Amy Williams
When we talk about growth in these programs. I’m often the caveat comes up. But if it grows, can it still maintain quality? So we are and we’re an organization founded on, let’s build some quality standards. So people that are working on these at the grassroots level, have some guideposts to follow up on because we’ve been through it, we’ve seen it, we know they’re gonna have to tackle this, this is how we suggest they take it on. So that’s definitely part of something that I worry about is I don’t think growth and quality are mutually exclusive. But there has to be intent in planning. You can’t take a program that’s a you know, a single loan operator on a college or a lot of times we call them programs of one, right? One person running them, you can’t take that and triple the size of it. And expect not to need additional support, and corroboration and collaboration.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by some experienced leaders in dual enrollment. This is an emerging space for students and institutions. But for many of us, including me, is pretty new and not very well understood. So I’m really glad to have these three experts who’ve been working in this space a long time to help us understand and engage with this. I’m so excited for the conversation. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, or browse our archives it’s 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 is a speaker, author, and coach, and you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I am recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation today and bring in our guests. I’m really excited to have you all here and learn with and from you. And let’s start it off with Dr. Caronda Bean here.

Dr. Caronda Bean
Hello, everyone. How are you? I’m Dr. Caronda Bean from Louisiana. And my pronouns are she her. This is a very exciting opportunity. I’ve been in the space of dual enrollment in post secondary education for 16 years, something that is truly dear to my heart. And with this space, I’ve been able to it just expand and grow in higher ed grow as a leader and really provide those opportunities for students locally. Currently, I do work for the Louisiana Department of Education as an educational program consultant. In this role, I continue to work with dual enrollment creating pathways for our students in secondary to transition to either post secondary or career opportunities. And so dual enrollment is still a part of my everyday. My everyday work. And I currently serve on the commission for a NACE the National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment partnerships. I serve on the advocacy commission as a state representative. I served as a regional representative for three years. And now I’m three more years as a state representative, again, just advocating and helping other other schools and other individuals and districts to be able to grow dual enrollment opportunities.

Brian Rosenberg
Awesome. Thank you for being here. And Chris Conzen, you’ve been on the show before to for folks who haven’t listened to that episode on humanity in the workplace. Check it out. But tell us a little bit more about you.

Christopher Conzen
Thanks, Keith. I’m Dr. Chris Conzen. I am the Executive Director of the center and early college programs at Hudson County Community College in northeast New Jersey. My pronouns are he him his. And I also admit that I knew nothing about dual enrollment until I inherited the early college programs. We my role was changed about four years ago. And like a true Maryland Terp. I dove into all the research and everything I could absorb on dual enrollment to understand what this work entailed. So I’m very excited to be very familiar with it and working with my colleagues across the state hopefully to create our first State Chapter where we’re in the bylaws finalization stage now, and I hope to be one of the first members of the leadership of that group. And I’ve been very excited. I got to see Hudson County Community College’s first group of high school students earn associate’s degrees upon their high school graduation. And we’ve had a little over 100 Since I came on, and we have right now we have over 200 students on a Pathways track in just associate degree pathways alone. So really enjoy this enjoy this work. And I like many folks who end up doing this work as a practitioner on the college side, they fall into it because of a role change or you know, a shift and you No, it’s I’m very excited, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else now. So very happy to do this work.

Keith Edwards
That’s, that’s awesome. And one of the things we’ll talk about is this is really a growing thing. So I think there might be some campuses that don’t have someone who need one and might pull in someone like you from student affairs and bring that that connection. Amy, tell us a little bit about you and your role.

Amy Williams
Hello, everybody, my name is Amy Williams, I use the pronouns she her I am the Executive Director of the National Alliance of concurrent enrollment partnerships, which admittedly is a pretty clunky, you know, name to try and spit out. So we go by the moniker of naisip. And probably for reasons that will become obvious through the conversations today. For those that haven’t not heard of naisip, you’ve just heard from two people that are engaged with our organization already, as well as solid, strong, motivated and passionate practitioners. So those that don’t know me naisip, we’re the first and only national organization that really works in three realms, we support programs, practitioners, and policy to advance quality dual and concurrent enrollment programs. So we are all things dual credit, dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, Running Start jumpstart Early Start PSEO, EPS, PSEO, all of the different terms out there, we like to say that we serve many models with one singular mission to advance our national community and build equity and quality and dual and concurrent enrollment programs. So we do that through a variety of different mechanisms. And a lot of them are very fun, like professional development events, we just finished our national conference in St. Louis was that last week, I think, really a lot of great feedback, people enjoyed that it’s always great to see friends, old and new. And I guess for context, before joining this up, I was a classroom teacher, high school and middle school for 11 years, then I jumped over to higher ed to help them build a dual credit program at a really small two year college. And that really got me the right kind of attention for the kind of the strategic approach that I took towards that and built it into our Perkins landscape, as well as things like that. So I got pulled into the system office to do the same kind of work to build and scale and expand access, and improve affordability and student engagement in dual and concurrent enrollment programs. And then I, you know, got to build on work on building that into the Perkins landscape. As the state’s CTE director and dual enrollment director, many hats.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. And you’re coming to us from Montana, right? Yep.

