April Konvalinka:
At the end of the day, we’re all in this for our students and to help our students be successful. And so how do we do that? Communication is important. Collaboration is important advocating for our students, whether it’s affordability or sharing resources that these partners can utilize and share with our students if they’re in crisis.

Keith Edwards:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today we’re discussing the future of off-campus student housing. We’ll just be discussing enrollment trends, shifting student needs and partnerships to best serve students. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations and make a contribution to the field and arer restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter. Today’s conversation was a live webinar that we hosted with a number of companies and entities that manage off-campus student housing. We did this live webinar, had these great guests and a wonderful conversation and wanted to repurpose and share it out with a much broader audience for Student Affairs Now this episode was sponsored by Off-Campus Partners, a member of the apartments.com network as a trusted partner to over 145 colleges and universities across North America.

Keith Edwards:
Off-Campus Partners is uniquely qualified to enhance the digital resources for your students. Living off campus. They’re sleek, modern and university branded websites are lightening fast, worked perfectly on any device and make it easy for millions of students to find their next apartment roommate, and more. To learn more about their solution partnership model list of university partners and partnerships, success stories, visit offcampuspartners.com. This was a great conversation, a lot about the future of enrollment who will be coming where geography, demographics institution type, as well as the value of partnerships, communication, collaboration to best meet student needs and the changing student needs that we’re facing now, in the coming years. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m a speaker consultant coach. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m hosting this conversation today from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral home of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. Today we’re talking about off-campus student housing and what the future holds, and we’ll do a little prognosticating and feature telling and have three really great guests. So I’d love to get our guests in here to introduce themselves. If you could just share with us your name, your role pronouns, a little bit about yourself. That would be great. And Dr. Konvalinka, we’re going to start off with you.

April Konvalinka:
Good afternoon, everyone. It’s great to be with you. I’m Dr. April Konvalinka, I’m the Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life at UCF. I’ve been with the institution for three years. And my experience expands over twenty-five years in housing and residence life, and then excited to be with you. I use the pronouns, she, her and hers, our housing operation at UCF is a comprehensive program that includes 14 residential communities on our main campus, our UCF downtown campus, which up two years ago, and our Rosen campus, which is the Rosen College of Hospitality Management. We accommodate over 11,000 residents, which includes 72% of our residents are first-year students or residents. Halls are a mixture of UCF owned and UCF managed. And we have two of those properties, UCF direct support organizations, which otherwise known as DSO. And you say affiliated communities, we, our campus is extremely large. We have 1,415 acres of our main campus that contains about 800 acres of Woodland. We’re in Orlando. And so if you haven’t visited our website, come visit us or come join us on campus to see the amazing work that we’re doing here at UCF. Good to be with you.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you. I’m really glad you’re here from UCF as the University of Central Florida, for those who aren’t familiar. But you have such a great robust program there with both on-campus, off-campus public private partnerships, really glad you’re here to share some insight insights. Blair, let’s go to you.

Blair Boozer:
Yeah. hi, everyone. Great to see all of them be a part of such an important conversation. My name is Blair Boozer. I serve as Assistant Director of Off-campus Living and the Department of Student Life at the University of South Carolina here in the capital city of Columbia. I’ve been with the university for about three years, graduated from USC many years ago. So it’s truly an honor to be able to hopefully enrich the student experience back back on my campus that provided me so many wonderful memories that our office is a very small, but mighty one. It’s just myself and my director and we are committed to helping support and majority of our students here at the university on campus, like at many other universities on campus, housing is incredibly limited, typically only reserved for that first year student population. And so our office is devoted to supporting about 75% of our students. Now we have close to 30,000 living off campus and hopefully educating them on how to not only be fantastic Gamecock community members, but also members of broader community. But again, thank y’all for having me and I’ll say right to be here.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you, Blair. I think given where our panelists are coming from, we might get more than our fair share of y’alls in today. So thank you for being here. Dr. Fortune, tell us a little bit about you.

Andre Fortune:
Sure. Dr. Andre Fortune I utilize he, him, his and I have the pleasure of serving as the Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at the University of West Georgia. I joined this team in April of 2020, I think the perfect time to join a new organization. Have the pleasure of at being able to say shut down housing and a university during the global pandemic, and then opened up a totally different institution during the global pandemic in 2020. I have served in various roles throughout higher education administration and for other institutions growing up in the Midwest and eventually making my way South West to now being Southeast. Enjoy a lot of what I get to do in both the student affairs to life, as well as enrollment management roles and including helping supervise housing residence life here, we have a little over 2000 beds here on campus very residential campus and surrounded by many properties that are adjacent to the university. And so looking to increase those partnerships, we meet with our partners quite frequently and talk about this very subject. So I am looking forward to today’s discussion.

