Paul Dosal
I think the institutional culture has a lot to do with with everything, and I sometimes struggle, I think getting people to understand what I mean by the right institutional culture. And we all think that we probably have the right culture and so forth, but I’m not sure. You know, I see other institutions doing great work in student success, often unheralded. They’re doing great work, they just may not get the attention. And what one of the commonalities I see is that the leadership cares enough to make student success and well being an institutional priority.

Keith Edwards
Keith, hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host. Keith Edwards, today, I’m joined by Dr Paul Dosal, who recently stepped down as senior vice president for student success at University of Central Florida. Paul has been an innovator, champion and leader of student success and well being initiatives at University of Central Florida, and before that, University of South Florida, I’m really excited to learn from him and what he has seen, where he has been, what is and what could be in store for student success and well being and higher education. We’re meeting for the first time today, but I’ve known so many folks who have really respected, looked up to and admired Paul’s innovative thinking, so I’m really excited for this 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. Youcan find details about this episode, or browse the archives at studentaffairsnow.com This episode is brought to you by Evolve. Evolve helps senior higher ed leaders release fear, gain courage and take action for transformational leadership through a personalized cohort based virtual executive leadership development experience and Huron. Huron educational and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovation, financial health and student success. As I mentioned, I’m Keith. I’m your host. Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker, author and coach, and I help higher ed leaders and organizations advance leadership, learning and equity. You can help find more about me at Keith edwards.com and I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to the conversation and bring Paul in here. Thanks for being with me today. Please introduce yourself to folks and tell them a little bit about you, your career and your connection to student success and well being.

Paul Dosal
Thank you, Keith. It’s real honor to be with you this morning. I’ve been in academia for all of my professional career. I started out though as a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, I went there after getting my PhD in history at Tulane in New Orleans, and spent about nine years in the cold. And then when I had the opportunity, I ran back home to Florida, joining the faculty and the history department at the University of South Florida, until eventually I decided to make a change and went over to the proverbial dark side, you know, and started in the administration, and I’ve been promoting student success and well being now for 18 years in different roles at the University of South Florida, and most recently For the last two and a half years at university. Of Central Florida, where I served as the Senior Vice President for Student Success. And so I think we have a lot to talk about, reflect on and think about. So again, happy to be with you this morning, Keith,

Keith Edwards
yeah, let’s just get some numbers out of the way, because you’ve not only talked about this, you’ve done this, could you tell folks a little bit about some of the success that you helped contribute to with I know lots of colleagues, it’s always a team effort at both those institutions. I think those are some pretty remarkable numbers,

Paul Dosal
sure. Well, I’m proud of being a part of the team at the University of South Florida that generated impressive gains in the retention and graduation rates. Most significantly probably we raised the four year graduation rate from 25% in 2009 to 62% in in 2022 that’s amazing. It’s a transformation of the university that was the strategic goal under President genshaft and Provost Wilcox and I led the charge on student success for 12 of those years, and learned a lot in the process. We have a lot to be proud of, because the goal was to elevate our performance to such an extent that we had become first designated a preeminent research university in the state of Florida, which was done, and secondly, though, to position the university to be eligible for membership in AAU. And while I wasn’t there for that, I certainly celebrated, because I think I contributed to that as well. I think they came in 2023 so it’s about institutional transformation. I’m proud, too of a similar gains at the University of Central Florida this past year. We. We jumped the four year graduation rate four and a half points from 54.2 to 58.7 and it’s, it’s on an upward trajectory as well.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that’s really great. I mean, this is really important for institutions, right? As you mentioned. You know, these, these statuses and categories and memberships are significant markers and significant for the institution. But that’s like, that’s like hundreds or 1000s of students who stayed at an institution continued with their degree, continue going to class, continued learning, continued having these experiences beyond the classroom, continued connecting, continue meeting other people. I mean, it’s a we can think about that in terms of the institutional status. We can think about that just in terms of dollars, right, which is maybe cold, but it’s not these institutions operate and continue to function, but also just students lives who continue to be connected and changed and transformed. Yeah,

