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 super excited to continue diving into the trends and the challenges encountered by communications and marketing leaders in higher ed. And I am honored to welcome Kylan Alford Winfield to the hot seat today. Kylan is the vice president for enrollment management at Jackson State University, where he leads the institution strategy for attracting, enrolling, and retaining students. As a senior administrator, he oversees integrated enrollment services and collaborates across campus to drive access, student success and long term institutional growth. Thank you so much for bringing your expertise to this conversation today. How are you doing? 04:57 Kylon Alford-Windfield Well, and thank you so much for having me. 05:00 Sharlyn, Content Strong Yes, I'm so excited to have you here today. So, you know, I gave a little bit of a spiel as to what it is that you do, but set the context for me. A. Tell me about your role leading enrollment and how it kind of aligns with the university's broader strategic goals. 05:16 Kylon Alford-Windfield Well, so basically you gave a good overview. My, my definition might be a little more simpler. So I'm the chief enrollment officer for the university, Jackson State University. But I, I would like to say my ultimate goal is to provide access to higher education. 05:31 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay. 05:32 Kylon Alford-Windfield And so that includes several services that a student must encounter to get enrolled with the university and also make sure that student remains enrolled and is successful during their tenure here at the university and that they go on to get good jobs and utilize the things and the skills they used at Jackson State. So I guess in simple form, I don't want to get into all the technical things that we do. I'm pretty sure we'll get to some of that later in the conversation. But I like to say that I'm one that I'm the main advocate for college access. 06:03 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's, you know what, that's a really great way to put it. And I love the fact that, you know, one of the things you said, not everyone says this, but this just the idea that you are retaining students and making sure that they get the jobs right. Really speaking to the value of what an institution is supposed to provide. You know, thinking about that and thinking about some of the conversations I've been having kind of across this sector. What significant changes are you kind of observing in higher education right now, whether it's enrollment or whether it's, you know, broader. And how are you guys kind of adapting to some of those shifts? 06:40 Kylon Alford-Windfield Well, some of the changes and I won't get into, I am working at a public institution, but there's a large portion of government involvement. Although we're a public school, we're seeing involvement at a level that we haven't seen before. And it may affect the faculty side a little bit more than the practitioner side. But I'm seeing that in the landscape, even in how we do our, how we admit students, whether it's merit based, that type of thing. So. And that's not just at my institution, but that's what I'm seeing across the spectrum. And then Also, the relevancy of a college degree is another big discussion that I particularly face when marketing and trying to allure students to attend college or attend Jackson State University. 07:28 Sharlyn, Content Strong You know, I think you touched on two very big things there. And one is the value piece of higher education. Like everyone is talking about that because I think it's really being challenged publicly right now. But the other piece of what you said is just once, really once again, this idea of the relevancy of a degree and how it's impacting, you know, what you do in terms of marketing and what you do in terms of storytelling to attract students. Tell me a little bit more about that. What does that mean for you in your day to day and how are you kind of overcoming that challenge? 08:01 Kylon Alford-Windfield So it's a great challenge. So if you notice, Jackson State serves as a high population, majority black students and nationally we have a low rate of African American males attending college. So what we're doing strategically is getting on the platforms they're on. We have a big push, a strong push for social media engagement. If you look at our university's page, we have a large social media imprint. And then also we're doing the same thing in the enrollment management space. So I've actually created a department of Strategic Enrollment Communications. So they communicate with our current students, but also they create a lot of the marketing collateral and digital content for recruiting new students. 