283. Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative

Neurodiverse students often struggle to get co-ops, internships, and their first job because they face significant social barriers during the process of securing such opportunities. In this episode, Kendra Evans joins us to discuss a program at the Rochester Institute of Technology that helps this population of students build the skills needed to navigate the hidden rules of interviewing and supports them through their internship experiences.

Kendra is the Coordinator of the Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative (or NHI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]. NHI facilitates myriad programs that build the confidence and job readiness skills of autistic job seekers, provides guidance and support to employers, and creates unique opportunities connecting hiring managers with RIT’s highly-skilled neurodiverse applicant pool. Kendra is pursuing her MBA to better make the business case for neurodiverse affirming workplaces.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Neurodiverse students often struggle to get co-ops, internships, and their first job because they face significant social barriers during the process of securing such opportunities. In this episode, we discuss a program that helps this population of students build the skills needed to navigate the hidden rules of interviewing and supports them through their internship experiences.

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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: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Kendra Evans. Kendra is the Coordinator of the Neurodiverse Hiring Initiative (or NHI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]. NHI facilitates myriad programs that build the confidence and job readiness skills of autistic job seekers, provides guidance and support to employers, and creates unique opportunities connecting hiring managers with RIT’s highly-skilled neurodiverse applicant pool. Kendra is pursuing her MBA to better make the business case for neurodiverse affirming workplaces. Outside of RIT, Kendra is a community organizer and serves on various boards. She has three teenage children and a springer doodle puppy, loves her Peloton and logic puzzles, and her last meal would be a soft pretzel and an IPA at a ballpark, preferably Wrigley Field. Welcome Kendra.

Kendra: Thank you for having me.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are: … Kendra, are you drinking some tea?

Kendra: I am drinking some tea. I was going to Ted Lasso you and saying I’m really more of a coffee gal. But for the occasion, I’m having a little Earl Grey here in the afternoon.

John: Many of our guests do drink coffee or Diet Coke or water.

Rebecca: I did have a silent share. I don’t know if you saw but I was cheering for the tea. I’m so excited that you had tea. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I have Prince of Wales tea today.

Rebecca: And John and I are on the same page because… this is very unusual… but I have the same tea as John.

Kendra: Well…

John: I think that’s the first time in over 280 podcasts.

Rebecca: We chose them independently, and then realized we had chosen the same.

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss the Neurodiverse Hiring initiative at RIT. First, though, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your path to becoming a coordinator of this program?

Kendra: Sure. I actually started my career as an elementary school teacher and started off very early, realizing that my training, my master’s degree in education, didn’t actually prepare me for the students in my classroom. And so I went on to get a number of different certifications for the teaching of reading to dyslexic students, for a Lindamood-Bell training for processing disorders. And the more I broadened my skill set for working with learning differences, the more and more I kept coming in contact, and was being referred to work with students on the autism spectrum, mostly because of my passion for executive functioning, and how to basically improve those skills in everyone. And so I started as an elementary school teacher, I did that for a few years, became a learning specialist. Then when we relocated to Rochester, I opened my own small business. And while I was working in my brick and mortar social learning environment, RIT found me, my supervisor, Laurie Ackles, and the rest is history. So that’s where I came from. And then of course, I can tell you about the program itself. But that’s my trajectory was basically I’ve taught students pre-K now through higher ed.

Rebecca: You’ve hinted a little bit at your passion towards this work. Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of the initiative?

Kendra: Sure, well RIT started helping students transition from high school to college back in 2008. And one of the reasons that many students choose the Rochester Institute of Technology is because of the career and cooperative placement, we have a very robust, it’s like an apprenticeship program. In order to get your degree and most of our majors, it’s required that you have onsite experiential learning. And after my team had really moved forward in helping students with their social and their self advocacy and executive functioning, and all of the things needed to succeed for the academics in college, we realized that many of our students, even though they had come to RIT for this job experience, were unable to get their foot in the door. And therefore, when you can’t get your co-op that’s required, even though you’ve successfully completed all of the other content area requirements, they weren’t graduating. So this became the next barrier to employment and purpose and belonging in that meaningful adult life that we’re hoping all of our students succeed at. And so, thankfully, we have a gift funded initiative, thanks to the many parents that are very supportive of the work that we’ve done over the years. And so in 2018, we received this gift and pretty much were given carte blanche in order to do the work as we saw what our students needed and what employers were looking for. And in 2018, we started getting our students those first co-ops by partnering with employers and working on job training, and it’s gone from there.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about some of the barriers that you indicated that the students were having or facing trying to get their foot in the door for those co-op experiences?

Kendra: Sure. Well, interviewing is still a dominantly social process, right? We have to pick up on cues. We have to modulate our voice, we have to code switch, we have to dress appropriately. There’s all kinds of unspoken rules that our students are not prepared for. Even though they have the same hard skill set from RIT that their peers have, the social barriers were just really great. And so that’s one of the main difficulties with our students. Also, job descriptions can be a barrier for my students as well, because if employers are not distinguishing between “must-have” skills and “nice-to-have” skills, my students will often not apply to something if their exact major isn’t listed, if they’re like, “Oh, I’ve only had one course in C++, I haven’t had two, maybe that’s not enough.” Those were things that were keeping my students from even applying. There’s also things on the employer side that in addition to the way we’re looking to interview, when we’re looking for a best fit, that concept of best fit in the social aspect of the interviewer can inadvertently exclude this highly skilled talent pool simply because they don’t necessarily give you a warm and fuzzy, let’s say, or they don’t answer a question in an expected way. And so I often make the business case for: “Are you looking for expected? Aren’t you looking to get a job done and bring innovation, let’s talk about what is unique about my students, what they’re bringing that you already want, and what’s going to be different, that’s going to set your company apart.” And so those are some of the barriers in how I work with employers and with students to make that match and just make sure that we’re all speaking the same language,

John: what are some of the skills that the students you’re working with have that would be useful that are not generally recognized in an interview,

Kendra: There are so many. My students are passionate intellectual problem solvers. And I’m not saying that the rest of the RIT students aren’t. But that is definitely something that I will put forward. These are individuals who strive to do their best, they look at problems differently, and they’re going to stick with it. There’s a problem to solve, they’re going to follow it from beginning to end. I often say, and this is very general, but I’m neurotypical, I’m an extrovert, I’m going to spend time at work doing things not always just my work. Whereas I will tell you that my students can hyper focus on that task at hand, and they’re going to work very efficiently to get it done. So there’s just a multitude of things I could talk about, but their problem-solving skills, their stick-to-itiveness. And just their different way of approaching a problem. We don’t all want to be the same. It inhibits the creative process. And if you want to be innovative, we all know that you have to have creativity and a bunch of minds coming together.

Rebecca:So it sounds to me, based on what you’re describing is that you’re helping facilitate matching students to opportunities. Is that the role that the initiative is taking? How are the students getting the placements?

Kendra: So my role, when I describe it, it’s really three main goals. The first is to work with our students, to talk about those unspoken rules, to make them more job ready. The National Association of Colleges and Employers have identified 16 skills. So I work to let them know, “Hey, you’re actually being judged on these things. Let’s talk about them. Let’s practice and let’s teach you how to talk about your experience,” because oftentimes, they don’t realize that they have that. So I work with the job seeker. I work with the employer to implement universal design, so they’re not excluding anyone. And so actually, universal design helps all employees, not just autistic employees. And then yes, I’m the matchmaker, the bridge, the pipeline between the students and the employer. And we come up with creative ways to do that, including reverse job fairs, we partner with our career services office, we have information sessions that are low sensory and low stress, that’s a lot of what we do, is just to make sure that this is an environment that models best practice and how my student is going to be the best performer for your company. So those are the three main aspects of NHI.