Paul Dosal
I like the way you put it that way in that we too often focus on the grad rate and we forget that those are students behind it, yeah, you know. And so at USF and at UCF, we commonly broke down the FDIC cohorts that we were trying to graduate in four years so that it became more manageable and human, that is. So we recognize that UCF, for example, a one point jump in the graduation rate meant that’s probably 80 students we’re dealing with. And so when you have that increase, you know, this past year, if we jumped at four and a half points, that’s hundreds of students that we helped to graduate on time, and that means less debt, and they’re ready to go on to grad or professional school or into the workforce. Yeah? So that’s impactful?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that’s a win for those students, that’s a win for the institution, that’s a win for the workforce, that’s win for, as you said, their families and debt and all of that stuff. Yeah? Well, good, good. I think we’ve given people a context that you’re someone who has not just ideated, but you’ve really done this and really broken the mold. And so many folks struggle with, you know, they would celebrate a 3% increase in their persistent for really good reasons, and they should, yeah, yeah, as they should. And those numbers that you’re talking about really remarkable. So we’ve got a remarkable innovator and leader. But let’s go back a little bit. As you mentioned, Tulane to Massachusetts to Florida. You were a history professor. What? What led to this shift from history professor professor to focus on student success? How did that kind of evolve for you?

Paul Dosal
It came slowly. I I loved my teaching and research. I was always committed in the classroom and always looking for new ways to innovate, change my teaching techniques and so forth, and fully dedicated to the success of the students in my class, you know, so it wasn’t much of a leap to then think that I could go into administration and continue to serve students, but I would be doing it in a different way, and once I got into higher levels of administration, I’d have the opportunity to serve more students. Right in my intro Latin American history classes, I was proud to serve and help out 200 students who took that intro class. But then I found myself eventually as vice president student success at USF, and I’m serving, you know, 40,000 undergraduate students. Yeah, and so, okay, that’s it’s a chance to do more for more students

Keith Edwards
super drawn to the expanded scope of impact?

Paul Dosal
Yeah, I was. I certainly see this, whether I’m in the classroom or in administration. It’s very much a mission for me that is, I think I, like many people in higher ed, are doing this to serve students. This is a public good, and we choose this career over other opportunities that could be available to us. But I choose to be in the public sector because in part of the opportunity to serve students. And so there were other factors involved. I was doing research on on contemporary Cuban history, the Revolutionary period, from the 50s to the present. And anyway, I I sort of did as much as I could given the resources and documents available to me, and I’ve been waiting for changes to occur so that I could get in the archives of Cuba. That hasn’t really happened. And so if they were to open up tomorrow, I might think differently about things, but the research I would like to do, I can’t really do just yet. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
And so, so South Florida a little different than than UMass, right, in terms of access and accessibility. Ability to do some of that. I really, I think it’s worth highlighting, though, that this wasn’t a title, prestige, title move, a prestige move, a pay move. It really sounds like it was a purpose driven move, right? I so enjoyed helping 200 students at a time be successful. What if I could help 1000s at a time? And it sounds like, Well, I’m here. I’m here. I’m hearing from you in multiple ways, that even though we’re talking about numbers and percentages, which is the metric that we use, that it stayed really personal. It stayed really like humans, students, the impact of debt. What do these percentage points actually mean in terms of numbers? And I think having that, you use the word mission, I’ll use the word purpose. Continuing to center us keeps returning us to kind of a North Star or grounding, and when things get hard or things get difficult, that offers some renewal and keeps us from burnout. Is that a bit of what you experienced? Yes,

Paul Dosal
it is. It’s still a good way to ground ourselves in turbulent times like we’re experiencing now. We’re all going through it. And I’d say, though, looking back on my career, what got me started and what sort of reaffirmed that mission driven approach, is that my first job was as the founding executive director of an organization that is now known as the Florida College Access Network. And so my job there was creating a statewide network whose purpose was to promote college readiness, access and success for underrepresented students. And I did that for three years, until my mentor, the provost at USF, thought it was time for me, and I was ready to step up into another role as Vice Provost, but it gave me that grounding, that boy you have here, the opportunity to do some some work for these students. I was one of those students, and I have a personal and professional interest in doing this kind of work.

