862: LIVE From Ellucian Live 2024 - with Kevin Hatcher, Operations Director, Olivet Nazarene University

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. We are getting down to the end of day two here at Ellucian Live in San Antonio, Texas. We have been here now for the third straight year interviewing the most innovative leaders in and around higher education and really finding out what is going on in higher education today. What are the problems? What are the things we have to tackle? What are the good things, right? There's a lot of negativity out there in higher education too, and value of a degree, and should I go to college? And higher ed is slow, but there are people out there moving fast that are innovating. And we've got somebody with us today who is an innovator and he's, what we'll call him cross-departmental. We'll tell you what that means as we get down to talk more about his role. I have to get on my saucy. I'm not prepared all the way. This is what happens when you're doing a podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Kevin Hatcher. He is the Operations Director at Olivet Nazarene University. What's going on, Kevin? How are you?

Kevin Hatcher: Good, good. Enjoying the conference.

Joe Sallustio: You are. Yeah, it's a lot of people here. Tell us a little bit about Olivet Nazarene University, where you are, what do you do and how do you do it?

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, so Olivet is just south of Chicago. We are a private four-year Christian university, run about between our undergraduate and our graduate around over 3,000, almost 4,000, depending on pre-COVID, post-COVID, all the lovely stuff everybody else deals with. Just rounded out 3,000, something like that. So a little higher than that at this point and all that. And my role specifically is helping with a lot of the technology needs and operational needs across several different divisions at Olivet specifically. So being the type of school we are, we are wanting to draw students and we want the students to feel like they are most important. We want them to be transformed academically, spiritually, all capacities and part of my job is to continue to help to do that and make the technology and the operationals of work behind the scenes reflect that as well.

Joe Sallustio: So when we were speaking before we hit record, I asked you, what does the Operations Director do? And you do a lot and you do it cross-functionally. It seems like there's some priority built into what you do. Kind of explain what you do as the Operations Director.

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, so my role is usually most positions are built kind of in a vertical that they operate with. I am actually kind of set up to be horizontal. So my role actually is in IT, but I oversee a lot of the work being done operationally and especially with the technology in both the enrollment division and the institutional advancement division, working with alums and donors and all the university relation elements as well as helping making sure that we're recruiting undergraduates, we're recruiting high school students, we're recruiting masters and doctorate students as well.

Joe Sallustio: It's interesting that because you're deployed, it sounds like there's like a deploying factor to you. Like, you know, Kevin, we were deploying you over to this department. Maybe they have a new technology. Maybe there's something going on. Is the idea that you're helping to keep operations consistent or technology speaking data moving like is that part of the function and part of the idea of your role?

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, in a lot of sense it is. It's also really kind of trying to solve the big rock issues that start happening within these divisions and all that specifically. So like for instance, if you think about it like undergraduate enrollment and graduate enrollment, there's a lot of needs for how do we make this simple for the student? How do we make this work? And yet at the same time, how do we take a lot of data and send it to the right people to do the right work and all that? That was one of those projects that you're talking about about kind of deployment that I was asked to step directly in. Our grad school had been separated and so they were actually on a separate CRM system than our undergraduate. Well, we had to kind of pull them both together in CRM recruit and make it so that the student's experience was more seamless and it didn't feel like there's a lot of extra steps and things like that. And at the same time, make it so that these multiple different teams with the very vastly different strategies are able to work with all of their particular students without any particular issues. So all the nuances that they have to go through as well as all the things that they do hold in common, like how do they communicate in mass to these people?

Joe Sallustio: Epic. Sounds like you're change management a little bit too.

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, there's a lot of that. There is definitely a lot of managing personalities. You're bringing people along, right? When you have to, if you talk about two CRM systems and you're going to move into one, even if one of those groups is using the CRM system, you're moving to the other group is going to go, well, why do we have to move? And you know, what, what about this function? What about this path? What about this communication or this communication cadence that I have? Is it gonna work? I gotta click over here now and I'm used to clicking over here. I'm just repeating what I know to be the case. And in fact, that's in our university was able to receive an award from Ellucian directly in tied to this sort of piece itself.

Joe Sallustio: So you won a Ellucian Partner Award?

Kevin Hatcher: That's correct. Yes.

Joe Sallustio: OK, what is that? What is that award and why is it meaningful?

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, so the Ellucian Impact Award, we won for an impact award. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's fine. In innovation. And the reason that we won it was because we were able to do this merge all within a very short time. We got all the groups on and operating within a 12 month sphere, went through kind of the stabilization processes that needed to be happened and really made sure that not only did our undergraduate who had been on CRM recruit was successful in doing what they continue to do but that the grad school was also being very successful and we had a couple other initiatives that were just thrown kind of through this as well that we also help support and and bring up online at the same time.

Joe Sallustio: So you literally walked into a room and said execute order sixty-six and that was how it happened.

Kevin Hatcher: You know, in some sense, it was one of those things on that particular note that like July 1st when the contract with the other CRM was completed and like 12:01, it's gone. That very much felt like how that was. Surprise.

Joe Sallustio: Funny times. Change management in higher ed is tough, right? But I will tell you, it's interesting that your role is horizontally moving across different departments because you can use examples too. Like, hey guys, and admissions changed and now we got to do the same thing over here in advancement or advancement changed IT and we need it, right? So you're able to bring in examples, institutional examples from your own institution versus, the university down the street that's our competitor did this and we have to too. It's easy internally to say, well, that's not us. But if you're doing it internally and you have your own examples, it makes for hopefully easier change management.

