Pavani Reddy
Richard Reeves, who is at Brookings was describing, you know, different aspects of college enrollment gaps. And he made a comment that complexity is the friend of the privileged. And I think targeted universalism challenges us to really think about that. It challenges us to really think about the structures that are creating that complexity and those frictions, and and really rethink those structures as opposed to further baking them into the, you know, to the college experience that many students and families have have struggled with.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we have two deep thinkers to help us explore innovative approaches to student success. We’re going to merge ideas and concepts offer critiques and breaks new ground and I’m very excited about this. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent in the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode, or browse, browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, author and coach. You can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com. I’m broadcasting from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. I’m so grateful to have you both here and for this exciting conversation. Let’s introduce you to to our audience. Brian, we’re gonna start with you.

Brian Reed
Hey, glad to be here, Keith. Thanks for having us. I’m Brian Reed. I’m the Vice President of Student Success and the Roanoke experience at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, and I am on week four of this new journey. Most reorientation has gone well, it has been fantastic. I love baptisms, by fire. And so I have most previously it was at the University of Montana for four and a half years, which is how I met Pavani.

Keith Edwards
Awesome, well, overdue. Pavani.

Pavani Reddy
Hi, everybody. Thank you, Keith, for having me as well. I’m Pavani Reddy, my pronouns are she her hers. And I lead public private partnerships for socio economic mobility for EAB. And as many of your listeners might be familiar, EAB is the best practices and solutions company that serves education leaders from K 12 through employment, which is how I got a chance to really get to know and work with Brian, I also serve as a solutions architect for a DC based nonprofit called Student freedom initiative, which I think might come into play in this conversation. And my other role is that I’m actually find myself a little bit like Brian, I’m a student and a teacher right now of best practices in in a field that I’m very interested in, which is ethical technology product development, which is what brings me to the conversation today to talk about targeted Universalist design.

Keith Edwards
A good time in our society to be focused on ethical technology, product development with with AI and tools and data and so many different things. Well, this is exciting. And I know you two have worked together in previous iterations and been good thought partners, and I’m just excited to learn from you. So Brian, we’re gonna start with you, framing some context around student success. What do you see as some of the current and near future challenges that might be worrying campus leaders, or maybe aren’t even on the horizon quite yet.

Brian Reed
You know, one of the primary ones and this is not going to be new to your listeners who paid attention to sort of the the recent landscape of higher ed, but you know, the the demographic Cliff looms very largely press, we’ve entered into that downward slope, as most institutions, particularly the small and independent will tell you that we’ve entered into the declining enrollment phase of, of that demographic drop off, not to mention what I call the Great opting out. So we saw this happen right after COVID, which was this. Even among the eligible enrollees, we saw a decline in students choosing to attend a college enroll in college. And so what that means for us is that we got with a shrinking pie shrinking competitive pie, we have to really focus laser like on our retention efforts. And so for the students, we do attract, and are able to get enrolled at our institutions with that we have to double and triple down on our Student Success efforts, particularly around as we think about our retention, persistence and completion goals. And so for what that means is that I think institutions who haven’t been accustomed to serving first generation students, low income students, students of color, well, that we’re going to have to get better at doing that and adapting our policies, programs and services to make sure that we’re meeting a greater diversity of students needs because as I’ve talked to Pavani in the past week, like Higher Ed was is never intended for that kind of diversity. And we took for granted for a long time that we would have this unyielding revolving door of supply, and we’re not there anymore. And so we’ve got to get better at retention and persistence. And that means we’ve got to focus more of our efforts on how we serve the greater diversity our students better.

Keith Edwards
And you’ve been focused on both how we do that, at the individual level, and at a system level around policies around procedures around structures. But then also, about my interaction with this student is a retention engagement. Could you say a little bit about the, the, whether you think about it individual and systems or micro and macro about those students success?