Keith Edwards:
All right, well, let’s, let’s stick with you. Help us understand the future of enrollment and college and universities. What are the numbers telling us about enrollment in the coming years and decades?

Andre Fortune:
Quite interesting that you asked that question. I remember interviewing or being, thinking about interviewing for a position that involved enrollment management a couple of years ago. And when I looked at the projections, I said, there is no way I want to be doing that job in five years. And here I am because in the next five years, there’s certainly a predicted or a predicted cliff overall in terms of the number of high school graduates, which of course is going to be for many of us, our traditional age college students who are first time freshmen entering our campuses. And so when you look at, you know, about five years from now if you’re not on the West coast or if you’re not, you know, in some of the Southern States, it is not a pretty picture when it, when you look at the number of high school graduates that are predicted to come out of the Northeast particularly in the Midwest, you start to see some shrinking.

Andre Fortune:
And then you also start to see as we have seen over the last five or 10 years, more and more students from historically underrepresented populations are starting to attend college, which has a number of different factors that we have to think about as we think about student success and how do we provide the support that those students are seeking so that they can be successful on our campuses. One other thing I’ll note is, you know, also for those of us that are in the South and whether you’re in the South or in the West, it also doesn’t mean that we just sit back and say, yeah, we’re going to be fine, because I think more and more of my colleagues from the North and the Midwest are looking at the same data that I’m looking at and identifying, we need to go to places like California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, because that’s where the growth is. And that’s where the projected growth will be. We’ll start to see some more increases or at least expected increases in the decades to come. But then our favorite excuse of the last 12 months is we don’t know what COVID-19, what impact that is going to have on the future of enrollment.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and it’s interesting, I’m hearing folks talk about, you know, next year we’re going to have two classes of first year students on campus, right? We’re going to have a first-year class and a second year class that really in many cases are just showing up on campus. I’d love to hear a little bit more from you, Andre about what we’re going to see in different geographic regions and student demographics and particularly institutional types, as you’re talking about things, being different around some of those help us help us here. Learn a little bit more here.

Andre Fortune:
Certainly. So if any of you are familiar with data and I’m blanking on the acronym right now, but excuse me, over the next 10, 20 years, you’ll start to see a decline in terms of the overall percentage of the number of students who identify as white attending college, or at least graduating from high school knowing that are historically underrepresented populations typically do come from a first-generation low-income and student of color populations. And of course, anyone can be any one of those combinations or more than one of those you know, that may be more than one of their identities. And so that is certainly going to have some impact as we’ve seen particularly with, again, the global pandemic and the impact that it has had on testing national testing, whether it’s ACT or SAT, you’ve seen a number of, especially public institutions move to test optional, which has certainly impacted admission standards, which changes who goes where and so I think you start to see the students who may typically go to some of your typically start at a two year institution, or some of our vocational schools are now choosing to go to state schools or some of the regional comprehensive comprehensive, like where I’m at.

Andre Fortune:
And then also the students who are typically attending the regional comprehensives and state schools and perhaps community colleges are going to what we might say is another tier and going to some of those public flagships. And, you know, those are the students that may also be looking at some of our private institutions. I think some of our, our, our larger and really well-resourced institutions probably won’t have the same type of impact from an enrollment standpoint, as some of our smaller, or even less resourced institutions. If you look at the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed, anytime in the last, you know, three to 12 months, you’ll see, there are a number of institutions who are simply closing their doors because their enrollment has declined significantly. I don’t remember the institution off the top of my head. I, I wanna say actually shouldn’t speculate, but I know there’s a school recently that just announced they’re going to sale. They’re, they’re putting land up for sale as part of their institution as a way to stay as a way to generate additional revenue.

Keith Edwards:
Right? Yeah. We don’t want to close someone down by accident on this show today. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, some, some really big shifts and trends, and it’ll be interesting to see, as you mentioned, what COVID does, and as we see fewer and fewer graduating high school, we’ll see an increase in the non-traditional students, will they want to live on campus versus off campus? We can speculate about that. Let’s keep the focus on students though. And Blair come to you. You spend your time serving the needs and understanding of the needs of off-campus students at the university of South Carolina. Can you help us better understand the experiences that students living off campus are having and how off-campus housing can do an even better job to meet those student needs?

