894: The Davenport Difference - with Richard J. Pappas, President, & Carlos Sanchez, Executive Director, Casa Latina, Davenport University

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to edup on the Edup Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio back with you again, doing what I love to do, which is podcasting with my closest friends in higher education or friends to be. As it were, there's a lot going on we're dealing with right now. You know, it's funny, I was thinking back about all of the episodes we've done over the last four years. We started in early 2020, and it was on episode nine that we started talking about COVID. Edup literally documented how presidents were dealing with COVID. We have all this amazing content, almost like a documentation of this event and people's perspectives of it. 

Fast forward four years and you have something that is as consequential, but in a much different way, and that's FAFSA simplification. We're documenting this and the perspectives of leaders as they're going through and talking with students and the unbelievable challenges this is creating for parents, for families, and for institutions. It's not like we're holding things hostage going, "We're not going to send you a package." There are just so many variables and ins and outs and the Department of Ed delays to get us to the point where we're all going to be grinding through the summer. Typically, when something would have been cleaned up by now and families would be making clear decisions, it's very muddy.

Through the summer, we're going to be grinding this out with families so that we can see what a revenue line might look like so that we can run the business of higher education, because we still have to do that. We still have to employ people and pay for buildings and put another course online. There are all of these things that we have to do if we want to serve students. And I've got great family with me today on the podcast. One of my favorite guest co-hosts. Let's get it on right now, ladies and gentlemen. He's head of partnerships at Lead Squared. He is the one and only Douglas Carlson. Douglas, what's going on?

Douglas Carlson: Thanks for having me back. I always appreciate it.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, I really, it's always a toss-up too. It's like, should I have him back? Should I not? But this time we went with yes. I flipped the coin and heads came up, Douglas.

Douglas Carlson: You know, I've always been better, more lucky than good. So I'll take it.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Sounds good. We're going to keep that theme going. Let's bring our guests in right now because we have a lot to talk about in a very short period of time to talk about it in and we're gonna get them in together. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Carlos Sanchez. He is the executive director of Casa Latina and Dr. Rick Pappas. He is the president at Davenport University. Gentlemen, welcome to the mic.

Carlos Sanchez: Thank you very much.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: We're honored to have you. You know, this podcast is all about what we do in higher ed to serve students. And it's really important to know, to put us on the ground. Where are we? What are we talking about today? So, Dr. Rick, I'll start with you. Tell us about Davenport University. Who do you serve? How do you serve them?

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: You bet. So we're not a new institution. We're a private not-for-profit. We're the largest in Michigan. We were founded in 1866 and it's more of a career focus. All of our colleges of technology and business and health and urban education all go directly to the career. Interestingly though, I've been here 15 years and when the board hired me, they wanted to improve student outcomes. So this is important stuff for us. We have a balanced scorecard across the whole institution and it emanates all the way down. 

To give you an example, we've increased our graduation rate by 163% in that period of time. Retention rate 32%. We won the Malcolm Baldrige State Quality Award in 2020, and ACE, American Council on Education, called us the transformational institution of the country in 2021. And I say all that because, you know, when you look at our vision 2025, almost 50% of our students are first generation, and over 30% of our students are students of color.

We started with first generation. So when we did vision 2025, we put first generation right in the middle of it and we'd started doing peer mentoring. For those students who take peer mentoring over the last two years, we've increased 20%. And then we started a college of urban education that would be different. The way that we prepare teachers today, I'm probably going to insult people. I don't mean to. I do it all the time. It's fine. But to have them go into their high school, their senior year to teach, student teach, and then their teachers seems a little ridiculous. 

Urban schools have the fastest, they lose the most teachers because they're least prepared when they go there. And then the turnover, when something opens up in the suburbs, they take those. So there's this constant churning of teachers. So what we said is let's get them in the freshman year, get them in there. We will do weekly coaching. We'll put DEI in every course, not a course in DEI, so they really understand the different types of students that they're serving. And we partnered with the Grand Rapids Public Schools, the first thing about six or seven years ago, and our outcomes were higher for the students they taught than the rest of the district. So it is a solution to a large problem.