Amy Williams
Beautiful, Bozeman, Montana, although it’s not that beautiful. Today, it’s almost,

Keith Edwards
I’m in Minnesota, you’re in Montana, we got jersey, we got Louisiana, we’re doing great. We’re all spread out here. Awesome. Amy, it is a treat to hear you rattle off that mission statement. And I had the opportunity to work with NASA on their strategic plan a couple of years ago, and mission, vision and values and strategic goals and outcomes. And so it’s really great to hear some of that language which we were creating and emerging. Sounds like it’s second nature to you. So super, super fun to hear that great,

Amy Williams
or a couple of years to work on it. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Keith Edwards
So Amy, we’re gonna stick with you to really lay the foundation here help those of us who are not very familiar, as I wasn’t very familiar. And as Chris was saying, and I think a lot of our audience maybe is hearing this language, not quite sure. And there’s a lot of language in your intro, you rattled off a lot of stuff and a lot of alphabet soup. So help us kind of clean this up. Help us understand dual concurrent, AP IB, some of the other things just kind of help us lay the foundation for the conversation.

Amy Williams
I will do my best. But it does kind of end up rolling us into more of a history lesson as well, because the mixed terminologies deeply embedded in kind of the history of these programs. So dual enrollment, dual credit, concurrent enrollment, Running Start early start, concurrent start, all of those are different terms used to describe basically the simple act of a high school student engaging in college before they finished high school. And so all the terms differ based on a variety of different things. Sometimes it’s local context and what’s used. A lot of times the terms differ based on who is teaching the course, where the course is offered, the type of students that are recruited for the course, and kind of the holistic wraparound services that may or may not be provided to help students navigate as well as some of like the objectives and outcomes that the program is trying to get these students across the graduation finish line by the time they finish high school. So they differ in name very frequently because of the type of modality that the programs offered sometimes where it’s offered. We know that when we look at national data, about 86% of high school students that have taken a college course prior to graduating high school, report that they took it in their high school, so 80% of those are in their actual home high school, about six to 8% are in like maybe a career center or a regional education area. So when we get into looking at how all of these programs end up, living in a high school space, there’s a lot of complex Sitting behind that. And that’s really kind of a fundamental piece of where our organization comes in and to try and build guideposts for navigating this complexity. And the complexity. And the terminology really comes from the fact that these are grassroots programs. So Keith, you mentioned like AP and IB, those are nationally built and manage standardized curriculums, right. So there is one entity in charge of the content that goes into that and assesses value of students contributions to that in terms of the exam, and then spits out a score for the consideration of a potential post secondary entity. These programs are very different, because they are very, very much built grassroots and locally. And that’s one of the things that’s really key, I think, to the sustainability of them because they are highly contextualized, to the environment in which they are they live in are built and grown. And that makes them very flexible and dynamic. But flexibility and being dynamic and being able to adapt and change. different pieces make them pretty hard for researchers to study because they’re very heterogeneous, like

Keith Edwards
the Wild Wild West, right? There’s a lot going on except to coast. Yeah, right. Right. But just a lot going on a lot of people innovating and creating and grassroots. And not a lot of top down uniformity, which, as you just said, has upsides and downsides.

Amy Williams
Yeah, well, and we talk a lot about these, they’ll talk about them as the Swiss Army knife of education programs, because you can use them in about any direction, whether you want to work on workforce and build apprenticeships, student apprenticeships or work based learning into them. Totally, you can do that. If you want to accelerate students towards the gen ed associate so that they’ve got a really foothold across the threshold when they go to college, you can totally do that. And then pretty much anything you can dream up in between there is fair game and fair space. Because it’s based on partnership. So one big distinguishing characteristic that’s different between like AP and IB, is that these are partnerships between a high school or school district, and an institution of higher education. And those partnerships are golden, they’re probably like the most under rated characteristic of these programs is getting faculty into a room, from both high school and the college to really talk shop and get into the curriculum, because that’s, that’s what all of us are here for in education is really get deep in the weeds and enjoy it. So and then before I hand things over, because we’ve got some really great panelists to hear from today, I’ll say that I’ve said that, you know, the history of these grassroots is really an important component. One thing that I just talked about at our national conference and have kind of talked about throughout the year is the history is really relevant. And it’s shifting, driving a shift and a change. So when you look at these programs, which by the way, go back to the like the 1950s, early 60s, when you look at them, they were basically designed to engage already college bound seniors who are really, you know, twisting in the wind during their senior year not optimizing and using their time not really exploring valuable content. So that’s a very highly privileged group. And these programs tended to crop up at highly privileged universities. And not surprisingly, in school districts that were affluent and predominantly white. So we’ve seen national data kind of support that there is a paradigm shift. It’s not happening everywhere, not all at once, and certainly not at the accelerated volume we’d love to have. But we are seeing the shift from a more program of privilege focus, and maybe even an equity barrier or perpetuator of inequities, to an equity building type program. And that’s what has a lot of people really excited. And there’s a lot of really cool research coming out now. So that’s my quick and dirty on like the history of dual enrollment and how you can navigate the terms. I’m sorry, there’s a lot out there. If we can fix it, you should,

Keith Edwards
you should write cliffnotes books because that was amazing. You got so much. So clear, so fast, so great. And the beauty of a podcast, you can rewind it and listen to it again. Chris, what would you add to help further clarify? Well, and