Blair Boozer:
Absolutely. So this past year, certainly I think highlighted those changing needs of our all campus student population and really kind of hold back the curtain of what they truly need and required to thrive off campus. I think it also kind of highlighted I think historically, sometimes there’s been a little bit of a divide between universities and off-campus housing partners, but we wouldn’t have had as successful of a year without the collaboration, our off campus housing partners. There’s such a strong continuing ongoing exchange of communication, transparent conversations. I know us as an office, we collaborate with about 22 apartment communities that truly cater to our students because they are viewed as, as an instance of university. And so some of the trends that we kind of noticed just by having some panel discussions with our property managers, what students were reporting as far as their university experience to us were definitely heightened anxiety, feelings of depression, feelings of isolation.

Blair Boozer:
And we had a lot of property managers submit incident reports through our reporting system where we could start making those referrals and connecting those students to the appropriate counselors and the mental health services. So I think there is definitely for the first time, in a very long time we were really forced to have kind of an ongoing relationship. And we’re definitely hopeful that that’s certainly going to continue you know, in the future. Because at the end of the day, we do have that common goal of serving our students and supporting their success here at USC and in the community. A couple of other trends that we noticed, which probably don’t come as any surprise to y’all definitely students not having too much of an issue of complying with guidelines on campus, wearing the face coverings, practicing physical distancing, but they tended to kind of relax.

Blair Boozer:
I think those practices whenever they got home and in the evenings. And so we try to have as many open discussions with our property managers and community directors on like, this is how we enforce things on campus. And our job as an office is to really educate our students and helping them take those practices on campus, back to their homes and just taking some, some accountability and responsibility as well. And I think without the collaboration, without the communication that we did have the opportunity to experience this past year, I think we would have seen and witnessed a lot more of that high-risk behavior of the large gatherings of the pool parties not complying with face coverings. And so I know it typically takes like 30 days for a habit to stick. So hopefully after an entire year of doing this, we’ll see a little bit more more compliant, but absolutely it’s been, you know, there is no playbook for this past year and students they’re naturally inclined.

Blair Boozer:
They want to gather they want to connect. And so one thing that we kind of started doing is actually, as we like to say, meet students where they’re at and that’s providing resources, it’s kind of sometimes in conjunction with resident events having some mental health workshops, resume building and just really making sure that population is still engaged and feels a part of the community. I think sometimes universities, we spend so much time creating programming for our first year students that are upperclassmen, especially those off-campus students sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I think your, your, your first point about really this, this pandemic, this crisis, the all the issues that have arisen with it over the past year and not just COVID, but other significant issues in our time. And our culture sounds like it has really brought off-campus partners and the campus resources closer together and those processes and the relationship and that’s something that should stick around past this, the past this year, right. That seems like something that we, we needed to do. And so we did it. And how do we continue some of that so that there are better partnerships better ways of identifying student needs and connecting the off-campus. And then connecting them with on-campus resources. Students don’t really oftentimes see those differentiations the way that, you know, the budget or the structure or the title or the letterhead often does. So how do we, how do we bring those more in alignment? I want to also ask, are there any promising practices or emerging practices that you really want to point us toward, particularly into the future beyond COVID, which I think is going to less end than sort of steadily fade over a longer period of time than we once thought, were there any promising emerging practices that you would really want to point us toward?

Blair Boozer:
Hmm. So I think just really continuing that communication and we’ve even had some fantastic feedback from parents and family members who are oftentimes the most critical of their students’ experience of having a messaging like the messaging is transparent, it’s accurate it’s up-to-date, and it’s aligned with what the apartment communities are putting out. I think this year family members truly felt like their child was having an exceptional living experience off campus just because they were pushing out the same communication that honestly felt like it was changing daily during the start of the pandemic. And just really making sure that everybody is informed because I think with some of these students center, apartment communities, there was a lot of misinformation and rumors. And students were at the end of the day, they were confused. You know, you can wear your, your face covering outside of the business, but then maybe you can take it off inside.

Blair Boozer:
And then how does that look in our dining halls? And then the residence halls as well. But I think definitely just relying on us as much as possible for the resources. There are so many that I didn’t even know that are available to our students. And some of the things that we did that we had a lot of success with we’re providing like onsite COVID testing at some of these apartment communities. It was at times kind of a nightmare to coordinate logistically, but I think that truly showed kind of our relationship and it just, at the end of the day, like we’re here to support those students and make sure that they stay healthy and their wellbeing is kind of at the forefront of everybody’s mind. And so I think I would like to see some more of that collaboration the resources and again, just kind of meeting students where they’re at as well.