And I won't talk about Casa Latina, but Casa Latina is the only kind of its country and Carlos will talk about that, but we're different. We guarantee, for example, for over half of our degrees, Joe, that if you come in as a freshman and you sign an agreement with us, or you transfer in, and you maintain a 3.0, and you follow our career services, which you get for lifetime, our career services, if you graduate, then we'll guarantee that you'll have a job within six months of graduation in your field.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: There you go. Right. We know the market better than anybody else.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: That's right. So, when the pandemic you mentioned and with, we were online in a totally online in two days and we were one of the first online programs in Michigan, I think in the late nineties. And we've really done a lot to really embrace that and make sure it's good. And so this FAFSA is a problem. There's no question about it. And it affects lower socioeconomic groups harder. But we're ready for it. And we're starting to see it coming out. We'll see if we can catch up or not. But everybody's in the same boat. And it was really a disaster. And it didn't have to be. I think the goal was good to get them down to 20 questions to simplify FAFSA. But then the marketing of it, the technology of it was less than perfect. And then, so we are, you know, we can't complain about it. So what we need to do is just get to it and our people are on it.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's amazing. Does that give you a good sense of who we are?

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: It really does. And one of the things that I love about institutions that continually talk about outcomes and you talked about getting that job is this. It's not what you know, it's what you can prove. Right? Outcomes are all about proof. It's a proof of the education. It's the relevance in the marketplace. And that's something that I think we're talking about marketing a little bit. Relevance is this thing that we're dealing with right now. A college degree, is it relevant? Is it still something you need?

And there are a lot of articles. I swear, any given day, you could probably find two articles that say get a college degree and two that say you don't need a college degree. But you know what, Joe, if you we can show dramatically that getting a higher degree, you get more money. But you know, we've done is we've created stackables so that if you get a certificate, if you're certified in something, we can stack that on top of another so that you're not losing, that you can start in a smaller way. But the degree is still valid. You've got people who are, there's some jobs that during the pandemic that all of these technology companies were hiring, hiring our students, and they were making triple the amount. They ended up laying most of those people off just a short time ago. And long term, this is still the way that you change people's lives is through higher education.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, that's a really good segue. Carlos, I want to bring you in as the executive director of Casa Latina and then Douglas will pass to you. But what is Casa Latina and why does it connect exactly with what Rick just said about serving students and why are you doing this? What is it? Help us understand it.

Carlos Sanchez: Yeah, you know, Joe, first of all, I think Casa Latina speaks about the culture of innovation and the culture of focusing on career education at Davenport University. Because the university has devised this initiative to instead of having the Latino bilingual students adapt to the way we teach, we are adapting to the way they speak. So we will be teaching 12 programs at the undergraduate and graduate level in English and Spanish in a bilingual format. 50% in English, 50% in Spanish. Because that is the way the Latino community behaves, right? They speak English and Spanish as well. 

We're gonna do it fully online because we know that a lot of our Latino community that are in need of degrees are adults and don't have really the time to come to school on a regular schedule so they can take it anytime they want. And lastly, we are, for those that come from abroad that have foreign credentials, we're going to take all that, the assessment and the evaluation, the evaluation of the credentials, we're going to take them in-house at no cost to our students to make it easier to come to Davenport.

Douglas Carlson: Amazing. Davenport's really interesting to me here. You have taken a focus on making sure that you're offering degrees that are ultimately, you know, career ready in a lot of ways, which I think is really smart and really impressive. And also kind of this interesting, very large number of first generation students at 50%. I'm curious, so Michigan as a whole has what about 5.6% or so Hispanic, but I would bet that Grand Rapids, where you're very close to, has a much higher percentage of that. Is that true? And is that one of the opportunities for you is really working with first gen students? Do you have like a higher percentage or concentration of Latinos, therefore you're able to serve them better in the area?

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Just one thing before Carlos talks, we actually have our main campus in Grand Rapids, but we also have a campus in Detroit, in Lansing, and Midland. And so we're able to handle the whole state. But go ahead, Carlos.

Carlos Sanchez: Sure. Douglas, you're absolutely right. By comparison, of course, Detroit is a much larger metropolis in Michigan. But if you were to compare apples to apples, West Michigan would have a larger population than the Detroit area of Latinos. We are about, I'll say, 18 percent of the population. But here's the thing that about half a million Latinos that live in this state, only 2% of us have a college degree.

Douglas Carlson: Wow.

