816: LIVE from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Brent Fitch, President, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD)

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience Podcast, where we make education your business. We're recording episodes here at Insights EDU in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Renaissance Marriott, a conference all about marketing and enrollment. This is only my third podcast, so it's actually pretty amazing that I'm making so many mistakes so early. But that's probably because I didn't have enough coffee and Elvin Freitas continues to put unneeded and unnecessary pressure on me to hit the recording button, which I am remembering so far on my own, ladies and gentlemen. 

But I am very excited because I've run into an old friend. Well, he's young, but we're old friends. And what is he doing here? So he's got to get on this microphone, ladies and gentlemen. He's Brent Fitch, the president at RimCAD, the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Brent, what's going on? What the heck are you doing here?

Brent Fitch: Hey, Joe. It's great to be here. You know, we recently partnered with Education Dynamics with our marketing efforts. We've been so pleased with their work. They've really helped us look with another eye at the work we're doing, whether it's website, SEO, paid search, social content, and really helping us back up decisions with what we've put in place over the last year, which was a big push toward data decisions. We look at it through the entire nine stages of the student cycle. Obviously, the first four, as we look at it, is all about student acquisition and new student enrollment and admissions.

Joe Sallustio: Okay, so you're running an institution RimCAD. A lot of people know it. For those that don't, we've interviewed you once before here on the experience podcast. Level set for us again, what do you do at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and then I'm going to ask you another more important question.

Brent Fitch: Yeah, so I'm president of Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. I started right when the pandemic started. So it was very interesting and perfect timing. We're located in the suburb of Denver in Lakewood, Colorado. Beautiful campus. Historic campus, 100 years old. We're kind of in between downtown and the Rocky Mountains. So beautiful site. And we've really taken a hard look at our student population where now the majority of our students are out of state and online.

Joe Sallustio: Really? When's that shift happened? Recently?

Brent Fitch: It started about 10 years ago and really accelerated in 2019, 2020. You know, people think about how you do art and design online. And our instructors are amazing. They're constantly thinking about what can happen in the online environment for art and design students, whether it's fashion students, interior design, which is our largest program. Really honing in on the specifics of what happens in the classroom.

Joe Sallustio: It's really interesting because you make such a good point. There are some programs traditionally that if you say, "Well, we do that online," you hear "We're gonna have a problem here." But really anything can be done online, almost anything can be done online. Art and design is one of those areas that has been shifting more towards online because that's where the demand is. And you are in a position where you want to grow. So tell us what got you here. You're an art design school, you needed a new marketing company, you decided that it's time to invest in something. What did that process look like for you to get to Education Dynamics? How did it all work? What prompted it? What catalyzed it?

Brent Fitch: Great question. So we like to think of ourselves from a position standpoint of we are the crossroads of tradition and innovation. You know, tradition is if you think about from an art school, fine art, studio work. And we wanted to kind of grow in areas that, again, are at the crossroads of tradition and innovation. Most of our programs today in design specifically have a heavy technology component. Whether that's Revit in interior design or, you know, there's a ton of Adobe products in the animation area. 

But as we started to look at our work and how we present ourselves online, being an art and design school, you have so much content to produce. And one of the things that we saw was we needed to make sure that our student work is positioned correctly so that we can tell our story better. Private, online, affordable, accredited through NASAD, which has a lot of specific requirements for a Bachelor of Fine Arts. So we wanted to make sure that we positioned ourselves correctly for growth in the future.

Joe Sallustio: So what does that look like? You just decide one day you wake up or you've been mulling this over and say we've got to get the right partner. Did you do a process of interviewing and vetting different companies? Can you give a little insight as a college president what this looks like and how important it is to have the right partner?

Brent Fitch: Yeah, we did. So I brought in a consultant, Tom McCarty from Chief Outsiders. He's a former CMO that I worked with. And he helped me do the evaluation. We worked specifically in the RFP process. We talked to six agencies.

Joe Sallustio: Was that an important number for you, six? Or just was it because there were six that contributed?

Brent Fitch: Well, as we started to look at the space, we found that there were six that really could compete. One being our existing agency. And then we went through the process and really looked at a number of things. We actually had an agency that didn't do higher ed just to see what they brought to the table. At the end of the day, fit was important. Finding people who understand where we want to go was really critical. And they work with us. Obviously, being a smaller art and design school, we had a pretty tight budget as well. You know, the team really kind of put some things together and said, "Hey, here's the package where we think we can help you grow." Then it was kind of off to the races.