Keith Edwards
I’d love to hear you know, you’ve been doing this for a long time, and you’ve been really innovative. You’ve had these successes. You’ve really challenged some of the normal ways that people were thinking about persistence and retention. How have you seen approaches to student success and well being evolve over this time?

Paul Dosal
Well, there’s been a lot of changes in as a historian. They’re fascinating to me. You know, I haven’t researched and written about this the way I used to write about Latin American history. But looking back, I think when I first got started in 2010 I was appointed Vice Provost for Student Success, and I think at the time, I was one of a few across the country who had assumed that responsibility. And I think prior to that time, and even to some extent to the President, to a great extent to the President. The responsibility for student success often falls on a vice president for student affairs. But at USF, they were thinking differently that. Well, we’re looking Vice Provost for Student Success. This is, this is partly academic. It’s partly enrollment management. In fact, my first job was supervising Admissions, Financial Aid registrar, although I was in charge of student success, so we sort of put our toes in the water. And it was my academic background that attracted the provost to me, and since that time, I think it’s changed. First, I think we’re seeing a merger, and maybe not official, but the roles of VP student affairs and student affairs professional with others who come into the field of student success from different backgrounds, including academics like myself, they’re coming together in meaningful ways, and I think that’s promising. It’s still going on, and it’s not a complete transformation, but I’ve also seen universities adopt organizational structures similar to the one we eventually created at USF in 2016 where we merged Student Affairs, enrollment, planning and management and undergraduate studies, which had been administered by three different VPS or dean then merged them into one, and that became my job as vice president for student success and student affairs. And that was sort of ramping up the efforts to be even more deliberate and intentional, breaking down all the silos, pulling everybody together who touched the life of an undergraduate student. And I think that made a meaningful impact on student success performance at USF. It really broke USF off what was then called a performance plateau. The games had stopped or stalled, and that got it going again. And we set up a similar. Actually at the University of Central Florida as well. We’re probably in a different era now. I’m not sure where we’re going. You know, there’s a lot of changes in the works, although I think the institutional interest in student success remains. Strategies and Tactics are likely going to be changing rapidly, yeah.

Keith Edwards
But I think as we see the enrollment cliff coming for many, that’s super regional, right? Yes, it is. I’m close to really facing some dire numbers ahead in terms of the pipeline. Others are not. But I’m hearing a lot of leaders. We can’t just admit more students to make the numbers work, right? We’ve got to retain the ones that we have. Maybe find some students who have stopped out and bring them back, really focusing on completion. I guess what I’m hearing is, you know, I work with a lot of organizations where we are bringing together for the first time, these different units, and other organizations are separating them out again, right? And I don’t think there’s a right or wrong, but I think there’s context and leaders and things happen. But what I heard is it wasn’t just putting these three units under a singular person. It was really about, how do we merge their function? How do we break down silos? You said being deliberate and intentional. It sounds to me like there was kind of a move from from these disparate efforts to more unified efforts that still were a little less wholesale and a little bit more retail. There’s a there’s a theme here about not just thinking about students, but thinking about these students and this student and this group of students and who’s going here, is that right?

Paul Dosal
I think so, you know, deliberate and intentional really characterizes the the efforts at South Florida. That is that institutions leadership was committed to making gains in student success and transforming the institution. And so that restructure was customized. It’s tailored for USF at the time, and so that’s an important lesson for everybody. It it was designed by those institutional leaders to serve a particular purpose. It produced the results that were desired. Can others? Should others replicate it? I don’t know. A lot depends on people, personality, structures, budget. Who knows? There’s something to be said for breaking down those silos. Of course, everyone always talks about it. You can do it in different ways, and even doing it on an org chart doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to collaborate. You can still have the silos existing within a larger structure, then you’ve not done much at all. So you still have to break it down. And I think it still requires greater understanding between professionals trained in student affairs, professionals trained in enrollment management and academic affairs, and oftentimes there’s not enough understanding of what the others do. There’s not enough sympathy and empathy for what they do or respect and it’s important to get everybody to understand they all play a role in student success. We’re all doing different things. Let’s come together and understand the roles we play and value what we each bring to the table, because we all have to be involved in this effort. Retention, as you mentioned first year, retention isn’t just a student success initiative, it. It’s enrollment management, right? If you, if you lose 10% of your students, you got to go get another group of students. You got to replace them, so retain more. It’s an enrollment strategy. Student Success is an enrollment strategy

