How Utah State Built a Connected Campus That Boosts Retention, Equity, and Student Support at Scale:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 266 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Rene Eborn

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast  266 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Rene Eborn

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Introduction

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Rene Eborn, associate Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Deputy of Digital Transformation at Utah State University. Rene has over two decades of higher education technology experience and has built multiple sustainable, innovative processes and cultures that align business university goals and technology investments to lead cultural change and transformation within higher education.

Rene’s got a long pedigree of doing this at multiple institutions, including Western Governors, SNU, and BYU Idaho, and she joins me to talk about the great things she and her team are doing to improve student engagement, access to resources, and most importantly, student outcomes through technology innovation at Utah State University.

 Welcome to the program.

Rene Eborn: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I am happy to have you here as well. I’m looking forward to a great conversation. We’re going to talk about how you and your team at Utah State have been really helping with student outcomes through IT, believe it or not. Yes, IT can be a strategic partner to academics. It’s really important that everybody have that good shared vision and be in lockstep.

[00:01:47] Rene Eborn’s Background and Career Journey

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get into the conversation, please give my listeners a background on who you are and what you’ve done in your career.

Rene Eborn: Oh, thank you. I have actually grown up in higher education and I started my career early on about 30 years ago, and I’ve been in the higher educational space for, a couple decades now, and I’ve had a lot of great experiences implementing and doing creative things.

I’ve worked, in the early days, at Western Governor’s University. I’ve worked at Southern New Hampshire University during their rapid growth phase, and I’ve been an ed tech advisor for a lot of ed tech companies over my career. Grown up in the space.

My passion for higher education, I think, comes from my youth. I grew up in rural Utah on a cattle ranch and I just really believe that education is a stepping stone to equality and making our lives better and I’m very passionate about it. It really changed my life and my career and so I always try to give back. And so I’m very excited about being able to do that.

Currently in my role. Right now, I am back at my home institution where I started my career, have come full circle, and I am the Associate Vice President of Digital Transformation.

Drumm McNaughton: So cattle ranch to higher ed, that’s quite a leap.

Rene Eborn: It really is, isn’t it?

Yes. I was very much part of the whole rural education. I was a first generation student as well. And so I lived out in the country, Northern Utah we’re very close to Yellowstone National Park, it’s the corridor. And a lot of space, and during, when I was growing up as a first gen student, having educational opportunities in a rural area was very important. And so I got very passionate about providing access to higher ed to everybody, no matter where they are, no matter their life circumstance.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s amazing having been at Western Governors, SNU, back in the go-go days, that gave you a very interesting perspective, especially around online distributed education.

Rene Eborn: Yes, absolutely. Those were great opportunities for me to help influence and help change some of the ways that we do things in higher ed. Yes,

[00:04:02] Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: And that kind of reminds me of a quote from a, a dear friend of mine, Gordon Gee, who back when COVID hit, he said, “COVID has accelerated needed changes in higher education by a decade or more”, and I think he’s absolutely right and you’re living testament to that with all of the stuff that you’ve done with online education.

Rene Eborn: Yes, absolutely. Agreed. That is, well and during COVID, like you said, within that period, we just, we jumped and leaped bounds like 10 years. I got to be part of that as well. I was here at Utah State during that period, and we took all of 7,000 sections of online classes and had to go online really quick with them. And it really did, it saved the institution being able to do that. Now we’ve gotten through it and we’ve learned from that, and I think that it’s been a great catalyst for all of us to realize we can change and we can do some cool things in this space.

Drumm McNaughton: Really higher ed can change? What a concept

Rene Eborn: It is. Yes. I always make the joke about the, higher ed is one of the verticals that’s been around for hundreds of years, in the business world. Right? It’s a vertical there and we’re steeped in tradition and we care so much about our brand. Right? Like our logos and who we are and our alma maters. But to the point we actually still wear medieval clothing to celebrate our credentials. Like we literally wear medieval clothing. That’s how steeped in tradition we are. But we can change, we can, and COVID proved that. Like we all across the nation, across the world, people adapted and used technology to help with those adaptations.

Drumm McNaughton: I never stopped and thought about the medieval clothing part with higher ed. Oh, that’s so spot on. We used to have a saying in the Navy, ” 250 years of tradition, unmarred by progress”. And higher ed, we could do 1500 years. Yes, yes. Easily.

Rene Eborn: Absolutely. Yes, easily.

