165. Educational Pipeline

Posted in authentic learning, diversity, equity, higher education, inclusion, learning, STEM
December 9, 2020

A college degree, especially in one of the STEM fields, can provide students with higher incomes, more stable employment prospects, and more pleasant working conditions. Many  students who could benefit from a college degree face a variety of barriers that prevent them from successfully completing their degree. In this episode, Jill Lansing joins us to discuss what colleges and universities can do to help smooth the educational journey from Pre-K to college and to careers for all of our students. Jill is an Assistant Vice Chancellor and Director of Education Pipeline Initiatives at the State University of New York. Before moving to this position in 2009, she had been the Coordinator of P-16 Strategic Planning for the New York State Department of Education.

Transcript

John: A college degree, especially in one of the STEM fields, can provide students with higher incomes, more stable employment prospects, and more pleasant working conditions. Many students who could benefit from a college degree face a variety of barriers that prevent them from successfully completing their degree. In this episode, we discuss what colleges and universities can do to help smooth the educational journey from Pre-K to college and to careers for all of our students.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Jill Lansing. She is an Assistant Vice Chancellor and Director of Education Pipeline Initiatives at the State University of New York. Before moving to this position in 2009, Jill had been the Coordinator of P-16 Strategic Planning for the New York State Department of Education. Welcome, Jill.

John: Welcome, Jill.

Jill: Thanks so much for having me today. It’s really truly an honor and a privilege to be here. And

John: Today’s teas are:

Jill: I’m drinking iced tea because of the podcast, and some water.

Rebecca: It’s a little cold outside for me to have iced tea today, but I have Big Red Sun again. And as you can see, I am drinking my way through one whole canister of the same tea. [LAUGHTER]

John: I am drinking Tea Forte’s Earl Grey today.

Rebecca: So Jill, we’ve invited you here today to talk a little bit about your work on educational pathways. Can you tell us a little bit about your role?

Jill: About 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago now, I started at the State University of New York in this role to really try to help to strengthen the alignment between K through 12 education and higher education and adult education, also encouraging adults to return to college. And it has been such an amazing opportunity, I have to say. It’s amazing, It’s been 10 years already, 11 years to think about this pathway. But, I think the idea was, many of the faculty that are listening today have been doing it forever. So they know what works and what doesn’t work. What we did when we started this work about 10 years ago was to really try to create more opportunities to bring resources to the table for faculty at our colleges. So the idea was really, and I’ve been lucky in this regard, was really to figure out what grant opportunities we could apply for, what pathways were available that we could actually say: “This works. This doesn’t” …to try to avoid places where people have had difficulties in the past. So, I spend a lot of my time actually learning from the faculty at SUNY about what does work, and then also try to bring resources to those things that are successful. Before my role at SUNY, I was working as the coordinator of P-16 strategic planning for the State Education Department. And I worked in many different capacities there, one of the places that I worked, that I loved the most, was working in the Office of the Professions and Higher Education. And in the professions, I was so new, I was a graduate student when I started and I got the opportunity to be in the role of the public management internship program at the time, which was to really try to create opportunities for new people to have the opportunity to learn about the government and learn about public administration. And so the idea was to create a public information campaign around career opportunities in the professions like architecture, dentistry, engineering, nursing. And so I was able to learn about so many opportunities there, there are nearly 45 licensed professionals in New York State, all opportunities for students to have career opportunities in. And also from there, I was able to work in the Office of Higher Education, and also the Office of at the time, it was Elementary, Secondary and Continuing Education. And so I really did get to see all of the amazing work that goes on in the State Education Department to support students, and also the pathways that are available for student success. So it really gave me an idea of what we could do at SUNY to really support students beginning at the very early age of pre-kindergarten all the way through elementary school, secondary school, and then into college. So lots of good experience that led to, hopefully, better outcomes for students,

John: What are some of the barriers or the challenges that students face as they move along their educational pathways in the state.