Christopher Conzen
student affairs professionals are no strangers to alphabet, soups and acronyms. And we create acronyms, or backdate them to create cool programs. And we figure out how we can make things match with letters, so don’t worry, but the student affairs professionals out there are used to navigating that. So I’ll add, you know, one of the interesting things and I think it’s natural is that the largest growth in dual enrollment has been at the community college level. And I think that that’s for a number of reasons. One is that, you know, because of our mission being open access, and, you know, really devoted to serving our community and opening doors. So what’s a door to open that’s to create pathways to college for high school students. And so I think the number was about 16% Over the past two years. In dual enrollment growth at the community college level, it was across the sector, the largest pocket of enrollment growth over the past few years in some sectors, the only enrollment growth, it kind of it actually cancelled out some of the enrollment losses that community colleges are still dealing with, through the pandemic. So I think the other reason is that I think I may be a little biased here, but community colleges tend to be on the cutting edge, we are more nimble, we are able to respond to the needs of our community a little bit more quickly than some of the larger institutions, particularly for your institutions. You know, so we, and now I can speak for Hudson County Community College, you know, we were well positioned to pivot quickly to expand these opportunities. And so, you know, I think it’s been really fascinating for me to, as I’m learning along, I’m still learning for years in in doing this work, but loving the opportunity to provide these high school students with pathways that will shorten their college journey, which makes it more likely for them to graduate on the other side, and the research is showing, I’m sorry, then cost? Yes, exactly. You know, the drawback is, particularly for a self pay student, a student who’s not supported through funding through a district or through the college, we still we do provide reduced tuition, but they’re not eligible for any financial aid. Some states may open up some aid, but federally until you until you have that high school diploma, you’re not eligible for federal aid, there was an experiment to allow early Pell, some Pell access, and they’ve ended that experiment, and I’m not sure that that’s going to continue or if it does, it would, it would be in a different way.

Keith Edwards
Anyway, depending on federal legislation right now is just as good as crossing your

Christopher Conzen
fate? Well, yeah, I don’t know. There’s, there’s they rarely agree on anything at this point. So in but I, I’ll leave it with, I always love attending commencement, that’s my favorite part of the year. And when I’ve worked in community colleges, it is doubly my favorite part of the year because the, I know the stories of some of those students and can and can just expand to just imagine what the stories are for every individual walking across that stage. And so when I got to see my first graduating cohort of high school students, and they’re all their high school, their teachers, their guidance counselors, and their families come out, you know, to see them earn an associate’s degree, you know, as they graduated high school, and, and this isn’t watered down material, you know, they they did this along with their college peers. And, unfortunately, some of the four year institutions are playing catch up when it comes to the receiving side and the transfer side. But as more of them are starting to expand dual enrollment, I think that will only help when it comes to the transfer of our students and their credits.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Caronda, what do you want to add to this foundation we’re building here.

Dr. Caronda Bean
So I’m gonna piggyback off of what Chris was talking about. Most of my experiences with community colleges, that’s, as Chris stated, that’s just the, the heart and so many more opportunities, I went to community college, so I had the privilege of going through that process. And it is a difference, you know, that open access is just a different environment is smaller. It’s more of a just what it says a community. And I think that that’s a different perspective for a lot of students, and they don’t have that fear of that large, you know, going to the big college, and really get lost. And so, um, you know, Chris spoke about the associate’s degrees. One of the things that that I focused on was our CTE programs. Louisiana is a workforce state. So we’re really big on workforce. And here in our state, our two year, community and technical colleges are the only schools that can provide that training for students. And so that’s where we kind of focus our what can we do for the students when it came to dual credit. And so one of one of the things that I worked on was developing programs that would allow a student just like a student to get an associate’s degree that a student can get a technical diploma while earning their high school diploma, and that is very rewarding. When you have that first cohort of students come out of that program. and they’re able to participate. And when we started the program, we started it in 2019. And then COVID happened. And so what, you know, what does that look like when you have a student that’s in welding and automotive when they have to do those technical, you know, processes and learn those skills, and everything is not just an instructional base. But we were still able to navigate those students and provide those, you know, that instruction that they needed, so that they could finish. And again, I know one, one thing that when when I was when I became involved in it was looking at how does what we offer, benefit the student. And not just providing opportunities, just to say that we’re doing it, but really being very intentional about our programming, and what in how we’re going to help the student to be successful. And so, you know, just really focusing on those CTE and not negating the Gen X. We’re not negating career technical education. I’m sorry, Outlook, our alphabet soup, right? We love we love we love. But, you know, just really being very intentional about what we’re offering to the students and making sure that whatever the end result is, is going to benefit the student at the end. And really having those opportunities and seeing how it has changed some trajectory for some of the students, those students graduate high school with a technical diploma, they earn industry based credentials, they are employable, they can go and work. And that could just change the whole trajectory for that family and for that student. And so you know, that I’ve seen both sides of it, as Amy stated for the privilege, because when I was in school, that’s what dual enrollment was it, you know, you had to have a certain GPA you had to have, you had to be able to afford it, because we didn’t have any state support. So if your parents couldn’t afford to pay for you to go, then you didn’t participate. But now just seeing the you know, the opportunities that it has for so many students, but I think a lot of it is the lack of knowledge that some parents have to be able to really embrace the opportunities for the students now. So I think that’s where we’re going with it.