John: You mentioned reverse job fairs. Could you explain what that is for people who have not heard of those before?

Kendra: So at RIT, we call it an affinity reception. And if you can picture a job fair, think back to our first jobs where you go into this large auditorium, you have 250 employers, and all the job seekers are dressed in their blazers like I happen to be today. And they go up to their 30 seconds of fame where they’ve got to give an elevator pitch, they got to wait in line, your recruiters are tired and cranky, and the sound is cacophony. It’s a lot. What we do is we bring our students and they sit at the table, we have fewer employers that are coming around which the students get to know who they are ahead of time. We prep for all of that. But then the employers circulate around the tables to our students as opposed to the reverse. And I’m also there as a facilitator to reach out to the employer: “Who are you? What is your name?” It makes the introduction. So I am frequently the matchmaker in all of these situations. And it really lowers the sensory overload, it reduces the stress factor, especially if you know who you’re going to see, you can prep for it. And you also don’t have to navigate, moving around, bumping into people, the crowds, the noise and we, even in that space, have a breakout room as well, so that students can take a break from the table, go refresh, have some water, regulate ourselves, and then come back out and do it again. So that’s kind of the theory as opposed to students coming to you, you’re coming to the job seeker.

Rebecca: We often talk about universal design for learning in a classroom setting but you were also talking about universal design in this interview setting. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like?

Kendra: Absolutely. Just like we would translate an accommodation plan from college to career, the concept of universal design is universal, really. And so in this particular case, things that are very helpful for my autistic jobseekers, which I’ll be honest, very helpful for me, things like, “Could I please have the questions in advance so that I can prepare my best answer?” I’m not going to be surprised and therefore anxious and shut down when we’re going to have our conversation. Things like being able to disclose if I need to have a fidget under the table, and why I’m doing that, being able to talk about the lighting in the room, or like, “Where am I going to go? What can I expect? Who’s going to be there? How long is the day going to be?” …just various things like that. Those are some very small modifications to the process that universally help any job applicant feel comfortable, and therefore bring their most authentic and best self to the interview.

Rebecca: Sounds a lot better to me.

Kendra: Indeed. Ideally, we want an interview to be where we’re learning about each other, we’re learning about the job to be done, and we’re both assessing if we think this is going to be something that we want to engage in together. And the balance of power is always off in those interviews anyway, and especially for the first job out of college, or even co-ops, or before that, right? I’ve only been in college for a year and a half. And my students are already interviewing, right? They’re 20 years old, they’ve never had a job before. And now they’re going into this big data analyst co-op position. That’s a lot of stress for anyone. So anything we can do to minimize the stress and maximize the ability to share the skills that I have. And that’s another thing that companies are doing as well, is changing the interview process, so that instead of all of the questions, it’s “Alright, we’re going to bring you to campus, we’re going to give you a problem, we’re going to have you work on it with some of our other applicants in a team. And we’re going to see how you solve a problem, as opposed to how you talk about how you solve a problem.” So it really is much more skills based. Another thing that if you’re going to have not only getting the questions in advance, but breaking those questions down and making them single step, so that I don’t get lost in some huge, rambling answer is very helpful and making sure that they are less open ended and more, “What is the skill I’m trying to assess with these questions?” That’s another Universal Design tactic that helps a lot. And then one last thing that I’m seeing more and more companies use is, are platforms like HireVue, where they can record their answers. The virtual world, this way nobody has to fly to the new Microsoft campus anymore, we can do it from the comfort of our home offices and have as many recordings as we want. Again, all of us misspeak sometimes, it’s nice to have that do-over because I really am trying to showcase what I can bring to your company and my students bring a lot.

John: So it sounds as if employers are starting to recognize this and learn new skills. What role do you play in helping them learn alternative ways of interviewing?

Kendra: It really depends on the company. And we work with big anchor companies. I’ve talked about Microsoft, I’ve taught SAS, Southwest Airlines, they’re now big players in the field that are realizing that diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t diverse enough if it doesn’t include neurodiversity. So there are some big dogs in the field that are bringing their HR programs, and they’re really working to make sure that they’re doing best practice. Companies like that will often come to me and say, “Hey, we’re doing this, who do you have for me in these fields?” And I am, in that case, mostly just a matchmaker, I help shepherd my jobseekers through the program. I check in with the recruiter: “How’s it going? Where are they in the process? Do you have any questions?” And I’m a matchmaker to make sure that that pipeline is direct, and they’re getting who they need. There are other companies, and these could be startups, these could be other big companies, but they come saying, “Hi, I’m an HR manager, I’m a data analyst, I’m someone right,” it could be anywhere in the company, that they have someone in their family in their network who’s autistic. And they realize, hey, this is something that would benefit my workplace. This is something that would benefit my person, what can we do? And so if you’re at the very beginning phase, I do a lot of nurturing with those companies talking about where can you get more information? Who are the models that you can look at. I’m here for a consult, do you want to interview some of my students, because a lot of what I do at that stage too, is destigmatizing. Autism, it is a spectrum, and so some people come in thinking that, “Oh, I’m going to do some charity work.” And that’s not at all what we’re doing. In fact, at this point, I’m doing you a favor. This is a talent pool in worker shortage. Trust me, companies really get it at this point in time.

Rebecca: You’ve match made, they’ve joined an organization for their co-op for their experience, how have you worked with companies to help that onboarding process and to make sure that they have a good experience once they’ve gotten the experience?

Kendra: One of the wonderful platforms that we partner with is an organization called Uptimize, and they do online trainings for employees, employers, and they have online training modules. I always give the disclaimer, we don’t know each other well, but I’m a highly critical person, and I hate to waste people’s time. So I don’t often send out professional development if I don’t truly believe in it. And I’ll tell you that I did these modules that were shared with us by Uptimize, and I learned things. And so one of the things that we have with them, because they have a whole suite of trainings, but we have Neurodiversity 101, and a basic module for hiring managers, for HR professionals, as well as supervisors. And so when a company is ready to take our students, I can give them unlimited licenses to share with the team, to share with the executives to share with everyone to try to build awareness, because the truth is, with the increase in diagnosis of autism, we’re all working in neurodiverse teams already, we just don’t always know it. So again, universal design is helping who you already have, and also opening up this talent pool that you’re not accessing currently. So there’s widespread benefits, and I’m giving it to you for free. If you want more, you can then go partner with Uptimize, and they’ll do all kinds of accessory training. But here’s a great introduction that we can give to our hiring managers. I often talk to them ahead of time before they take one of my students. The two main barriers once I have the job with you, would be housing, and transportation, learning how to navigate a new city, being comfortable navigating it, figuring out where you’re going to live for these 10 weeks. I remember doing that as a neurotypical, A-Type 20 year old. And so that’s hard for anyone, it’s exceptionally hard for my students. So that needs to be considered. companies aren’t really providing housing or transportation now, but if you’re going to boast about your neurodiversity hiring initiative, you at least need to have answers for me on how you’re going to direct them to these housing sites, here’s what we’re going to do, how is that going to work. And then I also just help make sure that my students are following through on all the onboarding paperwork and things from my end. And then if you’re an employer that we have a partnership with, I’m available to you. I’ll tell you that most of them don’t reach out to me during the co-ops, but I’m here. So if we need to troubleshoot, if something’s going better or worse than you expected, let me know, let’s take it to the next level. It’s about being the best supervisor you can, regardless, and I’m just an extra tool when you work with my students.

John: It’s wonderful that you have this program at RIT. But is this very common in the rest of academia?