Carlos Sanchez: Yeah, exactly, right? So that is why we are very much intent on helping the Latino community in getting those degrees. And I'll tell you something else that's really important to us is closing the talent gap.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: So we have great programs in cybersecurity. We have programs in all of these cool, and we created two new mental health degrees. We can do it in 60 days versus six months to a year for other institutions. But this here, you've got all these great workers. Some of them already working at institutions, but not having that degree at companies. And we're going to raise them up to be able to move and feel comfortable. As Carlos said, we're changing us. I mean, the heavy lifting of we did a Spanish website and Spanish materials and every faculty member they have will be bilingual. And we believe, like Casa Latina implies, it's the house, it's their home. And so that we are changing how we operate to make sure that they're successful. So it's not an enrollment. We enroll, retain, graduate and place. And that is, if we're just attracting them and we don't keep them, then it's a failure.

Douglas Carlson: Tell them like it is. That's incredible. And you probably know these stats better than I do, but 20% of the US population, 18 to 35, is Latino and potentially growing over 25%, even just by 2050. So it just seems like you're very much, you know where the world is going and you're helping prepare the students you know.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: That's our slogan, Douglas, get where the world is going.

Douglas Carlson: How did you know that? I'm telling you, it's a lightning guy right here.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: But you know, they're expected to be the majority. I forget which year it is, Carlos, but they're expected to be the majority in this country. And the thing is, families follow. So if we're good for one family member, the rest of the family will follow if they trust us and we develop that trust. And so this is a long-term project. This is not short-term. In our enrollment this year, even though we got hurt by the pandemic, all four semesters have been up. We had the most people living on our campus in our history this past fall. So higher education is making a comeback, not for everybody, but we're certainly seeing that at our institution.

Douglas Carlson: 100%. 100%. Carlos, do you - I'm also curious what, especially thinking of Grand Rapids and Detroit and others, but first thing I think of is Motown, because it's fantastic. Second thing I think of is cars, but - What are the jobs of the future that are coming here? What are you seeing that you're preparing people for that may be a little bit different than the future 20 years versus the last 20 years?

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: So we have a guy whose only job is the executive director of market intelligence. It's a cool job. I wanted them to put that at the end of my title, but the board said president and intelligence don't go together. So what they do is they find out where the new jobs are coming from. So we saw that mental health was a big deal. So we created a master's in nursing, nurse practitioner, psychiatric nursing and a master's in mental health. And we, and they came and it was really cool. So we're seeing right now we're studying for the future, not just the micro credentials, but we're also measuring, for example, the soft skills, critical thinking, problem solving. So, and we're actually going to put it under our great provost work, put it into our transcripts. 

But I see AI is something that we're embracing at the institution. We're not afraid of AI. We're learning more about it. But ours, what are the jobs of the future will also be the expectations of those employers. They're going to expect that our graduates are going to have AI experience because they're going to be using AI. So as we start really looking at how that affects our curriculum, we look at our curriculum all the time and try to, is it still up to date? Is it still needed by the marketplace?

And so vision, so we're finishing vision 2025. So next year we'll draft vision 2030. We like five year increments. 'Cause I think if you plan longer than that, the change is just too rapid. Right. And so, and we're flexible within this strategic plan of ours. So you'll see more technology based, but it doesn't stop the human interaction that's so necessary for how do you learn and how do you apply? We apply more than theory. We're application-based more than the theory of something. If I had a law school, which I'm glad I don't, I would teach them how to litigate versus about the law. They expect to know about the law, but how do you apply it to your profession as an attorney?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Carlos, I want to jump in and come back to Casa Latina a little bit. That's such a good segue. It feels like I've been paying Rick for these segues because they're so perfect. I haven't seen any money, but I know I haven't sent you any really but it's engaging the person engaging humanity when you're talking about Latino Latina and Latinx students in general. You're not just recruiting them. You're recruiting the family. There's deep cultural ties language, you know culture, customs, almost the parents not letting them go. You know, there's some of these students have familial responsibilities, putting food on the table, having to work and contribute to the family. How deep does this go in terms of planning Casa Latina? Because you've got to consider all those things when you're out there recruiting students, right? Even language, even having a bilingual makes it feel more like home. It's such a recruiting advantage for you.