Keith Edwards
well, and those students are having experience through enrollment, through financial aid, through orientation, oftentimes, through housing, through their courses, through First Year Seminar, through hurricane season, through all sorts of things, right?

Paul Dosal
I’ll play a role, yeah, and I love

Keith Edwards
that you’re highlighting that the secret to success wasn’t merging these groups. That was what was needed at that institution at that time, and that really helped you achieve the aims. But those are just means to an end, right? The end was always that student success metric, and at that moment in time, with these people, with these structures, that was the way to do that. But I think sometimes we get caught up into Oh, South Florida had these great success. They merged these. So we should merge these. And that’s not always the right answer. It might be breaking them apart, right? It can be different things. But how do you make sure that you keep the focus on the outcome, which success? What’s the right way for us to get there? So if the secret sauce wasn’t in merging student affairs, student success undergraduate studies. What do you think is the secret sauce from what you’ve seen at South Florida and Central Florida? What I know you’re also a thought leader, working with lots of others, speaking at conferences, attending things, connecting with colleagues who are doing this. There’s some other institutions that have also. Had some some remarkable success. What are some of the things that you’re seeing that is really moving the needle that others might want to look into for their approach to student success? Well, I

Paul Dosal
I think the institutional culture has a lot to do with with everything, and I sometimes struggle, I think getting people to understand what I mean by the right institutional culture. And we all think that we probably have the right culture and so forth, but I’m not sure. You know, I see other institutions doing great work in student success, often unheralded. They’re doing great work, they just may not get the attention. And what one of the commonalities I see is that the leadership cares enough to make student success and well being an institutional priority. And so people doing the work in Student Success and well being, who are already caring individuals for the most part, promote a culture of care, and it matters, then performance on student success metrics. If nobody cares about what happens, we’ll just continue to do the same thing. And the metrics may not move at all, and if they do move, nobody knows why,

Keith Edwards
or we fight over who’s to blame or who’s to get credit. Increases the silos and the territorial and the lack of empathy and sympathy and respect, and now we’re adversaries rather than

Paul Dosal
team exactly, and so I, I very much think student success begins at the top with boards of trustees, presidents, Provost making it an institutional priority. And in every public statement, you know, mention this is our priority. This is where we’re going, folks, and everybody has to come on board and do their part, because that that secondary message is equally important, that we all play a role in student success. And if you create this new structure, and you create a new leader and say, well, this person is going to lead the charge, that person alone still can’t do it. Everybody has to do it, faculty, staff, and I mean all staff, all faculty everywhere, all colleges, all units, CIOs, institutional research, library, groundskeepers, we all have a role to play. You know the student success and well being units might be, you know where the student support services are delivered, but if you’re not also in the classroom and the curriculum, you’re not going to make the long term gains that you need. You can make differences, you can make a change, but not long term. I love that

Keith Edwards
you even you mentioned groundskeepers. I’m remembering so many times custodians being really pivotal in student success. You know? I’m noticing Jordan is behaving really differently than I usually see them behave. Could someone check in with them? Right? Just the this, the noticing and paying attention and that that reminds me of the kind of culture of care that you’re talking about, that these are not about metrics and numbers and percentages. These are about humans and students and Yeah, and so many folks who are. You know, as you mentioned, as the vice president for student success, you had responsibility for 40,000 students. That’s hard to do when you’re on a residence hall floor, or maybe three floors each with 30 students. Well, you can notice and you can pay attention, and you can connect and see things absolutely and then bring other collaborators in who can engage in some different ways.