Kendra: Well, there are about 75 to 80 programs across the country that are working in various ways at various levels, some are brand new, some have been around almost as long as we have, in order to help support students through this academic process of college. The goal of college is education, of course, and meaningful employment would be my objective at the end of college. So not all of them are handling it in the same way or have the same programming that we do. But that’s in total, there’s about 75 to 80 across the country at this moment in time, that support through the transition from high school to college. And just as I said, we started with that as well. And now we are helping transition into the workplace.

Rebecca: You mentioned early on about feeling not prepared to support the students you had when you were an elementary school teacher. And I have heard this many times, a faculty member at a college or university saying the same thing, maybe not prepared to teach [LAUGHTER] and then also not too prepared to support this particular group of students or many sets of students that are very different from one another. Can you talk a little bit about strategies that faculty might want to be aware of that could help support students like yours more effectively?

Kendra: Oh, absolutely. The more partnerships we can have with our professors and across campus, that’s one of the things when we talk about where this program is going, that’s something that is critically important, both to the academic success, and then, of course, into the workplace. So my students do very well with written communication, typically, and since most of us are using some kind of my Mycourses or online shell for information, please go ahead and upload those PowerPoint slides, please go ahead and put your notes online. Those are not crutches, if you will, those are actual accommodations that are just best practice. I let you all know that I’ve already got a master’s degree. I’m working on my business degree now. And I’m a graduate student in business. And I get that, as a neurotypical, like that’s just best practice so that I can go further than these notes. Doing those kinds of things, super important. Setting up a culture in your classroom where you can take a break if you need to, and just saying that out loud, so that it’s kind of a culture of the classroom, being aware of what could be overstimulating in your environment. In our lecture halls, it’s not as if we have a whole lot of control, but if you’re in a smaller setting, to just go ahead and look at those things. And sometimes some of us talk more than others. I talk a whole lot, we can have a neurotypical person that’s going to suck up the air in the room. That’s something that we’re used to. Giving students strategies ahead of time or if you notice that, pulling them aside, because they want to be their best selves. I’m constantly raising my hand because I love your topic. I’m very excited to please and I want to engage and if you say something, “I notice how excited you are Kendra, if you could pick just two times that you’re going to share out loud during class, and then write down everything else and email it to me, you can give it to me after class.” It’s just basic classroom management kinds of things. And it’s training our students not just to be good students, but to be good citizens, and to be good employees. And it’s how do we do that give and take that maybe some of us take for granted that we learned turn taking, and we were really good at it, and sometimes people need to be encouraged to take more turns, that would be the other end of the spectrum is that when I’m teaching my career ready bootcamp, the reason that I’m here, I usually have those two different groups. And that’s true among neurotypical people as well. So if I’m going to suck up the air, give me some strategies, so that I’m not alienating my classmates and I’m still engaging. And if I’m too afraid to talk, tell me how you want to hear from me, I can email you before class. Give strategies that show that you want them there and that teach them how to be part of the mix, regardless of whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, or a neurotypical or neurodivergent. Those are some of the really best practices that I can say: share all of that written material, [LAUGHTER] and make sure that you’ve created a culture that just meets people where they are. And like I said, this is universal design. It doesn’t matter if you’re autistic or not. These are just best practices that help everyone. This is something I’m passionate about, and it traces back to my earliest days as a first-grade teacher. As I told you, I went through Orton-Gillingham training to teach dyslexic students because I came out with a master’s degree, and then had no idea how to teach reading. I had no idea what I was doing. That’s whole language, it’s all the stuff. And when I would come back from this very intense training that is specifically for dyslexic students, and I wanted to teach it in my private, high-end, elementary school, I had to justify why I was doing that. Well, why does my student need this particular program, and I was able to say, “Orton-Gillingham breaks language down into pieces. And if I teach this way, it’s the way that this particular subgroup requires in order to learn how to read, we’re keeping reading from them, if I don’t teach it in this one way, but for everybody else that gets it broken down, this is helping them with all of that language that you’re going to hit later on… the words that are not first-grade words, they’re going to be able to decode it, because that’s how their brain works, and I’m just giving them new pieces of the puzzle.” And so when I talk about how I’m teaching reading to first graders, or how I’m teaching job readiness to 22 year olds, it’s the same idea. It’s just: how do we help everyone? …and tailoring our design to be more inclusive, it’s just what we should all be doing.

John: Right now we’re running a reading group that focuses on Inclusive Teaching by Viji Sathy. And Kelly Hogan, and much of what you’re describing seems like the type of structure that they encourage people to use, and small group discussions and providing ways for all students to be comfortable. And we’re seeing that a lot, that there’s so many things converging in terms of things that are effective in helping people learn show up in many different approaches in terms of studies of how we learn, studies of effective teaching methods, studies of creating an inclusive environment. And pretty much all these methods benefit all students, but they particularly benefit those students who don’t do as well without the support provided. And it sounds like this is another form of inclusive teaching.

Kendra: It is. I couldn’t agree with you more. Regardless of the age, we all need to feel safe in the environment. And I’m not going to feel safe if someone’s interrupting me or talking over me. I’m not going to feel safe if I don’t feel like the teacher wants to hear what I have to say. I’m not going to feel safe. If I don’t understand the information or I have sensory overload. It doesn’t matter, we all need to feel safe first. Second, the next buzz would be belonging in higher education, and how am I connecting to my peers and connecting one on one to either my teacher or my professor? How is that working? And then you have the content that comes after all of that. So we really do have to work on our classroom management, we really do have to work on that personal relationship with our students. And then it’s the same in the workplace, we need a safe workplace where I don’t have to mask but I can be my authentic self and therefore I can bring my whole brain capacity to the job, I’m not worried about if somebody’s going to notice something about me or I’m going to feel uncomfortable or they’re going to feel uncomfortable. It translates across the lifespan of a learner.

Rebecca: And most of these things are not difficult.

Kendra: You’d asked about my relationship with either professors or with employers. And I’ll go back to the employer piece because the concept of ADA and IDEA can be scary and intimidating to human resource managers. And so when I talk about what is a reasonable accommodation for my students, most of the time, it’s me asking for a supervisor to just be a very direct and explicit supervisor. It’s things like: can they wear their noise-cancelling headphones while they’re working to kind of drown out some of this din? Are they able to work at home? Are there hybrid options that are available? Is it okay if they take their shoes off under the desk? These aren’t even things that cost the employer any money. These are just sensory regulatory issues, and then it goes into things like: Can you please set a regular weekly meeting with your employee so that my student knows when to come to you. And it goes back to that Which type of person am I? Do I ask way too many questions all the time? Or do I never ask a question and then it’s a barrier for me accomplishing the task. So if I know that I’m going to meet with Kendra every Monday, and I have to bring my list of questions that helps both sets. It also, as the employer, gives me the ability to check in on where you are and advance, because that’s the goal. Even if you’re not considered a teacher or professor anymore, that’s what a supervisor is. Our goal is to elevate our employees and help them reach the next level, at least, that’s my definition of what a supervisor does. So. I like to share that, yeah, and these things are not big cost. They’re big returns on your bottom line, is what it is. So if I can be myself at work, I’m going to work while I’m there. And that’s really what it is.

Rebecca: You talked a lot about at the beginning that the Institute started with the transition from high school to college. Can you talk about some of the things that are important to support neurodiverse students in that transition?

