807: How AI is Changing the Student Experience - with Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover, President, Houston Community College - Southeast

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio, and it's a very exciting day for me. As we record this, we have just released our 800th episode of the EdUp Experience podcast. Why is that so important? Well, we've interviewed over 250 college and university presidents across the world from for-profit institutions, non-profit institutions, global institutions, community colleges, four-year publics. You name it, we've gotten tribal colleges and universities. We've been everywhere. We're trying to interview as many people as possible to bring in as many perspectives as possible because you can't change higher ed by taking little bites of an elephant. We have to work together to change it.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Speaking of bringing people on that can do things I can't do, I've brought somebody here that I literally can't do anything that he does. And once I read this list of accolades here, you'll know why. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the one and only Chike Aguh. He's senior adviser for the project and workforce at Harvard University, former chief innovation officer at the Department of Labor and vice chair of the Commission for the Maryland Department of Education. Chike, how are you?

Chike Aguh: I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me, Joe. Congratulations, not just on the milestone, but also the space that you've created for these really important conversations that we just don't have enough of. So congrats on the big thing and congrats on what you do every day.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Thank you very much. We appreciate that. And we're going to be lobbying you, Chike, for maybe a special project down the line. But I want to get to our guest today because she is leading one heck of a large institution, delivering on the promise of what higher education means for so many people. Ladies and gentlemen, we're excited to talk to her today. She is Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover. She's the president of Houston Community College Southeast. Frances, welcome to the mic.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Welcome Joe and welcome Chike. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited about the conversation.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: So before we get into it, we have a common contact. Her name is Dr. Michelle Cantu-Wilson, who Michelle and I go way back. In fact, she is one of my first fill-in hosts when Elvin and I started hitting our stride. I said, who could fill in for me when I get sick or I can't do it. And Michelle was like our go-to. And I know that you were just texting her and I was just texting her. Shout out to Michelle. How do you know her? How did you become intersected with Michelle?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: My goodness. I think I met Michelle a couple of years ago at a HACU conference, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities conference. And then we just bonded. When you meet somebody, you have just those same values, the same passion for what we do on the front line. We just continued our relationship. And she's a phenomenal leader in higher ed right now. She got elected to be a trustee at San Jac College. And she's doing amazing work in the space that needs our voices and needs our students' voices and our students' needs just raised up.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, you know, she's very passionate about female Latina leadership in higher education. In fact, she along with another person, Linda Battles, who is another Latina in higher education, works for Western Governors University, they got together and did an episode about leading as a female Latina in higher education. How important is it to you as a Latina in higher ed at the highest level of leadership with tens of thousands of students to be blazing a trail for the future of higher ed leadership? What's that responsibility like outside of the norm?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Right. And we all stand on the shoulders of many, many people in the work. And I know as a first-generation student myself, my dad had a sixth grade education. My mom had a third grade education. And we just talked about the student experience. And my student experience several years ago as an undergraduate wasn't very welcoming. So the heart of my passion and my go-to song when I wake up every morning is to ensure that every one of my students at my college feels that welcoming, caring environment and that it's okay to ask for support, because we're all here to be successful. No longer are the days do we say, look to your left, look to your right, one of you doesn't belong here. And I'm sure all three of us have experienced that. And so I want to ensure that through the work of many higher ed leaders, to include you guys, is to make sure that we provide all the resources necessary for our students to be successful, either inside the classroom or outside the classroom. So every day when I wake up, I look through the lens of a first-generation student and say, okay, what would this student feel like?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, that's a unique lens. It's an important lens. So lay the groundwork for us. Houston Community College Southeast, how big, how small, what do you do? How do you do it? What's the institution?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: It's a fairly large one, the largest in the country. We're a multi-college district, Houston Community College District. And we're composed of six colleges with an online component as well and we're growing. And I'm very proud to say that our enrollment post-pandemic is just rising up. And it's through those intentionalities that I just talked about. We're part of the Caring Campus Program, our QEP, our SACS accreditation is about personalized learning to ensure that we meet the students where they are. And we're being really intentional about our targeted strategies around the whole lifespan of the student. When a student walks in, they're now part of the HCC family. And so our work with students in my role in student services, my role as president, is to connect all the dots to ensure that that continuum of the experience surpasses even when they graduate. Those connections that we make with workforce, I'm looking at Chike as Chief Innovation Officer for Workforce, those connections with those workforce partnerships are not only existing within the student experience while they're here at HCC, but extend it out there and then prepare them for those jobs that don't exist yet that we need to prepare our students for.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing. Yeah. You have a little tagline behind you, real world education. And I know Chike is going to ask you lots of questions, but before I give the mic to him, I want to ask just one quick follow-up. And I realized I didn't get the second part of your title. I left it off, but I'm gonna talk about it intentionally now. You're also the interim vice chancellor for student services. And so when you say those two things together, the president of Houston Community College and the interim vice chancellor for student services, one, are you insane? Two, how the heck are you doing that? And three, why? What's the story there?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Well, I think if anybody can handle having seven children, they can handle two jobs. I'm also a mother of seven children, all but one attended a community college. And that's a long story about the other one who was brainwashed by her high school counselor not to go to community college, but that's another story. I think it comes from the passion. I know that the work that I can do in conjunction and collaboration with the team, it's just not me. It's the whole team that's involved and having an advocate, like many of us who have experienced either good or bad experiences. You learn from what you didn't have or learn what you did have. And so we have some great talent at HCC. And my job is just to bring people together and to ensure that we lean in, that we don't give up, just like we tell our students, don't give up. And so a lot of the credit goes to the team here at HCC. It's not me, I'm just very fortunate and honored to have those titles, to be able to lay the groundwork and provide that advocacy and resources we need to be successful.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Double duty, somebody that knows a little bit about that, my co-host, Chike Aguh. You like that?

