Hello and welcome to Higher Thinking on Higher Ed. I am Charlyn Carrington of Content Strong Communications, the fractional communications and marketing leader of choice for universities, colleges and nonprofits. Today I am excited to continue diving into the trends, the challenges encountered by leaders in higher education. And I am honored to welcome Brian Hodges to the hot seat today. Brian is assistant vice president for Enrollment management at Bradley University and has worked in higher education, mostly in admissions, for 20 years. During that time, he has volunteered many years with the Illinois association for College Admission Counseling and has also served as president of the association. Thank you so much again for bringing your expertise to this conversation. How you doing? 02:38 Brian Hodges I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Charlie. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Hopefully I can provide some insight. And hopefully we have a great conversation about higher ed. 02:47 Sharlyn, Content Strong I think we will. I think it will be a good one. So, I mean, I spoke a little bit about kind of what your background is, but the first question I typically like to ask is just to get a good sense of, you know, the context with which you work in really. I think you mentioned to me earlier that you're still fairly new in your current role here at Bradley and tell me a little bit about kind of what you've inherited, I guess. What, what are you building towards? How do you see enrollment management kind of shaping the university's growth right now? 03:15 Brian Hodges Okay, well, I have been a part of Bradley University in priori Illinois for about seven months now. And under my, I guess, my portfolio, I work directly with the undergraduate admissions. The director for undergrad admissions reports to me, our director of graduate international and online admissions, and that person works directed me. And the graduate instance in Bradley is actually new. In four admissions, they used to have a graduate college that was dissolved and then they came under admissions. And it's probably the first year we've done anything in the graduate instance as far as real recruitments and processing and trying to start the recruitment and get a class for our graduate college. So that's new. I also work with our campus visits, so director of the visit experience reports to me as well. 04:07 Brian Hodges Now, those are the three groups or three units that I'm in charge of as far as being in enrollment management. I also work closely with the, with financial aid office and our admissions technology director. So even though I don't supervise financial aid and admissions tech, we work closely, hand in hand. So that's pretty much the full picture of enrollment management with Raleigh University. 04:33 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, I get it. I totally get it. So, okay, so thinking about kind of where you are in the institution and how the institution kind of moves and moves forward, what are the kind of shifts you're seeing? So you mentioned, I think maybe an earlier call that, you know, even marketing and communications now make up a big portion of the enrollment battle. What shifts are you kind of seeing in how students are engaging and how, you know, the kind of shifts in general are shaping your strategy day to day? 05:03 Brian Hodges Well, yes, I'm glad you brought that up because my counterpart is the assistant vice President for Marketing Communication. And again, we work hand in hand as well. The communication aspect is really huge. I know you mentioned that. I've been doing this for about 20 years. When I first started, I was admissions counselor, and phone calls was the only way were truly communicating with students. And email was a part of that. But it wasn't like a. It wasn't really taking over. Now we have to email students. Now we have to. Hopefully, if we see them on social media, we're doing something as far as communicating with social media. If we get their contact information, we're trying to text them. We're still trying to send calls out to them. We're trying to meet them where they are in as many possible ways as we can. 05:46 Brian Hodges Not necessarily to bombard them with marketing communication, but what is where they feel the most comfortable communicating with us. So we have to go to as many different places as we possibly can. And if that's texting, that's what we're going to focus on. If it's phone calls, which most students now don't answer phone calls anymore. So if that's something, we'll keep calling them. If it's through email, even though they might not check their email, but they say know that information, we're trying to meet them where they are in as many different places as they are. And my unit within management works hand in hand with marketing communications. They help with the communication that's going out. We kind of supplement that with our admissions counselors and how they're reaching out students in their particular territories. 