Paul Dosal
Yep, just like a professor will notice if a student is absent or comes to class and falls asleep, mm hmm, repeatedly. You know something’s up, someone working as a custodian in a residence hall is in a position to know what’s going on, and many of them become friends with students, and students befriend the custodians, right? For good reason? Yeah, they play a role. So how do you bring them into a coordinated care system? You got me on my next topic, coordinated care manager. Go for it, coordinated care. Tell me about it. Coordinated Care. It reminds me at USF, I learned so much from my colleague, Tom Miller, who used to be vice president Student Affairs, and did great work, does great work in predictive analytics. With him, we created a care management approach to student success, and I know he started the effort to use predictive analytics and then target or develop interventions that would help students that he identified as being in need of some kind of extra support. And as soon as I learned that he was doing some predictive modeling, I said, I want to do this. I want to apply it across the board. Let’s how do we scale this up? But it was learning things. Like, you know, if we identify a student who’s struggling, who is in the best position to intervene, and it’s somebody who already has an established relationship with the student, and sometimes that best person might be the RA in the hall. And if that’s the case, maybe we just ask the RA to knock on the door and see how that student’s doing. Nothing more than that. You know, don’t go and say, Hey, looks like you’re doing terribly in your classes. What’s going on? Instead, knock on the door, how you and it’s the start of a good conversation that might result in more, but that’s a sign. Then, you know, you’ve got RAS doing work in student success. You got career coaches over an account in the Career Center doing similar work, academic advisors, coaches, financial aid experts, student organizations, orientation. Well, how do you pull them all together in a meaningful way? Because we all know students. We all work with students. We all learn from our students, well, who isn’t then in the best position to do the work that needs to be done? And that can vary? Maybe it’s somebody leading an intramural team whose student, no, the student is spending maybe too much time playing intramural soccer. Hey, you know you got, you’re here to, you know, earn, earn a degree. So pulling them together in a care management approach, I think, is something we developed in and applied at USF around 2016 that made a big impact on our Student Success efforts, and something I still firmly believe it.

Keith Edwards
I think it’s really important, because I think I hear you talking about technology tools like predictive analytics and metrics and things like that to inform a very relationship based care approach. And I think the both end of that is really important because, because I see people using technology and analytics to have a lot of information, but it’s not connected to a personalized approach, right? It’s text box and things like that, and we can say we’re doing it. It’s kind of a check the box. We’ve done this and we’ve done but then I also see people who are not using information and data, who are just trying to connect with as many students as possible, and it’s overwhelming, and you’re spending a lot of time connecting with students who maybe get students who maybe don’t need the assistance and don’t need the support. So I think the both end of who really needs the support who’s the best person to connect with a relationship, you’re not always going to get that right, but you’re really putting the resources, which sometimes that relationship building is really time intensive, but if you’re putting that towards the students who it will almost make a difference with, then it is a good return of your investment.

Paul Dosal
Agree completely. You know, we can. We can use predictive modeling. We can use prescriptive AI as well. And sort of where we’re heading with this technology platforms, we can do all that to deliver individualized support, even at a university like USF with 70,000 students, 60,000 of them, undergraduates. Well, how do you do it? Well, you have to deploy these technologies. You have to be innovative. You have to target your support to students who need that help the most. And that’s part of the care management approach you’re trying, it’s population health management is articulated by Education Advisory Board, and hundreds of universities across the country are using that approach as well. It’s valid. It produces the results if fully utilized, if fully implemented. Because what I’ve realized predictive analytical tools and platforms, they don’t solve anything. Right? We do. It’s how we use the tools, how we set ourselves up, so just contracting with an external party doesn’t solve anything. It’s a lesson we learned at USF we’ve had to figure out how to use predictive analytics. We were one of the first to deploy a platform, and we thought it was going to solve everything for us. It didn’t solve anything until we reorganized ourselves to figure out how to use the insights that the tool was giving us. That took a while. It was like a year or two before we really figured out how to use the tools it’s always on us. That’s why, again, I go back to the institutional culture, culture of care. If you don’t care, what does it matter? What fancy platform you get?

