with that student?

Joe Sallustio: Administrators, we still got to get students, whether there's a FAFSA or no FAFSA.

Nicole Pollard: Exactly. But you don't give me any institutional aid to help them pay for their tuition.

Joe Sallustio: Give them more aid, but you can't increase the discount.

Nicole Pollard: And we don't have discounts at the community college. So there's that. You know, it's one... it's this creating... one of the things that I was very intentional about when we decided to go with student forms was to say, this was kind of nefarious... was like, I don't have much trust in my SIS, but I know what I dealt with with student forms at a previous institution. I know that I was able to load ISIRs and the workflows would be set up and it was like magic. I'm done, right?

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. Just for the audience to know that Nicole and I have institutions that do not use Ellucian. But we are here looking at the product set going, maybe we, maybe that would be great.

Nicole Pollard: That was one of the things, from the student-facing perspective, what is it that we can do so that the student has an experience that says, okay, the government might not know what they're doing, but they're not paying attention to that. At the end of the day, they're paying attention to what we're doing. So number one, I'm communicating with them, like, do you need help with your FAFSA? I know it changed, but I just did one remotely for a previous colleague and her daughter, and it literally took us 15 minutes. We can get through this. It's okay.

Joe Sallustio: But there's a lot of uncertainty.

Sarah Prince: So much. Yeah. We really do have to rally around our financial aid folks and just kind of like just encourage them. Some of the tactics we've been doing is kind of, you know, I call it the distraction. Right. So it's, you communicate that, you address the elephant in the room, but then you communicate other things that they can potentially be looking at. Right. We've got an honors academy scholarship that doesn't require the FAFSA. So getting more students into that program, highlighting other things that they can get into, doing more student engagement events that are allowing maybe an admitted student to attend rather than an enrolled student.

And so some of those things are tactics we're doing to kind of keep them pumped and excited. Because I think, Joe, you mentioned this, all of the problems we're having, it's a higher ed issue. It's not specific. It's not just Prince George's Community College. It's not just Frederick or your institution. So keeping them focused on the things that they can control, addressing the elephant in the room, then understanding that they're having the same issue at the four-year institution that we're competing with, right? And so they may not be doing some of the touchy-feely things.

I'm lucky to have staff within the high schools, right? So they're engaging even more with the seniors prior to graduation because they know once graduation and all of that, they're not going to be checking email as much. Maybe their parents will, but not them. And so if they haven't, if May 1st rolls around, signing day, and they haven't committed, the likelihood of them attending the community college as a backup, you know, or, you know, their somewhat of a gap year goes up. And so those are some of the things that we're kind of looking at and executing just to kind of, as I would say, focus on what we can control.

Right. And I think the other part too is we're in a very precarious position, not precarious, but a fortunate position in Maryland with dual enrollment and the Maryland Blueprint where our dual enrollment students in high school, while they're in high school, they can take college credits for free. So that's fees and tuition. So I have mixed feelings about that as a previous financial aid administrator because now my Pell entitlements just tanked, right? And there's consequences to that that no one seems to really want to want to talk about. But that's another podcast.

This is an opportunity where we already have them engaged. So now we can have that conversation like, well, what would it look like if you just took those extra 15 credits and finished your associate's degree? You know your GPA is pretty high. Have you ever heard of PTK? Do you know PTK has a scholarship? And then personalizing it. We have several people, I myself was a PTK scholar, say, look, this is why I didn't have undergraduate debt. And I went to a private college to finish my bachelor's degree when I transferred from the community college.

These integrations make that so much easier. Like we previously used a different platform for our dual enrollment application. And I've been at PGCC for two years, so immediately it was like, yeah, not doing that anymore. Pulling them into recruit, like we're already using it. That way the data's already there. And this year we're queuing up their applications. Simplify it, right? Instant gratification. One less thing, one less button I have to click. One less thing I have to type up. It has all my information for my dual enrollment application. Yeah, I may change my major or declare a new major. But anything that we can do to fully integrate and show them, right, hey, based on all these credits you've already completed, here's the certificate, right? We've got an auto grad feature that we're using. There are all these different things that technology now frees up the opportunity to just go straight to having that sales conversation.

Joe Sallustio: Let's talk about that, right? It's a sales conversation. Well, let's wrap this up, you guys, because we have other podcasts I got to do. But Lee, thanks for bringing us together. Will, for leading the panel. And Nicole, for being an amazing panelist and Sarah, my new best friend from enrollment and marketing. Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard from Will, from Lee, from Sarah, from Nicole. Thank you guys for having such a great discussion here on the podcast. There's a lot of nuggets out of this.

Nicole Pollard: Thank you, Joe, for having us.

Sarah Prince: This is awesome.

Lee Doubleday: Our pleasure.

Joe Sallustio: Remember everybody. Be excellent to each other. You've just ed upped!