879: A Corporate Model for Student Success - with Dr. Jason Hale, Director of Education Success, Havenpark Communities

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to Ed Up on the Ed Up Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio back on another episode. And now I get to say award-winning Ed Up Experience, because we won a Bestie award - gold award from the EdTech Chronicle who had an award series called the Besties. We won the Bestie for the best higher education podcast series for our president series as we've interviewed over 270 college and university presidents all across the world. And I would take credit for that all myself if I didn't have co-founder of the Ed Up Experience with me on this episode where he's listening to what I have to say, or else I would take all the credit if he wasn't listening, but he's actually here co-hosting. Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only Elvin Freytes. He is a co-founder of Ed Up. What's up, dude?

Elvin Freytes: Hey, Joseph Sallustio. So nice to be back and we're testing out Riverside FM. So, this is our first time, so this should be fun. So cool to our guest who is helping us along to test this out. I'm looking forward to this one, Joe. I love the concept on this one. So let's move it. Let's get into it, brother man.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Let's do it. So far in our testing, we're having a few problems. We're going to have a problem here. We've had more than one. Camera didn't work. We're having some echoes. Elvin, I might hit the mute button on you if you talk too much. There's gonna be all sorts of things going on in this episode, but let's bring in our guest now. When I say they're doing interesting work, I mean, they're doing interesting work and it's something that we should all hear about in higher education. Here we go. He's Dr. Jason Hale. He is the director of education services at Haven Park Communities. Dr. Jason Hale, what's going on?

Dr. Jason Hale: Hey, thanks guys. I appreciate you guys giving me a platform to talk about some of the things that we're doing over here at Haven Park. It's pretty exciting. Pretty exciting, honestly. Yeah, it's been about 12 years in higher ed and three years working on the high school side and to find a private company that's doing something like this was mind-blowing to me. And I feel honored and just lucky every day. I feel like Santa Claus within the company because I get to do so many wonderful things on behalf of the company to help so many of our residents.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I like your style, dude. Let's level set for the audience. Tell us about Haven Park Communities. Right now, somebody's listening going, why is Haven Park Communities on a higher education podcast? We're going to get to that, but let's find out about Haven Park Communities first and then we'll go into it.

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah, absolutely. Haven Park Communities is a manufactured home operator and developer. It's a fairly young company; they've been around since 2007. So when you hear manufactured homes, you might be more familiar with the terms mobile home parks. You know, the mission of the company really is to create caring communities for hardworking, honest residents and responsible residents. And the vision in kind of what this program is, the Education Success Program was something that was a brainchild of one of our co-founders, Anthony Antonelli back in 2021. Just with that mission in mind, he is somebody who was a first-generation college student, somebody who had a lot of challenges in his own educational adventure before he kind of made it in the business world. And education was his success. And he figured that creating a program like this, and I'll get into the details for sure, and the scholarship component of that for sure, was one way that we could give back to our communities and that we could show and demonstrate that we do care. Again, that mission is creating caring communities. We want our residents to care about each other and the place that they live, but we want to show that compassion and that caring nature. And one way to do so is the creation of this program.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Epic. So what is this program? So what is a director of education success mean in a community?

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah, I felt the same way, I think, when I saw the job title. A little bit about myself just so you know a little bit of my background. I actually grew up in a manufactured home myself, raised by a single parent, was a first-generation college student. And, you know, as I mentioned, worked in college admissions for about 12 years at schools all across the country and then on the high school side. And my wife and I had moved to Utah where Haven Park Communities is based. And while based in Utah, we have dozens of communities all across the United States in multiple states. And I saw this job listing thinking director of education success, what does that mean exactly? And really what that means is, it's kind of however, whatever we wanted to create to give back to our communities and help our residents get from point A to point B in their own educational journeys and progress to whatever career field that maybe they want to pursue. 