08:40 Kylon Alford-Windfield And so we've been getting some great engagement for that and making sure that all of our platforms, whether it's an application for an event or to attend the school to make sure that everything that we put out is mobile friendly. So what we're noticing, if we're using platforms like a constant contact where we're doing email marketing, we can see that we're seeing the volume of individuals that's opening their email from a mobile device is increasing and so wanting to be in front of that student at all times. And one thing that a student has most of the time, if not always, is a phone in their hand. And so that's one thing that we're being knowledgeable of human behavior. And that's been a great thing for us. And we're seeing some quantifiable data that's showing that they were doing a good job at it. 09:26 Sharlyn, Content Strong I'm glad you talk about the data because my, I mean, one of my questions, and I am jumping the gun a little bit, but one of my questions is always, you know, about metrics. What are you following? What Are you, what are you looking at? What are you tracking in terms of metrics, but also connecting it back to your outcomes. Right. Like I, obviously you're in enrollment. So a big goal is looking at your enrollment numbers. But when we talk about, you know, universities and colleges, sometimes the lead time to get somebody to apply and then enroll is so long, like they start looking at your website, you know, a year or two out, sometimes longer to really get a feel of what your culture is and so on before they make that next step. 10:05 Sharlyn, Content Strong What does that mean to you in terms of metrics and tracking? And what are you looking at? 10:09 Kylon Alford-Windfield Well, we're looking at a number of things. So we can go as is recent. And I say recent. It's one, when a student, when they make up their mind, looking at those enrollment deposits, another thing that I look at more so in the fall than I do the spring and spring I'm looking at deposits in the fall. I'm pretty much gauging our applicant pool. So as you know, we have a recruitment or enrollment funnel. So I want to do is get as many applications as possible. And what I would do is simple statistics. The more applications I get, the higher the probability that I'm going to yield more students. And so I don't necessarily have to change my yield rate if I increase the amount of applications that I'm bringing in. So that's been my strategy this year. 10:55 Kylon Alford-Windfield And we are doing some things and working with some third party organizations to help us increase our year rate. But this year the key word that I use with my team was volume, volume with our applications. And some of the things that we're doing to drive that applications are driving those numbers for students to apply are some of our recruitment events, also the marketing that we're getting back into as well. And like you mentioned, it's a long, drawn out process. And I would not sit here and say wait till the students are their senior year. 11:30 Kylon Alford-Windfield So what we're doing in the space, those that are doing it the right way, we're tackling those students as early as possible, getting information on those students and acquiring parent information and starting to market to those students so by the time they become a senior, they have formed an affinity or a knowledge base of your institution before their senior year. And we do know we have those students that'll discover you their senior year or they've heard of you and they start to look into your school. But one of the things we like to engage Them earlier on as soon as they get to high school, if not earlier. 12:06 Sharlyn, Content Strong Yeah, I love that. I and I think it's an effective strategy because we're seeing, we see a lot of institutions do that really the K to 12 journey and pushing all the way directly that kind of pipeline into your school. So you talked a little bit about strategies there. I mean, I wonder if there are any additional strategies you kind of want to lean into or talk to a little bit more in terms of what have been the most effective for you and then versus what are things that you found kind of particularly challenging. 12:36 Kylon Alford-Windfield So there have been a number of strategies. One thing that we did when I first got to Jackson State, we did an lrap, a loan payment assistance program. And so were the first HBCU in the country and the only schools in Mississippi to offer an lrap. And we saw some great results from that. And so what the LRAP does is it makes a promise. I look at it as insurance for a parent and a student that if your student graduates from our institution and they make below a certain threshold, they can be 50, 60, $40,000, whatever that school says. If they make below that, we'll assist them in paying their student loans back until they reach require acquire a job that pays more than that. So we've got some good feedback from that. 13:23 Kylon Alford-Windfield And that actually drove a lot of our applications in the program. It was a great program for us and it was research based. R and L conducted research that shows that families are more likely to choose an institution that offers an LRAP in comparison to one that doesn't. So that's been a good strategy for us again, constant communication. Like I said, I developed the Office of Strategic Communication. So now the student isn't just receiving an automated message from a CRM from us. Now they're getting catered messaging. Depending on where they are in the funnel. They're constantly seeing something on social media and even on the social. I say like one small thing that we got some major feedback was decision days are big, not just in athletics. 