06:31 Brian Hodges And we're trying to find many ways to communicate with them. Now that puts a lot of pressure not only on the marketing team, but also on the admissions team, because we're trying to communicate in the same seven different ways to our group of students. And then we might have different groups of students that might communicate better through phone or through text or through social media or through email. And we have to be in all those different places. So that's a lot of pressure and a lot of work that has to be handled not only by the counselors, but our marketing communications team. 06:59 Sharlyn, Content Strong That sounds like. I mean, maybe you're hitting on a bit of a challenge there. But that does sound like a challenge. Like the idea that you're. You're both teams are almost stretched thin, right? Because you have to kind of be everywhere. And I think this is a trend we're seeing across the sector right now in general is this idea that, you know, students are digital natives. They were born with a phone in their hand, in front of them. They were born kind of almost with this, with a screen in front of them. And there are certain things that they block out and will completely notice or not pick up on. And then there are other things that they are really interested in, they do really want to engage with. 07:34 Sharlyn, Content Strong I wonder if that knowledge or that I guess, change in the way students behave when it comes to getting information and when it comes to making those almost enrollment decisions are impacting your strategy in any way. 07:49 Brian Hodges Oh, very much so. When we have to take stock on what we are capable, what we have, what we can do, what we're capable of doing. 07:58 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 07:58 Brian Hodges I know for, for Bradley, we just don't have the staff to do all those different things, not only on the admission side, but also on the marketing side, communication side. So a lot of institutions, including ours, have to work with third party vendors and they have to help us with our communication plan. They haven't had a start from the ground level as far as we call it top of funnel. So we're reaching out to students. Freshman, sophomore year, we're working with those different vendors to kind of come up with communication plan to hit them early. Maybe not necessarily just talking about Bradley University, especially for younger students, but just helping them. As far as the college search process now, definitely branded with the Bradley Shield and with the red, but we're just more, I would say, educating those students early on. 08:43 Brian Hodges So a lot of institutions will probably have to go that route. I worked at a previous institution where we had the resources, where we had a communications team and our staff that we can handle that in house and come up with a communication plan. I will say most institutions don't fall into that category. So we have to work with, I would say vendors in general and multiple. 09:04 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 09:05 Brian Hodges Vendors. Because we, not every vendor has a different specialty. So you have to work with those different vendors. You have to meet students where they are. And that means you have to, you have to go to a lot of different places and, and hit them in different avenues. So I mean, I, I talk about working with the Benderboard communication plan. We also have vendors that help us when it comes to financial aid optimization. 09:28 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 09:29 Brian Hodges We also have vendors help us when we come to students that are admitted. How do we make sure we're still at the front of mind for those students because they were admitted to other institutions? How do we make sure they're getting the information they need so they can choose our institution? So we work with a lot of different companies, and we are, I won't say spread thin, but we're trying to do a lot of different things to make sure we communicate with students in the best way possible for them. 09:54 Sharlyn, Content Strong I'm gonna. You just raised a question in my mind, and I want to get to it, but I'm gonna wait for the. The next two questions because I think it will really align a little better. But the one thing that does come to mind immediately is, you know, what's been working really well for you, what's been surprisingly successful over these last. These first few months for you, and where are you and your team? Still kind of wrestling with persistent challenges. 10:17 Brian Hodges One thing that I would say definitely helped is we are working with the vendor now to help us with our admitted student communication. We, a lot of us in our leadership role started probably won't say October, as you know, that's well within the cycle already now pretty much being reactive when it comes to trying to get students to apply, prospective students, inquiries to apply to our campus. So were able to sign up with the vendor to help us with our admitted student communication. And I will. It actually showed us how we're communicating with students when they're actually communicating with us, kind of the things that. That are triggering. So we know this student is really interested in our campus and the group of students that are interested in how we communicate with those particular students. 11:05 Brian Hodges We also know students that might have been admitted, but they either haven't received the communication in a while or. Or they haven't communicated with us. So we now know those students maybe aren't as gauged as they used to be. How do we communicate with those students to make sure that you get them back into where they're truly interested. So the biggest thing we did, and I think that had really worked and gave us a lot of good data, is how we communicate with our admitted students. And that kind of give us a shine a light on these things are working. These things are not working. These are students that have a higher probability of coming to our campus. These students have a lower probability. How do we communicate with them so they can get into that next category. 11:47 Brian Hodges So that's probably one of the biggest things we've done. I'll say the group it was enroll ML that actually helped us with communicating with our admitted students. 