Brian Reed
Yeah, you know, for a long time, I think particularly student affairs folks have been fairly good, we’ve got a lot of we always have work to do. But I think student affairs folks have been good at that individual interaction with the student. That there, I find student affairs professional, really eager to increase their cultural competency, and to be a good steward and advocate of the diversity of students on our campus. I think where we fallen flat is how we think about how we translate that effort into systems and policy. And so what does it mean? So there’s, there’s this question, right? How do we do DEI, at the system of policy or structural level, which can get really overwhelming, I think, for a lot of folks. And I think that’s where a framework like targeted universalism comes in, to really help us think about how we structure those things, to serve students better. And so because I think there’s a couple of things that I know that as part of the work that Pavani that I did together at the University of Montana, one of the things we did was we really dug into looking at how, and this is the charge that I give all directors now that in my portfolio is our goal is to look at utilization data, outcomes, data, etc, and how different students experience or participate or what the outcomes are for them as they interact in our services. And I’ll give some examples in terms of, we looked at how students the diversity of students who utilize or not Counseling Services at the University of Montana, what we saw, we had huge gaps across race and ethnicity there. We also talked a look at how students access financial aid resources as well, which, again, there were huge gaps there as well, career success. And so I think what the first step in how we do this is to really analyze and look at our data. And how students, again, utilize or take advantage of those resources on our campus. And so that’s really the first step. And then once you do that, then we have to sit down with good partners like Pavani and our EAP partners to think about what would intervention what would really successful and targeted interventions look like to help us reach those sort of universal goals on our campus like retention like completion?

Keith Edwards
Well, I feel like Brian is dropping some little nuggets here about this idea that I am super excited to learn more about. So we want to look at student success through this lens of john powell is targeted, universal, sorry, targeted universalism design, I need to learn more about this Pavani, bring me up to speed bring others up to speed, what is this? And how do we apply it to student success? Because I’m really intrigued.

Pavani Reddy
Yep, absolutely. And I just want to say for our listeners, in the Student Success community that Brian and I are part of which is quite vast, we’ve done so many talks together and, and different experiences, not very many people are familiar with that actual targeted universalism framework. And it’s like a light bulb goes off when people really start to apply the framework. And so I’m so happy to have this conversation today. So targeted universalism, it’s a way to think about how to design those policies, programs, interventions, and with regard to the product development piece, even the tools that people are using, how to design them more equitably. And so john a. powell, who you mentioned, he is a professor of law and African American Studies at Berkeley, and he also directs the Berkeley’s othering and belonging Institute. And he could over his career conceptualized this framework through a long career in civil rights. And so he really comes at it from you know, the policy angle, but I learned about targeted universalism in 2019. When Professor Powell and a few of his co authors they released a guidebook on the concept which we can link up in In your show notes, it’s actually a really well done primer on the subject. And the idea is that what he’s trying to address is that the policies, the programs, interventions, and the tools that we deploy to solve a problem are often either too broad, or too narrow. So often we consider, you know, a solution to a problem, like as a universal solution, or we come at it with a very, very specific lens around a specific, vulnerable population. And it’s not that either of those approaches is very wrong. But often it doesn’t get us kind of to the goal that everyone was looking for in the first place. So just to clarify this, for example, let’s say, Brian, is, you know, he’s at a four year college where, you know, roughly, let’s say, the 68% of the students graduate within six years. And I might have that close or not, but that’s just an example. And we might be able to disaggregate the data to understand that a certain groups, depth rate of Completion is much lower, and another group is much higher than that average. But the average is 60%. So what a targeted Universalist design would, it would appreciate that all of these groups are situated very differently. And rather than go for a sort of one size fits all approach to each of you to this to this graduation rate question, or just pick one vulnerable population and say, We need to get them up to 60%, it would actually consider the structures of the system that are either helpful or harmful to the goal, and start addressing those systematically. And so if you want, because I really do love a framework, there’s just five, simple, there’s kind of five simple steps that Brian kind of started to touch on. And I love a good framework. Yeah, I know, guards of a feather. Yeah, and this is, you know, again, in in, in Professor Pauwels, primer, but the first goal is to it, the first step of this is to define that universal goal. And so the question here, just to keep it simple, is, let’s say the goal is all students who want to graduate do so within four years, you know, at Natick college. And then the second step is looking at how the general population is doing against the goal. So maybe we say it’s, you know, 68%, or graduating. And then the third step is, like I said, how we disaggregate the data in all the possible ways we can to see how different groups are doing. And so we may see some groups that are graduating at rates of 85%, and some at 50%. And then we this is where it gets really challenging and nuanced. But this is where the magic is we assess the structures, and really understand and acknowledge the differences that people have relative to that structure. And so maybe we discover, you know, again, to just have a simple example, that there is a first year required course, that has, you know, a high stakes midterm high stakes final, and that we know from the data that students who receive an A or B in this course, are like 30 times more likely to graduate than students who receive a D or an F. And maybe this recourse also reflects a structural barrier, you know, for hundreds or 1000s of students that are going through that experience. And so then step five, would be to develop a targeted strategy. And that’s where the design part of this process comes in, which is how can we, you know, go think about the structures and really optimize the structures.