Keith Edwards
Well, let’s, let’s keep talking about that. Because we see a lot of data that this dual enrollment is absolutely growing, when so much of higher ed is condensing, right, this is expanding, while many folks are looking at population, enrollment cliffs, and also costs, I’m imagining that with COVID, with a lot of things going virtual, instead of having to leave third period, drive for fourth period, and then come back, I just go to the media center, right. And so it seems like with COVID, and virtual options to be able to jump in on a community college class, from the media center, and then move to your next thing seems much more accessible. And then also so much attention to the cost of college, you may have to pay for the credits. But if you can leverage them into another place where the credits aren’t as expensive, it could be in the long run opportunity. And I’m just hearing from my kids who are not even in high school, but their peers are starting to think about this as this could be an opportunity to do this or, you know, I can I remember I was taking advanced math and I topped out so I had to take this senior math class twice because there was no other option, this could be an option to do something else. And extended that so as we see this growing, I’d love to hear what you see growing with some of my observations legit or maybe not. And then what do you see on the horizon? What do you see prognosticate here a little bit? What do you see in the next five to 10 years kind of we’re gonna we’re gonna start with you. So

Dr. Caronda Bean
for me, I see that dual enrollment is going to become the norm is gonna, it’s gonna just be what is and not and we won’t have to work so hard to convince students and parents and school systems and states to really get behind dual enrollment to invest in it. Because this is going to this is going to be what’s going to create that pathway into your schools into your work environment. This is this is going to be the only way to do it. I know I can only speak for my state is that, you know, we found, just in looking at the number of students who go to college when they graduate 80 euros is not very high, it’s, I think it’s less than 50%. So they’re not going to school. And so when you think about that, so what are we preparing them for? I believe that when you really, like really, really dig deep into it, and really focus on it, we want all students to be college or career or career ready. And in order to do that, it’s going to start on the secondary side, but what are we doing to prepare them. And I think that’s where dual enrollment comes in. So dual enrollment actually begins that process to really get those students involved. In that it gets it provides opportunities for them, it gets them exposed to set them up for success. So that’s where I see because I know here in Louisiana, we’re really focusing on providing more opportunities for students. And in my current role, one of the things that I’m working on is establishing apprenticeships, because again, everyone isn’t going to college. So what does that look like? So dual enrollment won’t, won’t only be English, math, history, science, you know, dual enrollment is going to be those generic classes when you get an associate’s degree, there are going to be those career and technical education classes where you can learn welding, automotives, age back electrical. And it’s going to be opportunities where you can do apprenticeships or work based learning where you’re actually working in the trade that you’re interested in. So I just proceed growing and expanding, and really becoming the norm, and just a part of what we do, and not the extra thing that we’re just trying to get individuals to participate in.

Keith Edwards
I also think it’s just a wonderful idea to try things right to try this college course to try welding. I don’t know, let’s see, do I love it? Do I not love it. But also just have some familiarity with what a college course is, like, I think just helps that transition, whether you’re going to that institution or another institution, it’s just kind of a, you talked about pathways, but also just kind of smoothing that fewer bumps along the way. Chris, what do you see in terms of the growth and what’s on the horizon?

Christopher Conzen
So I, you know, I agree, I think it is the future. You know, there are already Career and Technical High Schools where entire 1212 grade, you know, are spending that entire year at their local community college, rather than at the Career and Technical school, I think there may be other trends that will precipitate further growth, I think we’re seeing a teacher shortage. Now, it can depend on the area of the country. But you know, I teaching is not a hot field to go into right now for a variety of reasons, which would be a whole other podcast. But as we see fewer teachers, and as we see also, as the economy will shift, because, you know, we know that that it’s a wave, the COVID funds are drying up in the States. And so as they look to maximize investment, where, while also we all know that, first things that get cut, when states need to cut funding is public education. And so particularly higher education. And so what’s what’s a great way to maximize how you are funding, you are combining sections of high school and college at the same time, but you’re also serving a purpose for the state, because you may be able to be more likely to keep those students in state, because they’re already getting credits from your state system, whether they be on the community college side or the four year side. And so for completion purposes, and you know, to to get to that degree faster, it makes more sense for them to continue, whether it be at the institution that granted them credits, or the institution that they know at least, will accept all their credits. And so I think we’re those are going to be natural movements based on the surrounding environment and the shifts that are going to be happening sooner than later, you know, in both our economy and it, like I said in teacher recruitment.

Keith Edwards
It also seems to me that we’ll see more and more campuses wanting to jump on this as a recruitment strategy. If we can get these students enrolled in 11th grade, 10th grade 12th grade, then we have a better chance they’re going to be familiar, they’re going to be in our system that In a no us they’re gonna have the sweatshirt maybe and that this seems like a great way when so many campuses are really, really concerned about enrollment cliff and pipelines and wanting to build relationships with high schools. This seems like a great way to do that. Amy, are you starting to see that? Yeah,

Amy Williams
I would say I used to have this thing that was more or less equipped that I would just kind of throw out, but really tell me where else or how else you’re gonna get early access to completely college capable students. And then if you’ve got something, then throw money at that. Instead, I’ve got this, I think you should invest in Christen Khurana made awesome points really hard to follow up on that on. And I don’t want to be. I want to pick up on one of Chronos things. This idea that this is becoming the norm because this blew my mind this year, I’ve been attending naisip conferences since 2013. Right. And so I’ve been in and around the field, I’ve been the executive director that long. I’ve been in and around the field and for years and years. And I want to say until maybe the last year or so it was always explaining, fighting for, you know, status, trying to get people to understand what those in fact, I was at a region spinning once when I was early on starting my job with the state of Montana, and one of the regents asked me real a softball question, but it surprised me, like, how are we going to know when we’re done working on this, and I didn’t really have anything prepared, I just kind of blurted out, when the person that asked me what I do at the grocery store doesn’t say is that kind of like a pee when I tell them what I do. And so I feel like we’ve passed that moment, where now this is a relatively better understood again, not everywhere, not by everyone. But it’s becoming a lot more common in the lexicon. And I think, to your point, Keith, you know, colleges are looking thoughtfully at what they can do to better help students understand what they offer. And I think this is a great opportunity and to some of Chris’s points as well as yours, Keith, when you look at the research, so I come back from a background as a stem research scientists. So I’m always looking into see what is the peer reviewed research tell us about these programs.