11:59 Sharlyn, Content Strong Great. So that's good. So that means you're able to figure out what's working well and really having those metrics aligned back to that. And I'm going to talk about metrics in a second. Where, where are you still finding some challenges? What's kind of, you know, grinding your gears still? 12:14 Brian Hodges I would say our biggest issue is just being in the state of Illinois, to be totally honest with you. We, we have a strong recruitment base not only in Peoria, which is our local territory, but. 12:25 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 12:25 Brian Hodges But in the Chicago land area. So that's Chicago, the neighboring counties, these suburbs surrounding Chicago. And the issue is that everybody recruits Chicago. Besides, I think outside of New Jersey, Illinois is the number two exporter of students. And that's mostly in the Chicago main area. And even with the enrollment cliff coming and having less number of students in Illinois and in Chicago, that's still a hotbed of students as far as numbers are concerned. And that's where we get a nice amount of our students. And because the number of students are decreasing even though Chicago is still a hotbed, we are struggling recruiting those Chicago land students. So because everybody's recruiting from the same pool and the schools are doing well, obviously the Ivy Leagues and the land grant public institutions are doing well, but everybody else is now pulling from those students. 13:21 Brian Hodges And I'm curious now what's going to happen and you want to go down this route or not? The having with international students. 13:28 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 13:29 Brian Hodges If that number, that student population is decreasing, then those big public schools are going to start trying to supplement that student number with in state and out of state students and that's going to pull away from schools like Bradley. So that's probably where my concern, the biggest concern is right now. 13:50 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's interesting. I mean, I, I've been, as, you know, I've been having a lot of these conversations with different institutions. And you know, one individual I had a conversation with is actually not directly an institution. He's, you know, he works with international students and he works with connecting, you know, universities with international students. And you know, he talked about just the climate shift and how it is actually impacting the attractiveness of certain institutions to bring in that, you know, foreign investment from international students. So it's interesting that you pinpoint that as well. Well, you mentioned metrics at one point and I do want to ask you generally what data points are kind of helping you stay grounded, especially as you juggle, you know, the short term results and the long term goals. How are you kind of measuring whether your new strategies are working? 14:37 Brian Hodges Well, I, there's been a lot of conversations about the funnel and it's, it's still a part of what we do as far as prospective students, inquiries, applicants, admits, enroll. I think that's still a metric that has probably changed over the last few years, but it's not going away anytime soon. I think one of the biggest things that we, I would say, institutions are really thinking about is not just, I won't say cookie cutter, just trying to get as many inquiries as possible so they can get the number of applicants. Applicant number is important, but the type of inquiries are probably more important. Say this, we need to purchase this number so we can have this in our. In our pool so those students can apply to our campus. That's not necessarily the case anymore. Especially with the advent of common app and coalition. 15:28 Brian Hodges Students can apply to as many different programs as they want to, and they might not necessarily complete or do the next step to complete those applications. So now we have applications in our pool. Those students really never had the wherewithal. Not wherewithal, but the gumption to move forward and finish the application because they're just applying to multiple schools. So students have to be a little more forward thinking about the type of inquiries that we are actually receiving. Are those students truly interested in how are we using that data? How are other vendors using that data to make sure we're getting the right type of students in our inquiry pool? Everything is not getting reduced by a bunch of numbers. 16:11 Brian Hodges That has definitely changed what I've seen over the last few years, that we have to be smarter and a little more strategic about how we. How we add inquiries to our pool so we can get the right number of inquiries that make sure they translate into the applicants that we want or students that want to apply through our campus. So that's. So that data actually makes sense so we can get the admins and hopefully the enrollment number that our institutions are looking for. 16:39 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. So. And you're not, once again, not the first person to talk about this, but this idea that the analysis of the metrics is really important and tying it back to the strategy because it's a longer. It's a longer process than just looking at the numbers. You need to understand what they mean and what that actually means in terms of your entire sales cycle. And for a lot of institutions is, you know, a sales cycle compared to a small business. For example, the sales cycle is. Is a longer process. You may have multiple touch points with them before you get them to the point of, you know, they're applying and they're here, and what does their retention look like and what is. So it's a. It's kind of a bigger picture thing. And I can see that as well. 17:13 Sharlyn, Content Strong And in the way you talk about your metrics, what are you thinking about over the next 12, 6 to 12 months? Like what looking at your next year's cycle, you know, what are the big changes or improvements you hope to kind of put in place? And that's either internally or even, you know, externally with prospective students or internally. 