Keith Edwards
I love this. So I love the disaggregating to really understand all the different ways you do it. And you might find some things that you anticipate certain populations you anticipate are struggling or not, you might need some that you might anticipate, would you be doing really well are struggling more than you think. I also love the nuance of, sort of, we want all of our students to be successful. And I want to help Keith, who I’m meeting with in my office, and this is sort of that in between there. How do we think about particular groups of students that then can inform maybe individual interventions, or scale some of these individual interventions in a bigger way? It’s, it feels like a really nice both and two, of course, are interested in every student. And then I think oftentimes what we’re doing is saying, I see this isn’t working for you, I’ll give you an exception. I’ll give you an exemption. I’ll help you out. Right, we’ll give you an emergency loan rather than thinking what are the things we can do for for many folks,

Brian Reed
and I’ll just add really quickly to Pavani’s. The framework piece to it. I think one of the things that’s I consider the chef’s kiss of the model to which is it really one of the things that and this is always this baffles me and student students success is that we sit around we talk about these challenges, we identify these problems, we disaggregate the data. And then we immediately rush to these individualized solutions, which is great. But one of the pieces that Powell does talk about is like spending time with the people that you’re designing for. And so we’ve all heard that if, if, if, you know, you’re you’re you’re strategizing solutions for people who aren’t represented in the room, you probably need to rethink that strategy. And so this is where our previous work with at the University of Montana using this framework, and it was, it was around financial aid strategy was really important for us to do focus groups with students, we actually did focus groups

Keith Edwards
that were really focused on native and indigenous students

Brian Reed
Yes, so native and indigenous students in the example there is, if for anyone who’s worked with the student population, particularly in the state of Montana, as an example, the financial aid packaging is so complex, because in addition to federal financial aid, there are individual tribal scholarships. And in the state of Montana, we have 13 federally recognized tribes that have different strategies, different dates, and distribution dates for how they distribute that aid, than the state also had the state of Montana had a tuition waiver that very few Native American or indigenous students actually took advantage of. And so those packages are super complex. And so what we needed to understand was to meet with students, and we actually met with community partners who work with indigenous communities as well, to understand what were some of the user experiences and hurdles accessing some of those resources, and it was really illuminating to, and not only we did we learn about, you know, sort of systematic hurdles, or sort of technical hurdles, but it was really about relate, we heard a lot about relationships, and how service matters and how developing relationships matter. And then also to it was a great education, and particularly for this population, about how the the the lingering historical effects of the boarding school system, particularly in the US affected the relationship between indigenous communities and predominantly white educational institutions. So we took, we had to take account for all of that as we design these projects. But again, to come back to the main point, which is, you’ve got to meet with the people you’re designing for, or designing with, to really have the strategies, even within a targeted universalism framework to inform what those solutions look like.

Keith Edwards
I love the word with their right who you’re designing with. And sounds like you were working with the folks to do that work on your campus with community partners. And then you did a lot of focus groups. I’ve heard you talk about in other realms of focus groups and learning from the students. Can you say just a little bit more, Brian, about what you learned about the Earn mistrust from the boarding schools and colonization that those folks that experience at a generational scale, and how that transfer to their experience of service and what you all learn to better connect?

Brian Reed
Sure, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an ill studied history in terms of national history of the US. And so and what people don’t realize is the boarding school system in the US was not dissolved until the 70s. And so, again, if people are unfamiliar with this, this was a policy where the US government essentially took children from their tribal families and ship them to largely East Coast schools, to educate them. And that and the idea there was to, quote unquote, educate the Indian out of the students. And it was really, to a cultural, it was both a literal and cultural genocide that occurred in our country, and both in the United States and Canada. And so, we have students at the University of Montana, whose grandparents who were in that system, whose aunts and uncles and parents were in that system, and so this is not a far removed history. And there was a lot of physical abuse, sexual abuse that occurred. They’re still discovering mass graves at some of these institutions, and well, and so there is a well earned skepticism about what the intentions are.

Keith Edwards
I think skepticism is generous, but Well, yeah, sure, yes.

Brian Reed
Around what the intentions are in a predominantly white institution as it comes to educating indigenous youth and so it is it becomes it is an I will say this, it is our challenge in terms of the institutions and those who work with the institutions to develop and nurture that trust, and all. And I, that’s where your comment, Keith is really important. And I caught myself the with peace is so important. The empowerment piece is so important when we do anything like this. And that’s why I love powell’s framework is that it’s not a floor, it’s a width. And so and I think that’s particularly, I think you can see some really profound breakthroughs when you’re not coming in as this white savior, to try to sort of, say, these populations of students.