Keith Edwards:
Right? Yeah. You’re highlighting collaboration and communication again. And again, one of the things you also mentioned was often we see this is an overgeneralization first year students living on campus and sophomore returning students living off campus. And one of the things that I do a lot in working with campuses is think, how do we want to engage second year students and first-year students differently. And I think oftentimes the inclination is that those second year students are at a completely different place and have completely different needs until you start working with them. And then you realize, Oh, they’re a lot like a first year students in there and what they need and their comfort. And they figured out how to be in this building and go to this dining hall and go to those classes. Now that everything’s kind of thrown up in the air again.

Keith Edwards:
So I would really recommend folks working with particularly second year and even third and fourth year students and beyond their needs might not be as different as first year students. And so how do we see what is in replicate that in some other places. Great. April, you, you lead a really complex and robust on-campus and off-campus housing and some powerful and varied public and partner, private partnerships, what you just alluded to a little bit in your introduction in Orlando, there at the University of Central Florida. What, as you work with so many different partnerships with so many different people in so many different arrangements with so many different structures, what are some suggestions you have for folks who are looking to really develop strong partners, partnerships to best serve students, which is in the best interest of off-campus housing entities, as well as the campus community and student success and retention?

April Konvalinka:
Sure, absolutely. So, as I mentioned, we do have a pretty complex housing program and surrounding our campus is a large off-campus large off campus entity that serves about 2100 students. And so when you think about that, that’s pretty, that’s a pretty significant, and so we have our own properties that we’re responsible for, but we also have these off campus properties that within a three-mile radius or the needs of 2100 residents. And so when we think about off campus and those relationships, it’s important to to have open communication, just like Blair said. But I think for us, we don’t work directly with our off-campus properties. We have a off-campus office that works directly with these properties to develop those relationships and share information and advocate for students who may experience issues in these off-campus properties. And so for us, when we are full, we will refer them to our off-campus office to work with the students. Last summer, what we did in regards to trying to come together because of the pandemic, we created a task force for housing in general.

April Konvalinka:
And so on-campus, and off-campus properties came together to discuss the experiences that students were involved in. We were talking about how we welcome them back to campus in a different environment. We identified innovative practices that we could share with one another, as we consider the health and wellbeing of our students here at UCF. And so I would say that collaboration is extremely important whether you have direct impact or contact with off-campus properties and part of that collaboration involves communication our partnership internally. So when I think about our managed properties, our DSO properties in our affiliated communities again, going back to communication and the value and importance of communication, that’s where it begins. And so it’s important for us to discuss the mission of the university with these partners and how these entities can support and be an extension of the university sharing with them what’s happening on campus, what many students be experiencing within within their housing that may impact their success is extremely important.

April Konvalinka:
And also how they can be involved in some of the events that are happening on campus. You know, sometimes this includes talking about leasing information, maintenance issues, capital improvement, security technology. Those are important things to discuss when you’re meeting with with these entities and in our case, our managed our affiliated and our DSO properties. I think it’s also important to engage in conversations about affordable housing. As we know we’ve all been experiencing a lot within this past year and affordable housing is crucial to a student success. If they’re going to come to college, whether it be online or in person affordable housing is important. And I think that as we advocate for our students, we also need to ensure that we’re not continuously raising prices, or these partners are not continuously raising prices and students can’t afford to live on campus or to live within their properties.

April Konvalinka:
And so those discussions are extremely valuable. And I think lastly, I think it’s important for us as housing professionals with these partners, whether it’s an off-campus partnership or whether it’s a managed partnership is that we’re advocating for the student. Our students are dealing with a lot and there’s the mental health cases are on a rise. And so finding ways to bring awareness to them so they can have an understanding of where our students are, but also building the connection with our Dean of students office, with our care services office, counseling services. And so if they have a student that is in need or in crisis, that they know who to reach out to, it may not be us directly, and it may not be the off-campus office, but it could be them themselves reaching out to these partners on campus and trying to connect the student with the help that they need in order to be successful. At the end of the day, we’re all in this for our students and to help our students be successful. And so how do we do that? Communication is important. Collaboration is important advocating for our students, whether it’s affordability or sharing resources that these partners can utilize and share with our students if they’re in crisis.