17:31 Brian Hodges With your team Right now, internally. What was interesting when we first started, when I first got in to this role in October, again were being really reactive, right? We're trying to make sure we're getting things we need done for this particular class. And we kept having our to do list, like in the summer we're going to start doing these things. Well, guess what, it is now the summer. And that list is pretty long. And we are, we have to figure this stuff out pretty much by, in some cases July 1, in other cases August 1. And so probably the biggest thing that we're doing now is coming up with a, a consistent communication plan again, working with our vendors to kind of come up with that. And so that's where our biggest plan are happening. That's where our meetings are right now. 18:22 Brian Hodges How are we going with communication plan with our vendors? So we're not only recruiting students for the 27 and 28 cycle starting early on, but how are we getting in front of these soon to be seniors for this next 26 cycle. And by doing it this way, it really is going to help us be a lot more proactive when it comes to how we communicate with our students. So that's happening. Also, we're going to start working with our admissions counselors about the supplemental communication that we're working on. Because we're a medium sized institution in Illinois, our councils are right in the heart of their territory. They know their territory in and out. 19:04 Brian Hodges So they have their own communication plan to reach out to those students that they've met with not only on visits, but high school visits, college fairs or any other, say essay workshops or search workshops that they're working in. So we want to make sure we're not duplicating efforts. So we'll have our own, our big picture communication plan. And then we're going to work with our staff to have a communication plan for their particular territory and make sure it kind of falls under, I will say, our guideline and our principles. So we're all saying a very similar message, a consistent message, but also is very specific and nuanced to their Particular territory and their students. So all that right now is happening during our summer, our summer time frame. 19:50 Sharlyn, Content Strong And Right. 19:51 Brian Hodges You would, you would, you kept having these conversations throughout the year was like the summer we'll do all this. And now it's the summer it is here. And I thought my calendar was going to be free, but I guess there's no such thing as a summer anymore in higher education. 20:03 Sharlyn, Content Strong There's no such thing. 20:05 Brian Hodges Yeah. And I think, yeah, I said this to my staff. If I'm doing my job right, the busy time is going to be the summer for me. And then make sure you have everything you need. So when the travel starts, you know exactly what the game plan is for the next school year. 20:21 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. So that's the kind of thing that I do all the time. That long term communications planning and then the segmented pieces of how you can carry piece of that, you know, objective over here and what the rollout would be over there and over here. So I completely understand what you're saying. That's exactly what it is that I do. I think about, I think about what kind of what some of your specific goals are more like. I wonder what some of your specific goals are. So it sounds to me like you're doing a lot of outreach, a lot of almost personalized customized outreach to the different segments that you have within your, you know, within your ecosystem. Is that right? Is that, is that what you would say like your big, your tailored goals are? 21:04 Brian Hodges Yeah, I would say so. I mean the communication is a huge part of that. I mean we have our enrollment goals. I think school like ours, we want more students. And I guess probably one of the biggest things that we're trying to get have a mindset change is that as institution we need to stop thinking about just first year students. I think every institution that's, I mean everybody's trying to get the big number of first year students. We gotta get to a point where not only we think about first year students, we're thinking about transfer students and we're thinking, and like I said earlier about graduate being. This is the first time it really incorporated graduate recruitment in enrollment management or admissions within Bradley. 21:40 Brian Hodges All that needs to play, I want to say equal part, but it needs to be people should be talking about all three of those different instances rather than just for my first year. So yeah, first year transfer, graduate, the international part plays into that. We do have an online, robust online program not only for transfer students, but for graduate students as well. All that plays a role and it should Be the forefront of everything that we do as far as how we recruit students in those instances. 