[00:05:57] Challenges in Higher Education and Strategic Solutions

Drumm McNaughton: So that’s a great segue into talking about what we’re going to talk about today, higher ed has a few challenges right now. You’ve probably heard about some of those, public trust, the cost, the most expensive degree is the one you’ll never get. We need more people to stay in higher ed, and what you are doing is finding ways to help people connect, find students, find faculty, and even staff to connect through IT. So relate some of the challenges that USU has been facing.

Rene Eborn: Yes, absolutely. You’ve really, you’re hitting on some really critical pain points for higher ed right now. Right? There’s a decline in public trust, there’s escalating costs going on, and there’s this persistent challenge of every higher ed institution making sure that we ensure that students connect, that they engage, and that they succeed. Right? We have so many students that don’t finish their degrees because of life or money or, there’s a variety of reasons. And so it is our mission, from a higher education perspective, to ensure that student’s success and it’s just not isolated issues around those three.

They’re all very interconnected and they demand a strategic solution around that. We need to think thoughtfully about connecting a digital campus to create some solutions around this. You talked about trust. Right? I think that technology can be a really powerful tool for rebuilding that trust in a couple ways.

One, it can demonstrate value through data because people want to see the data. And if you have a connected campus, it generates vast amounts of data. You can track the student’s progress, you can track their engagement, their outcomes, by ethically harnessing that data and setting up ways of managing that. It can enhance communication and transparency. That helps with trust. And also if you do personalize the way that you handle support services for students, that also is a sign that you care. And that’s also a way to, to build trust. So I think that technology can be a tool to help build that trust. And I think it’s really important.

And then also it helps with accountability because you have these digital systems that can create records and it provides those data points. So I think it’s really important to realize that it’s not all about technology, it’s about people. But technology can be a tool that helps those people do a better job.

Drumm McNaughton: You’re absolutely right. I can remember back years ago when I first got out of the Navy, business restructuring, et cetera. Yes. But that was, it was not a good use of that type of thing because it was restructuring for restructuring sake and, “hey, here’s the latest and greatest IT, let’s put this in regardless of the disruption”, instead of saying, “IT is a tool for business or substitute education. It’s a tool for education to do what purpose?” And you just talked about those. Yes. The belonging, the creating community, being able to support students that much better and hold people accountable as well.

Exactly.

Rene Eborn: And part of that trust is it costs a lot. Right? Higher ed is very expensive. It’s one of the biggest purchases. It’s probably the biggest purchase an individual can make in their life. Right? If you compare buying a home,

Drumm McNaughton: House and then education would probably be my guess.

Rene Eborn: Exactly. Home, education, cars maybe, depending on what you do. But you’re right. Like it’s one of the big major purchases in your life and from a higher ed perspective, we have to tackle it with efficiency, with new and modern tools to be able to bring those costs down, because we’ve got to streamline our operations. And if we can do that efficiently in a good way, and technology tools help that, then we can take that savings and invest it and expand it into other things that help, reduce the cost for the students, provide that money for scholarships or things like that. Provide shorter pathways.

[00:10:00] Modernizing Student Experience with Technology

Drumm McNaughton: And what you’re talking about, to me, is how do we build a more connected digital campus experience? And when we were talking yesterday, or day before, you had reminded me that research tells us when student develop meaningful relationships, they are more successful.

Rene Eborn: Exactly. Student success is so multifaceted. Right? It’s the connection, but the connections and the engagements, they’re catalyst for success. Right? When students feel connected, they truly shine. That’s when they do their best work when they feel like they’re cared about, and first being able to personalize an experience at a large scale, technology will allow for that outreach and that support that’s impossible to scale if you were just doing it one person at a time. if you’re doing it manually. Because you can have AI powered nudges that like reach out to them, you can have personalized dashboards that highlight their progress or their next steps, or brings up the resources they need based on their own experience so that they can have tailored recommendations for the things that they need to do to be successful. Every student’s different, and additionally, you can go a step farther and some of these digital technologies you can create early alert systems. So if you can identify a student that’s disengaging, perhaps you have some type of alert on your learning management system or something, and you realize they’re not logging in that allows for timely outreach to those people to provide those more connected experiences. Success is really, is multifaceted. It’s really important.

Drumm McNaughton: Let’s back it up just a little bit and set the framework because we’re headed down a great path with this conversation.