Jill: So I always like to start with opportunities. [LAUGHTER] But I think that barriers are real. In fact, they very much are real. So last year, I had the great opportunity to work with the National Center for Education Statistics as part of the Data Institute team to kind of look at the data and to find out some of those barriers. So, we did some regression analyses, and one of the things that we knew were true, but it really became evident in the numbers, is that economics and race matter. My dissertation was around college choice. And it’s amazing to me that, when the odds are stacked against you when you’re looking for college, that puts you in an unbelievable place where you’re really trying to figure out how to go about college choice, how to go about succeeding in college. So we really do try to look at that in the beginning. But barriers are, you know, your a risk for college. The Education Trust has been an enormous resource for us. They were looking at things like student suspensions in high school. It’s a demoralizer, it also really places students behind where they could be if they didn’t have to experience those kinds of challenges in their high school. So, I would say that the barriers are real, and we’re trying, through our programming, to really address those barriers. I also think another barrier is, and I know a lot of our faculty are interested in this, it has to do with the growth mindset and to what extent is students believe they have the ability to succeed and I think that pervades all economic lines and it’s really an important thing to keep in mind because, as faculty are thinking about how do we work with new students, and they’ve given me so much advice, as we look for money and programming, how do you really try to build a student up and help to empower them as they try to be successful in college? So, I think the barriers are real. And we really need to think about that. And it’s good to have this opportunity to talk about what we can do to really make a difference.

John: What does the data suggest is effective in helping students overcome some of these challenges?

Jill: That’s a great question. And there are so many data points that help to think about what the challenges are, and how to create change around the barriers. So one of the things we’ve been working on right now in collaboration with the Community College Resource Consortium, and also Jobs for the Future is the idea of Guided Pathways. For a long time, students would come into college, particularly in community colleges, and take courses that they were interested in, but didn’t necessarily count toward their major. So, they would take some courses, they weren’t sure what major they were interested in studying, and then they would take some courses, and then they may or may not add up to the total number of credits they need to graduate. So, we’ve been trying to really focus in on college completion and graduation. And that consortium has led us to become part of something called Strong Start to Finish, which is a national initiative to try to get students to complete gateway courses in their first year of college. So, really try to focus in on what matters, also try to avoid remediation through co-requisite coursework, and also opportunities where students don’t have to kind of get behind in their classes and can really kind of get up to speed on what they need to complete their gateway courses. So, that’s been very helpful. And also the Guided Pathways Initiative. If you talk to college presidents across the state, they are head over heels about Guided Pathways. So students enroll in college, they enroll in a meta major, instead of necessarily a particular major, and really try to take the courses in the very beginning of their curriculum that would lead to success in the health sciences professions, Hospitality and Culinary Institute, business professions. So, it’s not we’re asking high school students to make a decision right away about their major, but kind of “tell us what you’re interested in, and then we can connect you with the courses that would actually add up to success.” Because, I think, where the Community College Research Consortium has found many students fall away from college is when it’s not adding up to their degree program or to their area of interest. So, that’s been very powerful. Another area is our P-Tech and Smart Scholars programs that have been guided by faculty, and I’ll say the Faculty Council of Community Colleges, in the very beginning of any early High School initiatives, put in place standards for what quality looks like. And one of the things I was going to talk about later, but I’ll say it now, because it’s so critical, is that rigor matters. So, when faculty put rigorous standards in place, it inspires students to succeed. And I think that they feel a different benchmark about where they’re supposed to be in their collegiate life. So I think rigor matters, and I applaud all those faculty who do this day in and day out, because it’s hard. It is hard in times of COVID-19, it’s hard every day, but just to keep the rigorous standards in place, and then support students on that pathway really matters. So, those are some opportunities, many more. We were able to, a couple of years ago, win a grant from the National Science Foundation, and also from Battelle Institute to help our graduate students work with middle school students to be, in their words, deputized as scientists beginning fourth, fifth and sixth grade in high need school districts. And having the connection between the graduate students and the middle school students was powerful, and all this was under the direction of faculty in our colleges. So, we had our scientists, across SUNY, overseeing this effort. And their ability to really create opportunities for these middle school students, who otherwise would never have had the chance to become scientists in laboratories at our SUNY Colleges, was huge. So I think that there are so many examples that I could share with you, but the ones where I think faculty, graduate students, aspiring faculty, put their passion and their heart into it, as well as their intellect and rigor, those are the ones that really matter for our students.