Pavani Reddy
The thing that Brian just struck me so much from the work that we did, and, you know, that certainly was by design part of it, we we worked, you know, super closely with not only the student focus groups, which was a huge part of it, but the all of the faculty and staff that have that, especially serve Indigenous students, and one of the opportunities, and I think this is what the framework of targeted universalism allows for is to develop an intervention that takes that nuance into consideration. So, for example, there was just such affinity for working with certain units on campus. You know, at the University of Montana, there was such an affinity for the, you know, kind of ability to go to spaces that were centering Indigenous students and centering, you know, that were just culturally competent. And so I think what we got to in that was just understanding how important it would be for a solution designed to entail that, and really figuring out, you know, what, what does that look like? And how do we help. So, for example, you know, very specifically, the tools that we that we built, made, it made it possible for those practitioners, to serve students and have this huge amount of trust already built in with students, that they’re able to see data in a one stop shop kind of fashion, and they don’t necessarily have to refer students to five different places on campus to get their question resolved or to, you know, remove the barrier that that that student might be facing. And so Keith that kind of brings us to that idea of like, you know, this is about the universal, I mean, about the about the larger population, but it’s about the individual as well. And that’s like designing an intervention where the adviser has a one stop shop, full knowledge of what a student is experiencing from their financial aid perspective, and then the student is getting a much better service and a much more, you know, a service that felt makes them feel like they belong, and that there is a, you know, a person on campus that really understands their experience and is helping to support their trajectory that, you know, through the experience.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, I love that you’ve kind of given us the the challenges around student success and how we need to do retention way better, you’ve given us this framework. To work with him, we’ve gotten a very clear, specific example, at the University of Montana, particularly focused on Indigenous students. Let’s zoom out now and think a little bit more more at the macro level, nominee, like like you, I work with lots of different institutions, and there’s a real value in sort of having the wow, look at all of these different things. And, and Brian is migrating from one place to another. So I’d love to hear what are some of the broader implications that you have learned, either from this particular institutional project context that you think are more broadly applicable, or from powell’s framework that you think are more broadly applicable either to other institutions? Or maybe to hire it as an industry? What would you offer from from your learning?

Pavani Reddy
Yeah, I mean, it’s both, you know, across institutions, but also from this framework is, I think targeted universalism really pushes us to consider structural redesigns. And if I can say anything about, you know, Brian, kind of teed up some of the challenges and hurdles that are facing student, you know, student success practitioners and students themselves. And anything that like the trend that I’ve seen over the last five years is that historically, higher education is accepted, accepted complexity, and that hurt students and families that lack privilege, and the biggest the biggest shift that I’ve seen recently is that there are massive numbers of higher education practitioners that realize that simplifying systems is necessary to create the engagement and sense of belonging for across the whole student pop elation. And earlier this year, Richard Reeves, who is at Brookings was describing, you know, different aspects of college enrollment gaps. And he made a comment that complexity is the friend of the privileged. And I think targeted universalism challenges us to really think about that. It challenges us to really think about the structures that are creating that complexity and those frictions, and and really rethink those structures as opposed to further baking them into the, you know, to the college experience that many students and families have have struggled with.

Keith Edwards
Reminded me I think, not only that, but higher ed kind of values, complexity, it’s hard to get in, it’s hard to navigate. If you can do this, it’s really good for you. And it’s sort of that complexity, I think, gets confused with rigor, and robustness. But I love that, that framing around complexity and privilege in simplifying things. What are you learning? Brian, as you move from one institution to another and carry these mindsets and approaches, as you’re thinking about different contexts?

Brian Reed
Yeah, I think for me is that I think Pavani sort of suggested this, which is, I think it’s, we’re at a time where I think excellence or an institution and access or success are not mutually exclusive concepts. And so I’ll just be really frank with you and your audience, I had,