We’ve talked about building community, we’ve talked about how that improves student success, and now we’re starting to talk about how this is individualized for particular students and faculty to be able to keep track of it and staff to be able to keep track of multiple students. So it seems to me like what you’re doing is modernizing the student experience, that it’s beyond, online textbooks or whatever. It’s looking at the whole package of how a student’s doing and using AI to set triggers when the student may need help and doesn’t realize it or they just haven’t reached out for it. Does that make sense?

Rene Eborn: Yes, no, that’s exactly what we’re doing here, what I’m trying to do, and I feel like right now we’re poised to do some really great things in this space. If leaders make good decisions and harness some of these technologies to be able to accomplish their learning outcomes for their students.

So you’re right. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to modernize that experience, creating like a digital community or digital campus. Like technology, if done right, can foster vibrant online communities, vibrant organizations, peer-to-peer support, and can connect people with those resources.

And so that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, is most of the students that are coming to higher ed now, whether they’re coming from high school right in and having that traditional higher education experience, or they are choosing not to have a traditional, they’re choosing to go into the workforce, develop skills, and they come at it a different angle through that lens.

At the end of the day, they need that, they want that credential, those skills, that learning. And so what we’re trying to do is modernize our student experience, so that they do have this vibrant, connected experience no matter what type of student so that it’s very diverse, so that we can have unrepresented people with different backgrounds. We can have people that are all diverse, but they have the opportunity and the access to be able to be successful and improve their lives. And we’re trying to do that through modern technology.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. So you’re actually doing this at Utah State. Before we get into some of the details with that give our listeners an example of how that can work with a student who’s falling behind.

Rene Eborn: Yes, absolutely. So say you have a student that’s struggling. If you have a system in place like this, a technology, some type of talent technology foundation that’s more modern, that you can have an early alert to their disengagement.

So perhaps a great example of this is maybe their activity in the learning management system where they submit their homework. They have homework assignments or they have online discussions, or they have in class interactive sessions that they have missed. The system can alert the faculty member, “Hey, this person is not online or didn’t come online or missed this”. This allows for timely and targeted interventions from the advisor, from the faculty member or a support staff member to help that person not fall through the cracks. To reach out to them and say, “Hey, what is going on? What’s going on with your life? Can we help you?” And, say it’s money. Maybe the student’s working three jobs to be able to pay their tuition. Then maybe that individual could say, “you know what? Let’s have you apply for a scholarship, or, let’s see if we can get you some aid”, or, there’s a variety of ways that could happen, but that’s a good example of alerting yourself to that.

Drumm McNaughton: That is a good example. Another thing that comes to mind is if a student is struggling in the classroom with a particular concept. That if you have the proper tools, AI, whatever, one, the student can help figure out for themselves what’s going on . I was a qual guy. I wasn’t a quant guy. So when I ended up having to do statistics, I was lost. I had a faculty member who could help me. If in fact you had the systems built in place that could key the instructor, “Hey, Drumm’s having difficulty with quantitative analysis, you need to reach out to him to help”. Is that a good example?

Rene Eborn: Yes. That’s a great example. Yes. But higher ed like we talked about, it has a long history in it. And a lot of our systems are antiquated. Right? They’re old systems that were built in different decades. Right? Really. And now we have.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes I’m not an IT guy. I wouldn’t understand that. I thought everything’s brand new.

Rene Eborn: That’s why it’s breaking

Drumm McNaughton: so much.

Rene Eborn: That’s why it’s just breaking.

Yes. And part of modernizing and part of our strategy in modernizing some of these tools and these technology platforms is to get on the new updated technology and building that foundation so that we can actually leverage AI. Because right now a lot of higher education institutions, their data is in siloed systems that the data is hard to, there’s a lot of integrations, a lot, like you said, a lot of things that break going back and forth.

And so we’re trying to do a facelift on our technology landscape and modernize that experience for our students so that we can get the data all in the right place so we can actually have a 360 view of that constituent. Whether they’re starting at the beginning of, just outta high school to they’ve graduated, their alumni coming back to school to skill up because they need to learn more technical skills in their careers at this point. That’s our mission in higher ed is to do that, and so we’re trying to be poised to do that.

Drumm McNaughton: The other thing too is. And I’ll take USU as a prime example, you’re a land grant college. USU doesn’t have the money that a large private, an Ivy, or even a University of South Carolina, which is another land grant type college. It’s a flagship public. Exactly. So with that, you’ve got to be able to modernize your systems without changing out the basic infrastructure.