14:11 Kylon Alford-Windfield So that's a national thing where students make announcements on social media at the high schools where they're planning on attending college. So we did a thing where we said hey you guys, send us your decision day photos when we posted it on our outlet. And so that did some good numbers. And then also our in person events. I can't get, can't stress enough that physical touch. Although our students are much different now, you see there Were days where hanging out on the yard. Now they're in the dorm rooms or the residence halls so the student is different. But that face to face interaction, that has been awesome for us. So we've done a number of events, what we call our bus tours where we bus the band, the president, the cheerleaders and several other student groups to various cities and across the country. 15:02 Kylon Alford-Windfield And the events last for about an hour. But they get a glimpse into their student life on their campus, at their high schools, what it means to be a Jackson State Tiger. And I think that's very important. And one thing, what I preach to a lot of people is that all of our schools that are accredited, they're pretty much accredited by the same accrediting or governing bodies. And so the big thing that we're seeing selling to the student now is brand. And so like we mentioned before, acquiring that data on the students and starting to market to them earlier, you are selling brand. And that's what the student ultimately is purchasing. And we know that some schools have catered academic offerings that other schools don't offer. But for the most part, especially those liberal arts institutions, we're really selling brand. 15:54 Kylon Alford-Windfield Even if you ask a student why they decided price point is one thing, but brand is one of the biggest things that I'm noticing when a student is deciding to attend the university or college is based on their brand and how it's established. And that brand isn't just marketing, that brand is, I use how they're greeted when they come for a visit on your campus. So that's another big thing that we've been pushing is that JSU brand that we're seeing some great numbers from right now. 16:23 Sharlyn, Content Strong I love that because I think, you know, we talk so much about the value of higher education, the value of spending that dollar to get of, you know, to do more than read a book. What you're doing is you're selling experience and you're selling reputation. And that experience coupled with that reputation is what they take and they take it elsewhere out into the workforce. And they say, well, I had this experience, I have this hands on ability and I have, you know, backed up by this education. This makes me qualified, worthwhile, you know, able to do X, Y and Z profession or job. And I think, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head there. What about challenges? What chat? So you said a lot of things are working really to building that experience. 17:07 Kylon Alford-Windfield Yeah, yeah, we've had some major challenges. Of course the enrollment clip is one that the dreaded enrollment clip that everybody speaks on. So that's been a challenge. But I look at that for a school like Jackson State, one of the larger HBCUs in the nation, out of 100 or so HBCUs, we're one of the larger. But I look at the enrollment cliff as an opportunity for us. Now if we look at the demographic data of the enrollment cliff from white students, aging students, and even Hispanics, even, even the black students all experienced a decrease. But the black students, that area, that birth rate did not decrease that much slightly. So I would go on the line and say it remained Constant. And about 90%, 85% of our total student population is predominantly African American. 18:03 Kylon Alford-Windfield So those were some good, those are some good metrics for us. But one of the challenges too, with the specific demographic of student that we serve is a large population of them are what I would consider low income, Pell eligible students. So about 65 to 67% of our students, our total student population would be considered low income. So with the rising cost of college, that has been posed various challenges. So those students, that Pell grant money that they're getting from the federal government doesn't go as far as it used to in the past. And I've seen even more discussion if we get politics involved more where there's conversation of decreasing the amount of Pell grants offered to students as well. So fiscally that's been a major challenge for us. 18:56 Kylon Alford-Windfield And also space, we have limited residential space, and so we've had to work with outside vendors to house some of our students and that incurred a larger bill for our students. So we assisted where we could. But I think finance has been a major struggle for us. And one of the things that we are doing strategically is actually diversifying our student body as well. You know, that's a difficult conversation. And I'm speaking diversity. And it's not necessarily racial diversity, social economic diversity. So now we, although we may remain true to that mission to educate all students that attend. And we know that we service a lot of at risk students, low income students, and it doesn't define them intellectually. So we have some brilliant minds. This is just something that's outside of their control. 