Keith Edwards
oh, please, I’ve been waiting for it. Let’s get ready. I have

Brian Reed
very little patience for prestige and prestige chasing a one, I think the demographics just don’t, we don’t allow an institution other than IVs and NESCAC schools to do that anymore. And so, you know, these these institutions that pride themselves on how many students they keep out versus who they welcome to their campus. I think I have a very low threshold for that kind of attitude. And so for me, I think as a first gen low income college student, I was fortunate enough to attend an undergraduate institution that really was accessible was not that realize that jargon, you know, we had to get rid of the jargon and the complexity of higher ed, which we all know makes us sound smart. But is a very little use to students a very useful utility to families, that and that’s the other piece, too, is that. And I don’t want to let this go without saying this is that I think when we serve this greater diversity of students, and particularly at our institution, this is one of the reasons I was attracted to Roanoke College with 30%. First Gen, we’re 25% Pell Grant recipients status. We serve a lot of rural students in southwest Virginia as well, we have some articulation agreements with with Virginia Western Community College as well. And so really like what we’ve got going on here in terms of this, providing an excellent rigorous education that’s open to a lot of students that might not otherwise have access to a private liberal arts education. So I’m really I love that piece. The other piece of this, though, is that, where I think higher ed, it’s kind of catching up is then how we support the families of those students to to understand what this whole thing this college going experience is like. And I know I’ve gotten a lot of personal gratification over the last few years developing relationships with families, you know, developing parent portals, doing summer, Google’s zoom hangout sessions with families to understand particularly complex pieces of the institution around financial aid and how to navigate Career Services. And so, and again, all of that’s designed with these families who have never navigated this experience. And so for me, I like to create what one partner called a stereo effect, which is, as we communicate with students, we communicate with families, and that we’re all sort of on the same team doing this work together. And so, yeah, I’ll end there. But yeah, that’s kind of the stuff I’m thinking about right now.

Keith Edwards
You’re making me think about a lot of the work I do with institutions around curricular approach. And one of the big benefits is when you’re clear about what the goals are, then you can communicate them in the same way to different people, right, when when everybody’s kind of doing their own thing, then lots of different things get communicated. So making sure we’re kind of all singing from the same music, right? We might play different instruments, but we’re all singing from the same music. And so making sure that Admissions and Enrollment folks are communicating that to prospective students and that we’re using that language in in the pipeline and on campus and with families. And I love the that you’re adding to my musical metaphor here with the with the stereo effect. But yeah, and taking that jargon and the complexity way

Pavani Reddy
I was I was just going to build on that Keith with one more thing, which is, I think there’s a goodness in articulating what the goals are. Because if the goals are to reward privilege, to, you know, to separate, you know, students who have been resourced all their lives, and, you know, signal to the outside world that these are very well resourced students, I think it’s, I think many institutions be hard pressed to come right out and articulate those at those principles as their goals. And so I would say, just articulating the goal that we want students to succeed, we want students to, you know, have opportunity, you know, equal opportunity have access, you know, to different educational experiences and paradigms, I think that that allows for just expression of those goals, rather than sort of just committing to the status quo.

Keith Edwards
Well, in higher ed has had this mindset of our job is to attract good students who will be successful. And you’re reminding me of Parker Palmer, talking about sitting around with a group of faculty, and hearing them complain about students are not as prepared as they used to be, and they’re not as hard working as they used to be. And Palmer sort of says they sounded like doctors complaining about having too many sick patients. Like that’s our job is to help them be successful, help them develop the skills and habits and patterns and navigate around that. What do you want to add? Brian?

Brian Reed
I was just gonna say, I think that’s, you know, I think student success has become the new, the new sort of marketing term for a lot of institutions. And what I mean by that is, like, you hear like, we have a beautiful campus, we have a 13 to one student ratio, and we’re committed to student success. Now, when you say that, that we’re committed to student success, I think we’re making promises that that what that means for every student who comes to our campus. And so I said this the other day at our Board of Trustees Meeting, I said, I think student success is one of those phrases that everybody thinks they know what it means. But I don’t know if we’ve really articulated what it means. And how does equity. Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly so and I think the challenge back to your point, Keith, earlier around how we do that work, how do we define that work is really important. And if we’re going to say those things as an institution, and make those promises to students that come to our institutions, then we damn sure better be ready to do that work on our side of the house at the institution to make sure we fulfill that promise to every student. And that’s going to be all the stuff we’ve just talked about today, like the really hard work. And it’s not easy, it’s easy to set these universal policies that we think are going to help everybody but we know they don’t. And to do targeted Universalist work requires that we do some really hard individual coalition building programmatic assessment for individual groups, for sort of really small groups of students, and that matters. And but that’s hard work.

Keith Edwards
Right? And, you know, students success, everybody agrees who’s who’s against student success, right. But then that means we have to do things differently than we’ve always done.

Brian Reed
And most successful, it’s like the everybody’s for D, until it cost them something until they have to sacrifice and I think students success is the same way. Like we’ve got to really assess our own stuff.

Keith Edwards
And a lot of it don’t you think is not just costing resources, but just, I might have to do different something differently than I’ve done for the past 20 years, or maybe even longer, whether that comes to how faculty teach a class to how orientation has operated? Absolutely. Some of those things

Pavani Reddy
are different. For different students, I was just going to build on that were differently for different students, which I think is also a paradigm shift, say more about

Keith Edwards
how that can happen and the value of that?