Keith Edwards
When you look at nerdy with us?

Amy Williams
I love it. I’m gonna nerd out. And then I’ll talk about state policy, which is my other nerd out. Ronda? No, she’s seen it in action. But when you look at like the impact of students, it’s not just about like accelerated academics or advanced academics. It’s those like college knowledge things, understanding what a Bearse RS office is, you know, understanding that there are registration periods that there are drop add periods that there’s a withdrawal period. These are things that if you come from a background in a family that’s been to college, and you can just call I don’t know what they’re talking about bursaries, office, Mom, what are they doing? When you come from background like that, you’ve got resources, you can tap. But dual enrollment programs give students that knowledge? Well, in advance of ever, in many cases ever stepping foot on a campus, particularly the high school based models, which are the most prevalent ones. So there’s a real opportunity to build intentionality in terms of outlining paths that brings students somewhere that help them explore options that are not terminal, perhaps, and giving students kind of that extra leg up of confidence. In fact, someone on LinkedIn, Chris might have even been used to these programs can serve as a proof of concept, right? So that students can really say, oh, yeah, I can do this. I am a college student, and then to pick up on, um, you know, Chris, and Caranas point about the satisfaction that comes with seeing those students. That exact thing, you know, happened to me ages ago now. But one of my real eye openers was I had a student who’s like, Yeah, I’m in college now. And he was talking about his high school culinary class. And he was bragging about it with his, you know, and he didn’t know I was behind him, but he was bragging with his peers. And I’m like, that’s, that’s what we’re here for. That’s what we’re all about that was that kids first step in that journey? Yeah.

Keith Edwards
And just getting to explore that maybe that kid has now on a path to Culinary Life, or maybe it was one class and 20 years later loves it. So dual enrollment, the best thing to happen to bursaries office since the Hamilton musical. That’s really great. And I wanted to say I was listening. Go ahead, Chris.

Christopher Conzen
I just want to say because AMI opens up a great point as well, about that knowledge of things like the bursa or you punch the person. I think that’s especially important for first generation students. And so by having that exposure, while still having the scaffolding that you have as a high school student, makes that transition a little easier and less daunting. Not that the challenge is disappear that that are there for first gen students, but it makes that transition a little softer because them and their families are introduced to the college terminology and the college experience, while they’re still minors while they’re still at home while they’re still in that nest. And you can bring them in because we’re are designed, you know, I always joke that I went into higher education so I wouldn’t have to deal with parents. And then lo and behold, I ended up dealing with high school programs. And now I’m dealing with parents all the time, although I still do have FERPA on my side, it’s very different. But, you know, we’re, we’re built in a way that we’re, we’re communicated with parents, because we understand the environment. And so that’s, I think, especially helpful for our first gen students. So I think that was a great opening that Amy provided there. Yeah. Well, you’re

Keith Edwards
leading us right into our next question. And we’re going to keep on with you, Chris, what are the implications and possibilities per specific specifically for Student Affairs, folks who are a large part of our audience, and I love us to circle back around equity and how we help this become less of a barrier to equity, and something that helps foster greater equity.

Christopher Conzen
So I think, you know, for a while, I think dual enrollment was a silo, in many institutions, and it was handled by one individual or one specific, you know, person. But as it grows, so are the needs of those students. And as they become more embedded in the college community, they’re going to need the student support services that that are naturally provided to a college student. And not only that, but they’re entitled to it, because they are college students. And, you know, I, I was, so I was so happy that I didn’t even think about it. But our Director of Mental Health approached me and said, you know, we want to make sure that we’re supporting the early college students. And I said, That’s a great point, because they’re entitled, and, you know, in fact, when you think about, we know that there’s growing mental health concerns for our young people, and it’s just exploding. Yeah, if we can help provide additional support to take some of the burden off the high school counselors. And you know, in many district and high school districts, you have one social worker, for all of the schools within that district, you have one person who’s licensed to provide care, mental health care, because they’ve got that school counselor model. And so now some of those folks may have a license, but it’s not part of their job. And you know, they’ve got caseload so huge, they’re just trying to work through the the college recommendation letters, let alone providing the kind of support, but we can help support do some of that. And we’ve already started on I know, at my institution, we’ve had early college students reaching out and wanting that support, because they’re now on campus. And so and we’ve we’ve had conversations with career services now. You know, as grants talked about with the CTE component, career and technical and being at a community college, we support that as equally we it’s not just about degree and transfer, but it’s also about preparing students for the workforce, our career services are starting to get more involved in working with the students, all those traditional student affairs components. Now, I don’t think ResLife will get as involved. That may be one area that that except for those like summer exposure programs, they may not have to worry as much, but we’ve got students who are joining clubs, we’ve got students who are eligible to join honor societies and want to get involved in those. We’ve got students who want to go on service trips with the college, you know, especially when their high school doesn’t offer those things. So all those components that are in traditional student affairs and institutions, they’re going and I know they will welcome it. I know my colleagues and my peers and student affairs, you know, they expanding the view and expanding the tent to help support those students who are also in high school as well.