So in terms of what we do, you know, we're kind of most known for the Haven Park Academic Scholarship Program. Again, this kicked off in 2021. We piloted that program and awarded 2 of our residents across the country in 2022. We awarded 19 of our residents across the country in 2023. We have already awarded 38 of our residents across the country. This year we're wrapping up the cycle and we are about ready to award 41 new residents that will give us 100 total scholarship recipients since this program kicked off in 2021. I think what's magical about these scholarships is it's life-changing money. You know, there's really no one else in our industry who's doing anything like this. There may be a couple other companies who are kind of doing things on a little smaller platform, but our scholarships are very significant, up to $10,000 per year to be used at a two-year, four-year vocational tech and they're renewable scholarships as well to up to an additional three years or until a bachelor's degree is achieved.

Really it's open for any of our residents, high school seniors or anyone who's a current college, university, vocational trade, tech student, or an adult learner who's thinking about coming back to school. When Anthony kind of created this program, he was all about college access. And that's certainly been my passion and my exploration and working all in college admissions and on the high school side is how do we get more people to where they want to go and to where they want to be professionally? And that's different for everyone. Again, that was what Anthony was saying too, is we created this. We want adults to be able to come in and maybe pursue vocational techs or trades that maybe they can level up or skill up and go back and achieve certificates, whatever it is they want to do. We want them to be a part of this party as well. 

So that program is kind of our signature program. And I think the thing that, what makes it really unique is we invest about $500,000 into this program each year. Certainly the scholarship component is the biggest component, but with my background in admissions, my real passion also is retention. How do we get folks from that first year to the second year and all the way through to the finish line? So I think what's also special about this program is that all of our Haven Park scholarship recipients are paired with Haven Park employees who serve as mentors during their first year as a scholarship recipient. They meet with their mentor once a month to work on goal planning, just kind of common questions about how to navigate higher education. And then they also receive webinar programming as well too that I curated pre-recorded because everyone's on different schedules. You know, we do sessions on just kind of what is mentorship, you know, for folks, because, you know, about 73% of our scholarship recipients are first-generation college students. So this is brand new. What does mentorship even mean and how do I take advantage of that? 

And we also get into the nitty-gritty with some of these webinars and do things like study abroad. What is that? How can I afford to do something like this? Growth mindset, understanding fixed mindset and growth mindset, utilizing LinkedIn, building your social network and social capital. So all sorts of different types of webinars in addition to that one-on-one regular check-ins with their Haven Park mentors that serve as individuals who will help them with doing mock interviews or resume prep or whatever it might be, or just being a consistent point person in their life as they navigate that first year as a scholarship program recipient. And again, everyone's in a different place. Some of our scholarship recipients are freshmen at their institution. Some of them are second or third year students. Some are about ready to graduate. And some are, again, those adult learners who are coming back to education after maybe a number of years. And maybe they're just trying to navigate, how do I balance this with having a full-time job or having children, young kids at home? So whatever it is, our mission is to help our residents get from point A to point B. And it's great to hand someone just a scholarship and say good luck, but we're really invested in getting them to the finish line.

Elvin Freytes: Amazing. Yeah, I want to jump in. Jason, I'll be honest with you, we get pitches all the time and we see these folks that want to come on all the time, every single day. When I saw this, I said, I got to get him on. And it is super fascinating. And you know, you asked almost all my questions, man. But I do want to know how do you get the word out? Because they're all like, and you called it, you called it something else that mobile homes is what I'm used to, but you called it something else. What was it that you called it?

Dr. Jason Hale: Manufactured homes.

Elvin Freytes: Man, you have to, okay. It sounds purposeful too, right? Like the language change. It's powerful.

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah, it's powerful. And I think, you know, when you think about the term, you know, mobile parks or mobile home parks, there's a certain connotation historically that folks kind of have with that term. And Haven Park is trying to change that narrative. We're investing in our communities and really trying to invest in our residents and get folks to purchase homes within our communities and not just be renters. You know, studies have really shown that folks who own homes take better care of their homes. They live in their homes for much longer. So, and now we create programming like this where you would say, in addition to having dog parks and pools and a lot of great amenities you wouldn't associate with maybe a mobile home park. Now we have these education features where you can send your child and they can receive a scholarship and help pay for their education to help them get from point A to point B.