Pavani Reddy
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest opportunities for us who are all working on sort of this deep definition of student success that Brian, just, you know, articulated is to get so much more curious and nuanced about what is going on for students. And I’m actually hopeful that some of the newer data technologies and I’ll say it ding ding, ding artificial intelligence machine learning, that these technologies can shed light on the student experience more and more granularly so that eventually students are not being dealt with as a representative example of a group of students but interacting with a college as a as an individual, uniquely situated learner who does belong in that educational experience. And to your point, Brian, the idea of like a college saying, you know, we do, we do these three things and and this and this is how we promote student success should be a way that students and families can understand what educational context is, is actually a great fit for that student based on, you know, how they find themselves and where they’re situated today as a learner. And so that that is what you know, I feel like it’s an opportunity and all of this, and I’m hopeful that we can get there.

Keith Edwards
I’m really enamored with this nuanced middle path, because I think we do talk so much about all students, right. They’re all here for orientation, they all got this email, they all have to do this thing, right? And then I think particularly Student Affairs, folks, do you think about a lot of individual students, right, I, our behavior, bid team, our care team is focused on this student and their challenges and their issues and who’s going to meet with them? And then of course, we we meet individually, with students for lots of different reasons, maybe advising, maybe an intervention may be an exception, and we get really focused on that. And this is really that middle ground? About? What about our indigenous students? What about our trans students? What are they navigating and experiencing? And I think when you when I think about when we get to sort of those group level, it becomes very easily dehumanized, right meeting with this student. They’re very human, the very real relationship and connection. But then when we’re talking about Pell Grant recipients, I don’t know who that is. That’s now a nameless, faceless, dehumanized collection of data. And what I love about some of the things that the both of you are talking about is looking at those groups, and then humanizing them and talking with them and engaging with them. So that it brings more to that. And I’m just, I’m enamored with that. Bringing relationship and connection and with two groups of students that you know, through the data are struggling and really asking them, what’s getting in your way? What would be helpful? When people refer me to another office? Just do it nicely? And don’t just rush through the email? And don’t just pass off quickly? Like, that would be really great.

Pavani Reddy
Exactly. And what is their interaction with the system? Right, like, so even just that broad strokes of being a palace student, which I was, when I was in college, just what does what does that look like? Just from your perspective? How does that how does that work? And then you shed light on what the system is really designed to do and not do?

Keith Edwards
One of the things I’m curious about is we’ve talked a lot about learning and data, and desegregated data and learning about what these groups are experiencing to inform faculty and staff practices and policies and how we engage and resources. How do you all see sharing that with the students? You know, these are some of the things that your peers are saying are getting in the way? These are some of the things that are helping them be successful? Is there a share back with the students to sort of inform them and empower them or their risks with that?

Brian Reed
Really good question. Thank you. I think, I think in so much as we can triangulate what we think we know about how we’re this is where this becomes a really, I think, a really beautifully iterative process. And what I mean by that is, you have your focus groups. And this is what I really like. And I didn’t want to talk about because I could do a whole nother podcast on this but Human Centered Design

Pavani Reddy
Guide. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
All right, well put her on the list. Yeah.

Brian Reed
How to apply the principles of human centered design and student success. But like, we know that the first stage is in empathy. And developing a point of view really is iterative. And so it’s having those initial conversations with students to say, hey, let’s understand you, here’s what our data tells us. Let’s triangulate that with your experience. Okay, then we put that together, then we then we develop some prototype ideas. And then I think we go back to the students and say, hey, here, give them something to react to, with respect to here’s some intervention or program or policy ideas, what do you think? And so, again, like I said, like, That’s not easy. That takes a lot of time and effort. But like, that’s what that’s the good work that happens. And that’s how you get really solid community and formed solutions to really complex and sticky problems. And so, to your point, Keith, I think it’s got to be super iterative. Now, I want to, I want to expand a little bit, I think one of the things that we don’t do well in student affairs is share with our faculty who our students are, in terms of the makeup of our students and what the particular challenges might be, or are the strengths actually of what it means to be a first gen or low income or bipoc student on our campus and to continually update our, our, our staff colleagues, as well as our faculty colleagues about who Our students are, you know, one of the things we did at Dartmouth, which I thought was really lovely there was, we did this video called class in the classroom. And we interviewed students about how does social class and finances influence your experience both inside and outside the classroom. And students talked about lab fees, book costs, studying abroad, being able to do internships, and it was just this, this aha moment for a lot of folks on the campus about like, wow, we’ve we’ve got to change some things if we want to truly focus on the success of these first gen low income students. And so it’s things like that I think could help us move this sort of needle in terms of student success.