Keith Edwards
I love this. Tell us a little bit about that care part, right? So I think sometimes we just want to get a vendor who will give us some predictive analytics and start doing that, but you’re saying that’s important to do, but that’s not going to solve your problem. Once you had that information, once you knew students were struggling, more students probably on the radar than were before, which I think is always a good thing. If we’re finding about students who are struggling sooner, where we can intervene and make a difference, rather than too late, when we’re just trying to separate them, that’s really important. What did you find worked in terms of the care, the relationship, the connection, the outreach? Are there some strategies there that you found were really effective?

Paul Dosal
Sure, well, we we have support personnel all over our campuses, hundreds who are trained to do this work and who do care. But what I found worked best to really make care management work, we deployed a team of academic advocates at USF and UCF, and in both cases, it’s a team of about 12 specially trained professionals who are charged with

Keith Edwards
these are sounding like Navy SEALs or something, just 12 specially trained, 12 special

Paul Dosal
elite in student success and well being, who sort of stitched the whole system together because they’re there to act initially, we used to describe their case managers, they’re dealing with those high touch students and helping them overcome any barriers to their persistence and completion. But it it. They can act as the spine of the care network, because otherwise that network is a little too diffused. Nobody’s holding it together, but a team like this then supplemented with academic advisors or academic success coaches, as we created at UCF, then it really starts to work the way it’s designed to work, because otherwise, you know, I as a the leader of the division, I can talk all I would about care management if I don’t have people actually doing the work and holding it together, making the referrals, closing out cases and stuff like that, it won’t become a Reality.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, academic advocates. Is this? All these folks? And then you had academic success coaches, right? Yes. And so you had these 12 academic advocates that were really, as you said, the spine, sort of connecting out to all these different things, and who should connect, and who should do that, and following up and accountability. And we had learned this, and now we need this. So they were kind of coordinators of these many disparate, as you said, hundreds of people out there in support roles. But who’s the right one? Who should talk now? Now that we’ve done that, we should move in this direction. This student’s good. We can let them be for a while. We’re going to move to this

Paul Dosal
right so, you know, the predictive models, whether in house or external models can help us identify the student, but Okay, so this student is in need of high touch, but that touch might require interventions by housing, financial aid, Career Services, Counseling and those advocates are trained to interact with all of them. They know enough about all of those areas, right? They know enough to know when they need to refer out to make sure the student gets that professional expertise when needed and and so it helped, in both cases, to move the needle on the on the performance metrics. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
you know, I was working with folks in housing at South Florida, and sort of in the midst of this shift and change and and hearing about this, and my sense was that it initially, it left them with a sense of like overwhelm, like more is being asked of us, and that really quickly shifted to a sense of pride about the difference they were making. And yeah, we reach out to a lot of students, and yeah, we connect with a lot of students, but look what it’s doing, and look what we’re seeing. And they were seeing that, that needle move, which I think contributes to the culture, right? Yes, it’s not just you’re saying we were going to care about students, but then they started caring. They started seeing. It was rewarding, right to connect with these students and see a difference. And then that sort of seems to sort of fuel itself in some

Paul Dosal
ways. In many ways, student success is a movement, and progress helps to reaffirm the work, it validates the work that we’re doing. And because it’s a systemic approach, it’s a holistic approach, people might initially fear that it’s more work, you know, an RA then says, oh, so I have to do this as well as all my other duties. But ultimately, if we get it all going properly, we’re leveraging all of our resources to the max, and so in some cases, we might be able to reduce workloads, like we added academic advocates to deal with the high touch students that could relieve academic advisors of the need to do that. Plus, they’re trained to be proactive. They’re reaching out before the problems emerge, right? And a lot of the staff, the academic advisors, they find it very difficult to be proactive. They might have the interest in doing that. They may even have the predictive models to help and do it. But can they do that and that then dedicate an hour a day for a couple of weeks with one student that’s tougher, yeah,