Joe Sallustio: What put them over the top of that group of six?

Brent Fitch: I think just the best way to describe it is they were really sophisticated but they explain it in a very simplistic way.

Joe Sallustio: Nice. I like that a lot. So what's the result been so far the partnership? How are you doing at RimCAD since you onboarded Education Dynamics? How are things going?

Brent Fitch: Great. So early results have been positive. We also, obviously, some of the things that we had in play already from last year, our spring enrollment has been more than what we expected, which is a great way to start the calendar year out. That gives us some opportunities to really optimize and look at some investments. Right now, we're looking at the way in which we can use our content through social and really drive some organic traffic. 

So Education Dynamics is helping us navigate through the tricky waters. That's not an easy process to change. It does take time, investments, understanding where your content is displayed and what does that look like, making sure that that aligns with your mission and certainly how you want to position the school and really just having a good partner to give you insights and looking at things differently.

Joe Sallustio: That's a fact. That's a fact. Insights. No pun intended there, of course. Right. But it is the obvious piece here is that Education Dynamics is providing us important insights into what do you want to call it? The preferences of online learners, right? And they put out their online student college report, online student report that's full, chock full of data. It's, I don't know how long I'm going to talk to the data analytics whiz over here after you. I don't even know what to ask her because there's like a hundred different charts in there. But, you know, the point being is that there are a lot of insights to take out of this conference. Why are you here? And what do you believe a successful conference will be for you when you head home?

Brent Fitch: It's just, you know, and one of the things we talked to the Education Dynamics team before coming out is trying to figure out what others are doing. So it's a great way to learn. You know, we're certainly excited to collaborate and partner with others and just thoughts and seeing how that relates to, you know, at the end of the day, we all serve students. How can we serve students better through the nine stages of the cycle and learn how that works. 

Now, one interesting fact, which hopefully they bring up, is consideration from a student. They're considering less schools now in the choices, which we just heard that, you know, and so if you're just a few in that number, you bet you have to be good and you have to present yourself not only on the digital front where students are doing a lot of research. We have to have an admissions team that really understands how to ask questions, particularly in our area. You know, these students are coming and they're so talented. We do portfolio reviews with them and just to look at their work and say, hmm, they would do wonders here being, you know, one of many because in high school, they're one of one. Yeah, they're really, you know, they don't have too many people to collaborate with. So we want to make sure that they understand that that is an advantage to come into Rocky Mountain College.

Joe Sallustio: It's a big time reduced margin of error. Right? There's less tolerance for not giving the student the information that they want. Right? The power leverage used to be in the institution's hands. It's in the consumer's hands now. The consumer can go to any website, get what they want mostly. So what's the difference maker? It can be that conversation when they get on the phone with someone.

Brent Fitch: Yeah, you know, a lot of schools think about, I'll call it a binary choice. It's, you either have online or you have, you know, face to face and the way we look at it, it's actually, there's no decision between the two. It's up to the student and it's up to the student per term. Because our tuition is the same for both modalities. It's easy to go in between, from one to the other. And because work gets in the way for students, even traditional students, they're trying to work. They can't make a specific class. So they take it online.

Joe Sallustio: You've been a president for how long now?

Brent Fitch: Four years.

Joe Sallustio: Four years. All right. So you're I think in your fifth year. You've passed the national average for presidents in their role. I think it's 4.8 years or something like that. What's kept you going? What keeps you up at night and how are you feeling about the next four years?

Brent Fitch: Yeah, great question. You know, what keeps me going? It's each and every day working with my talented staff. I have an executive team that really builds trust amongst the group and that trust certainly, you know, gets portrayed in every conversation we have with students. So we want to be the trusted advisor outside of the classroom because students work as hard inside the class. And that also keeps me up at night. Are we doing the things necessary at each stage in the student life cycle to make a difference? Do we personalize it? 

Being the father of two college students, one who just graduated, I see how important it is when a parent calls in and they can't get an answer. It's frustrating. How do you break that frustration and personalize that so they're not passed around from service to service trying to get an answer? They need an answer today because they're busy, they might have only one chance to call on behalf of their student.