Kendra: Oh, definitely. So there are five pillars to the program. And the one that we’ve talked about would be career and co-op. So we’ll go ahead and move that to the side. Social is a really big piece, that sense of belonging, self advocacy, how do I ask my professor? What are the deadlines? Can I leave the room? Self advocacy and all of those areas. Wellness and health is a really big deal. And the fifth one is executive functioning, where I’ve done all of my studying. That’s what we do, is a lot of executive functioning. So those are the five pillars of the program to help them transition. And we do a lot of work. Also, just like we onboard for a job, we do special onboarding for our students as they come in and their parents. And I think that’s a really important shout out is that oftentimes the support system for all of us gets overlooked… it’s our partners in life, it’s our children, it’s our parents, it’s all of those people. And for students on the spectrum, these are parents that have had to be varsity parents for a really long time to navigate the 504s and the IEPs and all of the social learning that has to happen in K through 12. And so onboarding the parents that this is a young adult, they’ve gotten into RIT, you did this. They’re here, they got this, and we’ve got them. So to do that transition on: “here’s what to expect.” And it’s all the same things. It’s like, “Where are you going to go? Who’s your point person? How are you going to do this when a problem arises… because it’s going to… where do you go?” …and I don’t say that, because you’re autistic, I say that because I can look at both of you and say, something’s going to happen that we have to navigate. And we have to stay emotionally regulated, and we have to problem solve, and we need to know who to ask for help. These are life skills for any person. Again, it’s back to universal design. But that’s part of what SSP, our spectrum support program does, specifically for our parents and students, is a lot of that onboarding and letting them know that we’re here and you earned this, you did this, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to survive, you’re going to thrive, this is going to be great for you.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit more about the executive function part of the program?

Kendra: Well, I always like to talk about executive functioning. So the first thing I’m going to do is tell you my favorite executive functioning 101. I want you to picture a stop sign, S T O P, and when we’re talking about executive functioning, we’re talking about space, time, objects, and people. So if I need to function in any environment, I need to stop and think about those things. Think about an elevator, what’s the space like? How long am I going to be there? Am I supposed to talk to the person? You go through space, time objects, people, and when you transition into college, it’s a big difference, because in K through 12, a lot of that’s managed for you. And then you get sent off to college. Oh my gosh, the schedule changes, the classrooms are different. I have to get from my room to all of this. And I have to factor in travel time. How long do these long papers take? How do I chunk those assignments? So everything we do is space, time, objects, people, and I’ve been using that since I was a first-grade teacher and all the way up because you can chew on that, everybody can understand this is what I’m thinking about in this environment. And so we do a lot of visual scheduling so that you can see your “must dues.” Where are your blocks? How do you plug in the things that you need to accomplish? We do planning on here are all the assignments that are coming up. How long do you think this will take? Time management is often a hiccup for my students. Again, think about the people in your lives. Some of us are really good at some pieces of executive functioning, and some of us are not. I can tell the time down to the second most places, people think I’m a savant, but I can’t organize to save my life. I have 22 tabs open right now on my computer. I struggle with that, and I’m neurotypical and high achieving and mid career and all of those things that you’re supposed to check the boxes off. So when we’re helping our students transition from high school to college, how do you navigate those four things? And some of them you’re going to be stronger at than others. Everybody is. So what are the tools so that you can be independent and accomplish your goals here? And that’s a lot of what we do. And of course, as I told you, there are those five pillars, so when it comes to career and co-op, I have a whole other set of how we’re talking about space, time objects, people. We also talk a lot, as I said, about social and about well being. I remember being horribly homesick. I didn’t like my roommate. There’s all of those things that all of us have to navigate. And so when you don’t like your roommate, because you didn’t get that single, what do you do? How do you navigate this? When you’re lonely, what does that feel like? What are the alternatives? And then of course, if something does happen, we always plug the students into those campus resources. So how are you doing? What do you think? Let’s walk down to counseling. Let’s just walk down together right now. They know they can advocate for themselves, but they also have somebody that’s going to walk on this journey with them, and that’s really important. And it brings, I think, peace of mind, both to the student and, of course, to their families that they’re sending out of the nest for the first time.

Rebecca: I think the things that you’re talking about in terms of executive function should be an all first-year classes, [LAUGHTER] it should be built into the curriculum.

Kendra: I think every professor would thank me, if it was, [LAUGHTER] and I say that about my career ready bootcamp. I would have been so much better off, if I’d have this kind of training going into my first job. It’s universal design. If we were doing this kind of prep for everyone, I think every employer would be happier. But my students specifically need the explicit instruction on “This is what they’re looking for. When you do this behavior, this is how they feel, and this is the outcome when that happens.” You need those behavior maps in order to teach the lesson that is not coming in through osmosis. And to be fair, one of the reasons there’s such an employment divide is, autistic students and adults, they’re not getting jobs, they don’t have any work experience at all. So if you’ve never been in a work environment, how are you supposed to know how to behave in one. I remember, again, as a learning specialist in elementary school, we would go over social situations like a birthday party, any birthday party, I don’t care who it is or what age, there are certain components that you can expect so you can stay self regulated. You can know how much time it’s going to take, you’re going to know you have to bring a gift of some sort, again, space, time, objects, people and here are the classic things. It translates into adulthood and the workplace. Like you need to know how do you code switch? What does that even mean in this new environment? And you can show how you’ve mastered it through your lifespan and here’s just the next frontier. We spend a lot of time doing this, and I will just say, in terms of our program, I’m excited that we have this funding, I’m excited to be able to do this at RIT and for that kind of buy in. In this last year, we used to offer career ready bootcamp, just once per year. I was able, being full time and with the buy in now, we offer it three times, which means if the average incoming population that works with SSP is about 30 students and I was able to get 24 students through the career ready boot camp in this first year. So that’s something that they’re all going to get to take. And so now that we’ve got this model that’s working really well and is self sustainable and that we hope we can take to other colleges to do this. We’re working on different ways to support the student across their learning journey at RIT. And so we’re doing some alternative, like a spring break trip, I’m actually taking a cohort of eight students to New York City in March so that we can go visit four different employer sites. And we’re gonna go over beforehand the T chart of what do you see? And what do you hear? And in these specific categories. Is it an open space, is everybody in a cubicle? Are they talking to one another? Or are they working by themselves in headphones? What is the culture that you observe? How are people talking with a list of, like, what are you looking for? Be a social detective, so that we can then come back and debrief and I’m intentionally going to very different environments, so that they probably haven’t been in a work environment before. And we’re going to some really big ones, and to be able to say for themselves, “Oh, I can do this.” I know what to expect. And not only can I do this, I know what I prefer, and I know why I prefer it. So again, it helps that self advocacy, it helps to be your authentic self. And these are employers that all have neurodiverse programs and want my students. And I have to tell you that that is the most rewarding part of teaching career ready boot camp is when I have SAS come to talk or Southwest Airlines and I get to set the stage with students of “You are wanted. I know you’ve spent your lives feeling other. No, no, they’re here early for you. It is August, they have not posted these jobs yet. They are here to get a front-row seat to my RIT talent.” And you can just see them, they just sit up so much straighter. And in all of the post career ready boot camp survey, that’s what they say… it was just I never thought that people were going to want me… never thought… or it felt so good to have someone come here. And they do, I mean these employers give a 45-minute presentation of how we are thinking about you and your needs and here’s how it’s really great. Oh, and here’s somebody that did it. Like Southwest Airlines started their program last summer and had one of my RIT students and brought her back to career ready boot camp… and to hear her share her experience and what it was like and the students were able to ask like, “What’s your one piece of advice? What do you think you did the best in the interview? What do you think you did the worst?” And this is my best piece of advice that I really want everybody to hear going into this interview. They want to know how you solve a problem. Just like in life. I just want to know that you’re listening to me and that you’re going to try,. I want to know your initiative and your problem solving and so the student comes back. And she says, “I got this question and I didn’t know the answer, and I started to panic. What I did is I took a deep breath and I looked down at my notepad, because we always say, have reasons, have ways to distract yourself. I looked down, and I composed myself, and I looked back up, and I said, ‘I honestly don’t know. But I’ve solved other problems. Here’s how I would approach that.’” And she went into what she would do next. She’s like, “I think that’s what got me the job.” Because again, it’s how do I solve some them? Am I going to give up? Am I going to whine? Am I going to complain? Or am I just going to get to work, because again, these are co-op positions. And then I talk about what a co-op is: “Think of it as a class. This is like the lab to your bio class. This is you getting out and putting those skills to work.”