Carlos Sanchez: Absolutely. Because what happens is that for most Latino families, their bilingualism, which is a skill, right? It's already there. So they're already growing up in a lot of them, not all, but a lot of them in a bilingual environment. So let's take advantage of that skill, right? So there might be an individual who has, let's say, born here or arrived here very early in their life, went through the US educational system, speaks really good English, academic English up to high school, but their Spanish is not academic, but it's there. So Casa Latina will help them elevate that Spanish to an academic level to develop professionally proficient individuals, right? 

The same case for those, for their parents who might be Spanish dominant, but have some English skills, and we will level up their English skills again to develop professionally proficient individuals. So those are the skills that are for a lot of Latinos are not being leveraged right now. And I think it is not right. We need to develop those. Level up.

Douglas Carlson: And Carlos, I'm really, I think you part of already answered the question about ask, but I'm interested in having you elaborate on it is, you know, with every different type of student type, there are different opportunities and challenges and things that a student type brings that are very positive. And I think one of those things you've already talked about is that bilingualness is a huge asset and a huge positive. I'd be curious with this group as well. What are the other aspects here you're noticing that are real positive about the students? Like, is it coming with a bit more grit, a bit more of a world experience, a different lens. I'd be curious because those are also kind of the hidden things that we maybe don't talk about enough, but it's special about different student groups and all of them have something special.

Carlos Sanchez: Sure. You know, we talk a lot when there's a disruption in the markets, there's a lot of change, right? And people aren't afraid of change or they have a hard time changing. Being bicultural, we are dealing with change day in and day out every single day. So we need to recognize as bicultural individuals that that is what we are doing so we can adapt faster to change. And then of course, be comfortable with change and sometimes even provoking change, right? Because sometimes it's good, because we feel comfortable about that. 

Imagine there might be a Latino, Latina that at home they speak let's say some English and Spanish, they listen to Univision, it's a different culture in general, and then they go on to a Steelcase, so a manufacturing of predominantly American English spoken environment, and they have to shift, they have to change, they have to become some other person, so they change it all the time. So that is a really, really good skill that comes with being, if not, again, some, not all Latinos are bilingual, but most Latinos are bicultural.

Douglas Carlson: That's a, I think a really powerful, not only distinction, but some kind of activity, like hidden opportunities and hidden strengths. I don't think we talk about that enough.

Carlos Sanchez: Right. And to underscore what Dr. Pappas said, you know, there are a lot of companies right now that are looking not just internal, but externally for talent. And what we are trying to help them is to identify those individuals that are leaders, that could be leaders. They just need a higher degree, right? You might have someone in HR who's been doing it for five years, but lacks that HR bachelor's and he or she is bilingual. Let's get them that degree and then bring that person up, you start creating a pipeline, right? But of course, you will have an employee for life because you gave them that opportunity.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: I think it's a great opportunity for corporations. We have corporate partnerships with companies throughout the state. The big ones, the DTE, the Meijer, all of them. And this is the advantage they have with us, is that we can do non-credit, we can do credit, we can do Casa Latina within that organization. And so Carlos is the right guy and he's also a Davenport alum, which makes him even stronger.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, one thing you're talking about leveling up and in higher ed, I love ecosystems because I feel like we do, you know, when I do, when I keynote out there and I do these keynote things on the future of higher ed, I'll always ask somebody in the crowd who at least has the masters if they have doctoral, how many schools you went to to get those degrees? And so you'll have generally have somebody that says I went to three schools. That's on average, I got my bachelor's one place, master's another place, doctoral another place. And you'll why? Where's that loyalty that stepping through process in higher ed when you get a degree in one place? Why not go there for your next degree? And you guys have done a really good job of laying out those pathways, Rick. You can get the certificate. You can level that up into an associate degree. You can level that up to a baccalaureate degree. You can level that up to a master's degree.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: You know, it's interesting. It's important. And we have a strong alumni group that we talk to about, you know, at commencement, all of these bachelor's degrees in nursing, for example. They get more money. They do better with an MSN, a master's degree and then they can go to nurse practitioners. So we do ladder up. You know, it's funny, I went to, I have three degrees, but my last two were from the same institution, Michigan. And the reason is that Michigan talked to me about in my master's. Why don't you think about that? You know, in other words, encouraged me to stay. Sometimes there's such a gap between when you get your bachelor's and master's or master's and doctorate, if you go for the doctorate. And it's the...