Keith Edwards:
Well, your, your summary April was so close to my summary. What I’m really picking up here is the three words that I had is partnerships and really talking about the closeness of the relationship, partnerships, collaboration, and communication. That’s what I’m hearing again and again. And I it’s and what Andre is bringing up is the flip side of that, which is competition. There’s going to be so much more competition for students competition for students competition, for students, regionally competition within institutions. You might have West Georgia fighting with Georgia State and University of Georgia and a lot of competition. And then once they are enrolled in the institution, then how do we really create these partnerships? And I think so many times we don’t have to start over and build these a new right and recreate the wheel.

Keith Edwards:
So the, the partnerships really allow us to connect students with resources and things that are already there. And you’ve pointed to for ability other basic needs food mental health issues, which are just on the rise and being exacerbated by, by what’s going on here. Thanks to each of you. I want to open it up here a little bit to all three of you. I’m wondering, you know, obviously it’s hard to see beyond COVID, but I think many of us in this future, looking, not just in the summer, the small, but what’s going to happen three or five years down the road. I’m wondering what you see coming with just enrollment or trends or shifting students or different needs coming up. Andre we’ll go to you first. Since we haven’t heard from you a little bit, anything that you see coming up in the future beyond enrollment, do you see the students who are going to be coming shifting?

Andre Fortune:
Sure. I think you, you hit on this point earlier about having essentially two different types of freshmen classes. You know, as a parent, I’m watching, you know, my kids just went back to school in person for the first time, you know, and almost a year and because they’ve been doing virtual learning. And so what does that mean for their socialization and their own development? And, you know, those are the same students who are going to show up on our college campuses, whether it be next year or a few years from now, right.

Keith Edwards:
That’s such a good point because what we’re seeing now is everybody’s reposting first day of school, pics of their kids. Right. They, they did it in September and now they’re doing it again in March. And so we’re having a similar experience where for folks who’ve been in college, you’re going to have like, what feels like their first day again, go ahead.

Andre Fortune:
Sure. And then think about for our off-campus partners, you know, the off-campus residences to your point earlier about not making the assumption for any of us, whether you’re on campus or off campus, that there’s a large distinct distinction between a first year student and a second year student. Sometimes they have some of the same needs and sometimes developmentally they’ve made in the same place. And one of the things that I think I do see in the future, I’d love to see, and you were marked on this in the last segment is we talked about competition and partnership and collaboration. And I want to look at our partnership and collaboration with our off-campus partners as just that, and not necessarily competition amongst each other particularly in my role, because I hope we fill up our bids and your bids too. You know, that means we’re doing everything we want to do from an enrollment and retention and progression and graduation standpoint.

Andre Fortune:
And so one of the things I’d worked out or began working out at another institution, but didn’t get so wrap up. Because I moved on to another position is working with off-campus partners to have their facility managers participate in our training with our resident assistants, with our residents directors, because it certainly, you know, all the things that April talked about earlier from, you know, and Blair mentioned this too, in terms of student support and needs, you know, those are very difficult to learn if you’re also trying to do building management, you know, and you don’t necessarily have the robust team that the on campus partners have, unless perhaps you do have a three affiliation, but otherwise, you know, you could have one or two or sometimes three people managing, you know, a complex of a couple hundred people, and that can be really overwhelming to address all of those different student needs. So learning how do we resource or share resources because at the end of the day, they’re still our students, whether they’re living on campus or off campus.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I love this and I’m seeing other folks really resonating with this too, about how do we bring the off-campus staff in and do some of the training where it makes sense, not everything, but there are some topics. So, you know, if we’re doing the training for 150 on-campus staff, let’s do it for 200, right? Like that’s, that’s no more work, but then also where are the trainings that are off-campus partners are doing that are exceptional, are doing really well, and how do we, how do we have this swing, both ways that we’re all learning with and from each other. Thank you for that. Blair, what are you seeing on the horizon? I mean, you were working with off-campus students before COVID and I’m sure you were seeing shifting change in needs. What are you seeing here in the three to five year range about shifting needs and experiences of, of students?

Blair Boozer:
Yeah, I think whenever you and Andre mentioned, there’s an assumption that we tend to student affairs, professional tend to make, would that first year experience versus the second year experience where you just kind of assume, okay, like y’all had that first year go out into the world and be a good neighbor. And whenever my director and I we’d go out and do property safety walks with the property managers and really listening to their concerns, like, what are we not preparing our students for in that real world scenario? Because I’m one of my favorite stories to tell is I’m always surprised at the number of students who don’t know that they need a shower curtain in your apartment and then water gets everywhere and then we have a big maintenance issue. And so we want to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power and kind of taking it back to adulting 101, some life, life packs, like field so that our students are, you know, they’re going to be great residents.