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, and in some sense, it also means that I also know who some key players that know their specialized area very well and say, hey, take this and look at it from this perspective. And they say, yeah, we can make this work. And we're able to then kind of take other tools and merge them together for the purposes. And so it really allows us to kind of make the technology and the operations work alongside the strategy and the policies that we need to follow so that our leadership is able to say, hey, this is the directions we need to move for. And we have the right setup underneath the right structure that says, we know how to be adaptable when we need to be adaptable. We know how to be modular when we need to be modular. And we know how to really build some specialized pieces as we need to.

Joe Sallustio: Tell it like it is. So what do you how's your conference going so far? What have you learned? What have been some takeaways? What are you hoping to learn and see and do? Give us give us your experience.

Kevin Hatcher: So for me personally, it's been since pre-COVID since I've been able to go to a conference. This was one of It was and it's one of those pieces that for me it's very helpful because it helps me know like what are other schools experiencing? What are they going through? Are the situations that we're facing similar to other schools and how are they beginning to work around? How much is a vendor like Ellucian aware of what is the paths going forward and what are their responses to it? It gives me better landscape to then kind of continue to do the type of role that I do for the university in helping shape the direction that we need to go.

Joe Sallustio: So networking is a big piece here. Very, very big piece. How are you doing this? How are you doing that? You guys figured that out. I should try that. I I find that to be one of the most valuable things when you come to a conference like this. You're walking, sessions are great. Sessions are great. But you meet somebody at a session and you're walking to the next and you go, how did you guys figure this out? We did this, that and the other. And you go, my gosh, in a mind blowing moment, I want to try that too.

Kevin Hatcher: Absolutely. And it's one of those things that we're able to even kind of take the sessions and say, hey, you know, they're talking about this. Well, let's find the other people who they're talking to as well and say how similar our problems that we're working and what are these kind of solutions that are being presented and what's really, what's underneath this that they're trying to solve with the products that they're producing at this point?

Joe Sallustio: So when you go home at the end of the week and you look back on this time, besides the fact you're probably so excited to come, I was excited to come here too because there's, I know, I've been to this conference now, this is our third time and there's always an incredible energy here of collegiality, of community. When you go home, you go, this conference was the bomb because...

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, so for me it is a lot of, go back to the staff that I work with, I go back to leadership, I go back to our directors that work with the day-to-day operations and all that sort of stuff, and I'm able to say, hey, there's some things that we need to be paying attention to, there's some things that we should investigate further, there's some things that we should be looking at as a university that I think will solve some of the things that we've been talking about. And it's always exciting when you're able to go back and say, we may have some potential solutions to the problems that we've been facing and maybe not just even the symptoms of the problems, but the real problems underneath that we're really needing to solve.

Joe Sallustio: As a group of trucks rolls by, I don't know what the heck they're rolling by right now, but it makes a lot of noise. So you get to go back and take all these good ideas and then tell your team. That's just the way I operate with great ideas, right? I mean, you just bring it and then you, these are mine, these are my ideas. No, it's fine. You get to share and then you get to implement and implementation is a big part of what we do in higher education, right? We have to find the right technology. We have to implement it. When you go back, how do you prioritize your job? Like now you're going to take all these good ideas and I bet they're cross-functional too. You probably have some in admissions. You got some for student service, you got some for advancement. You're going to go back with a big briefcase, the virtual briefcase, if you will, of ideas. Where do you start?

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, that is a good question. And it's one of those things that I haven't maybe thought through.

Joe Sallustio: Don't know the answer to this?

Kevin Hatcher: Not quite yet. I have some ideas of what that is.

Joe Sallustio: That's all right. No, no, it's fine.

Kevin Hatcher: I have definitely ideas of what that is. And a lot of it is still the same kind of priorities that we had coming into it. It's just, hey, let's look at this from a different angle now. We may have something here that can really help us with this.

Joe Sallustio: What's your advice for higher ed? What have you learned in your role in the cross-functional serving that other institutions could learn from you. What's your advice?

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that we've already heard at the conference, things that we've already heard from other folks and all that about, you know, keeping the student at the center and making sure that that's one of the big pieces that we're doing. And the other piece is just understanding what are the essentials that we're really trying to be about. And then what are the things that we can say, okay, it's not essential. Therefore, if we change this, if we adapt this, we can make this work in a different way. How do we start identifying those and moving those safely? You don't ever want to sacrifice everything, but you want to make sure that you are open to the idea of the changes that are probably necessary as higher ed is really in a transformative state.

Joe Sallustio: What else do you want to say about Olivet Nazarene University? Close us out. Open mic.

Kevin Hatcher: Yeah, mean, Olivet, a wonderful place, again, very strong on saying we want to transform students. Fully believe we are intentionally Christian. That is the type of school that we are and we own it. We believe fully that it is in the experience in college that you can be, you can learn a lot through academics. You can learn a lot in your social abilities, but you also grow spiritually as well. And, you know, we want just to be a part of that for our students.

Joe Sallustio: There he is, your guest today here on the podcast is Kevin Hatcher, Operations Director at Olivet Nazarene University. You know what you've done. You've just ed-upped.