Rebecca: I wanted to follow up on the picking a major piece a little bit, because I think that is a real struggle for students when they head into colleges with an expectation of like, “Well, what are you going to do when you grow up? What are you going to study?” And the names of majors are so abstract to students, and there’s many careers that students have no idea even exist, and if you’re already in academia, you might have a clearer vision of what those things can lead to, but our students just don’t, and there’s no reason for them to know that

Jill: Exactly. When I was an undergraduate student, physical therapy and occupational therapy were big majors in my school and I didn’t know what they were at all. So the idea of helping students to come into a major in health sciences really will allow them to understand what opportunities are available to them. Another resource I should talk about is a resource called the Empire State STEM Learning Network. And in my career, one of the things that I’ve learned is that often when grants are distributed to an organization, the project period ends when the grant period ends. And one of the lucky things that I’ve been a part of, thanks to the regional leadership across the state, is something called the Empire State STEM Learning Network. And the idea for the STEM Learning Network was to bring together educators and business leaders in regions across the state to really focus on the educational pathway that leads to jobs in healthcare, in manufacturing, in Information Sciences, and architecture, and so many other fields. And I will say that one of the things that made the Empire State STEM Learning Network successful was the commitment regionally to develop partnerships to help lead students into careers. Because, you’re right, students don’t really know what they want, necessarily, in the very beginning of their life. But once they have the experience to be exposed to these opportunities, then all of a sudden, that could open the door for them and really spark an interest in them that we hadn’t thought about before. And even if they don’t go into architecture, maybe they would be interested in something related in engineering, or in teaching architecture. So I think the spark matters. And you’re absolutely right, Rebecca, it’s a really good question, because how would you know what the opportunities are for you? But really trying to create a level of interest with the students and also a level of “I can do it, this is real for me,” that really does matter. And I think our faculty, I mean, I’m talking to our faculty, and I’m so honored, because our faculty are often the drivers of everything that we do, and you know what drives students, what motivates them, and how to really think about what their needs are. And I think young high school students, I am always amazed at what they can do when they see exemplars of success, and also when they understand rigor. But also, I would say, in the way of how to be successful, I think we need to meet students where they are. One of the things that we learned from our colleagues at the Community College Research Consortium was that remediation can be very detrimental to students… the word remediation, the idea behind “I need to still catch up.” But, instead, trying to help to develop the skills that the student is interested in. So astrophysics is a big dream. But really, if you start, piece by piece, level by level, it can be a possibility, or another career option in that same field or discipline could also be possible for students. So really trying to motivate the students to success, I would say, but you’re right, students figure out what they want right off the bat when they’re coming to college is really a challenge.

John: What types of approaches have been effective in overcoming gaps in prior education? Because one of the main issues is that there’s quite a bit of disparity in the amount of training that students receive in their high schools, and that’s tied to a whole host of issues related to funding and housing segregation and other issues. While remedial work can be discouraging, or just even the term “remediation” is discouraging, what strategies have you seen that have been effective in helping students bridge any gaps in their background, to help them get to speed more quickly without being faced with a whole sequence of courses needed to enter, say, the STEM fields?