Elvin Freytes: Yeah, that's kind of my question now. So tell us about how do you get the word out? I'm going to ask you a lot of questions, man. How do you get the word out to the residents, right? I mean, tell us the story. How did you get the word out to them that this is available to you, right? This is how you apply. This is our evaluation process, how we choose who we want to be a part of this. And then talk about, is it just for online students? Because they're mobile, so they want to go around. I mean, they want to be in person. So talk about all that.

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah, so in terms of kind of our actual scholarship recipients, they're all over the map. The majority of those folks do attend in person. Believe it or not, okay, I'm going to shock you here. We have some, we have scholarship recipients. We have one at Stanford this past year, which is really exciting. University of Iowa, Iowa State, Auburn University, Nevada, Reno, UT Austin, Oklahoma State, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, University of Louisville. You know, the list keeps growing. So I think we're here to kind of crush some of those stereotypes about maybe even folks who might live, you know, in a manufactured home community. These are incredible students and every day I get a chance to work with them. I honestly feel blessed.

And our community managers are our greatest individuals who are the boots on the ground, who are working directly with residents, our communities, and spreading this message about our educational programming. One of the programs that I created that we haven't talked about yet is called the Springboard of Success. And essentially that is a college access club, for all of our residents across the country, you know, whether they're, you know, middle school kids or high school students or parents of high school students or current college students, or adults who would just have some educational interests. And, you know, maybe just want to change their job career or field and don't know how to do that. Anyone can join our Springboard of Success program. I should say all of our programming is free for residents. 

But the Springboard of Success is essentially designed to be a college access club with pre-recorded webinars, with one-on-one guidance from me, and then with electronic newsletters that I send out monthly that really kind of cover a variety of topics from you know, just what's going on in higher education, make sure folks are understanding kind of the FAFSA timeline and the changes. And certainly, you know, we, the prerecorded webinars, we focus on things like just understanding college admissions or visiting college campuses or financial aid essentials, or, then we also have some for, you know, folks who maybe are checking out some different sectors. Like we have one on just, if you want to start your own business or maybe create a side hustle, like just entrepreneurial skills. My wife is the real rock star in our relationship. She's the director of the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship, the executive director at the University of Tennessee. So she's the one. Yeah, I love to tap her shoulder from time to time and use her expertise. So she loves to kind of co-host that when we bring in some other folks to do like the study abroad, experts in higher ed. Then we also will do some of just how to get the most out of your resume or tips for job hunting.

In theory, when you think about the Springboard of Success program, we try to drive as many of our residents to join that club because that service is kind of our pipeline. That way I can market directly to those individuals and say, now that you're, you know you're interested in higher ed or wherever you're at in your journey, let me now tell you more about our scholarship program and make sure that you get your application in. So that way we can consider you for financial consideration.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: How are you - I got to ask - how the FAFSA, how are the financial aid conversations going right now?

Dr. Jason Hale: You know, when you think about our scholarship timeline typically each year we run that scholarship timeline from December 1st through the end of February each year. So three month window usually when we get residents at the time to submit their applications. We had to extend that of course just given the FAFSA delay. Well, I think one of the things that I'm passionate about about our program is we do not require the FAFSA for folks to submit a scholarship application or to be considered certainly. It's encouraged because we want to be able to take financial need into consideration. So we do have questions on our application. Did you complete the FAFSA? But the ultimate goal is what do you anticipate after any financial aid or scholarships to be your out-of-pocket expense for this upcoming academic year? Because certainly we have residents who may not qualify for FAFSA for a number of given reasons. Again, coming back to how can we be incredibly inclusive and accessible? So that is an important characteristic. It's not requiring that FAFSA. 