Blair Boozer:
And there’s going to be less, less turnover. One thing that we’ve our students in particular here in Columbia, there was kind of a trend of, we need to have the nicest amenities. And I think what we’re seeing now is after they graduate, living in very, you know, exceptionally nice places, it leads to some housing insecure where they’re like, Oh wait, maybe I’m not able to afford that. You kind of peaked in college and now I’m living, you know, in a, not nearly as great of a place. So those are kind of just the realities that we’re trying to educate our students about. Especially with it’s more important the relationship that you have with your property manager, with your leasing staff, one thing just through kind of our assessment and surveys that we do with our off-campus students the thing that really makes or breaks their experience, I don’t think it’s, you know, the type of pool that a property has or the shuttle service. I think it’s truly how hands-on the management is. And in their communication with the students, that seems to be the number one thing that students are learning. And I definitely think that’s a little bit of a shift to kind of get less less of a focus on those materialistic things.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, I mean, just so we think we’re not bashing students for not being not knowing how to adult and know their shower curtains, I’m reminded in Barack Obama’s book, he talks about moving into his place as a us Senator in Washington and not having a shower curtain and spraying water all over this bathroom. So you can be a real grown up and still mess this up. And I had a PhD before I realized that you’re supposed to leave the ice cube trays behind when you moved to a different place. I thought you took those with them. And then, so we’re all learning, right? And some of these basic things just nobody tells you. So I think that can be really helpful. And I, I work with so many campuses who this notion of adulting, we don’t really call it that, but practical competence, life skills, lots of these different things I think can be really, really valuable. April, we’ve got some folks who are sharing some questions with our host here about fall plans. What are you seeing at UCF and your peers? I’m sure you’re tracking what lots of other folks are doing. Let’s just, just say what, they’re, what what’s kind of the predictions for fall plans start seeing and the process, not just what are people going to do, but what are the process and timelines?

April Konvalinka:
So currently we’ll be in full mode. And so we expect students to be back in the classroom. We expect to be at close to a hundred percent occupancy with some isolation rooms on hold. Because we, we also understand that, that we will have some students that come who are not vaccinated. Vaccinations right now are not required. We don’t anticipate that that will be in our future, not this fall, maybe

April Konvalinka:
A year from now. And so we’ll have some rooms, a small number of rooms on hold for isolation in the event that we have some students test positive and they choose not to go home and we keep them on campus. But our plan is to be you know, full occupied. Campus is gonna be resumed, I would say, pre COVID no more normality as students we’ll still be expected to wear their mask and stuff. Students and staff still be expected to wear their mask and social distancing. Some of those provisions will be relaxed a little bit as well. Still encouraging hand washing hand sanitizer and things of that nature. But right now today, as we know anything could change and we have to pivot but we plan to be in our pre COVID status in the fall,

Keith Edwards:
This really tracks with what I’m hearing from so many people kind of this cautiously optimistic crossing our fingers, thinking we, there there’s a lot of indicators that we can be back in person in the fall, not the way it was, but pretty close. But a lot of that depends on unknowns of vaccine availability and vaccine rates and you know effectiveness new strains. So there’s this cautious optimism and people are really planning in the fall to be back in person on campus. So I think a lot of what you’re raising I’m hearing from others. Andre, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about are you and your colleagues talking about what kind of online, even if students can come back to campus, what kind of remote distance online options will be integrated in?

Keith Edwards:
I’m here in Minneapolis where we’re bringing students back to school, but every district is going to have an online, every high school is going to have an online option because as hard as this has been on so many for a lot of mental health issues and a lot of learning disabilities and other things for some, this has been great to not have the social pressure, to just focused on the learning and the academics and not have to worry about that with again, mental health issues and learning challenges, has been better than ever. And so I think we’re going to have a lot of both. And is that what you’re seeing and hearing as well?

Andre Fortune:
Certainly. And I think that is both from an instruction standpoint, as well as a student life standpoint. So, you know, earlier it was mentioned about, you know kind of the outside of classroom experience from even just pool parties and apartments and things like that. I think the hybrid mode of delivery is here to stay. I’m fortunate to be at an institution that was already a leader in online education delivery. And so shifting to online for our institution, I think we had a lot of resources already in place for that to be successful. However, I do know that there are a number of students who really thrive in the on-campus in person and are certainly seeking that. And we’re seeing our numbers even increase here this spring in comparison to the fall. And we’ve had a number of students who say, you know, we can’t wait to get back in the classroom.