Jill: Precisely. So, good question. I would say to look at the following programs for good benchmarks and good outcomes data, Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), the EOC, the Liberty Partnerships Program, also very powerful. STEP and CSTEP have been incredible about meeting students where they are and getting the students where they need to be P-Tech has been amazing. And I think the best P-Tech programs and the best early college programs, the best programs that we have across the board, are those that are led by faculty who are determined to help students succeed. For example, in our community colleges, which are open access, and many students come to as the first opportunity they have to enroll in higher education, where there are collaborative opportunities for the students to participate in STEM research opportunities, that is so powerful, it almost closes the gap in the way of letting students have the opportunity to become scientists. I was talking earlier about programs where we worked in our middle schools to help our graduate students come to the middle school students and talk about “Here are opportunities for you to become a deputized scientist.” So, then when that student actually comes to community college, and they’re saying, “Oh, I’m gonna research climate change with my faculty member,” or whatever the research opportunity may be, it becomes a way for the student to see themselves in that career. And then they understand the pathway to the career. So I can’t say enough about the hard work of faculty in this effort, because (and this is my own experience as well), is that faculty in my life have taught me how to think. And I often tell students in high school that college is a place where they can learn to think. And they think that they’re behind the eight ball in some ways, and that they feel like they have to tell the professor about how much they know. And, instead, if you listen to faculty, and I’ve worked with both of you, and you’ve been teaching me about, like, how to think about this, how to think about talking to people, how to think about getting a message out, and I think often new college students feel that they have to prove themselves versus they can learn something, and you’re actually willing to help them. [LAUGHTER] So, I wanted to share an example. A couple years ago, I was interested in the process of statistical process controls as a way of thinking about, “Well, if we are trying to achieve student success at scale, how can we look at numbers and data to help us do that?” So, I was thinking that statistical process control could be helpful in higher education, about seeing trends over time, seeing when there are differences, and why there are differences. Maybe, perhaps, that the spring semester wasn’t working out for students because of X, Y and Z. And the faculty, again, provide such leadership, maybe we could learn from one another. So anyway, I went to this course on statistical process control that was offered by SUNY Polytechnic Institute. And there with me, were three Community College faculty. And they were interested in statistical process control, because they wanted to be able to integrate that curriculum into their coursework. They said, “So many students are coming to us, and they’re interested in manufacturing and machining. And they keep talking about statistical process control.” So they were seeing how can we integrate those into our work, so that the learning opportunities are more aligned with their goals, professionally and personally. And so I thought it was really amazing that these faculties sought out these professional development opportunities to really try to make learning matter for the students and make it something that they were interested in that they could actually apply to their jobs. And I think we talk a lot about workforce, we also are talking about educating a citizenry, and especially with the political climate change, I think we really have an opportunity. We’ve learned a lot in 2020, about COVID-19, about our responsibilities to citizens in this country, African-American citizens in particular. We focus a lot about Black Lives Matter. And after the passing of George Floyd and so many other unfortunate events this year, we’ve learned a lot about why we really have to be focused in on those liberal arts opportunities, and also about governance, and religion. And we need to have active citizens in this country. And I think that is equally important. Often, we talk a lot about STEM and job opportunities, but we have to think about the big picture. And I think that our faculty are leaders in that work. And so, to the extent that we can learn from them, and, again, create opportunities that help to advance our agenda. is really powerful.

John: A couple of times you mentioned P-Tech, for those listeners who may not be familiar with that, could you describe that program and how it works.