Chike Aguh: So there's so many places to start. I am a big community college fan. You all sit at this intersection of higher education and the economy. Most people don't know the majority of American undergraduates go to a community college. It is not a small part of it. You cannot talk about higher education without talking about community colleges. And so there are so many questions. I'll start from one that's top of mind for me. I was at the Department of Labor for two and a half years, worked a lot in the future of workforce development. I spent a lot of my time with large corporate entities who are trying to figure out how to fill their jobs. We hear a lot from corporations about what they want from higher education. I would love to hear from you, the opposite. Tell me what you want from your business entities. Look, in the end, a lot of people who are going to go to a community college are doing it to improve their economic quality of life and for their family. So I think, same goals. But we see so often a disconnect. I see so many community colleges who just can't get this partnership right. I talked to so many businesses, like we just can't get this partnership right. So I hear from the businesses what they want. But we'd love to hear as you try and embark on these types of partnerships to, frankly, get students jobs and not just jobs, but the beginning of a career, what do you want from your businesses?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: That's a great question, Chike. And I know I'm very fortunate to have partnerships with Amazon, Apple, Intel lately that have been really at the forefront of providing those opportunities for students. And I'll just use our tagline, real world education. So if you ask me what I want from businesses, it's really providing those real life experiences and bringing in students either as an intern and you worked in the Department of Labor, you know about the growth of our apprenticeship program and we're very proud at HCC just to be one of the first of many to build a hub for apprenticeships. But it's really on providing that hand-in-hand partnership with our business industry and talking to students about what the job opportunity looks like, whether it be a future job down the road or whether it be expectations. We have our chancellor, Dr. Margaret Ford Fisher, she just newly appointed by the way. She's established the Chancellor's Business Advisory Council. And we have across the Houston region, 25 CEOs from various employment platforms and venues. And the pattern that we're hearing is really the soft skills, right? What the expectations are. You know, asking those business partners is exactly what are you looking for in your manufacturing business, in your logistics or the medical field. But, you know, the soft skills, you can't learn in a book. So I think having those opportunities for our students, whether it be one day, two day, visiting these corporations and companies to see what manufacturing looks like right now. And I'll give that example, right? Because that's one of my centers of excellence is the manufacturing field, which is a very high demand, very high paying field too. And most of our students' perspective students, especially in high schools, think that's a dirty job. I'm gonna get my hands dirty. Well, if you go to some manufacturing plants now, they're most of the cleanest, as clean as a hospital. And so really engaging those students and our business partners hand in hand together to really talk about what that workforce looks like, whether it be the workforce expectations or whether it be what the skills and capabilities are for both sides of the house.