Keith Edwards
I’m just imagining how the 16 or 17 year old taking some of these classes with traditionally H college students, or even with non traditional age college students, could be really challenging and also could be a remarkable break from being around other 16 and 17 year olds, who maybe they don’t connect with, maybe they’re on the autism spectrum, more mature than their peers, maybe they have different interests. It just seems like a wonderful way to get connected, which certainly can come with its bumps, but also has some assets. Caronda what do you see as some of the implications of possibilities? So

Dr. Caronda Bean
I come from both sides. So I started in student affairs, and I’ve worked in academic affairs, so

Keith Edwards
I’ve heard

Dr. Caronda Bean
But, um, you know, dual enrollment is, you know, even though it’s an academic program, it is not successful without student services. And so I think that when a lot of colleges is in when they’re implementing these programs is about the collaboration and getting everyone together to understand that it takes everyone in order to make the program successful. And like Chris said, in a lot of schools, it’s a silo. So as one person that’s still a dual enrollment, and they just kind of sit out there and kind of just do what they do. But I think that in order to, like, fully engage, and be present, it takes everybody and I know for. For us here, in Louisiana, one of the, you know, one thing that we really, really focused on is the student support, how we’re supporting the students, and how it ties to be equitable, and having access and opportunities for all students. And that goes with those with the support. And the support isn’t, you know, support can look like transportation support can look like making sure that they have food to eat, support, Kin support can look in so many different ways. And you know, with the food pantries now that we’re implementing on campuses, and making sure that all of those things are provided, it could be internet, it can be Wi Fi, it can be a laptop COVID really show the lack of broadband here in an hour state in the rural areas. It just didn’t work. So what does that you know, so what does that look like? Right? So how do we support the students when it comes to that? How do we support students, if we’re telling them, we’re preparing them for career opportunities, but they have to write a resume, they have to know those soft skills, they have to be able to do an email and not text, the email, like write a complete sentence, and so forth, you know, and so that’s one of the things as Chris stated, like getting career services involved, getting counseling and disability services involved, making sure that, you know, with advising, like really getting your advising team involved, because, again, we can’t rely 100% on the high schools, because some schools have one counselor, some schools have a shared counselor, you know, that has a counselor that goes from school to school to school. It’s not, it’s not the same. Um, but I think that for for me, and the conversations that I’ve been a part of here in the state, around dual enrollment, we have a task force, and you know, talking about, you know, the what student support students need. So what what does that look like making sure the student affairs individuals are at the table academically? What does that look like making sure we have programs? And with all of that, how do we make it equitable? Like, what are we doing to make sure that every student has the same opportunity. And I think that that’s very important, and being very intentional, and making sure that when we create policies, when we take things to the legislator, that it’s written in there, and also working with the school systems, both secondary and post secondary to make sure that when they’re creating policies and procedures and things that they’re thinking about that also, and they’re not just looking at it in one way, but they’re really looking at how do they, how do we reach everyone? How do we make sure everyone has the same opportunity? And I think that that’s very, for me, that was that’s where my passion lies, because I just did not I wanted every student. I didn’t, it didn’t matter where they were, in my region. I thought they all have the same opportunity. It didn’t matter. And that was a part of it. So even if they were a student who needed accommodations, then what did that look like? And I didn’t want to teach her to say, so that was talking to our Disability Services, you know, department and saying, Okay, so we have students, what does that look like? Do we do? Do you want to just know who they are and they use the accommodations at the school do we want you know, if they are coming on our campus, then what does that look like and making sure that we provided that information for the students and we just didn’t take for granted that they knew what to do. And so, um, you know, I think that again, it takes everyone coming to the table, when I serve as the director for Dual Enrollment, I went to academic meetings, and I went to Student Service meetings. So I was able to share from both perspectives to make sure that everyone understood, you know, what the need was and what we had to come together collaboratively and do in order to provide the services for our students.

Keith Edwards
And really sounds like really being student centered, right? Yes. With Academic and Student Affairs, but also high school and college and not being like, well, they’re your problem. No, you’re a problem. But how do we work together to meet the student and really do that for them? Amy, what would you add?