So we did, of course, extend our application deadline another month. And I wish we could continue extending it. But who knows how long this is going to go? I have a connection. I connect with and I work really closely with our reoccurring or continuing scholarship recipients each year. So I'm able to check back in with them to say at their particular institutions, have you heard back from your institution yet? Have you gotten your financial aid package? Do you know what that's going to look like? So as far as you may. I'm able to get some information in real time, but I think we're all just trying to do the best we can just giving us FAFSA. I don't know. Just say the newness of what we're experiencing.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's a nice way to put it.

Elvin Freytes: So I do want to know though, let's go back to, I think you missed this one, the question about how do you evaluate them? And you talked about that a little bit, but is it like a committee? Is it just you? You know, what's the background behind that? How you select?

Dr. Jason Hale: We do review and committee. We work with a scholarship management program called Kaleidoscope. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. They manage a lot of different scholarships for different companies and organizations. So we have them review these applications as well. And then I review these applications and we also kind of just look over everything as a team here at Haven Park. But in terms of just minimum requirements to be able to apply, as I mentioned, you either, you have to be a resident or your parent or guardian has to be a resident of our Haven Park community. You have to be attending an accredited two-year, four-year vocational trade tech institution or planning to in the upcoming academic year. Or as I mentioned, you can also be an adult learner who's thinking about coming back and planning to go in that upcoming academic year. And then you need to possess at least a 2.0 minimum cumulative GPA, whether that's in high school or whether that's in any college coursework that you've done. That's kind of how we evaluate. We have a couple of different essays on our application. One really just about service, just given how big community is to us and creating a sense of community. How have you given back and how do you identify? It doesn't necessarily have to be your Haven Park community, but whatever community that you identify with and feel that you're a part of, how have you given back? 

Then an essay, of course, on just overcoming obstacles, because certainly when you think about, as I mentioned, just persistence in general, you've got to be able to overcome obstacles, you know, right in higher education and navigate that first year. And we want to, we love to be able to hear stories from students who have overcome some adversity in their lives and have, are stronger for it. And we know that when we award them a scholarship, they're going to be able to, they've been through tougher, right? Then hunting down a difficult professor or whatever it may be that first year or just navigating a higher ed setting. You know, our residents have real stories and I think that's what's really exciting. They're incredibly thankful. They're incredibly engaging and they want to work with us and they want to be a part of like the mentorship program, as I mentioned. 

And I think a true testament to that is that in 2022, you know, we had our mentorship program. A number of our folks went through that program. And then in 2023, as we awarded new scholarship recipients to be first year students in that mentorship program, I had a number of five of our prior 2022 scholarship recipients who volunteered to become peer mentors to those new 2023 individuals. So again, this is, I was able to match first time, first gen college students who've now at least had a year under their belt or more and who served as mentees with the mentorship program to service peer mentors to new scholarship recipients. So that's the part that just makes you feel good in your heart. As you know, the residents are like, I found a lot of value in this and I want to help give back. And again, these are residents who are all across the country. So they're not even living in the same state. You might be a peer mentor to someone living in Wyoming or someone living in North Carolina or Ohio. And that's just really cool. It's bringing people together and supporting individuals, supporting maybe some students with some similarities and similar background experiences to help get them to the finish line.

Elvin Freytes: I'm very cool. I'm going to keep going. So, Joe, rest a little bit. You own the podcast. Surprise. Yeah, surprise. You mentioned a little bit about how you work with higher education. Are there other ways that you work with higher ed and are there any plans in the future? I mean, there are a lot of college university presidents listening to this, board of trustees. We have tons of higher ed folks. They're listening to this. Are there any other wishes that you would want to kind of in the future work further, work with higher education? Talk to us about that.

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, you know, a couple of the things that I would love to be able to do, as I mentioned with our Springboard of Success club, these are our college access groups. What I would love to be able to do is partner with more institutions where we have communities in that local area. For example, we have a number of communities in the Iowa City area. I would love to be able to partner with the University of Iowa, for example, or similar institutions who have first-gen programming to maybe come out and speak with our residents or coordinate and work with them to maybe bring some of our residents to campus to have a specialized campus tour and meet with other first-gen students or learn from first-gen Hawks or similar types of programs across the country. I'd love to create more partnerships like that.