Jill: So the P-Tech program has been a program that is being led by IBM, and they’ve been really a front runner in this work. And they’ve put a lot of thought into how to connect high school faculty, high school programs with our colleges, and then also with workforce opportunities in high need fields. And I think that it’s been an awesome opportunity for our students. They are able to enroll in the P-Tech program as high school students, free of charge to students and their families. And I would also add, at this point too, that one of the big assets of SUNY is affordability. And so there are often times where students can actually earn SUNY degrees free of charge. And that is really incredible to graduate debt free. That also reduces a lot of the burdens that we talked about in the very beginning, around economic burdens, challenges around race, all of these opportunities are now readily available to students. So that’s been very powerful through the P-Tech program. And I think the P-Tech program is something that we can model across the board. And we have tried to do that in collaboration with regional BOCES, regional K-12 leaders, to actually develop a scope and sequence of courses beginning in grade 12, that continues on to higher education and then into the workforce. So, what happens is K-12 leaders, community college faculty (also many of our technical colleges also have P-Tech programs), and our business leaders come around the table together. And they think about what would a student need in order to be successful in life and in business in the long term. And I think what it develops is a real true camaraderie that allows successful programming development to happen. What is fortunate about the P-Tech is that it is enabled by grants from the State Education Department. So it does provide opportunities for faculty at K-12, faculty at higher education, business leaders to come together. But that seems to be very powerful when college faculty can also work with K-12 faculty to find out what the needs are, where the gaps are, and how they can work together to try to mitigate those gaps. So, often what I heard when I interview faculty in our community colleges in our technical colleges is that often they are unaware of some of the challenges that K-12 faculty face and then K-12 faculty are so eager to learn more about all of the expertise that community college and our technical colleges and also even graduate programs have to offer. So, when they have the opportunity to speak to one another, then all of a sudden, they’re all on board on changing curriculum and helping students to succeed. So I think the magic in the P-Tech is about this collaborative experience. I often find that regional collaborations are really also very powerful in that our faculty in our regions know what kind of high school students are coming from. And then when they talk to faculty and they can identify, you know, maybe the student didn’t have a fourth year math course in high school, or maybe there are some skills that for some reason the student wasn’t able to develop, and especially this important in COVID-19, because we’re hearing students that are struggling. So I think the connection between high school and college and then regional workforce leaders are very important. And we talk a lot, too, in our work, about regional economic development, and helping to really strengthen New York as a whole through our regional workforce capital. So we’re looking at that. And again, I would say, to create and develop good citizens of the state and of the nation, I think it’s very important. So, I feel like the opportunity for faculty at the K-12 level to connect with our faculty at SUNY, and then also with our workforce and industry leaders (many of whom are SUNY alumni), is a very powerful connection.

John: What are some examples of good collaborations between colleges and P-12 programs? What has worked in terms of helping to bridge the gap in terms of creating an environment of good communication? You mentioned P-tech. Are there any other models that have worked well?

Jill: I can name so many examples of what has been successful. I’m thinking about also the gaps between community colleges and our baccalaureate degree granting programs and our graduate programs. I was thinking offhand about Binghamton University and its collaboration with Broome Community College, really trying to help students who perhaps in the beginning didn’t meet the admission requirements for Binghamton, but had a lot of promise and a lot of opportunity for skill development in STEM. And so they entered into a collaboration with SUNY Broome to help those students to develop the skills at SUNY Broome that would make them eligible for upper-level credits at Binghamton University. So there’s so many examples like that. Our early college high school programs, in addition to our P-Techs are also powerful for making the connection between high school and college. We’ve also done a lot of work with our teacher education programs. We’re really very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the deans of all of our SUNY teacher education programs, to help them to develop more practical experiences for their teachers to work with the students and try to bridge the gap between high school and college. And I think that that has been so successful, our teacher education programs. And the faculty there have really led the way in terms of helping us to better understand K-12 experiences and create clinical opportunities for prospective teachers. So that has been huge because educator preparation is so essential to really helping to bridge the gap between K-12 and college and they’ve come back to us with so many ideas and opportunities, things that we’ve been able to win grants for and bring resources into the classroom about. So I’ve mentioned the Empire State STEM network before and they have just been amazing. So our colleges will frequently partner with our K-12 leaders to do things like in Buffalo, there’s something called the hands-in-hand program where the students were able to use 3D printing to develop hands for other students internationally, who actually need hands or limbs for some reason in their life. And they’ve been able to actually generate that through 3D printing. The other thing is computer science, cyber security. Our students right now in the P-Tech program are working with SUNY-Orange to develop skills in cybersecurity. So P-Tech is one example. But there are so many, and again, the graduate students that are working across the state with our K-12 students in STEM is also pretty awesome.

Rebecca: The ingredients of successful programs seem to include some collaboration between faculty at different levels to develop curriculum and mentorship, with either faculty at the college level with students, or college students with high school students. Are there other ingredients that we should focus on or highlight as being important to the success of these kinds of programs?