Chike Aguh: The analogy, let me plot a couple of things that you said. One, making sure that employers are giving students those real world experiences and hopefully using those to help actually judge if they're fit for the job, number one. Number two, actually letting students understand what their job is so they can better make their choices. The analogy that I use with the real world side of sports, for anyone who plays sports, you don't read a book about how to do a jump shot. You don't read a book about how to do a whip route. Someone shows you, you do it, you usually do it wrong the first time. Then someone who wants you to be better, they coach you and you do it again, you do it again, you do it again until you get better. And most jobs are like that. And if we think about the people who are most privileged in America, they get that. They get that chance. And the question is, how do we take what frankly only a few people get and ubiquitize that to everyone?

Chike Aguh: But let me talk about the career exploration side and the path side. You know, I remember 10 years ago when we were talking about guided pathways in community colleges, which is basically just, don't just let a student just try and figure it out by themselves. Give them at least a path to begin to start. Tied to that is guidance. I mean, it's going to be, have a guided pathway and you need a guide. I have probably visited almost 100 community colleges in 30 states. The best counselor to student ratio that I ever saw was one to 400. Are you kidding me? And I saw a lot of institutions where it was one to 700, one to 800. I saw one, it was like a one to like 1100 students. This is impossible. And so I'm curious how you all approach this. You are a large community college and probably the fastest growing Metro in the country. How do you guide students once they're coming in? And by the way, you aren't just dealing with folks who, you know, my eight grandparents went to college. These are maybe folks who actually are first generation or who've come from a rough circumstance or just without a lot of capital. So you're the people who frankly are coming in with the least amount of advantage. That's right. And that's to get them to do at times a very hard thing. So talk about how you try and guide students as they come in to do what you're trying to do.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: So I would, you know, last year, talk to you about, we do a career assessment. You know, we assign students an advisor or all those things that seem kind of common sense to do or kind of some of the best practices. But I want to talk about a partnership that we recently developed that I think is gonna be a game changer when it comes to really empowering students to be involved in the career of choice or in preparing them for the workforce. And it's a partnership we have with AmeriCorps and Campus Compact, which I'm sure the two of you are very familiar with. And all credit goes to Eric Lugo, who is now the director of what we call the CR Corps, the College Renaissance Corps. We call it CR Co for short. And it's been two years in the making and HCC is one of the fortunate colleges to take part in this. They're looking at six other community colleges to scale it eventually across the years across the college. But basically, let me tell you about it. We can talk to students about careers, right? And they may listen, they may not, right? But who's the best source to really influence our students? That's their peers, right? So through this partnership again, it's called CRCore, College Renaissance Core. It's like, you know, AmeriCorps, we know about AmeriCorps and the great thing that AmeriCorps does. We also know about Campus Compact. So Eric Lugo has combined those two with his team. And so now what we have are industry ambassadors. So we have students telling students about manufacturing, about logistics, about IT. And it goes beyond just saying, hey, I'm in the program. It's more, and it's really more about saying, hey, I graduated, this is the job I have. Of course they talk about that, but really them infusing them in those industry partnerships and then leveraging things like social media, right? They become leaders. So not only are we developing ambassadors, but we're developing future leaders in those workforce programs. And we're giving them skills like social media skills, all those digital marketing skills that each and every one of us should have whatever occupation we're in, right? I could go into AI, but that's another big story, right? That how AI is going to affect us. But we're really excited about this partnership because we really think it's going to enhance all of our strategies towards career awareness, recruitment, placement, that career continuum to ensure that students get into a career that one, they're passionate about. I think that that's number one, money should always hopefully be secondary, but that they're passionate about and that economic mobility, like you said, Chike, because my community at Southeast is underserved. Many of them live in poverty or that ALICE, that borderline of ALICE and poverty lines and mainly our majority are first generation students.

Chike Aguh: Yeah, no, I just say what I like about this is I'm playing on my counter, the private sector had. If I go back to those ratios, what this initiative does is it expands the amount of people who can give guidance to us. Yes. That's what I hear. Instead of I have to hire more counselors, which is always great to do. Right. We can do it more. It's also I have these other people who are in the student's orbit, whether they be alum, whether it be people that who are peers who can also provide that guidance.