Pavani Reddy
The thing that I would add on to that is, you know, both all of us on this call, and the listeners know, that stereotype threat is really real. But I think this participatory design that you’re describing, Brian, and I think when it’s done really well can mitigate any effects that a different sort of solution might, you know, because because you don’t want to harm vulnerable populations by further having them isolated or alienated from, you know, majority populations. And so I think one of the key pieces to that is to really have participatory design, you know, with with those populations, but then also with, like you said, the faculty, with other student populations to try to get to a an approach that speaks to the universal goal, that is usually an you know, that should underlie this. And then what are kind of what are the different ways to position this for students? And what are the different ways that are going to mitigate or, you know, help address stereotype threat, which is extremely real, as you know, as the data shows?

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, my head is going into many different directions. So let me move us to our last question and give you both a little bit of time to, to pontificate a little bit, if you will. So the podcast is called Student Affairs now. And we always like to end with this question about, what are you thinking? What are you troubling? What are you pondering now, and if that’s related to our conversation so far, that’s awesome. And if it’s not, that is, that is great, too. And if you also want to share where folks can connect with you, feel free to do that. But I’d love to give each of you a few minutes to just share. What’s What’s with you now. And Brian, we plan to start with you.

Brian Reed
There, I’m, well, at the risk of getting in trouble. I’m gonna say this anyway. But

Keith Edwards
I’m so excited, good get in trouble.

Brian Reed
Well, Pavani mentioned it. So I’m gonna blame her a little bit. This the AI and machine learning and higher ed, and this hand wringing that is occurring at this moment around fears of cheating and academic dishonesty that we have. And so I’ve called it, I’m going to get in trouble for this. But we’ve we’ve I’ve called it the academic war on drugs, which is it is a an expensive loser that I think is going to harm the most vulnerable populations. So I think Higher Ed was not worried when rich, affluent white kids were having coaches write their essays for them. But all of a sudden, we’re worried that the mass populace will have it now. And so I get and writing papers, we’ve always had paper mills, et cetera, et cetera, et it’s not lost on me that when these technologies or these services become available to a greater diversity of students, that we suddenly have more worries about them. And so I would just the thing that I’m pondering is, how do we address the the all acknowledge the the cheating concerns, those are real, the academics, dishonesty concerns, they’re real, I don’t want to dismiss those. But I think how we approach this, and how we attempt to police this is not going to have the same outcomes for different students. And so I would just caution institutions to be very mindful about how they move forward with things like Chat GPT, and how those that how they are going to set up some disparities across student groups.

Pavani Reddy
Yeah, I mean, and Brian, it is kind of interesting how all conversations at this point in time lead to AI and machine learning. However, I think that I think that’s a very relevant point, but I and yeah, and I totally agree with this, and I think we need to use the technology and put some guardrails. else around, you know how we’re going about this, but it’s an experimental path. And so this is where I also like this framework and the ideas that we’ve been talking about, which is, you know, the human centered design aspects, because we’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and have a system or a set of interventions that we try, and we learn from, and, you know, we refine the approach, and we continue to, to go from there. But we have to do it with such transparency. And we, you know, with a, you know, across the entire community and with representation, as Brian, you, you alluded to, in different ways, kind of across this conversation.

Keith Edwards
I really appreciate that. Because I think, when we talk about human centered design, when we talk about really being student focused, when we talk about really being transparent, and really doing with, I think, for so many people that can sound great, I’m 100% on board, but that sounds really time consuming, I gotta really get at the micro level, and we’ve got 40,000 students on campus, or we’ve got 2000, and limited resources and lean on staff. Yeah, and what both of you have pointed through this conversation is really thinking through that not just at the individual level, but also at some small group levels, and also at the system’s policies procedure level. And I’m reminded that these, these, these things that the indigenous students in Montana, were articulating about this trust, about concerns about having a very complex system, both with FAFSA and institution and home tribal things. If we can figure that out for them, it will help a whole bunch of other students who have absolutely nothing at all, maybe are coming from a rural background, maybe had a K 12 experience with out in college preparation or knowledge or, or testing or, you know, things like that, and

Pavani Reddy
are uniquely eligible for certain kinds of scholarships, just because they’re uniquely eligible for them.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, right. And so I’m thinking, you know, solving some of these challenges for this particular and we’ll use the example of Indigenous students, we can solve those at a policy system level, it cleans up a whole bunch of things for rural students, for low income students, for international students, for students who are having a lot of different things for out of state students who are coming in and have other complexities. And so are reminded when we design things for the most marginalized, it benefits, even the most privileged as well. And so really, and that’s where taking the complexity out and bringing things to more simple, more clear, fewer obstacles. That will also benefit people who come from, from wealthy prestigious backgrounds as well. Right.