Amy Williams
So this may be a little tangential, but I’ll jump on the the element of equity. So we’ve been working on a resource that we’re about ready to launch that we think will be really helpful for programs because it poses, you know, when I started talking off, or started off talking today, I kind of talked about national data, and that there are equity gaps in there, it really applies to the same same principle on approach to the program level. So these programs start between a school district and an institution of higher ed, right, that’s a direct connection, you know, one population, and you’re hopeful if you’re higher ed, that you’ll receive that population. But a lot of programs we find, don’t even look at their student participation data. Some of them can’t collect that information, disaggregated by race, and gender, and things like that, or they make it voluntary, but we’re really challenging all programs to start with the basics. Look at who your students are, and how closely does that mimic the school district demographics you’re working with. So if you are only drawing in the white affluent students, but you have a school district that’s 50%, on free and reduced, and 30% Latino, and you’re not bringing those students in, you’ve got a gap to close. And one of the things I did a piece that when I started thinking about the paradigm shift that we’re seeing in the field, I did a piece in association with school administrators magazine, and I talked about the fact that when I started working on a program on campus, a lot of the administration were talking about how do we reach these students that don’t think they’re college capable, and they’re not capable, college bound, and they come from a community of color. And they were talking about all these just different strategies? Well, at no point in time, were they actually talking to the students or their families, about how these opportunities would be best marketed to them or influenced, and at no point in time, were they talking about, let’s look at the demographics of our community, and who’s participating in our programs, and then have some thoughtful conversations about how to fix that. So that’s one of the key things ever really been talking about is that student focus at the level of granular data and looking at who your students are, and who’s participating can be a really great annual activity, because then you can strategize how you want to close those gaps, and processes, policies, outreach events, community engagement opportunities that might help you get there, and then start to look and monitor progress and set some goals in there. And then you’ve got the next year comes around, you can pull the same data sheet and say, Okay, how do we do, and as long as we’re having a conversation, let’s do some planning for next year. So I think that’s a really important element. When you look at the national data, the most under or the largest equity gap is with student and I’m going to get it wrong. So I’m not even going to quote percentages. But students with disabilities and English language learners, followed by I believe, Latino, Hispanic males, and I believe black males are in the same group. So those are the underrepresented groups, but those populations will differ depending on where you are in the country. So start with your own school district data. And if your goal is to take the I would say, in some ways, the easiest student, the one in your community that drives by your campus, every once in a while, maybe had a sibling or a cousin goes there, start with those students and see how you can build a bridge. And I think that’s kind of took Rhonda and Chris’s earlier points. We really need to if these things are becoming more normative, we need to talk about them more strategically in terms of how to best support the student, what’s their next step, because I taught in high school for a number of years, and all the conversations were like, and then we get them to graduation, boom, it was very focused on a terminal event, not preparing for a transitional event, which I only saw on our IEP students, because that was federally required to do transition planning, post high school. So you know, apply that lens of, you know, learning elements that work for all students. And you can see that all students could probably use a little bit of transition planning. And I do know that there are states that are active in that. But it’s not pervasive and not everywhere, and it’s not baked into these systems.

Keith Edwards
I love it.

Dr. Caronda Bean
I’m sorry, I keep I’m sorry. Just to piggyback because that’s a good point, because I know what we did here is when we develop when the task force came, we look at the whole state, and we see where was the gap? Right. And so when we saw what the gap was, the first year was COVID happen which was probably one of COVID wasn’t good, but it was good. It had, you know, it kind of worked. Because we were able to, they were able to introduce an interim policy that was discussed based on the data, right, and showed that gap with, you know, between white students, African American students, and, you know, ESL students and Latino students. And what we did was, we changed the requirement. So since they couldn’t take AC T, that wasn’t a requirement anymore. And so we had different requirements. And we also had the requirement where the high school counselor can recommend the student. And believe it or not even doing COVID, where we thought we will see a decrease in dual enrollment, we actually saw an increase in dual enrollment, because of the standards. And that gap closed a little bit, it didn’t close all the way. But you can see the difference. And so that was something like ain’t to speak to what Amy said, is using the data to drive policy change. Because now, that’s a part of it’s not just an interim policy. Now, it’s a policy for dual enrollment. And also, we were able to write it into our four year school admission standards now, to where students who take dual enrollment classes and other its other measurements now, that would allow a student to go to a four year that in Latin two years ago would not have been the case. And so that’s still closing that gap that we’re talking about. And using the data to drive those policy changes. I really love

Keith Edwards
these very tangible things, identify the gaps, make sure you’re getting students the support, increasing access, removing barriers, disaggregating data, being proactive, and changing policies, we saw so many policies change under COVID circumstances and we thought, why was this everything? Why was this ever a rule? This doesn’t make any sense at all? Sometimes we go back to those rules for no good reason. But we have just a little bit of time, just a couple of minutes. This podcast is called Student Affairs. Now, we always like to end with asking what are you thinking, troubling or pondering now, and if you also want to share where folks can connect with you feel free to do that? Amy, what are you pondering now?