In addition, you know, when I was at a high school and working in Southern California on the college counseling side, we had a partnership with an institution where any student from our school received basically a reduced tuition rate or a scholarship from that institution for our students to go attend and attend that institution. Any institutions who would love to be able to partner with us in that regard, again, our students are fantastic. And certainly we're trying to do the best we can in terms of helping them financially, but certainly the majority of students they could continue using additional aid or we can't help everyone in our communities as much as we would love to be able to. So if any institutions would love to partner with us in that regard and maybe give a scholarship or reduce tuition rate to some of our residents, I'd love to be able to talk to you about that.

Elvin Freytes: Okay, cool. That's great. And what's going on for the future? What's going to happen with the program? What are your plans? What do you want to do?

Dr. Jason Hale: I think, you know, as I think about this next phase, what's exciting is I think we maybe had five graduates from the Education Success Program in 2023. When you think about all these scholarships, and now some of them are starting to turn over. So this year we may have upwards of maybe 12, 14 graduates in 2024. So we're having more folks who are graduating from our program, graduating from their colleges and universities, and entering kind of the workforce or going on to grad studies is to create a program or yeah, alumni program or alumni network that can be a continued support system for those individuals. Whatever that may be, that professional development, when you think about just entering into the workforce and identifying a mentor in that professional setting, many of our folks are going to be learning how to do that for the first time or learning how to network and explore outside of that first job that they have. So I think creating that alumni network is probably one of the next big things. 

Also, just additional programming for our residents that isn't necessarily college focused. So it's been killing me the last couple of years. I really want to create a summer reading program for elementary age students in our community. That's something that's been on my radar. I got really close to that in 2022 and just didn't have the bandwidth to kind of push that through. I'd love to be able to just given how much time is off in the summer. Love to be able to keep our children engaged any way I can and just understanding the importance of literacy. You know, that's something on my radar that I want to continue working on this upcoming year.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: How do you decide, let me ask you this real quick. Sounds like you have a founder and management team that's really supportive of you and your ideas around how to serve your residents through higher education. Knowing somebody that comes from the industry, if you have 12 years of higher ed experience, you're firing on all cylinders, especially if you have that support, you're going, we could do this. We could do that. Right. We have to, we could create this and we could create that pipeline and we could do this. You know, and then you put in the business side of this and the, somebody from the business end goes, well, you know, we've got to fund it. We've got to make sure, you know, what, what's the importance is it, you know, I know it's outcomes, right? I mean, I'm sure you're waiting for that story where the first resident of Haven Park Communities goes out and becomes the new CEO of blank company and you have this direct line to the scholarship program and that story will resonate for decades or a hundred years for Haven Park Communities, right? So that is the goal. But you have to have other supports and you know how students, next thing you know the students need this or need the mental health counseling or need a different type of support. How do you think about holistic support versus, right, here's your scholarship and see you later. The needs of the college student keep evolving and elevating. So there's always something else to put in. How do you think about that?

Dr. Jason Hale: It is tough. You know, I will tell you, when you think about just different things we do within our community, usually each May we recognize May as Mental Health Awareness Month as well too within our communities. We send out flyers, make sure folks are just aware and try to get past those stigmas of mental health. It's like sit down and meet with scholarship recipients. I meet with every one of them in May and then maintain relationships with them really throughout their entirety of the program. And then as they graduate, it's maintaining just that close knit relationship, I think. They can call me, they can text me anytime they have questions. So when you think about just the big, big picture programs, certainly we do our best and try to anticipate like, what's next? What can we do next? I think about, you know, you're talking about what else can we plan for? It's identifying, you know, other state funded, you know, great federally funded grant opportunities for our residents across the country for different types of programming. Those things are on my mind as well too. 