19:52 Kylon Alford-Windfield But also, you know, offsetting that and being fiscally responsible, but offsetting that with getting students that come from a higher income to help us meet our fiscal goals as well. So it's been a challenge, but I think that we've been navigating it rather well. But it's a slow Process, nothing that we plan on doing overnight. But that housing in residence life piece and having limited space has really posed these challenges because the students we serve don't necessarily have the means to get an apartment on their own. 20:25 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 20:25 Kylon Alford-Windfield And so they depend on being housed on campus. And so that's been a major challenge for us that we're fighting every day, if you will. 20:35 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's actually a very interesting challenge that I haven't heard in any of my conversations yet. But I think it speaks to a few things for me because it speaks to, you know, this desire really to support students, but this other desire to continue to, I don't know, engage or provide that student experience is a different thing. When a student is on, physically on campus, in campus, living within it. And, and that is part of their student experience. And I can imagine it's probably part of your storytelling from a marketing perspective as well. And I wonder, you mentioned, you know, doing a little bit more outreach and a little bit more targeting to that student that does maybe come from a more affluent family or you know, have a little bit more means. 21:18 Sharlyn, Content Strong Does that impact your, you know, the way you talk about your brand, the way you talk about the Jackson State experience at all? 21:26 Kylon Alford-Windfield Well, I think we keep it rather consistent. Believe it or not, the Jackson State experience is one like none other. So the messaging is rather consistent. Consistent. It's just the placement of the messaging, what I would say would be the differentiating thing. So the message is rather consistent. I won't say that they get anything special that the next student doesn't do. And I would say we've increased spending in our recruitment efforts. So if you ever seen any of my social media, Instagram, I post some on LinkedIn physical printed collateral like for example, our acceptance ladder, made a video about it. But a lot of work with our marketing commission, marketing and communications team went into it. So it's a rather expensive piece but you're getting that high end piece to those students, those affluent students. 22:14 Kylon Alford-Windfield But also our lower income students or middle class students are receiving that same piece and so they get the same messaging. But it's now placement. Now we're disseminating it to a different group of students that wouldn't necessarily receive it or be interested in Jackson State. And we want to show them that hey, you can get that same degree and even a better experience here at Jackson State University. So that's kind of how we've been navigating, getting in front of some areas where we haven't been and there's pockets across the country. When we're looking at who we're marketing to. If you look, I would say the HBCUs in the country, it kind of forms a J. It starts in the northeast and it comes down the east coast and down southwest. It makes a little J. 23:05 Kylon Alford-Windfield But saying that, to say that a lot of areas in the country don't have a lot of HBCUs. So there are students, regardless of their race, black, white, biracial, that don't necessarily know about HBCUs. 23:24 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 23:25 Kylon Alford-Windfield And you have some that know about them, but they don't have access to them because it's not necessarily where we're located. Now you, for example, the whole state of California, really, the whole west coast, there, there aren't any HBCUs there. And so I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, so there are any. So it's several states that don't have HBCUs. And so getting in front of those students, once they get the literature and they form some interest, now we want to get them to campus so that they can experience that. We're going to provide you a world class education, but also a student life experience that you wouldn't necessarily get anywhere else. And so that's just an example of trying to get in front of those students that don't necessarily have the access to them or the knowledge. And these same students, if you will. 24:18 Kylon Alford-Windfield And it's not a bad thing, it's just circumstance. These same students go their whole life, from the time they start K12, from kindergarten to 12th grade. They may have not encountered an individual, whether a teacher or a counselor that has attended an HBCU or even has knowledge of an hb. And so we have to get in front of those students as well. So I take myself personally, I'm not a recruiter anymore, but I'm always recruiting. But I take several trips throughout the year to California. I may not necessarily speak to students, but I may speak to some counselors or meet with alums in certain areas to tell them about the school and disseminate certain information to them so that they can help advocate and spread that message and make. 25:07 Kylon Alford-Windfield