Rebecca: This sounds like a really great program. We always wrap up our sessions by asking: “What’s next?”

Kendra: I love “what’s next?” I don’t know if you’re West Wing fans, but “what’s next?” is what’s asked by the President every time he’s ready to push the agenda forward. And so that is actually how I kind of live my life is “What’s next?” As I told you, we’ve expanded career ready bootcamp, we’re now doing alternative spring travel. And we’ll do winter term travel with our students to give these opportunities. What I’m most excited about, we’re always looking to increase the impact on our students, we’re always looking to increase the reach to the community, and how do we train the trainer. So that’s a big goal is to be able to take this career ready bootcamp to other universities and show them how they can make it their own and help their students. I’m also working with a lot of partnerships on campus, because that’s where creativity happens, because we were talking, it’s all cross disciplinary. And so we have a program called RIT certified that works with online options. And so this will reach not only within RIT, but wider. And so we’re going to have modules for managers. So if you’re taking an HR class, if you’re taking this managerial certificate, you’re going to get best practices and universal design, so that we can do the reach further. I’m also going to work with our business school to be able to have internship programs, leadership certificates, things like that. So that it’s not just helping the autistic student or the already employed, but we’re planting the seeds so that as each of these people go out into their various networks, it’s a wider spread awareness and knowledge. And so I think those are the main ways that we’re looking to take care of impact is cross collaboration and expanding the model.

John: You’re doing some wonderful work. And I hope we’ll see more campuses and more programs like this, because individuals who are autistic often have trouble finding those first jobs where they’re successful. And we’re wasting a lot of resources that can bring some real strengths to organizations and to businesses out there.

Kendra: That’s true. But as I said before, these are business solutions. This is an untapped talent pool that really the sky’s the limit here. In all spaces, we need to make a bigger table. We need to make room for everyone and make sure we all have a place. So that’s what we’re doing.

Rebecca: Well, I know that we’ll look forward to getting some updates maybe from you in the future about this program and the next things that you have planned.

Kendra: I would love that and maybe you can recommend some tea alternatives for me. [LAUGHTER]

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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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69. Students as Storytelling Ambassadors

Students can be important ambassadors for our programs, institutions, and disciplines. They are able to understand and speak to their peers more effectively than we can. In this episode, Tim Nekritz joins us to talk about how to leverage students as digital storytellers across social media platforms. Tim is the Director of News and Media and an adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Students can be important ambassadors for our programs, institutions, and disciplines. They are able to understand and speak to their peers more effectively than we can. In this episode, we talk about how to leverage students as digital storytellers across social media platforms.

[MUSIC]

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.

John: Today our guest is Tim Nekritz, Director of News and Media and an adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego. Welcome Tim.

Tim: Happy to be here.

Rebecca: Today our teas are….

Tim: I got blueberry green with just a hint of honey in it.

John: And I have ginger, with more than a hint of honey in it.

Rebecca: And I have my favorite tea, which despite popular belief is not English Afternoon. It’s Golden Monkey, and that’s what I have today.

John: We’ve invited you here to talk about how social media storytelling can be beneficial to students and to institutions. How did SUNY Oswego start it’s student storytelling program?

Tim: It started about a dozen years ago and there was a bit of a trend at the time to have student bloggers. And my social-media mentor Rachel Reuben, at New Paltz at the time, was doing a very good job at it. The idea there is it’s a little bit more authenticity, because I’m a marketing communication person, so can anyone really take my word for anything? And then when you’re talking to prospective college students, honest experience of a student and really, the student is still working for you, they still might sometimes complain about it being cold, or the parking or what not. So about 2007 is when we launched the student blogging project with about seven or eight students. And it was nice and it got a lot of notice at first… really good traffic because it was something new, and I had a really good group of starting students. One of my favorites was Erin who is legally blind, and had a lot of chutzpah. A good example, she had a blog post called, “The Blind Chick Goes Skiing,” and how can you not want to read that blog post. And I tried to get people from a variety of different backgrounds… and this was really before social media was taking off to the degree we see it now. It was a nice thing for prospective students, and we found out that faculty members, current students, alumni, they all consumed it as well and liked it a lot. It’s had its ups and downs along the way. It’s still part of our program but it’s not the main part. But then as social media started to evolve, it’s like, “Okay, well how can we change how they’re telling stories?” And obviously Facebook got bigger, Twitter got bigger, Instagram got bigger. I had interns who were working with Twitter, for example—just simple stuff like live tweeting events, or hockey games, or Quest Day, or something. And then finally, something like Instagram comes along… very visual, very resonant with current students and prospective students. So I had my interns working on that, but also started something called a Laker Takeover, another idea I borrowed from another college, my friend, Meg Keniston at St. Lawrence University. Basically, they have a whole account that’s all Takeovers, all the time. But for us, it was kind of like, “Okay, well I’ll have a student takeover the Instagram account—or do most of the posting for a week and talk about some part of the student life.” And so, like the first one we did was Lizzie Marks who is a women’s hockey player and a future intern of mine. Because everyone knows hockey and that type of thing around here but they don’t know about the preparation, the practice, and the weird bonding activities that are part of a hockey team or any team really. And then just started doing ones for like theater productions, and upcoming things, like there’s a current one for an event happening in Riggs Hall that’s also talking a little bit about life in a residence hall living on campus. And so a lot of it is, “Okay, this thing is happening.” And it started out with me just reaching out to people. Now, students or advisors are coming to us and saying, “Oh, there’s a really cool thing happening this week. Do you think we can work with you on it?” So that the word is out on that. It’s a dichotomy because you want them to be honest, but they’re also ambassadors for the college. No one’s going to be showing off a keg party or anything, but at the same time, it’s the point of view that people really are looking for and between that and the interns… I get stuck in the office a lot… It’s good to have the eyes and ears out there showing them a more authentic college experience and so like Instagram has been kind of our main part for that but the blogs still happen. We’ve had video blogging happening—I think that was probably one of our biggest successes. A student by the name of Alyssa Levenberg basically tweeted at us in our first week and said that if we wanted someone who could tell video stories that “I’m your girl” and I went and I looked at her YouTube channel I said “Yes, this is a good sell”. We came up with the name Alyssa Explains It All for her series. We were never sued by Nickelodeon, so I feel good about that. [LAUGHTER] The idea was, “What is a prospective student interested in?” It’s great because this is fresh to her. She started as a freshman —This is all the stuff that she thought about and lived through in college. So having that authentic approach I think was really really good and plus she was very good at what she does. She’s been doing video blogging and video storytelling ever since she graduated and it got to the point she was actually featured in two stories of the CASE Currents magazine which is pretty good and we were invited to speak at a conference called Confab Higher Ed in Atlanta which is a primary content strategy presentation conference and she was the only student presenting there. And I say “we” because I think they pitied me and didn’t think they could invite her without me… because I talked a little and then she talked and all the questions were for her. But it’s been a good experience because I had a couple of journalism students who came to me specifically on the internship because they realize that blogging and telling stories in that genre is big. Because that’s, for a lot of current journalists, columnist, that type of thing, they will keep a blog… or least have to approach it in that personalized way—and then I’ve had other ones who really parlayed it into parts of their portfolio as far as this shows their ability to organize and present and whether it’s write or perform, I guess you could say it’s a video so it’s really helped them with their professional portfolio. But, you know, again, there’s a marketing reason behind it and a reason for people to understand college life and Oswego in general. Alyssa’s blogs—some of them are Oswego-specific but most of them could apply to any student applying to any college and that’s really what we were looking for. And so those still get a lot of hits on YouTube. They’re three-, four-, or five-years old, but they’re the questions that come up all the time like, “How do I make friends?” and “How do I deal with homesickness?”, “What would I have to do to study or have time management?” that was the idea, to find really universal themes, which is what I like them to post.