Brian Reed
Yeah. And how acknowledges that and that’s exactly his premise two is that this is the middle ground between the culture wars we have now around affirmative action, and then exclusion like he, he, he considers this the the ground that achieves both of those things. And I’m, I’m just gonna say really quickly, back to your time, comment, the investment of time key, like, I think it’s not an additional amount of time, I think it’s we shift where we spend our time. And so rather than the traditional model, which is we make some guesses about what we think about the student experience, and then design interventions, and then those things don’t work and cost us time and money, we have to go back again, I think this just re allocates that time to the front end. And I actually think it saves resources, because I think we do it right the first time. And so I think anybody that’s concerned about how much investment on the front end, this is, I would say, think about those times when you really just not done well with an intervention and how much time and resources that’s cost.

Pavani Reddy
Brian, I was gonna say a version of a similar point, but maybe also give an example because I think a lot of folks will say, Well, what about the scalability of this? Or what you know, how do you have to really get to a solution that works? And I’ll just give it a small example. And it may be simpler, it may sound simpler than you think. And it’s always in the rearview mirror that things seems simpler, right? Because those are elegant solutions, but closed captioning it as an example. So we’re all on a zoom call today. And it is possible now to have the words that were speaking, written in in typed form if we wanted to do that, and then also translated into a number of different languages. And that is possible. And initially, if you if you sort of think about oh, you know what, I do closed captioning only for people with hearing disabilities. We know that there’s so many use cases that that help everybody This is not an extraordinarily or it’s come to be not an extraordinarily expensive intervention. And so many more pieces of content and many, you know, it’s so much more accessible for all sorts of reasons. You know, people can read, you know, that they take in information better reading, they can do that. So there’s just a lot of different reasons that, you know, just thinking about the design, thinking about how it, how it really works across different populations can get us to a solution like that. And so trying to have listeners kind of think about examples that actually, you know, have come to fruition that reflect this, this framework and some of the ideas that we’ve been talking about today,

Brian Reed
Powell gives the example of the curb cutouts on streets and how that helped. You know, it was really designed for folks who use wheelchairs or have mobility challenges. But then we found that families with the what’s the baby thing, the carriages? I’m not a parent, so I don’t know. But the strollers that it helped them to like, and there were all kinds of advantages for the elderly who have some mobility challenges you still Yeah. So there were all kinds of

Keith Edwards
retract drivers? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I really love that example of captioning. And, and you’re right, you can do it with tools, like zoom, and AI and things like that. And it’s one of the reasons we’ve committed we, you know, we include a transcripts for every episode, and they update that and we do it through AI, and then we fix it. The AI is really cheap. But taking time to fix that transcript and who’s not perfect, is one of the most time consuming parts of this process and cost us money. And we’ll thank our sponsor for helping us do that here in a little bit. But it does have so many benefits. It’s not just for folks with issues that you mentioned. But it’s also you can reference it, you can go back and cut it out and quote it and put it into paper, it turns it into digital scholarship. People say Oh, I couldn’t really understand that thing was that actually this or that? Which I just did on an episode we previously released, I thought, I’m not sure what they’re saying, I could go to the transcript and be like, Oh, it is that. So there’s so many, so many benefits to

Brian Reed
it. I want to be clear to keep like, I think student affairs folks do that individual relationship piece really well. So I don’t I hope nobody has listened to this and thinking like this, these people. I know this, like this is really intuitive. I do this piece every day. I think what I would want to leave your listeners with is like, Yeah, I agree. I think student affairs folks, do that individual student group work really well, that relationship piece really well. I think the beauty of pals work and what we’re talking about is really at that system process level. And so I just would want to leave them with that. Like I believe in you. I think you do good work. That’s not my suggestion here. It’s that the policy and practice work becomes really hard at scale. And I think this is where that framework comes in.

Keith Edwards
I love that from the individual to sort of the small groups to the all in the whole continuum. And what are we learning from this student and these most students and how do we scale that is really, really great. Well, thank you both so much. I have learned a lot and I am thinking thinking thinking lots of too many new ideas. So this has been terrific. Thank you both for your leadership and innovative thinking. And thanks to our sponsor of today’s episode Symplicity. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being students success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity, comm or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Huge shout out to our producer Natalie Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to our podcast, YouTube, and weekly newsletter announcing each new episode. And more. If you’re so inclined, you can even leave us a five star review. It really does help these conversations reach a broader audience. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you.

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