Jill: I think you said it so well, that it’s mostly customized opportunities for students and the places where we find success. And I was just reading the Journal of Higher Education this month, and it was talking about STEM student success and STEM student success at the community college level. And it was really focused around this idea of faculty in the very first year creating an experience for students that gets them engaged in their learning experience across the curriculum… and I think that idea of faculty engagement at the very beginning of learning experiences that are aligned to the student’s personal and professional goals. And again, it comes back to rigor. The students are so inspired by rigor, the students are so inspired by the benchmark is high, and these are the things that I can learn to be successful and to be like faculty. And so I just think faculty role modeling, faculty advising, academic success is so important. We also have the great benefit of SUNY of so many amazing student affairs professionals who also provide coaching and leadership and just a really well rounded approach to student development. Like I’ve mentioned before, the EOP programs are so successful because of this. So I think you’re right, Rebecca, the magic ingredient is collaboration. It’s also about rigor. It’s also about looking at the research and data and talking about what programs can actually generate data to improve success. I also think I’ve learned a lot from faculty about the idea of sort of an interdisciplinary approach to learning I often find that for me in education, if I go and look at that economics literature or the anthropology literature, or the political science literature, I can also learn a lot about how to help to bring these other resources to the table to really think about what success looks like. I recently had the opportunity to work with some medical professionals around the development of guidelines and the rigor to which they looked at guidelines and looked at evidence in the field to make judgments about what they should do, and the way of supporting medical advancements was so powerful that I thought we need to benchmark this in education. So I think looking at what the data tells us, and we’ve had our colleagues, like I mentioned before, at the Community College Research Consortium, at Jobs for the Future, at Achieving the Dream, and so many more places looked at the data for us. But I think that we need to be focused on the long term. And we need to think about what is the data telling us and how that can continue to improve our practice. And then I often think about the importance of qualitative data, what the faculty are telling us in the different disciplines. So that’s why it’s such a great opportunity in this position, because I’m working with faculty, often from economics, from English literature, from science, from political science, from public administration, so many different perspectives. But they all really come to bear when we talk about student success. So that’s been really tremendous for us here at SUNY,

John: Many of the programs you talked about have been at the community college level. And these don’t seem to be quite as common yet at comprehensive institutions. What can traditional liberal arts colleges do to reach out in the ways that community college have been doing for decades? What else should four-year colleges do to emulate the success that many community colleges have had in bridging some of these gaps?

Jill: I really think that you do it well. And I think this is where the SUNY advantage comes in. Because the quality and the dedication of faculty at the four-year colleges and the comprehensive colleges and the University Centers are amazing.

John: What can faculty at four year institutions or University Centers do to reach out to students in high schools to help them see the potential that’s available to them.

Jill: When they have an opportunity to listen to podcasts from faculty or actually engage in their research, it becomes really powerful to these students. And I think part of the challenge with faculty is really in finding a way to kind of create an inroad with these students. And so that’s why I was talking earlier about research opportunities, or really introducing students. I think you also have to help the students learn more about your expertise and try to again meet them where they are, trying to contextualize learning so that the expertise that you have at the comprehensive level and the university center level really can be matched to something that they might see an interest in long term. I’ve worked with an organization called the Army Education Opportunity Program. And this was through an opportunity that we had with Battelle. And the army is trying to recruit the future researchers, scientists, engineers. And what they encourage students to do was to work in groups with a faculty member and a science mentor to address challenges in their own local community. So, what kind of STEM challenges would they need to accomplish in their community? So, they look at things like recycling or safety and parks or child safety. But when the student can see how your expertise at the faculty level applies to their lives, then they are so engaged and faculty will tell me that they’re often outperforming them… that we have students in Long Island, for example, that are applying for patents on downloading data from their computer to a flash drive in instantaneous time, because they actually were listening to a faculty saying, “Ah, this takes so long to download that I actually need some help with this.” So they figured out the magnetic structure behind the thumb drive, and they actually created something that would help them to expedite the time in which they could download data. It was a big win-win, because the faculty was overjoyed. And also the student was able to learn the fundamentals from the faculty member to actually create innovation and to create change. So I think you have it, I was going to talk a little bit about the college choice process, which is so interesting to me, because students in high school have so many options, so many choices, there are 270 plus colleges and universities in New York State alone. And so when you think about the whole universe, and how students go about selecting a place where they can see their baccalaureate success dreams come true or their associate dreams come true. And think about graduate studies, what are they looking for? And based on the literature, after they go through the first predisposition phase, and then the search phase, they actually always talk about student culture in terms of why they make a decision about one college over another. And I also have seen literature that suggests that retention rates are impacted by the choice process around how much the student believes that they fit in. And so it’s hard for faculty at that point to connect with students. But I think that, to the extent that they could appreciate students’ development process and understand that their professional and personal goals and really try to connect them with their own research interests or their own academic interest, I think that can be very powerful in and of itself to really connect the student with the college culture, and with the rigor and academic excellence expectations that faculty have. I think it’s powerful. The other thing I think, is that Chancellor Malatras has been very committed to faculty diversity, because I also really believe that students need to see themselves in their faculty and see themselves in their mentoring experiences. So faculty diversity is also very critical. Our graduate students have been helpful with that as well, to try to make the connection between the faculty ranks and also with our colleges. The Education Trust has some amazing data around faculty diversity at the college level and also at the K-12 level. Because I really do think we need to do more in both arenas to really achieve change for our students, because our students are changing. And the other thing that drives success, and the main thing that drives success is student voices, because we have to hear from our students. And the more that I work with students and work within the framework of student success, I keep going back to the literature to find out what it is that motivates students of various backgrounds, how to really hear their voices, and how to integrate their voices into our activities to really strengthen the outcomes of students in our colleges. So student voices are fundamental to this work.