Keith Edwards
yeah, well, and I think that the proactive is always such a good investment of our time. It’s not going to eliminate the challenges, right, but if it can reduce them a little bit, so then the folks who are dealing with the challenges are dealing with fewer students, can invest more time, and students who are facing the biggest obstacles and the biggest hurdles that’s that’s a better use of everyone’s resources. So

Paul Dosal
what we did it at UCF with the we have a team of advocates here, and they function as a proactive wing of the whole academic support model. We also created academic success coaches. I mentioned that earlier, and these are advisors and coaches combined into one in 2024 we merged them together into one role within the Division of Student Success and well being. And so former academic advisors were retrained as coaches, and coaches retrained as academic advisors. So now they’re working alongside the academic advocates, and so the communication between them and the referrals between them, then frees up more time for those new academic success coaches to do what they are trained to do, which is develop relationships with your students from start to finish, connect with them, help them identify the right major for their career interest, and so the advocates relieve the ASCs of some of the work that they would have to do otherwise. So it’s a wise investment that helps out everybody do their work better, right?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and I think it’s just as you said, if we are smartly and wisely deploying our resources where it makes the biggest impact, we can actually save ourselves some time and work and resources not quite being deployed in the way that we really want to.

Paul Dosal
Yep. We’d have to be humble about this and recognize some students don’t need our help at all.

Keith Edwards
That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, let them through. Yeah. They’re going to do just fine on their own, or they’ll figure it out. And others really do. Let’s, let’s shift out of the good work that you’ve done, and let’s put you in this prognosticator kind of role. Given all your wisdom and experiences, what do you see ahead for student success and well being, both the challenges and the possibilities?

Paul Dosal
There’s a lot going on, and it’s hard these days, of course, with all the turbulence to think this

Keith Edwards
will be outdated by the time we release it to the world. But let’s do it, and it’s

Paul Dosal
particularly tough for a historian. I have a hard time telling what happened, you know, 100 years ago, but I’ll give it a shot. Thanks. There are really some promising and exciting developments going on, and I’m not sure we’ve quite figured out how to use AI. Then that’s the topic of the day of the year, perhaps. How can we deploy AI more effectively? And I’m talking beyond chat bots. And most universities have a chat bot now that can, that can help students get the information they need when they want it, which is usually, you know, midnight. But now I see movements toward developing prescriptive analytics, using AI to help us understand what’s going on with the student, and what recommendations for interventions might we recommend for that student, and so deploying technology and analytics in ways that can help academic advisors or success coaches do their work more effectively. A lot of time AI can be used right now to plan degrees, to get information they need sort of transactional stuff that doesn’t really require a meeting with anybody. They can do that on their own. So if we deploy it effectively, we can set aside time, create more time for a professional staff person to have a more meaningful conversation with a student. So we’re enhancing the level of support. The second area, which I think is more like a trend that’s been going on for several years, if you don’t mind, student success and well, being in one and they’re not separate goals, they’re one in the same and so the division we created at UCF is called. Success and well being. And that was the deliberate move, recognizing that for most of our students, that well being part is the one most challenging. The stress and anxiety that our students are dealing with is be is becoming effect. It already is the number one impediment to their persistence and completion. So bringing together the well being initiatives with student success is a trend that will continue, should continue and maybe ramp it up more. It produces other challenges like, Well, how do you connect people doing that kind of work, which is HIPAA protected and needs to be protected and private and so forth. How do you connect them into a care management approach more effectively to serve our students better? But also then, how? What kind of analytical insights can we pull from so that we can identify students who might be struggling with well being before it becomes a problem, right? And so another trend I see in analytical models, predictive insights being drawn or developed from multiple data sources. You know, we’ve relied too long on either the SIS or the LMS for our predictive insights, and those are great, but we have to recognize that there are other data insights we can pull from many other sources that help us better understand student behavior and performance, rec and wellness, center card swipes, that’s Important information, library card swipes,

Keith Edwards
just to go back. So you’re talking about the SIS, student information systems, LMS, learning management systems, right, pulling from those, but then adding in card swipes. Where are people going? Are they eating in the dining hall? Yes,