I'm going to go down the rabbit hole of technology. So before I do that, Joe, if you have a question, you can ask it. You said AI, I have a number of thoughts.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I'll put your thoughts on. Did you say technology? Do I look like I know what a JPEG is?

Chike Aguh: So when President Biden released an executive order on artificial intelligence late last year, I'll say during my time in government, this was a constant topic of conversation. That's why it got done. Because you were in government. No, definitely not. It was a... But mostly got done after I left. So probably I was a block. But a lot of the conversation about AI and properly so is about mitigating the harm. There are definitely, left to itself, left to people with ill intention, bad things that can happen. I would love to hear how you think about, I call it the other side, which is I always used to say, how do you mitigate the peril and capture the promise? There will be people who capture the promise to the tune of trillions of dollars. But I would love to think about one, how you think about preparing students for a world where generative AI is a part of every job, every company, every sector. And then secondly, how do you think about using AI and throwing any other technology you want in how HCC does business?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: My goodness. I'm loving this Chike. This is the best question of the day because, so AI, right? And you talked about the bad part. That movie that was just out on Netflix when the world ends or? Yeah. Yeah. My wife saw it. I couldn't watch it. I could watch it. I could watch it. You've got to watch it. You've got to watch it. It was like a, was it a movie? Yeah, it was a good movie. But on the other side, right? Instead of finding out, I'm still worried about what's wrong or how to stop it. Cause we're not going to stop AI. No one's going to, it's here and it's here to stay. And the scary or not so scary part, it's here to stay and grow. Right? We all know about machine learning and start developing. If you haven't looked into the AI tools, they really get to know you. I mean, I'm doing one that has helped me and I'll go back. So to answer your question, Chike is how do we embrace it, right? And how we engage our students in the AI availability, AI tools that are available, right? We hear faculty say, they're gonna cheat. Well, how long have students been cheating? Forever. And for me, you know, this is my professional opinion and personal opinion. You know, being among myself and telling my kids about the AI tools available is that it allows, it allows more room for us to be critical thinkers, strategic thinkers, right? Again, using AI as a tool like anything else. We had a keynote speaker and I want to give her credit. She is from Tennessee State University, her first name is Robbie and I'll get her last name, but she used an analogy of a recipe, right? And she is well known in the AI field. And she used the analogy of a recipe, right? That chicken soup, right? You had the recipe, but you still got to make it and you still got to taste it, right? So we encourage our students to use AI tools to develop a concept paper. That's not the whole project, but it gives a template and a way of a foundation of the starting point. That is correct. Just like anything else of plagiarism, you got to use originality and you got to cite the AI source just like anything else. One of my favorite AI tools right now is poe.com, P-O-E dot com. And unlike ChatGPT, it grows with you. It starts knowing Frances and not just a basic. So, and there's, I mean, there's just phenomenal AI tools that are growing. And I do want to give a shout out to my colleagues at HCC, Dr. Madeline Burillo, who is our president of Southwest. She oversees our IT program and HCC is the first community college in the country to offer AI as a bachelor's program. And so we just launched that out this past fall and we have students on the waiting list and we're on great things about AI is that, if students are interested in studying AI, they don't need a computer science background, right? It's kind of like coding. So encouraging everybody of every age to really understand what AI can do for us rather than how AI is gonna take over the world like that movie kind of insinuated AI would do. And it could if we don't take control of it. And as educators, I think my responsibility, whether they call it social, professional responsibility, is to really understand the impact of AI in my personal world as well as my professional world. Going back to, you know, and I'm going to be transparent here. We have a long way to go in the student experience with AI, right? Because, you made me think of when you asked that question, Chike, about advisors, right? Many of our students, to include underserved students, to include first-generation students, they use AI already in their personal lives, you know, look at Netflix, right? Look at the algorithms that they're able to pick you up. You know, chicken, now I see you watching these horror movies. Let me give you another one. And I think that's the way what we need to leverage AI in the student experience is to help empower the student to guide their own. You know, we're here to hold their hand when we can, but we're not gonna be with them all the time at two o'clock in the morning or at midnight when they want that information on the website or a platform using AI to really empower students to take control of what they want and information that they need to gain can be better served sometimes using AI.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: So I don't know Chike, I see the wheels turning inside.