For example, your SIS system. You, like many other schools, use Banner. You don’t want to have to change the entire system out because you’re talking millions of dollars, not only exactly for software licenses, but for the integration and all those things. So you’re looking at something that you can put over the top of it that’s going to talk to Banner. It’s going to talk to your LMS. It’s going to talk to your CMS C-M-S-C-R-C-R-S. I know there’s too many initials there. Sorry.

Rene Eborn: Yep. No, but no, you’re exactly right. We are the land grant school. Most of our dollars come from either taxpayers or the government or student tuition. And so we do have to be extremely frugal with the way that we invest in the technology and the tools that we have. And you’re right, we look for modern tools that we can bring into our ecosystem and manage them efficiently and streamline our operations. And we try to do that in a very, strategic way.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. Strategic, but also the bottom line is you’re looking to transform your student experience in a very cost effective way. Exactly. Exactly.

Rene Eborn: Yes. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. So walk us through some of the things that you’ve done at Utah State.

Rene Eborn: Absolutely. In the last year or couple years, we’ve implemented a new engagement platform and we did this so that our students could have a new and an improved mobile experience because so many of us, everywhere we go, we have our phones. Right? And we want our students to be connected. So we have implemented a new student engagement hub where students can have that mobile experience where they’re connected to resources that they need, where they’re able to have peer-to-peer interactions and they can find groups that they’re interested in and really truly fostering that connection and engagement in a digital way. And we have proof that helps us from a student success perspective, but we are able to personalize that engagement at a large scale because now we have a tool that helps us do that. Right? It helps us with AI powered nudges. It has personalized dashboards, students can see what their next steps.

It also builds digital communities for the feeling of belonging. So for many students, they’re either commuters, online learners, or for those that are from unrepresented backgrounds, having a digital campus is their primary campus sometimes. And so we want to have that vibrant community where they can go and get that peer-to-peer support and those support networks so that they can create that sense of belonging. And that’s crucial for persistence, so that they can persist through their degree and then we as an institution can meet our learning outcomes for those students.

It also makes it accessible, flexible, because they can, it’s mobile and it also is making, learning active and relevant to them for where they’re at in their lives, which is very, this is an intrinsic motivation to help with deep learning and success for our students.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s a great summary. Let’s break it down via demographic groups. Yes. You’ve hit a lot of the things for students, but just review, how do the students interact and what are the benefits for them?

Rene Eborn: So the students interact, they actually have the mobile app on their phone, or they cannot access it from their iPad or their desktop. Either way they can get on no matter what. So they can connect with the institution or with their organizations from anywhere . Additionally, students can get online to see if they have any holds on their account. So we connect them to all of the resources that they will need to be a successful student. In that student lifecycle there’s lots of touchpoints where, you have to register for classes and then you have to pay for them, and then you have to take them and have assessments. And so in all those touch points, in our engagement hub, we have touchpoints for them so that they have that relevant information to them at that time.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. And you mentioned earlier, part of those touch points are, okay, what are the next set of courses you’re going to be taking? What are the prerequisites? All of those things, so they can plan their journey through. They can connect with other students for that sense of belonging. Yes. So all of those important things like that, and they can see how they’re doing from an analytics perspective.

Rene Eborn: Exactly. Yes,

Drumm McNaughton: Let’s swap over to the faculty. Yes.

[00:22:23] Faculty and Support Services Integration

Drumm McNaughton: How does it benefit faculty?

Rene Eborn: So when we went live with this new engagement hub, at first we just focused on the students, we have students on our advisory, our product advisory board for it, and a lot of our student, and the feedback we got from our students is we really want our faculty in here too, because we want to connect with them and have that peer to peer connection with our faculty. That’s a pride point for Utah State. We actually really take pride that our faculty mentor our students, and we have low classroom ratios and things like that. And we then went forward with initiative to create a staff and faculty portal, mm-hmm. as part of this engagement hub, so that they actually are in the same portal with the students.

They have a different view because they’re faculty, so they have the tools that are important to them from a faculty perspective or an advisor perspective, as well as they have that connection to the groups that the students are in, so they can see what their students see and their students can connect with them in a variety of different ways. They can connect with them, either by linking them to the learning management, to the learning resources they need, or to even just the social and community tools that they need.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. That’s really important, especially when you start talking about student progress. And one of the things that I’ve learned over my many years in higher ed, mentors are so critical and when I think, and most folks that I’ve spoken to, when I think about my college experience, arguably, I didn’t have a college experience, I went to the Naval Academy, it was a technical train. No, I’m just kidding. But when I think about my experience back there, what stands out to mind really are two things. One, my classmates, the folks that I had there, and that’s really important from the service academy perspective.