Rebecca: I think you’ve given a good view of how much has already been done, but also how much there is still to do. So. we usually wrap up by asking what’s next? [LAUGHTER]

Jill: So, so much exciting things are next, I think. In our office, we have an opportunity that was made available to us through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation around trying to strengthen communications, advocacy and success tools for students. So the idea would be: how do we really make students understand the value added of SUNY, the value added of the work that we’re doing to try to improve college completion rates, and student success Initiatives. So I would welcome faculty feedback on this. As I said before, faculty have always driven the work that we’ve been leading in our office. And so ideas around how we can better communicate these opportunities that are available to our students and to our parents, also to our guidance counselors, and then policymakers and government leaders about what is the SUNY advantage and about how they can have a part in this, I will say that if you look at SUNY, affordability matters, affordability is huge. The student debt crisis is alarming. And that’s where SUNY has the value and the added advantage. Also, the graduation rates of SUNY often surpass the national average, and are very amazing in terms of what the experience is that post grad and into careers that we’ve been able to achieve for students. And the alumni networks are so strong. And so someone asked me the other day that the SUNY Community College Trustees have been very powerful, great advocates, and they asked, “Can you provide an example of what it looks like to be student of Guided Pathways? So, what is the outcome? And how is it different than it was before? So I guess if faculty could share with us their ideas on first of all, how to continue to improve outcomes around student success, and also how to improve communications, because often faculty are doing this in our classrooms, but they’re saying how do we get the word out that this is so good, that we’re really making a difference, like this student came to us not knowing all the opportunities, and now is head of the class or now is really making huge changes in their field? What are those things that we can highlight, also transfer opportunities, students that might come to community college and then go to our baccalaureate degree institution, or I’m always interested in those that go on to graduate studies, our business and industry partners have been trying to create programs that meet students at the high school or community college level, and then drive them all the way to be our future engineers and scientists and researchers and physicians and faculty and all of the great career opportunities are available students. So what are those pathways look like from your perspective? And I think with this funding, and with this opportunity to really try to communicate these outcomes, we could really have some power that would drive us into the future. So I appreciate the question. And we certainly welcome your input and opportunities.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much, Jill, for sharing your experiences with us.

Jill: Well, thank you for the opportunity. And I would just say again, our faculty at SUNY are top notch, number one, and really have driven student success as we’ve started this work where we really put an anchor into the ground to try to help to strengthen the alignment between K-12, higher education and workforce, and citizenry. And I would just keep encouraging your great ideas, and we hope to continue to work with you into the future. So thanks for the opportunity to talk to you today. And it’s really an open door. So please keep your ideas coming.

John: Thank you. And we will share your contact information if anyone has any ideas that they’d like to sharee. Thank you very much.

Jill: Thank you so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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