But at the end of the day, it kind of comes back to those just relationships. You know, it's the relationships you have with your students. It's the relationships our mentors have, you know, they're connecting on LinkedIn. They're able to kind of just, you know, if our student who's graduated, you know, has a question that I feel that they can reach out to us anytime. This isn't just as simple as here's your scholarship check. You know, we'll see you, good luck. It really is I think a lifelong partnership as, you know, oftentimes when you do serve as a mentor or you serve as a mentee, you develop that oftentimes. You know, if your mentor is genuine, right, if they really care and, you know, we recruit folks within our Haven Park team who really care, you know, and want to be a part of this program each year. So big picture, we try to do what we can. And, you know, Joe, you mentioned just the stories too, I live for those stories and as I mentioned, we had our first five graduates last year and one of the ones I'm most proud of is a student who I mentored this past year. She was a student from one of our Nebraska communities and a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln going through a teacher preparation program. I was able to work with her pretty closely because I went through a teacher preparation program myself. So we were able to connect on talking about Praxis and talking about just student teaching and prepping for interviews with superintendents. She graduated from University of Lincoln in the spring of 2023, immediately got a job with the Lincoln Public Schools and just is wrapping up her first year as a third grade teacher. So I think, you know, you talk about that community, it happens at the Haven Park community level, but these are also residents who typically are going to stay in their community and they're forming those partnerships. We're hoping that the programs that we do tell a bigger story to the community outside of Haven Park to the cities that they live in and the states that say that we're really investing in our residents. And we hope that you find this exciting and want to be a part of what we're creating and doing here too.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: If you can produce a teacher, you get extra points because they are hard to find and we need more of them and they need more money.

Dr. Jason Hale: We have a resident from one of our Minnesota communities who graduated last fall, just an incredible student who's studying genetics and he was just recently accepted to two PhD programs and he's trying to decide between Johns Hopkins and University of Minnesota. Again, these are like impressive individuals and I think just with Haven Park and what we're trying to create, we're trying to get past the stigma of what mobile homes are and I think that we're hopefully, as we continue telling the story of our residents, it continues to tear down maybe some of the stigmas of individuals who might live in manufactured home communities.

Elvin Freytes: So the value of a higher education is not even questioned. It sounds like it's like, no. I mean, that's being, that's a whole nother conversation, but I just want to throw that in there, Jason. Have you heard anything about, no, I'm not sure I need to go to college anymore. That's not happening.

Dr. Jason Hale: I haven't heard too much. Certainly, you know, I'm sure there are individuals who just given the discourse kind of in the country may feel that way. And certainly I think if they're able to interact with some of our scholarship recipients. You mentioned even just, you know, Joe and I went about like, how do we spread the word out there to our, our scholarship recipients also do this. They come, they live in their communities or they come back in the summer if they're on campus and they're spreading the word and recruiting other folks from their communities to apply to these programs as well. So I think their testament is, is the best testament, right? It's, this is worth it. Cause look, it's, it's changing, changing my life. 

You know, another resident just to share another story from one of our Michigan communities. He worked in a factory and this is kind of common to my hometown as well too. He worked in an automobile factory and he made rear view windows for cars. And he worked hard, bought his first home in our community at age 20. Again, when you think about maybe, I definitely was not buying homes at age 20.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, but he wanted more from something. Unbelievable! Good one, good one, Joe. 

Dr. Jason Hale: You went on, went back to school, wanted to study IT, just got his associates this past year. I've been following and working with him and tracking him on LinkedIn. He's always knocking out these certificates and taking courses on Coursera. And now he's trained to read through a four-year institution. So there's so many stories like that, I think, of individuals who maybe were doing something that they weren't necessarily happy with or just felt like there's got to be more, right? I know that I want to do something that maybe I connect with a little bit more. And there's so many of our residents, we're just trying to reach them and say, here's stories. Let me show you pictures of our scholarship recipients. Here's their stories. This could be you. And let me help you get there.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's awesome. Well, as we bring this one to a close, Jason, we've got two final questions for you. Number one, what else do you want to say about Haven Park Communities and your educational success ventures you have going on? Open mic, anything that we missed, anything that you want to add? Go for it.