Rebecca: How do you train the students or prepare them, and then also make sure that they’re ready to be an ambassador for the college? Especially because you need to be careful about what content they actually are posting.

Tim: It’s an interesting thing, I don’t want to throw them in the deep end necessarily. For a while everyone was having trouble with their first blog entry, and I said, “Just introduce yourself.” Then everyone had a problem with their second blog entry. [LAUGHTER] But I basically told them, “Try to find something that you’re interested or passionate in.” I’ve had students who would pick almost like a beat—like being at a newspaper—whether it’s student involvement, student organizations, or arts and entertainment, or find things that they’re interested and comfortable in writing. I’ve had ones who do listicles, “seven-tips for,” different things to get ready for college. But I also want them to find their voice, I don’t want to be looking over their shoulder and dictating that. And something I picked up very early in the process was you don’t approve blog posts, you approve bloggers. So in other words, you have to have a comfort level with them. We always let them know in front, “You’re an ambassador for Oswego. Oh, by the way, this will be seen by your parents, your professors, probably your future employers. So be sure that you keep that in mind.” It’s generally been a positive experience because they get that. And I think it seems like today’s students, a lot of the ones I work with anyway, are already more professional minded. They understand this is something that’s good for them to get into, to be part of their personal brand, I guess you use. Usually what happens in the semester, like our first meeting is supposed to be tomorrow—as of this recording—where I’m really going to talk to them a little bit, show them our social media users’ guide, ask them to look at some of the posts that we have, maybe other colleges have, and then come back the next week to discuss what they like, what they thought could have been better, and then ease them into it. I don’t give any of them a huge workload for that, for any given time. It’s like, “Okay, you’re covering this event, and you’re covering this event? What are you writing a blog entry on?” I ask them what they’re writing. And also it’s good because it’s expectations. I’m not asking them to do a ton of things, but understanding what’s going on in the first place. And I’m always saying, “Brainstorm, give me an idea.” I’ve never had to say no to an idea, their ideas are always better than my ideas.

Rebecca: What are some misconceptions that new social media storytellers have about storytelling?

Tim: I think, I guess if we were to define social media storytelling, in this way, it’s social media posts that are in service of a personal or a larger story, their journey as a student, or the journey at a college. In a way it’s understanding the difference between me and we. To a degree, we want their personal story, but also, in a broader sense. Let’s say if I had a student at the MLK celebration or something like that. If I had a student covering that for Instagram, it’s not a selfie, “Oh, look, here I am with Symone Sanders.” Its, “Here’s Symone Sanders, here’s what she talked about, here was the crowd.” Telling the story from, I would say somewhat of an institutional perspective or more of a we perspective, what anybody who goes to an event is going to experience, not as personal. And I know that there’s a lot of people who really like their selfies these days. My personal anecdote is, I was at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Oswego like two years ago—and I’m not going to make generational stereotypes—but a lot of people, all the photos they were taking were selfies with them and the parade in the background. And older people like me, we’re just taking pictures of the parade. I think they get it because they’re usually PR, marketing, or communication majors. So they’ve got an underpinning of the larger goal that we have here.

John: So most of the students have been in public relations, or social media, or communication studies?

Tim: Absolutely. Sometimes I’m their second or third social media internship. So it’s really just a difference perhaps in protocol and goals and everything and they understand it. There are exceptions to the rule, like Alyssa—who I mentioned earlier—asked if she could be an intern. We scheduled a meeting and I said, “When can you start?”, because I already knew what she could do, I wasn’t going to do that. We had a social media Laker Takeover with a student named Anna Chichester who was a freshman and I think she was in Pride and Prejudice. And after seeing her Laker Takeover, I said, “Hey, how would you like to be an intern?” But again, they’ve all been PR, marketing, communication, so they know some of the fundamentals of it. So for me, it’s really more adapting that to this job. But again, part of that is not watering down their experience too much because again, they are much closer to the target market than I am. But they all come in with the general skills. I have to tell them about something like accessibility, and tone, and that type of thing. And always spell check, because Lord knows even I will post something with a typo on Twitter, since you can’t edit it. You know, delete it and do it again, a lot of its repetition. So like, they start with some things and then by the end of the semester, or by the time they graduate, you start to miss them.

Rebecca: I think a lot of faculty are curious about using social media to tell the stories of the work that they do too, and trying to get it out. How does that connect to, maybe the work that we do as an institution or this bigger we voice?

Tim: Well, it’s interesting because there have been some questions from various parts about, for example, faculty having blogs. I think that type of thing could work really well, but also the idea of students showing a professor’s work is always good. Like we’ve had some students doing a research internship and they can show a little bit—I know the professors don’t want them to show all. We had a really neat one over the summer, for example, the study abroad course that was engineering students over in Trinidad and Tobago about engineering a steel pan or looking at ways that a steel pan creates noise from an engineering standpoint. And that was fantastic because first of all, they showed some research then they showed, “Oh, tropical stuff,” and you know, “Here we are in this forest.” It was an interesting way to transcribe what’s going on in that course, with something that’s a lot more fun. As opposed to, “Oh, here’s this class. Here’s this class, we studied abroad, we did these cool things.” So it’s trying to find ways to make it more of experience, as opposed to, “Here’s my research, here’s my work.” How can that be fun? I mean, I know there’s people like Professor Brian Moritz in Communication Studies who’s doing a lot of things with students where they might have blogs or they might do things on Twitter. And then ultimately, produce, I guess we could call it an online multimedia publication at the end of the semester on one theme. So I think it’s creativity on the professor’s part. There are professors I know who do class blogs, and I think that’s a really really cool concept to do. I don’t do it in my class just because I have so many other things to cover. But I know when I was at the Winter Breakout for the first-year signature series— which I know was discussed previously— it was interesting to see the people talking about how blogs are really a teaching tool. And students discover a little bit about themselves and how they write, because writing is practice. So for faculty, certainly trying to find students’ storytelling as a way of teaching and self discovery, I think it’s an awesome idea, I’d like to see more of it happening.

John: But also it’d be a nice way of engaging and reflective practice, where they’re working on their learning and reflecting back on it. And its applicability, which is, in general a good practice. But when they post that publicly, either within the class or perhaps more broadly, it forces them, perhaps to think through things a little more deeply than they might if it was just something that was, as Robin DeRosa called it, “a disposable assignment,” where they write it, it goes to the professor, and then it’s never seen again.

Tim: Yeah, and reflecting is a big part of it. I know we have a student here named Joely Rice, aka, “Joely Live” who has 500,000 followers on TikTok. I had to go and see what TikTok was, I don’t totally understand it yet. But…

John: … short videos.

Tim: Yeah, short videos. And basically, she’s doing an independent study. She’s working for something called Rumble—yet another thing I’d never heard of—which is basically a site, it’s almost like an entertainment site involving social media and social media influencers, and other things that I’m like 30 years too old to understand. For the independent study I said, “I absolutely want you to do some reflection papers or videos.” She’s an IMG model. She has her own show on TikTok already, or a couple of shows, a weekly show and a daily show. And for her she said public speaking was the biggest thing because they had to record something and submit it—because it’s an online course… she’s an online broadcasting major… and she said she’d never been so self conscious. All the stuff she does for social media, great. One for a class, she just became so self conscious about it. And I think there’s a lot of that going on because very few of us like to see ourselves in video, or hear our voice. I think for students, just like the rest of us who are going to cringe… but I think they learn more from hearing their thoughts. When they use a blog or video blog I think the reflection that goes into it is fantastic, and then when they read it back it’s almost like they learned a little bit more the second time around as well. As John said, it both commemorates it but it also has a bit more life to it.