Chike Aguh: Yeah, no, I just say what I like about this is I'm playing on my account. The private sector had. If I go back to those ratios, what this initiative does is it expands the amount of people who can give guidance to us. Yes. That's what I hear. Instead of I have to hire more counselors, which is always great to do. Right. We can do it more. It's also I have these other people who are in the student's orbit, whether they be alum, whether it be people that who are peers who can also provide that guidance. I'm going to go down the rabbit hole of technology. So before I do that, Joe, if you have a question that you have, you said AI, I have a number of thoughts.

Yeah. I use a medical analogy and I heard this from a head of student services years ago at a community college. Ideally you want to be like a hospital doing triage. People come in with different issues. There are some people who actually, hey, look, I can give you some Sudafed and send you out the door. Some people, shoot, you need to be admitted. And when we think about students coming in from various issues, there's some students who probably don't need to see a counselor. Right. And so on and so forth. And there's some students who you should not let them leave until they've spoken to someone. And figuring out who's who and how you let folks do that is kind of a dream for how we use some of this technology. And then similarly as well, how do you prepare students to use this? I always think about, and I may have mentioned this on our last conversation, Joe, there's a great story about, it was in maybe Fortune or Wired magazine. There was a guy, was a computer programmer. He had one job he made, say he made $100,000. Then when ChatGPT came out and tools like it, Claude, Inflection AI's tool, I forget what they call it, it's their tool. He's pretty much skyrocketed. So what he was, and this was during the pandemic, he was able to have three jobs and no one knew he had two other jobs. And so he went from like $100,000, and I remember this number very specifically, it's like $348,000, having three different jobs because he was so much more productive that literally he could get the same amount done in eight hours on three jobs that he got done on one. And it's funny, during the story he feels kind of bad. He's like, should I tell them that I have two other jobs? And he decided not to for a long period of time. He said, basically I get it done. But the analogy that I use, a lot of these tools is, none of us on this call would hire someone who couldn't use Google search. It's that elementary a tool. Right. I have argued that in 18 months, all these AI power tools will be like that. By the way, if you use Microsoft Office, you will begin to have co-pilots. Yes, they do now. Right. As you do now. If you can't utilize those, again, you're not workplace ready. And we fail students if we don't prepare them for that. Let me ask about your population. So I know a little bit about the Houston area just because my wife is a Houstonian. But talk to me about greater Houston and talk to me about, in many ways, lots of opportunities, but also, in many ways, some challenges. And then also put on top of it, if I remember correctly, you all are the most diverse metro area in the country. You also are, if not the fastest growing, probably in the top five. Talk about that, the macro environment that you all find yourselves in and how you as HCC try and respond.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Right. So yeah. Big. I can say is big. Do you think Texas does things big? You know, it's right. So, you know, that's good. You know, that's good, the bad and the ugly. Right? So the good part is, you know, we're diverse, right? We're one of the most diverse cities in the country if not across the global world. Right. And then, you know, just the, we have segmented populations, right? That are very fortunate and then some not so fortunate, right? And then that's my passion. That's where my passion is at. And that's where Southeast College is located, right? 60% of my community doesn't have a GED or high school degree. So I think about the jobs that are currently out there in high demand that would help them with economic mobility. I think about the jobs like how AI is incorporated and how we can educate and make them aware of some of the skills that would help them get promoted or upskilled. And so one of the things that we've been focusing on is really our adult population that we've kind of like not forgotten, but I think there's been some missed opportunities. Community college always work with our high school districts, but there is a great opportunity to work with the parents of those same students and go beyond that ecosystem. And so, you know, we were very fortunate to have partnerships like that with industry, with our workforce commission, with the city. We have a new mayor, Mayor Whitmire, who was just selected this past November. So, you know, really working with those fast track programs, you know, very familiar, both of you are familiar with House Bill 8. Community colleges in Texas have a new performance funding model. We no longer get funded by the number of seats in the class. We get funded by outcomes, which we should always have been performing, but it's now in the spotlight, right? So really focusing on those credentials of value, whether it be continuing education or credit programs. And we just had a conversation yesterday about, you know, all the lingos that we use that our community members don't even know the difference between. They just want, either they want a job or they want to fulfill a dream. And so, how do we talk to students? Create that one door. Let's stop creating these 10 different doors. Oh wait a minute, you're an international student. No, go through this door. Oh no, you're a veteran, go through this door. Or no, you're a... A student is a student, student, right? With the same goal of having what we can call a better life, right? And so, our focus really is getting those, creating those stackable pathways. I'll use some academic lingo, credentials of value, the stackable credentials. So they can see that there's those small achievement steps to a whole wider goal. And one of the things that we're really proud of, you know, especially for our first generation cohort is in engineering, right? We start them small so that if their goal is to really be an astronaut, really work for NASA, which is down the street from here, well, this... These are the pathways. These are some kind of classes or programs you can take and we'll help you along the way. And then if you need a stop for any reason, we're still here when you come back. Because many of our students, as we know, have to take care of their families or may have to take a semester out to attend to either their job or their family demands.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I'm going to take a quick left turn real fast because I want to get this in, Chike, and then you can take back over. What is the A-Team? What's the A team? What did you see that? I've got it on your bio. There's an A team.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: So all my kids, seven kids are A names with six letters. Andrew, Ashley, Amanda, Austin, Alyssa, Adriana, Aliana. Don't ask me their ages.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well done. We would have cut that out if you missed one, by the way. You did good. You did. And then you have what I thought about when I read your bio's right at the end. You have a motto, which is find a way or make one. And I thought from when we started talking about leadership and I read that motto, I said, okay, what does that mean? And how do you execute that in higher ed, which you know, comes with bureaucracies and red tape and political environments. And it's not always easy to find a way. So sometimes you do have to make one. How do you live that?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Right. I'm constantly leaning in, constantly being creative without breaking the law. I don't look good in orange, you know, orange is the new black does not look good on me. And I think a lot of times, you know, we've worked in places where people say, well, we've always done it that way. But sometimes those are the worst words in business. Yeah. And honestly, that way, how's it working for us right now? Right. And I think answering those powerful questions and not being scared to ask those questions, because if you come in the room with a passion and the right goal of students in the center, and you have your team who are empowered to come up with those ideas, we find a way. And then we make one. We just get the crud, just move it out of way and towards our end goal of student success.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Chike, I bet you're familiar with that, right? Chief Innovation Officer for the Department of Labor probably had some people that said, well, we've done it that way. We've always done it that way.