Amy Williams
All right, well, I’ll just be totally candid. When we talk about growth in these programs. I’m often the caveat comes up. But if it grows, can it still maintain quality? So we are and we’re an organization founded on, let’s build some quality standards. So people that are working on these at the grassroots level, have some guideposts to follow up on because we’ve been through it, we’ve seen it, we know they’re gonna have to tackle this, this is how we suggest they take it on. So that’s definitely part of something that I worry about is I don’t think growth and quality are mutually exclusive. But there has to be intent in planning. You can’t take a program that’s a you know, a single loan operator on a college or a lot of times we call them programs of one, right? One person running them, you can’t take that and triple the size of it. And expect not to need additional support, and corroboration and collaboration. And so we are seeing that kind of pressure start to expand things. The other thing that I think is going to come on the rise that kind of keeps me up a little at night, although I know, like chatting with my friends from CCRC, because they’re working on a thought piece on this is this idea of CCRC Yeah, Community College Research Center. Thank you. Um, so one of the things they’ve been starting to pick up on and has always been kind of like a deep seated concern is a lot of times people talk about oh, well, dual credit classes don’t transfer, which is not true, they transfer about as well as other classes to an under American system. That’s not very good at facilitating transfer period. So dual enrollment just happens to be a subset of the American transfer problem. But as that grows, it’s going to become less of a subset and more normative kind of took Rondo’s point. So we’ve been talking about, and I’m stealing this from them, I didn’t come up with it, but they’ve been talking about it in terms of stealth transfer. These are transfer students that don’t like look like transfer students, because they’re incoming freshmen, right? They’re going to come in as first in most states, they’ll come in as first time freshmen unless they’re carrying significant credits in the state or the institution as a policy. So I think, you know, I was talking to a state a couple of weeks ago, and they were like, we really want to blow this up, or we’re excited about this. I’m like, That’s great. You guys are well poised. You’ve got this policy, this policy and this policy. But let’s talk about your transfer because what you’re looking to blow up is to dump a bunch of students out into the woods with credits that they don’t really have a lot of navigational support for your not a common course numbered state your institutions to and for your don’t play well together. They have no two plus two agreements. So again, bringing the focus back to the students I but I think you know, for prognosticating, about the things that keep me up at night, it’s growth with quality, and what happens to these programs when they accelerate in their growth, and we’re bringing students that maybe have less of a history or support system related to higher ed, and then just kind of releasing them and saying, Good luck, kiddo. Here’s your credits, go figure out how to use them. So I think building and training those skills with students, and within institutions to understand these stealth transfer students, that’s kind of Yeah, got a little gray hair about that one.

Keith Edwards
All right. All right. All right. Chris, what are you pondering now?

Christopher Conzen
So for me, it’s that, again, it’s actually along the lines of growth. And it’s that, my hope that our higher ed ivory tower thinking doesn’t get in the way and cause a plateau, you know, and in student affairs, you know, we are still centralized in a way even though we, we’ve got folks like to think of us as siloed, sometimes, but we still all report up through, you know, common individuals and individuals who in theory can tell us what to do. On the academic side, though, it’s decentralized. And if you’ve got a champion, or somebody who really believes in the work, you’re set, all you need is one academic dean or, you know, one area that doesn’t believe in it, for some reason, who thinks that Amy talked about the quality who, who doesn’t have any data to back it up, but just this feeling that it’s that it’s not of the same quality, you know, or that the students aren’t college ready. And I love that where and achieving the dream school because we get to repeat put on repeat the saying, by Dr. Karen stout, it’s not about students being college ready, it’s about colleges being student ready. And, you know, we I love that we are, we have that mantra, but not not everyone always buys in, and that’s the same in every institution. And so, you know, when it comes to doing the the high school bass dual enrollment, and it comes to working with teachers who don’t have a master’s in English, but they’ve been teaching APS for 15 years, and maybe better teachers than some of your adjuncts teaching college composition, you know, I’ll put it out there, because they learned how to teach the content. And yet, we won’t consider them because they don’t have a master’s in the discipline. You know, those are the kinds of things that that bother me. Fortunately, I have, I worked with some great folks who support the work that we’re doing. But I know that you know, that can be a speed bump at some institutions, and in some states. So that’s what troubles me when it comes to thoughtful expansion of the work we’re doing.

Amy Williams
Chris, that’s an excellent point, though. Um, there have been many meetings with faculty I’ve been in and God loves them. I just don’t feel like this is going to work. Well, you know, there’s millions of students that are doing it. They’re passing section 201 of the same or the subsequent course, like feelings is not really a reason to reject something. datas is an important way to drive decisions. But if you’re just using your feelings, you’re just kind of guessing.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Well,

Christopher Conzen
I one of my first battles when I when I took on this role was over rigor. Because, you know, we do the year long courses. So we do the year long courses, and we had somebody who felt that that didn’t match the rigor of a college class, because students in a college class need to complete the content and 15 weeks. And I retorted with saying, but we accept prior learning assessments, we use clip, we mean, I could speak Spanish at home my entire life and get to clip that in. So I’ve had 20 years of exposure to get the grade. And her response was, Well, I don’t believe those are correct. And I said, Okay, I know, I know, I have to get a win. I know I have to call in other people on this one, because I’m not getting anywhere.

Keith Edwards
Caronda, what are you pondering?

Dr. Caronda Bean
Um, so I think for me, it’s just the it’s the growth of dual enrollment. And it’s also the collaboration between secondary and post secondary. And what does that look like when it comes to again, what Chris and Amy talked about quality of program and quality of instruction, because it looks different, whether it’s the high school instructor teaching a course, or whether it’s the college, you know, instructor teaching the course. And I think that coming to the table and ensuring that we’re not duplicating information, but that we’re really being intentional and strategic about how we’re doing instruction on the secondary level, how does it fall into post secondary? And then how do we work together to make sure that what we’re doing for the student is been a bidding them? And what does that look like in the dual enrollment space? That’s what I ponder on.

Keith Edwards
That’s where, Your Honor, All right, awesome. Thanks to the three of you. This has been great. I’ve learned a ton. And I think this is something that is going to be more and more on the radar of many folks in our audience and they think you’ve done a great job, laying the foundation, helping him get the basics, but then also really complicating this and really look at some of the recommendations for good practices, good support, good policies, good things to advocate for. So thanks to all three of you very much. And thanks also 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.com, or visit them on social media. A huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey, who will do all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. And we love the support for these conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast, subscribing on YouTube, or subscribing to our weekly newsletter that announces each new episode on Wednesday mornings. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. It helps these conversations reach more folks. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guests today. And to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you all.

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