22:09 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's really interesting, I think. I mean, I think it's first of all smart that you identify that there is an opportunity that not only looking at the first time undergraduate students coming in, really realizing that there is more of a market for transfer students, graduate students, international students coming in, and how you market or communicate with them so that they understand the value of your particular institution and your brand. I've been having a lot of conversations about the value of higher ed as a whole generally. I wonder if any of that comes into play with you and kind of what you're doing in terms of enrollment, in terms of storytelling, about Bradley, in terms of positioning. Do you have anything to say about that? 22:48 Brian Hodges Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I know we've had conversations about the value of higher ed and. 22:54 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 22:54 Brian Hodges New students truly understand that value or they still carry in the same esteem as they used to. And I guess first thing I think about me, I feel like I'm an educator and an advocate. I want you to come to my institution. I hope you feel like you're good fit for the institution. But I want students to think about what the next step is after, say, high school or after going to a community college, if it's a trade school, if it's a community college, you get the applied. So an applied science degree, or if it's going to a point where you're going to graduate, you want to go for a bachelor's degree. 23:29 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 23:30 Brian Hodges I would love to have that conversation for students to think about that next step because college is not for everyone, but also depends on what that particular student wants. So I hope when I'm talking to students, or I hope when I'm in my mindset and trying to map out strategically what we want to do as institution that's at the forefront. What are we putting in front of students to make sure this is the best fit for them and being honest with those students about, okay, this is what you want. We're probably not the best fit. Have you thought about other. Other instances in other places? I was at an essay workshop earlier this week, and I was with four other institutions and were having conversations that like, yes, we compete with each other, but we're also colleague and friends. 24:16 Brian Hodges So if we're talking about our institutions and you're not the right fit, I can lead you or point you to someone else, another institution that might be the right fit in the end A lot of the things that we do are trying to help students figure out what that next step will be. And that's where I feel like my role as an advocate, as an educator is to get those students hopefully, towards the next step. I'm not sure if I answer your question. 24:43 Sharlyn, Content Strong You did. I. No, I think you. No, I think you did. I think you did answer the question. And I think you. You know, you touched on something that I've been having more conversations with other people about as well, is this idea of almost partnership in the. Partnership across the sector, right? This. This acknowledgment that it's not. We're not. We're not rivals in the same sense as I think it used to be. It's. There's a. There's an acknowledgement in terms of. We understand the value of higher ed, and we need to figure out, you know, how we can best share, one, the value of our. Of our individual institutions. But two, really understanding the kind of the morality piece of it that, you know, we. 25:20 Sharlyn, Content Strong You want students to come there and have a good experience and have the best experience for them so they could get on with their lives and, you know, find the best careers and whatever the case may be. And, you know, shifting that narrative in itself, I think is. And doing that collectively in partnership with your other, you know, neighboring institutions is an opportunity in itself to really boost your own institution's brand and your own institution's value. So I think I. I think you answered the question because you touched. I think you touched on that piece of it. I always ask this question about the magic wand, and that's, you know, if I give you the magic wand and you can instantly snap your fingers, wave it, whatever, and, you know, fix one major challenge that you're having right now in your institution. 26:04 Sharlyn, Content Strong Institution, what would you change first and why? 26:09 Brian Hodges That's a good question. That's a good question. I. I would. I'm thinking about this for my institution, but probably a lot of others that might fall into this category. If I may wave a magic one, I will make the financial decision. Not a huge part of the next step as far as going to college. 26:30 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 26:30 Brian Hodges Because I talk to a lot of students where this is the right fit for them, but unfortunately, that cost is a little bit high, so they're not able to make the decision. I have a. I have a niece who is thinking about college right now, and were having conversations, and one institution she talked about was. Was glowing, and she loved every bit of it. And then I asked, like, so where are you thinking we want to go? And she was going to choose the local college because of the price tag. I said, well, tell me why you're interested in that particular local college. And you can tell just by violating. Her shoulders slumped, got her head to the side. She wasn't really smiling. Like that part right there. How can we change the cost of our institution? So that's not a huge factor. 27:18 Brian Hodges So they can. So students can truly make a decision. I want to come here because this is the right fit. Fit for me right where I'm. This is my, this is an academic fit. This is the social fit, the financial fit, hopefully is going to be there, but it's like much lower. How can we find a way to make things more affordable? So that is not the deciding factor of the institution. And I hope in knowing that, I hope students really make a decision what's best for them. What's best for their pockets or their parents pockets. They make a decision that's going to be right for them. 27:49 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's a good answer. It's a broad answer. It's one of those like, ideal answers, like I wish we could change the world answers. And not in a bad way. In a good. Definitely in a good. Definitely in a good way. I think about, you know, bringing it a little bit closer to home for you though. Is there, is there something that you could, if I could give you that magic wand and you could change it and it could impact your day to day or it could impact, you know, and maybe it is that. Maybe it's a messaging thing. 