But, and I'll say we in that circuit, the HBCU circuit, there is a market for it. So we are in competition with other HBCUs. But one thing that I'm constantly mindful of is at Jackson State, that's not just our competition. And I think this is a challenge now. I'm not just competing with the other HBCUs nationally, I'm competing with, really every school in the nation. And so when we look at that demographic, and I guess this could be a little edgy or unspoken, when we look at that demographic, Cliff, as I mentioned, the black students kind of remained constant. Their birth rate of black kids remained constant. It didn't drop as much as that white student demographic when we look at the enrollment clip. And so now what I'm seeing in the circuit, and I don't recruit, but I keep my. 25:57 Kylon Alford-Windfield My boots on the ground, as they say. And so I identify as a sociologist, so I'm very observant. And so what I'm finding now is some of our predominantly black cities, whether it's a rural area or if it's an urban area, where certain schools in the past would not have sent recruiters or disseminated resources to. To that area. Now. Now they are sending resources to the area. In the past, you might have had some technical colleges, community colleges, a few HBCUs there, and you wouldn't have a West Point there. You may just have the National Guard. Right. You know, so now the dynamic shift. The shift is different now. Now everybody is vying for these students that once were overlooked. 26:51 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 26:52 Kylon Alford-Windfield Where HBCUs were a safe haven, and were internally in the HBCU space, competing for their market share. And now a large portion of the higher landscape is vying for the same. 27:08 Sharlyn, Content Strong Your same population. 27:10 Kylon Alford-Windfield Yes, for lack of terms. And so. And, you know, we. And that's. That's a great thing. I look at it as a great thing for the students. So now they have more access and exposure. But that does pose challenges for institutions that primarily serve service those students. 27:27 Sharlyn, Content Strong Yeah, yeah. I mean, the first thing that came to mind, as you were saying that was a few things. One, I mean, that's. That's an opportunity for you, right? Because, you know, if I were in your shoes, I'd be thinking about how can I continue to promote that. We were the constant. Right. We've always been here for you, and we've always been able to provide this, you know, higher standard of education to get you where you need to go. I think that does something particularly for, you know, that population in this particular climate. I will leave that there. You're picking up what I'm saying. I know you're picking it up, but the other thing is, you know, I've been having a lot of conversations with. 28:04 Sharlyn, Content Strong With other institutions, and, you know, a lot of people are talking about this idea of kind of cross partnership, you Know, across even, you know, their own, beyond their own institution, working with other institutions to spread a specific message. Like I had a conversation with someone having a similar conversation about, you know, community colleges and just changing the perspective perception of what community colleges could. Could provide. And I think, you know, you've touched on something there as well, is, you know, across all HBCUs, changing that perspective, that perception of. Of what an HBCU can provide and who they can provide it to and for. And it does go beyond what I think was initially useful. But now in this day and age can be a little limiting. Right. So I think it's a very interesting point. 28:54 Sharlyn, Content Strong I think about now, you know, the next six to 12 months. What are your primary goals or your. For the upcoming year in terms of enrollment? In terms of, you know, just about everything, actually, I bring it a little broader. What are your big six to 12 months goals? 29:08 Kylon Alford-Windfield I guess by. In most recent, I'll tell you, we've remodeled our orientation model. So we've instituted an enrollment fee that has been really successful for us. And so when I first came, I was like, wow, we're just playing Russian roulette with our enrollment. We really didn't know who was coming. We had a generic intent to enroll for them and anybody could fill it out. And now we've instituted that. That enrollment deposit. So we're seeing some good metrics for me. And so I'm eager to see how this class develops for the fall. So that's really my main focus right now is bringing this class in the fall. I am reviewing some data to see where our footprint has grown. And I'm the one that believes in playing into your strengths. 