Rebecca: I had a really great conversation with my students in my class last night—my study abroad class to the Czech Republic—and I posed the questions like “You have to do this journal assignment. There’s prompts. We talked a little bit about what the content was, and I asked “You’re more than welcome to do something and I can be your only reader, or we can make a blog and we can share the platform and you know, I’ll buy a URL, et cetera, and get it all set up.“ And I was like, “Think about it, you know there’s issues. You’re gonna have a bigger audience, you have to think about that stuff. I’m not grading on how well you’re writing, but like other people are going to read it so you have to think about that. And they all just, “Yeah, let’s do that. Can we do that?” and they were so excited about it. I mean, of course I showed them the blog of the students who went on the India trip. I was like, “Don’t want to be like them? Don’t they have a cool website?” [LAUGHTER]

John: But, are they going to India? But the excitement, perhaps, turned them around.

Rebecca: Yeah well I just showed, you know, they each ended up with kind of a landing page that has all their posts because you can sort by author and things like that and they just thought that was so cool. What they were doing could have a bigger life.

Tim: One of the first things I did to break things out in the blogging project was to get study abroad bloggers. Bloggers who had traveled and are experiencing new things because that’s a lot more discovery there than being on campus perhaps. And then, some of my favorite Laker Takeovers have been that too because they’re so much of an adventure but also, as a college that prides ourself and one of our hallmarks is a study abroad program, that makes perfect sense to show this. And if you’re a prospective student it’s like, “Wow, I hadn’t even thought of studying abroad, this looks awesome…” or our current students. Anybody, they really can visualize it when it happens.

Rebecca: I can share that in that same class we were talking a little bit about the differences in how a place presents themselves online versus their physical experience of the space. So we talked about Oswego as the first… and that we’re going to do the same thing… they’re looking up the websites and the places we’re going and then we’re going to talk about like their actual experience. But one of the things that came up in the discussion was that through some of the social media storytelling that’s happening, they got a really good sense that students get to do really cool things at SUNY Oswego, like research and whatever. And they all said “That’s how it actually is here.”

Tim: Oh, that’s great. So we have actual authenticity.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, people ask, “What’s your social media strategy?” and for me, it’s to show that Oswego is an awesome college with awesome people doing awesome things… because that’s a pretty broad guideline, but it is. And so to show, as you said, those student experiences and what you get to do here, that’s what we want to make sure is emphasized. And that also the cool stuff they’re doing happens to be great content, so that sure it doesn’t hurt either.

John: And it’s certainly more authentic when it comes from students’ voices than when it comes from a college website or public relations office and so forth.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely.

Rebecca: In addition to the authenticity and the “we” perspective, are there other things that make for a good storyteller?

Tim: I think it’s nature and nurture. I think some people are just born storytellers and really get how to tell a story. But also I think it’s kind of understanding photography, or iPhone photography, iPhotography, whatever you want to call it, but also from a different perspective. Trying to figure out, “Okay, here’s a photo of a speaker,” or “Here’s a different angle of here’s the speaker and the people reacting to them.” Everybody can take a good sunset photo, but can you find a different angle on it? Knowing that there might be a formula but there’s time to go off that formula. So I think there’s a lot of creativity. Curiosity, certainly. Wanting to know more. I mean obviously a lot of the people who do it, that is one of the things. But it’s like, “Okay this is a really cool thing, but why? What’s cool about it?” and that type of thing. So I think having that type of mind and saying “I’m curious about this, I want to know how it works, and I want to show people how it works in an interesting way.” You can say, “Oh it’s this major, this type of major, that type of major,” but they exist in all majors clearly. For the study abroad one usually I’ll ask the professors and I’m going to say, “Here’s what I want, can you recommend a student or two?” And they often do think about that, like, “Oh, we have this type of person. This is what we’re looking for.” There’s no template for what a good student storyteller is. You know it when you see it. We’ve also recruited people just because we’ve seen them in other mediums, like on Instagram or Tumblr—back in the days when Tumblr was a thing—telling really good stories. We said, “Oh, hey, they’d be great for this, because we see they already do it.” So sometimes there’s that too. You see someone who is a good storyteller and it’s like, “I want them as a part of my team. I’m not sure how, yet. But I definitely do want them involved.”

Rebecca: I think sometimes, especially with our students, they might be really good storytellers if they follow really good storytellers.

Tim: Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca: Because they have a good model.

Tim: Yeah, like one of our best student storytellers who just graduated, Mic Anthony Hay who has, I forgot how many Instagram followers but it’s pretty high. He basically has always been a really good photographer. And he followed a lot of people who are storytellers and he will post a photo, and a story to go with it. And the story is great, the photo is out of this world. And so a lot of it was really looking at what other people did. Because he could have just done photos and they’d be nice, but having that extra layer. It might be a question, or a little bit about his life and then a question for people to answer. Because things that everybody experiences make the most sense or that everybody can think about or visualize, but also, in the blogs especially, having that personal experience and that perspective is a good thing because obviously, it’s about connecting with people and being that authentic, interesting person, but also talking about topics that are of wide interest.

John: Now, if a faculty member or an institution is going to have students work in storytelling in some format, is there any advice that you give them in terms of preparing the students to do this… things to perhaps suggest that they encourage students to do, or to avoid?

Tim: Well, I think it’s always great to have proof of concept. Whether it’s your own institution or another institution where you can point them at and say, “Here’s some really cool blogs. Here’s some really good Instagram accounts. They’re doing things.” So, setting those expectations, having a very clear understanding, and constant communication is important. Because sometimes my student bloggers, one of the things they do is, not update very much just because it’s a perfection issue. They want the perfect blog entry. And I’m like, “There is no perfect blog entry. I’ve been blogging since before blogs existed. I’ve never posted a perfect blog entry.” And then if your an institution or somebody put it together a blogging program, think about it from a recruitment standpoint. I have the pleasure of being the faculty mentor for the women’s hockey team here and they don’t recruit seven goalies and no defenseman, and no forwards. So, you almost want people who like have good visual skills, and people who might be better writers, or students who are very involved in this, and/or a student athlete, and/or an artist or a performer, or something like that. So, if you’re trying to cultivate a very broad experience, think about the different types of students you want. If you’re recruiting students also ask faculty, ask staff members the type of students you’re looking for. But for students in general, it’s like a certain bit of professionalism and accountability, I think. But also knowing that you want them to find their voice to a degree. There’s an institutional voice that every institution has, every faculty member has, every class has. But that individual student voice and how that voice is different than other voices, that’s something you want to definitely encourage. When Alyssa was a successful video blogger, all these other students wanted to make blogs. I could see they had the same mannerisms and the same patterns and it’s like, “Be yourself.” Because it’s in a way it is looking, “Oh, here’s a very successful model”, but it’s like “But no. No two people are alike, cultivate your own style as well.”

Rebecca: You mentioned having a handbook. If faculty were going to do this on a smaller scale rather than like an institutional scale and they were to put together maybe a little handbook or whatever for their students, what are some of the key things that should be included?