Yes. But the other is the faculty members. I can tell you five different examples of faculty members that I had from my physics major that were just incredible. They were mentors to me in many ways. So having that connection with whoever your mentor is, whether it be formal or informal, is really important for student success.

Rene Eborn: It is. It is. And I look back on the same thing. I look back on my career and my life and my educational experience and I was a first gen student, I didn’t have a lot of ability to help me go to school, so I did it all on my own and I felt very isolated and very alone. And then I had faculty members that saw my potential and believed in me and encouraged me and kept me going. And I look back on those people and there are still people in my life that I look back on and it’s I have a faculty member that I still, to this day, I send her a Christmas card because I don’t think I ever made it through college had she not encouraged me. That is important. And so this, it’s hard to do that at scale. We are modernizing our technology so that we can leverage and build a community where we can engage with our students and make those a possibility using technology.

Drumm McNaughton: And that is such a critical point for that faculty member to connect with the student, especially when you’re teaching a section of 100 or even 250 students with the early, early classes. Yes. Having that connection and I would assume that by the system that you’re putting in place, there at Utah State, students can reach out to faculty via the system and vice versa. Is that correct?

Rene Eborn: Yes, they can. And in a variety of ways and get connected to the right people and the right resources, the right departments or centers, if they need help with math we have the ability for them to connect to the tutoring center, things like that.

And it’s putting it on so that it’s right at their fingertips so that they have it in an app so that they can, just click on it and their access is there and it’s personalized for them based on what they want to see and what’s important to them. And we are able to do that on a large scale because of use of some of the technology choices we’ve made over the last couple years

Drumm McNaughton: And that makes so much sense, because you can drive most of this stuff with technology. The last piece of that triad is a support services. You touched on that too, a bit with the tutoring center, but not only you have your tutoring center, you’ve got your student advisors, student support, financial aid, all of those things. How does this work for those folks?

Rene Eborn: Yes, so the way that we connect them is that in our engagement hub, one, we have a list of our common tools and resources that they need. So they can always just. Click on it and go right to the page. But then we also create, we call ’em widgets, but basically what it is we create a dashboard. And so for example, we have an advising widget. So when our student logs onto their mobile app, they see their personalized screen, and it shows them what major they’re in and it shows them who their advisor is or advisors. And it has the link right there to schedule an appointment, right at their fingertips. So they don’t have to go call or anything, they can right then schedule time to talk to the advisor right in the portal, it’s right there on the front of their dashboard. So that they can connect or they can get the advice they need when they need it.

Drumm McNaughton: And I would assume first off, let me ask you, how long has this been in place now? Is this within the last year, two years? Are you still rolling it out?

Rene Eborn: Oh no. We’ve actually are in going into our fourth year using wow, our new engagement hub. We implemented it and we have all these analytics and our user adoption for our student engagement hub has been off the charts. It’s been phenomenal.

I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I can honestly say that you can implement any tool and technology in the world, but if people don’t use it, then it’s not going to accomplish what you want to accomplish if people don’t use it. And our user adoption for our engagement portal, because it was built with the right stakeholders included, and the right spirit. That’s the key

Drumm McNaughton: point. Stakeholder involvement in the design. Yes.

Rene Eborn: Yes. Yep. Because we had that, we approached it that way, we’ve had phenomenal user adoption therefore we’ve been growing it over the last three and a half, four years.

Drumm McNaughton: And I would be willing to bet as progressive as Utah State has become, in use of technology, that this is part of the orientation. When new students have their orientation, you explain them absolutely about that. So you’re giving them a leg up already, especially, first gen students such as yourself.

Can you imagine having a tool like this when you went to college, about what? About 15 years ago?

Rene Eborn: Yes, about 15 years ago. It would’ve been phenomenal. You’re right. No, exactly. It would’ve been fabulous. And so you are right. It was such a positive user adoption, as I mentioned, it was received so well that we actually even opened it up to the community. So we have a community portal where like the parents or, families can log in to the portal and see the information, but until they actually become a student, they can’t get some of the secure information.