There are so many different ways, so many obstacles, I call them, that people put in your... I remember when I was getting my doctorate, I was young, and I remember the chairman of my committee said, nobody in their 20s is going to get their doctorate. Well, I happened to be in my 20s at the time. He was right, I got it when I was in my early 30s. That's an unnecessary obstacle. It has nothing to do with ability. It has something to do with age. And so there used to be this, you had to go through all of this red tape. Our degrees, when somebody comes to us, especially with Casa Latina, but all of our programs, they're our teammate of ours. They still have to do the hard work, but we want them to succeed. So we spend a lot of time advising and making sure that they understand their financial aid. But more importantly, they understand the work. 

So every student has to intern or have an experience at the end of their, because, you know, I had this student in accounting whose parents were accountants and she was going to go into that business. So she was a good student. She interned in accounting and she came back and said, I hate it. And I said, luckily you're in your first two years and you can move your major pretty easily. And so just because they're good at it doesn't mean so you have to like it as well as be good at it. And so this, this is a real key to a partnership when you look at higher education.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, that just makes my point, you know, the point. And I think a lot of times what we do, 'cause we, I always believe, you know, as we talked about the value of higher ed and its question, we don't do a good job of putting out messaging that dismantles that, that negativity. And you think about a bachelor's degree and you get him graduated and, you know, it's like, okay, go get your job. That person may move. They may go to another state. They may go back home to their home state. And when they look at their masters, let's say five years or 10 years, like many of us that don't do it right away, what your immediate, in your immediacy, you start looking at schools right around you. You forget about the school you came from unless that school's in touch with you the whole time saying, don't forget about us. There's a marketing piece that happens. Douglas, you're into marketing. I mean, we just do a bad job sometimes at keeping people in a system.

Douglas Carlson: Yeah, and I'd be really curious to that point. I think this is overgeneralization, but what I see in higher education is we focused a lot on getting students earlier and earlier, especially traditional undergrad, where we're talking almost freshmen at this point and then following them all the way through enrollment. We're doing a pretty decent job of making sure we're talking about this concept of student success and getting them graduated. And then yes, there are these alumni organizations, but so often it's just, can you give us a dollar? Can you make donations? Those sort of things where there seems like -

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: It's fuzzy math. And it's interesting because you've already talked about thinking about the entire family. So I'd be curious how you're thinking about alumni, how you're thinking about families and kind of expand on that a little bit.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Well, alumni association is important because they're really the product of what we are. And every time we improve, as we improved our graduation rate or our retention rate, that adds on to their degree they may have gotten 20 years ago. And so we talk to them, we have them coming into the classroom, our alumni, talking to people, they're in that field. What's it like to be in that field and trying to make sure there's a connection? You know, it's how you view higher education. You know, we are different, we're quicker. We're more agile. I don't like the slowness of higher education. So when I said we can create that new degree in 60 days, like we did with the mental health, it's because we already did the pre-work of understanding what the market says. There are jobs there and they're so needed, right? And so why shouldn't we be the ones to, like with Casa Latina, this is a bold move. We're one of the only ones, if not the only one in the country. And some people say, well, why aren't others doing it?

Because it's a heavy lift and they don't want to change. They want students to change to us. You heard Carlos say that we're changing because we think we should change for them. Why wouldn't we? You know that they feel more comfortable. They're smart, but they don't feel they don't have confidence in higher education and nor should they. I mean, we haven't we we've been in historically. You have to be accepted into ours. You know it's this this this kind of a who you exclude and who you include.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's right. And we're trying to be very inclusive. And when they come here... I like your style, dude.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: A lot of people have told me that, Joe, over the years.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I do want to point out, though, but I do have another question for Carlos, but I want to point out that you said that president and intelligence don't normally get put together. And you've been a president for 35 years, as you pointed out.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Well, that may be it by itself because over four institutions and soon as they found me out, Joe, then I had to go. But I will tell you, Davenport, I was actually a finalist for a public regional university at the same time as Davenport. And I'm so lucky and fortunate to have been here. Our board of trustees are all CEOs or former CEOs. They care. It's a diverse board. They want us to succeed. They're excited about Malcolm Baldrige and quality indicators. They're excited about reaching out to people who can be tremendous in the workplace, but haven't had the opportunity and doing things differently, not to do them differently, but to do them because they're more effective. We measure everything we do. We have 11 KPIs, key performance indicators, student satisfaction, employee satisfaction, graduate satisfaction, how the employer perceives us after they hire our people, you know, are they are they ready to work? And so that's fun for us because it helps us improve. You know, we look at the data and if there's something that's not working, it gives us a chance.