Dr. Jason Hale: I would just say it takes a lot of guts to do something like this. Again, I'd never seen a company do something like this, especially in this housing space. I was, as I mentioned, shocked when I saw it, the application come through the first time or just the job posting. And as I was going through the interview process, I was like, are you sure this is real? I find it hard to believe. You guys should have seen me as a higher ed nerd just migrating over to the corporate world for the first time, sitting at the desk surrounded by accountants and obvious important individuals. And I'm just sitting here just trying to concoct ways that we can award scholarships to our residents and really connect with them. So they've just been incredible to work for. And I really think that it takes a lot of leadership and it takes a real commitment to kind of do what's right. And as I mentioned, this was the vision of Anthony Antonelli. He recently just passed away a couple of months ago. And you know, we at the company really see this as this is, is, is kind of part of his legacy and we want to continue honoring that, like continue building. I think the important thing is this is just the beginning. As I mentioned, we just started this in 2021 and, uh, this year we will have awarded 100 total scholarships since the life of this program. And that's really exciting, but we're going to keep moving. We're going to keep doing all we can for our residents to keep growing this program and trying to think outside the box. And I would just encourage other companies do the same. You know, you've got individuals who can benefit whether they're employees or other, you know, folks who maybe live in similar markets or other housing sectors, reach out and find new ways to connect with students. Think outside the box and, you know, if you ever want to partner with us in any sort of capacity that's going to benefit our residents, absolutely come talk to me.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: How do we reach Jason? So somebody goes, yeah, I'm going to partner with you. How do I get a hold of you?

Dr. Jason Hale: Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn, of course, but you can also just visit the Haven Park Communities website. You just type in havenparkcommunities.com and we have an education page that talks about some of our programs and you'll find my contact information right on there and just go ahead and reach on out.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right, Elvin, last question to you, because I know you want to ask it.

Elvin Freytes: Yeah. So we asked everyone the same question and I'm very curious, very curious because of your experience inside higher education now outside of higher education. Jason, what do you see as the future of higher education?

Dr. Jason Hale: Well, that is a tough question. You know, I think that we have to find a way to make this more affordable. I think that's it. At the end of the day, you know, we have a lot of families and a lot of individuals who are, as you mentioned, are questioning, is this worth it? They might not see the long term benefit of this and they see that initial sticker shock and they have to make those decisions on whether or not they're willing to make these sacrifices either for their family or for their own future. I had one resident who I remember she was telling me about her first year. She's a student at UT Austin. She was telling me that she would be down there in the residence hall or she would be down in the meal center just eating an incredible meal. And she would be just thinking about her family back home, her community, and just feeling guilty. So we have to find ways that more folks can afford this. So whether that's federally, whether that's companies investing like what Haven Park is doing, certainly the cost of education certainly seems to be rising. But we've got to be able to educate that in a way that doesn't turn people off.

Elvin Freytes: Love it. Absolutely love it.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right, Joe, you go and close this off.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I'll close it out by saying, as you guys were talking, I sent Elvin, I sent you a text asking you to get me in for a haircut before Ellucian. That was meant to be sent to my wife. So please disregard my text method about my haircut. We'll see you on the road, everybody, as we visit Ellucian E-Live in San Antonio in the next week. If you want to catch us in person, that's where we'll be. If you hear this episode after that point and we caught up with you, happy to see you, whoever you are on the road. But not happier than we are to talk with our guest today. Here he is. He's your guest. He's Dr. Jason Hale, Director of Education Services at Haven Park Communities, doing some very interesting things for his residents. Jason, we hope you had a good time on the podcast today.

Dr. Jason Hale: I did. I did. Thank you so much. And again, I just really appreciate the time to talk about what our company is doing. It means a lot to me and certainly you just hearing the stories from our residents. I love being able to share that and hopefully some folks were inspired by some of the things that we're doing.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I have no doubt about it. Also inspiring is the one and only Elvin Freitas. He is the co-founder of the EdUp Experience podcast. Very seldomly gets on the microphone, but today he could not resist. And I was tired of getting emails from him with questions to ask Jason. So I said, you gotta just get on here yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just Ed-Upped.