But, we have opened up our portal to the community so people can go into community go and it’s been phenomenal that we can share that information in a cohesive way. So when they come in and they’re getting oriented to the university and go through orientation, you’re right, that’s the first thing we do is say, “go download the ‘My USU’ app and connect with people and really learn about how we can help you”. And that’s one of the first things we have our students do now.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, my first comment about having parents on there would’ve been somewhere along the lines like, “oh my gosh, you’ve raised helicopter parents to a whole new level”. But when you stop and think about it, being able to monitor what your kid’s doing at a particular time, with the appropriate protections on there, that’s important. But also too, from a development or an advancement perspective, fundraising, I would be willing to bet that this would be also very good.

Rene Eborn: Yes, absolutely. A lot of universities, we have alumni that they’re famous and they want to give back to their institutions. And some of them do that through mentorships. Right? And through helping in a variety of different ways. And you’re right, being able to connect that the whole student life cycle and that whole constituent experience and keep that data is just, is going to change the way we do our business.

Like I think in the next. But 10 years, we’re going to see higher ed rise to the occasion and really meet the workforce’s demand if we embrace the right technology at the right time.

Drumm McNaughton: And just quickly results you’ve seen, what have you seen from a persistence perspective? because analytics is one of the things that people can download and see. Have you seen an increase in student persistence, in student outcomes?

Rene Eborn: Yes. We have seen over the last few years, our students persist. Utah State University does a great job in meeting our state outcomes for what we want from a graduation perspective for our students. And a lot of it is because, we call it our Aggie family, but a lot of it is because we are gritty, we do a lot with a little bit of money, and we have a lot of passionate people, but we also leverage some of our technology to help us do more with less. And it do, and it helps us meet those outcomes that we need to help students graduate, get jobs, skill up in jobs and we are successfully able to meet the challenges that the communities are bringing to us in a really great way.

[00:31:45] Community and Career Services

Drumm McNaughton: Do you have community members on the app as well, so that students can apply for internships and things along those lines? Or is that Yes. Is that in phase three?

Rene Eborn: No, we do, we have our career services as part of it, and then like we have links from if students want to get jobs and do internships, career services is part of our student life cycle and part of that engagement hub as well.

Wow.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow. That’s fabulous. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about this, and I am sure that the audience, you’ve given them lots of great ideas on ways that they can use technology to improve the student experience, student persistence, all those things. So thank you for coming on and doing this Rene.

Absolutely.

Rene Eborn: It was my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.

Drumm McNaughton: My pleasure.

[00:32:33] Three Takeaways for University Presidents, Boards, and Senior Administrators

Drumm McNaughton: Three takeaways for university presidents, boards, and senior administrators who are thinking about implementing a “My USU” equivalent for their college or university.

Rene Eborn: I think the three takeaways I would say is be sure to be a champion of a student-centric digital vision. Make sure that you really put your students first. Include them in your research you’re investigating and even in like your decisions. I think it’s really important for university leaders to invest strategically in integrated platforms rather than just patchworking a bunch of disconnected systems. Look for a platform, and then to make sure you foster a culture of digital fluency, because in order to do this, you’ve got to have digital fluency on your campuses. So those are my three takeaways, but number one, champion a student-centric digital vision.

Drumm McNaughton: Those are great takeaways. Thank you. So let me ask you, what’s next for you? What’s next for USU?

Rene Eborn: So we are tackling, now that we have our engagement hub up and going, the next thing we’re tackling is our student information system, which has been very antiquated and very old, and we are going with the new modern technology. More around like a customer relationship management platform. And we’re going to, from the time a student, actually we recruit them, all the way to the alumni status, and when they’re alumni, we’re creating, a student 360 student profile view of our students so that we can, our goal is in the next two to three years to be able to let students apply using AI. Right? To be able to just be like, apply using some of these tools that they’re growing up with. But it takes work. So we’ve got to get some things in place. So we’re building the foundation right now in hopes that we can meet those expectations in the upcoming years.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, in a couple of years I want to hear more about this, so, I would welcome you when you’ve got updates that you could pass on the audience to come back on the show.

Rene Eborn: Absolutely. I’d love to.

Drumm McNaughton: Rene, thank you so much for coming on this show. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to the next time that we are able to get together and continue the conversation.

Rene Eborn: Thank you as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today. And special thanks to Rene Eborn, Associate Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Deputy of Digital Transformation at Utah State University. Rene, thanks so much, this has been a great conversation, talking about how technology can support and enhance building communities of higher education and helping students succeed so much more than they could. Thank you.

To my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you next week.