Chike Aguh: I may have heard that once or twice. And what I also always found was there were always people who were always trying to innovate, but they never had someone in the right position to make the way for them. And I always say this, when I was in the Department of Labor, my best days were not about my own ideas. Those were usually my worst days. It was always about there was some person who would have been in for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And they would say, yeah, like back in 1995, I tried to do this, but they wouldn't let me. Then they would say that, I said it again. And they would say the idea and I'd be like, we should do that. And those were my best days when I said, and I cleared stuff out of the bureaucratic way to make that happen. Those were my best, best days. And I think what you've talked about, kind of finding a way to make a way, in many ways, that's what community college is for a lot of people. Like, hey, I'm trying to go here. And because I've heard of this place, it's down the street. I know people who went there. That is my nearest tool to try and make that way. And I love your phrase, a dream or a job. That's what brings a lot of people through your doors. Look forward for me, for HCC, and even go a little bigger, because you all are a premier community college. I was just talking to a bunch of folks from Miami-Dade College recently, which is another kind of powerhouse. What do you want for community college? 10, 20, 30 years as a sector, what do you want from community college? What do you want it to be? What do you want it to be doing?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: I want it to be the, how do I want to say this? I want it to be the natural course of an individual's dream or economic mobility pathway, right? Whether there are... You know, we talked a lot about first generation students, but let's talk about students who have that support system, right? Who have parents who've gone to college and know how to navigate that FAFSA college application and, you know, the essays. But it's just not common sense about financial, the financial sense of attending a community college and getting real world education in community college. You know, we can talk about the money saved. In our engineering program, we have a partnership with A&M UT Tyler. Our students can get an engineering degree, degree, not associates, but in our engineering program, we have a partnership with A&M UT Tyler. Our students can get an engineering degree, degree, not associates, but a degree, bachelor's degree in engineering for $17,000. Victory! So let's talk about, and that's why all my kids, except one, have gone to community college, it's just the financial common sense around the cost savings. And they save the money for four-year university when they transfer.