Andre Fortune:
Some of the provisions, and this is to meet some of the positive things we’ve learned in the last 11, 12 months is what we can deliver online. So you mentioned like telehealth and Telecare counseling, and even for our university recreation, being able to offer you know, podcasts and on demand, YouTube type classes and ways for people to engage in that space has been something that our students have really enjoyed. And so with that, we’ve really started to ramp up, how do we offer online student engagement services? It’s a mystery. I think we’ve been trying to solve for several years. And I think we were just forced to solve it this last year. And so lots of positivity coming from that.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, I I’m reminded of a previous episode of our podcast. We had folks talking about, what do we want to restore to what was, what do we want to evolve and what do we want to transform? And the big takeaway there was, we all pivoted in mid-March a year ago didn’t mean we did it well, we just did it. And so we made this shift because we had to, but it is a great reminder that higher education is notorious for being slow to change. And we dispelled that, like we can change doesn’t mean we did it well. And so I think it’s a great chance to, to rethink. And so many of us are open to this and many folks are thinking, you know, a lot of what we did online through orientation is better than putting people in a ballroom and having them there, and they can watch it again three months later, this is great.

Keith Edwards:
So I think there’s a lot of opportunity and I think we’re going to be moving, not going back to what it was, but both. And how do we take the best of this and the best of what was, and bringing that together. Dr. Fortune, we have a question here about your short-term enrollment. What are you, what are you anticipating lower numbers this fall, you’re anticipating higher numbers. It’s sort of, we have a bounce back. What are you projecting on your campus and what are you kind of projecting across the US.

Andre Fortune:
Yeah, ironically for us fall 20 was a bounce back for us. And so for the prior two years, we had significantly declining undergraduate enrollment and just overall enrollment which was bolstered by certainly by graduate students. And then also a lot of our online education offerings. And so a lot of our indicators right now are really promising that we’ll be close to relatively flat or slightly up. But again, it’s just really early to tell. I mean, if you look back at, even our housing occupancy in July compared to what it was in August, I mean, I think we saw 15 or 18% dip and just that time, because students were in most likely, mostly parents were, you know, contacting us and saying, you know, I’m really not sure we want to do the on-campus experience to your point earlier.

Andre Fortune:
I think we’re going to have even more students who want to get that experience because they missed it. It’s not the same as you know, we talk about this with our office of admissions, particularly at the undergraduate level that when you talk about who did we lose to our biggest lose competitor was no school. You know, we have a number of students we admitted and accepted and they didn’t go anywhere. And so that’s an opportunity for us to bring them on campus and whether that’s housing them on campus and off campus or any combination. So that’s something that I’m, I’m really excited about. I think we will be able to one grow our enrollment by not only going after the traditional aged student, but expanding to what now is a new group of non traditional students who’ve stopped their education temporarily, hopefully temporarily.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I think you’re pointing to a, another theme that we see coming up again and again, in this and other conversations, it’s the both. And I think some students have been online and think it’s great and why do I need to pay all that money to live on? Or I can live in the basement and this has worked just fine. And others realizing, Oh, I miss it so much. Or even students who have been on campus, but miss the traditional campus experience, you know, I’ve been living on campus or I’ve been living in my apartment, but I’ve been isolated. I can’t leave. I’ve got to wear my mask all the time. I can’t wait to go to a football game. I can’t wait to have the barbecue in the courtyard. I can’t wait to do some of these things. So I think there’ll be both pushes and pulls, Blair you’re, you’re working with off-campus students all the time and talking to them and listen to them. What are you hearing from them about some of these things? What are you hearing in the push and pulls for them?

Blair Boozer:
Yeah, it’s pretty much I think similar conversations and the report back that we’ve all been hearing. For some people, it was a dream come true to really be able to focus on their academics and not have to worry about commuting. We had an all time high population of students making that decision to stay at home the first year. So it kind of just taking that commute and just making their transition a little bit easier. I think this year has shown us that we are able to do probably a lot more for our students, especially those non-traditional ones. I think, truly create an offer truly like customizable experience. Not just a much more inclusive environment on campus and all.