29:59 Kylon Alford-Windfield So the areas, our markets that we're doing rather well in, we'll put more emphasis into it. Even like say the Midwest area, for example, we get a lot of students from there. So even creating new roles and having regional recruiters to be specific for their area so that we're present more. Although we may be seven or 12 hours away, we have someone there constantly and just honing in on our strengths. A lot of. A lot of the work that we did, and I've only been at Jackson State for about a year and six months now. So during that time was laying a lot of the foundation. And now that we have a good foundation laid, I'm looking at building. We've brought in our largest applicant pool in the school's history. So I want to see the. 30:46 Kylon Alford-Windfield That I want to see that grow as well. Now that we have a Winning formula and also help try to work on increasing that yield rate. One of the things that we're doing now is being proactive. Although I said we did a lot of building with our orientation model and how we enroll our students being proactive. So it's my goal to start actually push up our calendar, our enrollment calendar by a couple months so that a student knows once they make up their mind, they have the ability to pay that enrollment fee and get a schedule probably before the fall semester ends. And so those are some of the things that I'm doing for the next six to eight months, is working on how we can be proactive and build on the foundation that we've established thus far. 31:37 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. I don't want to say it's an ambitious goal because I feel like you could do it. So I'm not going to say it's an ambitious goal. It's a good goal. My final question is always my magic wand question. It's always, you know, if I give you the keys to the kingdom right now, I give you that magic wand and you can wave it in the air and remove one huge major barrier, huge challenge in your way. What would you remove and what would that mean for, you know, your team, your ecosystem? 32:04 Kylon Alford-Windfield Are you talking barrier for the students or barrier for you? 32:08 Sharlyn, Content Strong Barrier for you and your role in your job. We know what the barrier for students is. Money. 32:13 Kylon Alford-Windfield Yeah, that may be a barrier for. 32:15 Sharlyn, Content Strong Me. 32:19 Kylon Alford-Windfield But I would say that's a shared barrier. One of the things with resources and I'll touch on the students, if I had a magic wand, I would make higher education free. I know that I've seen some institutions that are playing around with it, but again, to be able to do that, you have to have money. And so that would really help my team if I could make it, make that education free. Because we know from any form of data that higher education increases the students social mobility. And also with that money, we can provide more resources. The team could expand an area where I may have two people working on a particular subject matter. I may be able to have 10 doing it. 33:12 Kylon Alford-Windfield So the financial barrier would be a major thing that if I could wave a magic wand, I would put money into every area under my purview and also across the university to help us. Because the more resources we have, the more we can be a resource for. For those that we service. 33:31 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, right. That's huge. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you know, you came on the call really hoping that I'd ask you or really hoping you get to mention it. I never got to it. I never thought of it. 33:45 Kylon Alford-Windfield We pretty much covered the basis. It's been a great call. There's some different. I know, I know I threw some curve balls at you with the. With the various nuances that come along with running specific, different types of institutions. And I'm glad that you gave me an opportunity to speak on it, because I know we group all of our institutions together in which we all strive to provide great quality education. But there are certain institutions, whether it's a Hispanic serving or predominantly black or historically black institution, that service underrepresented communities. And I definitely appreciate you for allowing me to be a voice for those individuals that struggle to even get access to higher education and be a voice for institutions that specialize in the great work of being a provider for these individuals. 34:42 Kylon Alford-Windfield And we know that as we provide them a platform to educate them, that increases our workforce nationally. And we have some of the greatest minds in the world that come out of our institutions with limited resources, whether it's from. And a lot of it is, you know, systemic. But we do a great job at it. And I definitely appreciate you for allowing me to have the platform touch on that. 35:09 Sharlyn, Content Strong You appreciate me? I appreciate you. You came on here sharing your time, your experience, your perspective, which I'm so happy you had the chance to share today, because I think you're like, you hit the nail on the head sometimes. You're overlooked unnecessarily. Like you're providing a high quality education and it needs to be talked about and expressed as well. So it really has been such a thoughtful and generous conversation. Thank you so much to all the listeners, all the watchers. I hope this episode sparked ideas, affirmed your own experiences, or helped you see a challenge in a new light. Maybe if you're a communications or marketing leader or a leader in general in higher ed advancement, enrollment, whatever, and you want to contribute to the conversation, I want to hear from you. 35:50 Sharlyn, Content Strong So we, you know, ideally we can build a shared roadmap for the future of our field. Let's get to work. Thanks so much, Kylan. 35:56 Kylon Alford-Windfield Thank you.