And then the other piece is, you know, just the workforce experience that a community college look now and like you said, 10 years, 20 years from now, is that close relationships we have with partners, with apprenticeships, internships. So the students are really actively engaged in the workforce while they're a college student and they don't have to wait till their junior or senior year. And then, you know, building that community of empowerment so that a community college is not, you know, we call it Houston's Community College. We call Houston Community College Houston's Community College because we are a partner not only in education, but also the workforce development and the community engagement, right? We offer so much more than education and associate's degree. We are really a close knit partner with our community based organizations because each of our community members not only needs education, but they need the resources to sustain a livelihood with their family.

Chike Aguh: Just to build on that real fast, because I... the affordability piece, you know, this is so... it's like everything right now. And one of the most common pathways when we talk about higher education, particularly for detractors of higher ed, is that it's just unbearably expensive. There's just no way anyone can afford... you know, higher education is too expensive. It's really easy to generalize because, you know, if you study community colleges today and there are some amazing community colleges where that's not true, you're not gonna have insurmountable debt. You're going to have a cost effective pathway to get a degree, whether it's associate or bachelor's through partnership with a institution that is accredited by the same institution down the road that might cost you a lot of money, where academic quality is under the same umbrella of standards for our regional credit, what used to be regional creditors. Do you ever feel left out of that conversation? Do you feel like there's like a hand raising that has to happen for community colleges to stand up and say, well, that's not the case. You know, higher ed isn't too expensive if you look at this.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Yeah, I think we're doing a better job of raising our hands and being more vocal collectively. When you mentioned about the academic preparations, if you ask many large universities, they'll say that community college students are more prepared than the students who started out in university. 

Chike Aguh: Yeah, because they finished it. 

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Because they finished it. And they finished it, right? So I think there's more opportunity for us to be more vocal in the ability of starting at a community college. And I think that's where our workforce partners can play a bigger role as well. Back to Chike's question about what do you want workforce to be - our ambassadors, to tell our communities how valuable community colleges are for not only their livelihood, but also the students, because we can yell and scream and do everything with our school districts, our community members, how community colleges are the best course, you know, pathway, but our workforce partners play a critical role. We have advisory groups who do that. I do want to mention also, and there's many other great, great community colleges out there. You look at the dual credit, you know, there's many of our students who graduate with an associate's and a high school degree and zero debt, right? And then they continue on to community colleges, right? To finish whatever else they need to finish. And then they go to four-year and then, you know, just the sensibility of all that.

Chike Aguh: You make a really important point, which will be overgeneralized by higher education, you know, talking about higher education, like talking about schools, you know, we have a hundred thousand schools in America. I started my career as a K-12 teacher. I could, we know how different they can be. The same thing with colleges. One thing I see, and we see this in the state of Maryland, we see it around the country, the handoff between the two year system and the four year system is nowhere near as seamless as it needs to be. We think about transfer when we think about articulation when we think about all these things. I don't know a state in America who's like, yeah, we've got it. I don't know a student in America who was like, that was super easy. Super seamless, right? Yeah. I've never seen it. And it's a challenge because the only way you get to that affordability is that's got to be seamless. You know, you are the Vice Chancellor, the Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Services. That is a critical part of the experience. For many students, it is, I'm going to this school for two years, I'm going to get my associates, I'm going articulate to the, if you were in Maryland, I'm going to go to Prince George Community College, articulate to College Park at University of Maryland and get my degree. That is far harder said than done than what I just said. So I'm curious about... How can we make that partnership better? Because it just needs to be if we're going to achieve a bunch of things that you just said.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: So allow me to give another shout out to my former institution, Northern Virginia Community College, where I worked for 11 years, when we talk about the seamless experience of transfer. Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University. Now, you talk about a model program for transfer. It's a co-enrolled program called Advance. And it started out to serve with intentionality to serve underserved students, first generation students who want to transfer to a four-year university, but just didn't know how to navigate. And so those students are co-enrolled. Not only do they attend NOVA, they also have the same resources available to them at George Mason University. And that I see is a model for many other community colleges, including HCC to do. The Aspen Institute also published a transfer playbook, which we often utilize here at HCC. But you're right, Chike, we need to do a better job of having that handoff be a little bit just connected together so that there is no stop out students. Because many of the times students just stop out. They say, I just couldn't figure it out. I just couldn't figure it out. And those articulation agreements being so critical with those four-year universities. Houston's very fortunate to have many private and public universities, which we do have close relationships with, but it's really the interconnecting that student experience. Going back to Joe's title, what was your title? I love your title. Chief Experience Officer. Having that experience a little more interconnected. So there's not that, there's no gaps within that handoff. And one of the things we didn't touch on - prior learning assessment prior learning, right? Because I'll tell you this right now, if I get one on one training with the former chief innovation officer from the US Department of Labor, right? And, and it's intense on innovation in a bureaucratic environment. I feel like I should get credit for that. You know, I make home visits. So I'll come to your home, but I want credit.