Tim: Yeah, well, we have as a social media users’ guide and it talks about the different communities that are out there, the do’s, the don’ts. Don’t be too dense. Don’t throw out acronyms. Be a human being on social media as much as you can. Know that, not everything that you do in social media will be well received, some of it might be ignored, sometimes you have to deal with people who are jerks… how do you navigate that, for example, and do you have a policy for it. But in general, it’s also to a degree about you gotta learn, play a bit on the job. And then it’s always funny, people are like, “What’s your biggest advice as far as, avoiding screw ups?” and it’s attributed to Zappos and Microsoft. Their social media policy is, “Don’t do anything stupid,” which, that’s a life policy, I think in general. [LAUGHTER]

John: And a good thing for students or anybody.

Tim: Anybody, yeah anybody of any age should follow that. And so I think it’s interesting because it’s evolved so much. Social media’s evolved… certainly since I’ve been involved in it and in 2020 it’ll be different than it was in 2019. So it’s just, you want to know what the general things are. And then every new channel that comes along has its own rules of engagement, its own strengths and that type of thing. For a while, we’re putting some more emphasis on Snapchat we had students who were doing Snapchat posts and that type of thing… I wasn’t really understanding because Snapchat’s interface is rather ridiculous… but then we would do the same story on Snapchat and Instagram and Instagram would get 10 times the engagement. And then they changed the Snapchat design and layout and then suddenly our Snapchat engagement went almost down to zero. And it’s like, “Okay, well, this was nice, this was fun. We’ll put stuff there once a while but not going to emphasize it anymore because Instagram really has been where it’s at.” But also, the blogs are always important. A good example is our students will work with the incoming class group like the class of 2023, which for me, just seems impossible that that’s a year, but they’ll see what questions students have. A good example, one year our incoming students had questions about the Equestrian Club, Cheerleading, and the Ice Effect Synchronized Skating. Basically it was female students asking all these questions maybe because males thought they were too cool, I don’t know. But then one of my interns, Ryan said, “Oh, well, I know the President of the Equestrian Club. So he did like a Q & A… sent her questions… She sent it back, boom, quick blog entry, put it into Facebook, we also put it on Twitter, we put it all over the place because a good piece of content can work various parts. So that was an easy thing. What questions are students having over and over and how can you solve those problems? Whether it’s a blog post or an Instagram series, or even is this something that should be on our website? So we’ll see this, and seeing what students are asking what they’re curious about can inform everything that we do outside of social media, from a content strategy standpoint.

John: Have the students had to do much with, say, trolling and such issues? And how have you dealt with that, or encouraged students to deal with that?

Tim: Generally, if they’re dealing with a troll… it’s just a troll that they’re not going to be able to do anything about. So it’s kind of like an ignore. If they’re blogging about something… we’ve had students that are very passionate about things. I had one, Katherine Raymond, who was very much for sustainability and that type of thing… and so she got some pushback blog entries from people who were not necessarily scientifically oriented, I’ll say. And she did a good job of just very respectfully replying to them. You know, sustainability should not be a hot button topic but unfortunately it is. But generally it’s: understand what’s going on and if someone is snarking at them, they’ll ask me whether they think it’s good to engage or not. And sometimes it’s an honest question or that type of thing, definitely the honest questions we want to get answered. Someone just trying to be a jerk towards somebody, there’s no engaging them, it’s not even worth it. But generally student speaking, this has not been an issue for the students, which has been great.

Rebecca: What’s something that you learned about this process without expecting to learn that?

Tim: It’s going to sound like puffery, but just how good students are at this. So many of them have exceeded my expectations and I said, “Okay. They should be okay, they should be good” and they’re great and they’re awesome. And then 5, 10 years later, they’re working in social media and they’re known in certain circles and some of that you’ll see right away, sometimes you’ll see a growth curve. There’s always a lot of trepidation when you’re saying, “Oh, you’re turning this thing over to a student,” you know, “Aren’t you worried?” and they will more times than not exceed my expectations as far as that goes. Getting back to what I talked about earlier, it kind of teaches me what are we not communicating? What do my students have to say? What do incoming students, what are their questions that we could be doing a better job as an institution communicating? I’ve learned a lot about how diverse and rich students lives are because I think, “Oh, they might be doing this and that…,” yeah, they’re in five clubs, and they play in a band and they’re in a sport and all the rest of this stuff” and like, I’m just so impressed by it. Those are students, it’s like, you’re happy they’re representing you. You don’t want every student to come in to join five clubs and do all these things—at least initially—but just finding exceptional students that make me proud to work with them is, I think that’s been the biggest takeaway, the biggest surprise and probably the biggest pleasure from it.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Tim: What’s next. I mentioned TikTok earlier besides the fact that we have a student with 500,000 followers, there’s some schools that are starting to get into it. University of Florida, my friend Todd Sanders is doing some interesting stuff there and it really skews a little bit lower, but … it’s like high school students, that type of thing… and try to figure out, “Okay, do we have content that’s going to make the grade?” I went in, I got a TikTok account, I put some videos on it and said “Eh, there’s not much going on there…” but again, not the target market. So it’s maybe seeing what students can do video-wise there and also working with other operations around campus. For instance, our admissions… someone in admissions said that their students wanted to do like mini-tours of the residence halls because they don’t have time for all of them so they might see a couple and I said, “That’s content we can use too” and it’s content that the Reslife channels can use too so it’s trying to figure out how to work smarter not harder. So if students are doing these nice little videos, let’s find a lot of uses for them… Because video is a great storytelling avenue. It’s why Instagram has thrived and why Snapchat is static, because they’ve been beaten to the punches. It’s why TikTok is huge, even though people either don’t know it or don’t completely understand it. But yeah, so the video storytelling, trying to figure out ways of doing that within this that are manageable. And obviously accessibility is a big issue on like, “Can you tell a story that people will understand if there’s no sound to it?”, and that type of thing. So I think with my current crop of students it’s going to be trying to figure out visual storytelling things. Is TikTok something worth pursuing or not? Because if it’s not, then we just don’t follow through with it. And then you just never know what’s going to be the next channel. We don’t rush into the next channel, you know, the idea is you want a content strategy you want to do it well, or at least start out doing it at least not embarrassingly bad. [LAUGHTER] But so where we started to stay on top of that and a good wrapping up anecdote is when Pinterest started a lot of my friends and other colleges were like: “Oh Pinterest, so it’s a passing fad, no one should jump on it.” I spoke to my students and I said, “This Pinterest thing. I kind of get it but what do you think? Should we have a Pinterest account?” and one of them Jenna Hanson said, “You know, students are always asking what they should bring for their dorms,” she said, “What about a Pinterest board that says ‘What to bring to your dorm’? Or ‘The winter is coming, what should people bring? What are some of the clubs I can join? What are some of the teams at SUNY Oswego?’” and then one person—an alumni, Shane Leibler who’s not here anymore—did a very popular board called “Oswego rocks!” where he looked at like, Billy Joel played here on his birthday once in the 70s or The Doors played here…it was a wilder time… you could get really good acts for almost nothing. And so he did all these things about, almost a who’s who Rock & Roll Hall of Fame of people who played here when they were not known. That’s one that keeps going really, really well because for Pinterest you’ve got to just come up with a good theme and get some stuff to that board but it’s also something you don’t need to update all the time like Instagram or that type of thing. And Jenna has been working in social media ever since she graduated too. So, it’s good and again, when people have this idea and they understand social media… that there’s a strategy behind it and it should solve problems. When students get that, you know that they’re going to do well in it.

Rebecca: Well thank you so much for joining us.

Tim: Thank you for having me.

John: Thank you.

Tim: Thank you for the tea.

[LAUGHTER]

John: Anytime… we always have tea here.

[Music]

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.

John: Editing assistance provided by Kim Fisher, Chris Wallace, Kelly Knight, Joseph Bandru, and Jacob Alverson.