Keith Edwards:
Well, we’re running out of time to quote Hamilton there. And we call this podcast Student Affairs Now. So we always like to end asking, what are you thinking about now? What’s sort of on your mind and on your focus now, maybe professionally or in the meetings you’ve been having lately, or maybe just as we conclude this conversation, what are you really thinking pondering questioning troubling right now? April, let’s start with you. What’s kind of going for you now

April Konvalinka:
The loaded question, but there’s a lot. So I would say right now in thinking about the fall, how do we you know, there are preparations in place as we bring students back, but I think more about our staff and how do we continue to support our staff. Typically all of us in housing and residence life, it’s been a really tough year. And it has impacted our team in many ways than one. So as we’ve also been handling a pandemic, we’ve also had, you know, a racial unrest. We’ve also had families that are dealing with things that are happening with, within their household. And so just how do we support our team? How do I support my team and how do I continue motivating them as we plan for the fall and continue doing the great work that we are, that we are, that we do right now.

April Konvalinka:
And keep them in higher education. I think there’s, we’re seeing a trend that more folks are saying I’m done and moving on from the student affairs or even higher education period. And so how do we continue to support them under these terms that we’re under right now with the pandemic and managing all that we are that we’re experiencing, whether it be at work or at home. And, you know, as a parent of a nine year old, who’s worked, who’s learning remotely. It’s been tough, I’ll be honest. And so there’s many of us as professionals who’ve experienced that. And and as we continue going, how do we encourage our staff as well? Yeah.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and how to, how to support the staff on campus and the staff off-campus, who was there through the ringer. And also just the existential angst of everything going on on the news and on your social media and your doom scrolling in addition to your work and your home life so much going on and to the toll on us. Blair, what about you what’s, what’s on you? What are you thinking questioning pondering right now?

Blair Boozer:
I definitely think how to continue to convey the value of higher ed. There’s so much more of an experience especially for us in student life. There’s a lot that happens outside the classroom, whether that’s the virtual classroom or a typical classroom and truly some fantastic experiences less than to be had. So how to welcome back our students, because, I mean, I can tell you they’re ready to be back in some sort of capacity. So that’s been kind of on my mind. Well, and it’s just great. I think one, there’s been so many like good things to come out of this past year. And definitely one of those for me is gratitude and I can see it with our staff and faculty and I can certainly see it.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, thank you. Andre, we had a question here about I want to know what you’re thinking about now with double duty. Are you seeing the timeline and enrollment process shifting and changing for this coming year? And then also what’s on your mind now?

Andre Fortune:
The good thing is that actually what is on my mind now as I saw that check come in, I thought that that is perfect because, you know, I’ll go back to again what last summer looked like and how positive things were from a, from a occupancy standpoint from housing to where we ended up in, in August. It certainly what was not where we predicted in July and my concern, or I guess the thing that doesn’t quite keep me up at night, but it’s certainly on my mind is as we are all doing our various versions of discounting students are making commitments a lot easier and having less financial impact than they ever have before. A number of institutions either have waived deposit fees or canceled deposit fees, or even incentivizing and, you know, giving students additional money.

Andre Fortune:
Sometimes upfront you get some now and you get some later, if you show up and actually go through orientation and then arrive on campus. And so also seeing some of that from some of our off campus partners. And so I’m really looking at how does that affect the timing of our students and then likewise for our and, you know, April mentioned this earlier in terms of our own ability to manage our workforce, you know, for positions that are vacant right now, they are critical that we have those positions in place. If we’re going to have, you know, 13, 14,000 students on campus, but if not, then we need to make some other decisions. And so that those all have certainly an impact on at least what is on my mind and what I’m thinking. So the short answer to the question is, yes, the timeline has changed students that traditionally may have committed, you know, again now, you know, whether it’s a May 1st or June 1st commitment, it doesn’t mean as much until they show up because, you know, now what are they losing maybe $25, $50 or nothing on some campuses.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. And I just see that in so many places just increased flexibility students demanding it life to circumstance, demanding it institutions, offering it to be competitive with others. And so I think that greater flexibility that nuanced it, shifting timelines, being more flexible really, really important for all of us, thanks to each of you for being great guests today. Thanks for helping all of us better serve students, living off campus. Listeners, you can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs Now newsletter or browsing our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Thanks to our sponsor today, Off-Campus Partners. Please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share on social or leave a five-star review. It really helps conversations like this, reach more folks and build a community so we can continue to make this free to you again, I’m Keith Edwards, thanks again to the fabulous guests and to everyone who’s watching and listening, make it a great one.