Chike Aguh: I got it. I want credit for that. And you know, that that's more official than my cousin Vinnie who gives... I always have my cousin Vinnie gives real estate courses. That's something we got to get right around and community colleges are dealing with that all the time.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: That's right. Especially for our veterans who have a huge amount of experience they should get credit for. We owe it to them. 

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, Frances, we could talk all day. I know we could because this is... New best friends. Yes.

We are. And I got to ask you, I'm going to give you the mic for the last couple of minutes, say anything else you want to say about Houston Community College and your roles, roles? Roles, yeah.

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: Well, I just want to say is I just want to thank both of you, Chike and Joe, for the conversation. You know, not only was it a thoughtful discussion around what's going on, what's happening, and the trends, what our future is going to look like. It also gave me some ideas to go back to my teams about what we need to do as well. Very honored to work with Houston Community College. I think we're, this is a new day for the state of Texas in so many ways, and that the performance funding model is not scary, is actually something that should be on top of mind all the time as far as student outcomes. We have a long way to go with student outcomes, and we're really committed to ensuring that now that we're being funded by it, that we were really, really intentional and we lean in on some of the work that we perhaps have put to the side, said, well, maybe for another day, well, this is the day to do it. And really encouraging our community members, our workforce partners to be part of that. And we're very fortunate to have those relationships. And then partnering as well with our national, our peers across the country is really important. And the opportunities we have collectively to raise the voices and be the voices for our students who need us the most, right? And really leveraging on those student experiences. A lot of times people say, well, it's the student's responsibility, but it's also our social responsibility to ensure that they're successful. We do anything in our power to make sure they're successful and empower them. But I wanna thank you again and was a great conversation. I hope we continue our relationship somewhere on LinkedIn or a conference, or maybe when Chike is president of the United States, Joe, you and I can play a little part in... Don't forget your friends, Chike.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. So Chike, what did you think of this conversation?

Chike Aguh: This was great, honestly. And I was really excited for this because I think you all, you and your counterparts across the country are doing the work every single day. And I think that last thing you said about it's the student's responsibility. I'll use a quote that someone gave me, is, it is the responsibility of every individual to make the right choices. It is the responsibility of society to make those right choices as easy as possible. And I think what I think about what you do at a community college is you're part of making those right choices as easy as possible. And so just thank you for what you do. And Joe, as always, thank you for creating this really, I think, important and almost sacred space.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah. Thanks, man. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Chike Aguh. He's got a lot of titles. You can follow him on LinkedIn. I'm not going to give all those titles again, but he's doing a lot of things in higher ed. And I have a feeling beyond by the time he's done. Chike, as always, it's an honor to have you on. And we'll be talking about that special project together as we connect in the next week or so. And of course, our guest of honor, I do feel like you're my new best friend. And I'm going to have to call Michelle Cantu-Wilson and tell her I'm like, this is amazing. Yeah. Here she is Dr. Villagran-Glover, President of Houston Community College Southeast and Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Services. Did you have a good time today talking about all this?

Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover: I did. Thank you so much.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, we enjoyed you. Ladies and gentlemen, you know what you have done. You've just ed-upped.