Paul Dosal
here, yes. All that stuff gives us even more insights in into student behavior and performance, and so I think we have the possibility there creating really powerful platforms that help us understand how a student is doing, so that we’re no longer just looking for that student who’s not making the 2.0 and going to class, I’m just as interested in a student who’s earning a 4.0 and never going to class and never engaging. That’s a different kind of issue, but one we should be concerned about as well, right, right? Why are they not engaging? That could be a problem. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a real introverted person who’s quite happy. Maybe so, but maybe, as

Keith Edwards
you alluded to before, you know, is someone just disconnected from campus, not showing up anywhere on campus. That’s a different intervention than someone who is in the rec center four times a day and on four different intramural teams, right? That’s a different kind of and we know maybe who could connect with them, and maybe who sees them not treating those two students as a 1.75 GPA, but as two very different students with two very different challenges.

Paul Dosal
Yeah, yeah. And, or maybe we want to try to get that disconnected student to get connected, because maybe that student just hasn’t find the right people the right org. And maybe we know, okay, you would really like doing this. You know, who knows our goal is it should be to enrich the lives of our students to thrive, as we say here at UCF, that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s not just about getting them across the stage you get the degree, but enriching their experience.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, and you know, if they can learn how to succeed at this game, going to class, do your homework, being engaged, being connected, if they can be successful doing that, then it’s a better chance of them succeeding and what comes next and what comes next and what comes next, and ultimately helping them be good neighbors, not just in the workforce, not just with a job, but good neighbors, good citizens, contributing, helping others, doing all of that.

Paul Dosal
It’s part of our mission, isn’t it? I think

Keith Edwards
it is the mission. I think it’s the whole purpose, right? So we are running out of time. The podcast is called Student Affairs. Now. We always like to end with asking, What are you thinking, troubling or pondering now? And also, folks want to connect with you, maybe where they can do that, but what’s with you now? Paul, well,

Paul Dosal
you know, I stepped down from our role as senior vice president because I realized that I needed to take a break. Yeah, for a number of reasons, uh, personal and professional. And I did that. It was a tough decision to make, and it leads me to say to my friends and colleagues around the country who I’ve really had a chance to reconnect with over the last month or so, first, take care of yourselves, and let’s take care of each other. Because. We’re living in some turbulent times. It is challenging for us. And I’ve got friends and colleagues across the country who are concerned about so many different things, but including their own personal well being. And you know, we’re in a business where we we say that we’re interested in promoting the well being of our students, yeah, and we encourage them to take some time for themselves. So I want to encourage my colleagues to do the same for themselves, to show as much care for each other as we do for our students.

Keith Edwards
Great. Anything else you want to add other

Paul Dosal
than Thank you, Keith, this has been a wonderful conversation, and so glad that you reached out to me.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, thank you. This has been great. I’m so energized by the work you’ve done and the work you’re continuing to do. I think you really helped a lot of folks who maybe hear about this, read about in the Chronicle, go to a session at a conference, really think a little bit more deeply about how they might contribute to this so so thanks for your leadership in this baseball I appreciate you game. We also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode, both Evolve and Huron. Evolve helps senior leaders who value aspire to lead on and want to unleash their potential for transformational leadership. This is a program I lead, along with my colleagues, doctors Brian Rao and Don Lee. We offer a personalized experience with high value impact, the asynchronous content and six individual sessions and six group sessions maximize your learning and growth and with a focused investment, greatly enhancing your ability to lead powerfully for social change and also Huron. Huron collaborates with colleges and universities to create sound strategies optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Huron promotes institutional resilience in higher education. For more info, visit go.hcg.com/now, as always, thank you to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who makes us all look good behind the scenes. And we love your support for these important conversations, you can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and to our weekly newsletter announcing each new episode every Wednesday morning. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. It really helps these conversations reach a larger audience. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks to our fabulous guest today, Dr Paul Dosel, and to everyone who’s watching and listening, make it a great week. Thank you.

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