Joe Sallustio: And as a president, somebody who works, I always find it's very interesting because people who work in higher education, who have kids that are within higher education have the same and they know all of the ins and outs of all the departments and have the same struggles as a parent who knows nothing, because the institutions are built to not be student centric. And so therefore it's very hard to navigate even for somebody that knows the ins and outs.

Brent Fitch: Yes, it's a matter of making the decision based on the institutional centric versus student centric. There are different thoughts and ways to think through if you look at it from the lens of a student.

Joe Sallustio: What keeps you student centric? Is it built into your values? Is it your upbringing so to speak through higher ed? Is it the times that we're in now? How do you keep students at the center and make sure that your team does it too? Because you know Bill Pepichello who runs EdUp Insights here and he's I would call him a mentor because I talked about stuff that's going on in my life and he always reminds me do not embrace complexity. And I'll see even sometimes myself I'm going it's this it's that and wait a minute forget all that right? How do you stay simple and focus on the student?

Brent Fitch: Yeah, I think it's a combination. Being in higher education for, I hate to age myself, but decades. It's sad to say that, but at the end of the day, it's no different than, I started in higher education as an enrollment advisor. So you have to talk to, you know, 200 students a month and letting them make the decisions. You take that to heart and that doesn't leave you. And I would see a student in the cafe and, you know, have a quick conversation. And they're all doing the same thing and understanding the complexities of school, as you said. And we just try to make it easy. We personalize it and we probably do more for students. And there's a cost to it, but it's the right thing to do.

Joe Sallustio: You know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who I haven't seen in probably 15 years. And I met him last night for a drink. And Eli had a drink, he had a Diet Coke. You know, tells you a little bit about us. But we were talking about mental health issues for kids. He's got kids, I've got kids and, you know, if I had said anything to my father about having mental health issues, he would have told me probably to get my behind out of the house and go play with my friends. It would have been just completely disregarded. And you just had to work through it. You're dealing with those issues every single day with kids now and adults now. We're having many more mental health issues being brought up. I find it's very hard to navigate through those on what is serious, what is not serious, how to deal with this, how do you judge this? What's going on at RimCAD? How are the students? Is there a general mental health issue underlying things?

Brent Fitch: Yeah, you know, each student is unique. And we try to meet them where they are. So we have actually counseling staff and a director for health and wellness. And a lot of students take advantage of the service and we encourage them to do so even if it's an outlet to just go talk to somebody about a challenge of an assignment. Art and design school is tough because you get critiqued each and every day. So the entire basis is to hopefully give constructive feedback on everything. It's progressive and it goes throughout the entire student life cycle. You know, they have to understand that that is an important part of how we help them progress as an artist or designer.

Joe Sallustio: That's really interesting point. I haven't thought about that. I see go to a class and you ace your microeconomics exam. You walk out with an A and brush it off. Nobody's going to critique you for getting that A. But if you do some kind of art project or design project, there's always constructive criticism. There is no perfect score.

Brent Fitch: No. And even a graduating senior, you know, our dean of students is just wonderful at talking to students and helping them understand. And he also manages the Health and Wellness Center. And sometimes they, you know, we have a graduation exhibition. It's like the pinnacle of what we do. And some students are even apprehensive to put their work on display. We have to talk to them and the work is amazing. But they still have that apprehension to put it out. And that's what we try to do is try to bring that out in them so that they understand that it's part of the process. But also, you know, it's good stuff. Yeah, we should be proud of it and show it and display it as much as we can.

Joe Sallustio: What else do you want to say about Rocky Mountain College of Art Design?

Brent Fitch: Yeah, I'm so pleased with the work that we've done over the last few years in supporting students. We are celebrating our 60th anniversary as an institution and we have a large celebration. It'll culminate in really a celebration week and that'll end with our 2024 commencement. So we're working toward that. That happens in the beginning of May.

Joe Sallustio: That's pretty outstanding, my friend. And we wish you all the luck in the world. You don't need luck. You're good at your job, right? If you're good at your job and you have good staff around you, you serve students, that's what it's all about. Ladies and gentlemen, I was going to hit the yikes button on him, but I won't. Just to mess with him, he is the one and only Brent Fitch. He is the president of Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, better known as RimCAD. Brent, great to have you back.

Brent Fitch: Great to be here. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for all you do.

Joe Sallustio: Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just EdUpped.