Douglas Carlson: Carlos, back over to you real quickly. So talk about Casa Latina. When is it happening? When do you launch it? How many students are coming in? You know, what are your expectations? Are you meeting your expectations?

Carlos Sanchez: So Casa Latina, right now what we're doing is we are developing the first 32 of the about 200 courses that we need to have for the 12 programs that we have. Because it's not just about translating from English to Spanish, but it's to really redevelop it because, you know, they're going to be taught with dual language methodology. So we're doing that right now. In about a month, we're gonna be focusing on hiring the faculty that we need that again, like Dr. Pappas said, we want them to be bilingual. So one professor can teach both in English and Spanish. And all this we want to be ready by this fall. We planning on launching Casa Latina this fall and we're shooting for 100 students.

And we are so we are already taking applications. We are actively recruiting, of course, in the state of Michigan. But we've had really good, very good reception, very positive reception in other parts of the of the country. And I got to tell you, a few of them also from from outside of the U.S. So we're very we're very positive that we're going to get those numbers.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: We also had the State Hispanic Association, the West Michigan Hispanic Association presidents totally endorse this whole program. We had an opening with Carlos and they're excited. They said this makes a huge difference for the community.

Douglas Carlson: I'm really curious. It sounds like recruiting is going well. There's a couple different aspects of that is, especially if you're recruiting your 18 year old student, the Gen Z population. They communicate differently. There's different marketing channels. International, there's also different marketing channels. You know, WhatsApp's ubiquitous versus texting versus apps. I'm just really curious how you're thinking about communicating what those strategies look like. Sort of what those technologies look like, because that's an additional challenge. It's like, what do you, not only how do you communicate, but what do you use to communicate with these students?

Carlos Sanchez: Sure. Well, we've defined three principal markets that we want to tackle. And according to our research, we feel that the adult population are going to be the early adopters of the program. Also, because you know that in order to bring high schoolers, we would have had to start targeting them about a year ago when we were, you know, we were still planning this. So we're not leaving high schoolers out, but we are focusing on the adult population that want to get this degree. So basically is we see those adults that arrive here with some high school or maybe a couple of years in college. We want to bring them in. And then as they're learning what Casa Latina is about and how convenient it is for them, then maybe bring, you know, their kids, the kids along to Casa Latina.

The last market is a place where abilities are also very, very overlooked. They're usually non-Latino individuals that go to immersion schools. So sometimes they go from kindergarten all the way to graduate from high school, and they are bilingual individuals. After high school, there's nothing else for them to continue their bilingual education. So they usually come to colleges and universities and they test out of Spanish. And you know, if you don't use it, you lose it, right? So at the end of four years, their Spanish is not as good, let's say. Some might forget, others is not as good. This way they will be able to continue that bilingual education all the way to a degree and in, I don't know, accounting, marketing, HR, et cetera, and continue developing those bilingual abilities.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: And there's a company side of it. There's a couple of companies, we're talking about large companies. One has about 500 Latinos, and they're interested. And so we might take a cohort of 20 of them. And cohorts do better in terms of retention and so forth. But it's interesting because we haven't done it before. So it's going to be, we're going to be, what is it building the plane as we fly it or something?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Surprise. Yes. We're learning a lot. Yeah, there's something to be said for that though these days because innovation in higher ed can be stifled pretty easily. You know, Rick will know this, many in higher ed know this. Many institutions you try to drive an innovation like this, you get, you never make it through the first committee.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Right. You never make it. You just get stifled and sucked dry of all your innovative. You know, one university where I was president when I first got there, I asked how they made decisions and they had these committees and they actually had a committee that was studying committees. And I said, I think maybe we should just get one big committee and then eliminate the rest because you waste so much time and effort and rehashing so many things, but this institution is lean and we're ready and we're excited and everybody's been pitching in from a call center, our admissions people, our academics, everybody to support Carlos and his team to make this a success.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Where did this idea come from?