28:18 Sharlyn, Content Strong Maybe it's a, it's, you know, a way that you market your institution to students so that they're able to find more connections to, you know, financial aid or they're able to, you know, find their way around the finance piece and still boost, you know, your, maybe even your institution up as like the choice for them. 28:38 Brian Hodges Well, I think it, I mean, were talking a lot about this. I feel like it comes back to communication. Communication. How do we, how can we as an institution communicate, I want to say, if it's better or clear to students. And you touched on a little bit like we're trying to lean more into storytelling rather than facing facts and giving you, giving students a bunch of bullet points. What's going to connect with that student? And I was previous institution, we used to do presentations and they were anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour long. And we're just regurgitating information. And one of the things that made us Change actually two things. One was at the pandemic and we really were everybody's losing staff. So we had to figure out, how are we going to maintain this admissions office. And we leaned into our students. 29:33 Brian Hodges And one reason we leaned into our students was because the surveys were telling us they really enjoyed visiting and talking to students. So we shortened our presentation. We, we taught our, I guess, seniors and interns. The, the presentation were based on their stories. We had, we had guidelines for them, but it was based on their information, their stories. And we pretty much. The visit was about visiting students, seeing current students, and at the same time seeing the campus as a whole. And that kind of changed the narrative. It changed the visit and changed the mindset. And now as far as how we communicate with students, how do we get how or protective students, how do we get them in front of our students? They're our greatest storyteller. They're our best selling point. And a lot of that's with storytelling. 30:25 Brian Hodges If it's videos, if it's just in a short blurb in the email, our students have done this with a picture or something like that. How do we get them? How we get current or recruiting our respective students to see our current students in a more robust, brighter life. And also a short amount of time. If we do anything longer than a few, a minute or two, they're not going to look at it. Of course, we give them past a paragraph or two, they're not going to read anything. Email. So yes, has to be quick, concise and informative. 30:58 Sharlyn, Content Strong I think that's a, I think that's a really good, great note and a note that I'm seeing once again across the board is this idea that, you know, you're trying to reach out to students. Students need to see themselves in your institution. It can't be the institutional leaders. Students need to see themselves there. And the best way to do that is by engaging with other students who are there. So I think that's a powerful, powerful storytelling tool. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you want to tell me that I didn't ask you about or that you're like, I really wanted to share this thing before we close. 31:32 Brian Hodges I really enjoy what I do. I, I've been doing this for a long time. And I got to a point where I felt like I need to stop being in front of the students. I feel like I was getting old. 31:43 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 31:44 Brian Hodges But at the same time, like, I think I talked about the essay workshop. I really enjoyed doing that it kind of reinvigorated me just talking about the college search process, answering questions, asking questions of students so I can hear like what they're thinking. Now I'm at a place where I could do my best to try to remove barriers to access for institutions, for my institution. But in the end, it all comes down to working with students, with families, helping them find their path. And I, when I first got into this, I heard I was going to be doing this either three or 30 years. I don't know that's still the same. People think about the same way because this field. But I know I'm a 30 year person. I'm doing this for as long as I possibly can. 32:31 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's, that's so refreshing and so good to hear. I love to hear things like that. People who are passionate about what it is that they do. I have to say a big thank you. Thanks so much for sharing your time, your experience, your perspective with me today. It's been a really thoughtful and generous conversation. To anybody who listens or watches this, I hope this episode sparked ideas, affirmed your own experiences, or helped you see, you know, any one of your challenges in a new light. If you're a leader in higher ed, you can be in communications or marketing or advancement or enrollment, whatever, and you want to contribute to this evolving conversation, I would love to hear from you because ideally we're going to co create a really great roadmap for the future of our field. So let's get to work. 33:09 Sharlyn, Content Strong Thanks so much again, Brian. 33:11 Brian Hodges Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation. It was awesome.