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Well, I'll tell you, when I first got here and I had done a Latino initiative at National Louis University in Chicago where I was prior to this. And it was small and I asked our provost, who's originally from Puerto Rico, I said, what can we do for our Latino students? And she did some work and research and I give her and I give Carlos really the other ones who had come up with this with a couple of consultants. So I liked it because it was bold, but it was also real. It was talking about what are the real issues that a Latino family faces and what would we need to do? And I mean, it's expensive and it's, but once it gets going, this is not a one semester. This is going to be a year, you know, years long building this up and making it successful. So I would say Dr. Haley, Dr. Hilda Haley would be the one of the main architects for this, our provost.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, they always say sometimes in higher ed, we lose sight of the fact that a new initiative is really a startup and most startups take two, three years to break even. And we think that just because it's higher ed that it's any different. And there's a lot of naysayers that will come in and say, well, what did this, you wasted this money when I could have used it over here. I could use it over there. Well, that's every business operates that way. And you never have a new product unless you grow something.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Yeah. And we've been, we've been growing a lot of our baccalaureates and master's degrees that are specific to the, you know, like the cyber degree, we're a national center of excellence from Homeland defense and so forth. And I mean, you can leave our institution with six figures right off of getting the degree there. So there's a lot of cool opportunities. And what happens at the high school level is they don't necessarily know what their opportunities are. They know about being an attorney and about being a doctor and those kinds of things.

Douglas Carlson: But Douglas. Yeah, so I'd be curious to get a sense for what if this program really takes off, what does this look like in five years? What does this look like in 10 years? Obviously, you're just getting off the ground now. But there's a much there's a hockey stick kind of vision here. So I'm really curious about what that looks like in like maybe a five or 10 year.

Carlos Sanchez: You know, hockey sticks can go two ways, right? This is language. Well, you know, I'll be bold to say that we have a phase two. So we started with 12 programs and for phase two, we will be adding a couple more programs that are also that are in the pipeline, if you will, in the same way that Davenport operates. In about three years or so, we might evaluate the programs that we started with, and we might have to take one or two or none, the programs, because they're not working. So that's how we work at Davenport with results, right? 

Eventually, what I think is that, so on the academic side, on the academics side, we probably will have visits from other colleges and universities within the United States come and see how do you do this, right? How can we adopt this in other places? That is one. The other piece is as we are attracting a mass of Latinos to Casa, albeit online or not, to Casa Latina, to Davenport University, we might even think in about five years or so to start developing or in state classes, bilingual classes here at Davenport. For that, we need to go through a couple of hurdles because right now we don't have the critical mass of bilingual adjuncts or professors in Michigan, but that will be just fantastic.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: I also tell you that there's very few things I call a national model. The urban education is a national model because it solves a problem and it's replicable. And it's not as expensive. This has that same potential because, you know, we're starting in Michigan and contiguously we'll start growing it if we're successful here, where it could be a national issue. And then we're already, as Carlos said, getting some interest from outside the country because it's online. It could be an international model. And so, you know, first things first is what we're going to do is serve the students who come to us now. We're going to learn about where we've been really successful and where, hey, we need to switch this. And we're smart enough to right in the middle, if we see something that's not working, make that change then and not wait till the end. So that the students are always at the front of our mind. Are they going to be able to not only learn this and when somebody you think about it, well, it's just putting it into Spanish, well, accounting by itself, the word bottom line, things like that. They aren't translated as well. And they're going to need to know all of that if they're going to work in a CPA firm or our nurses. Think about how valuable this is if they're multilingual and the kind of people, patients that they get, and that people feel more comfortable explaining what my health problem is in their native language. And this will benefit all of the employers who hire our students or who already work within this company. And we see this as a real win, win, win for the employers, for the students, and for us. Because I think we want to be part of an innovative approach, and not just to be innovative, but that has some impact, that has some result.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's a fact. That's a fact. That is a fact. We always like to close out our episodes with two questions. I'll ask you, Carlos, first, what else do you want to say about Casa Latina? Anything at all will give you an open mic and then tell us what you see for the future of higher education.

Carlos Sanchez: Thank you. Well, the last thing I'll say is that we want also to make this affordable in Casa Latina, right? So for Michigan residents, we are providing, Davenport, the university is providing a scholarship of $9,200 a year at the undergraduate level and $5,000 at the graduate level. Again, we want to make this as affordable as possible. That, combining with tuition reimbursement from some of the companies, that might alleviate that. 

And what I see the future, I think, as Dr. Pappas mentioned, I think higher education is going to come back to what it used to be. I understand that there are needs also for two-year schools. But the facts are there, right? That with a college degree in the long term, you are opposed to really make more money and of course, start accumulating or creating wealth rather than accumulating, creating wealth for generations to come, right? So that is why I've been in higher ed now for 12 years. And I see that as positive for the community in general, but most importantly and again, they were selfish for our Latino community.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well said sir, I love that and I agree. Over to you Dr. Rick. What else do you want to say about Davenport University open mic and tell us what you see for the future of higher ed open mic.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Well, we're doing some of the things that we think are important. So there's something we've been working on for our online program. So you might, if you're a student athlete here, we're in the NCAA division two. So they'll start off as an in-seat in a class, right? But they got to travel to a game. They can in the same class go on to online or hybrid. Same instructor, same class. It's the flexibility that I think higher education will need to show, the adaptability, the ability to change faster, not change for change's sake, but to be able to look at the credentials that are making a difference in that industry, which might be quite different than, you know, if you think about it, semesters and classes have been here since the 1600s. Not a lot of innovation in that regard, right? 

So the speed of how we operate, you can see behind me, those are residence halls. But we have, you know, our online program is robust. We're working with people that haven't had the opportunity to be in higher education or to be successful in higher education. And there's this view, I used to be on the board of the American Council on Education that represents all of higher ed. There used to be this view that it's the elites that are the best universities. But now they're finally looking at who are we serving? Very few of the elites have first-generation students at any degree. Very few have students of color. Very few have people that can be very successful, but it might take a little bit more work to graduate them. And I think that's the future. The future are the institutions who are going to survive and grow, are the ones who care about these students and adapt the learning, not just lecture.

Lecture is good in some ways if you need to get a lot of information out, but that's not the way people learn, right? It's applying what they've learned. You know, when I learn something, I learn because I'm able to apply it. And everybody has different learning styles. But I think the institutions who are able to adapt to change the fastest and the best and with strong backgrounds and strong backbone will be the University of the future.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: So if you can understand any of what I said, Joe, that's going to be interesting.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I can understand all of it, in fact. But I will tell you, Douglas, what did you think about this conversation?

Douglas Carlson: Yeah, I really appreciated this. And I think, Dr. Rick, you did a nice job of kind of tying it up with the bow is you have to meet the population where it is. And I think the greatest strides are really met in the middle. It's not the top or the bottom. It's making sure that these middle group of students that really need an opportunity to chance are highly skilled, but they need the opportunity and they need to realize that being multicultural is an asset and not a liability.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Those are exactly and that's sort of the power of this. And I also agree. It's like the innovation doesn't come from the top. It doesn't filter its way down. It's really it's more where you're meeting the actual students where they're at. I gave you a quick statement, you know, we're bringing back for our biggest fundraiser. I interviewed people and Anderson Cooper is coming back and we had him eight years ago and he went to Yale and in the, we had a lot of fun in the interviews, a really quick, smart guy. And he says, you know, gee, I went to Yale, I should have gone to Davenport. And I stopped him there and I said, let's revisit this one more time.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Surprise. It's the truth.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: That's, that's, that's right. I mean, institutions today, who you serve, who you include, not who you exclude is the difference maker.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Douglas, you become a difference maker on the microphone. You're getting more adept at podcasting, but I, as the outro, I would like to remind you of one thing. So no matter how good you get the bar is high my friend. Thanks for coming on as my co-host Douglas.

Douglas Carlson: My pleasure.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Gentlemen our guests today - He's Carlos Sanchez. He is the executive director of Casa Latina at Davenport University and child will not sit down. We have Dr. Rick Pappas. He is the president at Davenport University. Gentlemen, it has been an honor and a pleasure to host you here on edup. We hope you had a good time along with talking about -

Carlos Sanchez: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Dr. Richard J. Pappas: Yes. It was great. Thank you. I like your statements that you make out there that I'm going to steal the one that's the smartest man alive, but I wouldn't be able to use it. So I'll give it to someone else.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I'll use it for you. Everybody. Dr. Rick is... We'll quote him. We'll quote him saying it. There you have it, everybody. You've just ed uped.