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 communications and marketing leaders, and leaders in general in higher ed. And I am honored to welcome Dr. Rick Upchurch to the hot seat today. Rick is the Associate Vice President of E Learning and Educational Innovation at Belhaven University where he leads curriculum and learning systems for more than 3,000 online students with over 25 years in non traditional higher education. 03:56 Sharlyn, Content Strong He's known for driving innovation, writing on AI in education, very important topic right now. And hosting a leadership focused podcast as well. Thank you again so much for bringing your expertise to this conversation. How you doing? 04:08 Rick Upchurch Well, Sherlyn, very nice to meet you and thank you for that introduction. Very nice. 04:12 Sharlyn, Content Strong Good. Wonderful. I've always worried that I miss something that's really relevant or important, which leads me to my first question, which is always a little bit of context, setting. So you could, of course, set me straight to anything that I got wrong. Tell me a little bit about your role at Belhaven and your focus on adult and online learners. How has that kind of shaped the way you approach strategy and innovation in this fast changing house higher ed environment we're in? 04:36 Rick Upchurch Sure. I came into higher education in 1998. I was hired by a small college in southern Ohio to implement their adult degree completion program. I don't know if you remember adult degree completion programs at all. Adultery completion programs allowed working Adults to be able to come back and go to school at night for four hours once a week for at that point, five weeks per course. So anyway, the president of that small college hired me and I discovered an immediate affinity for how higher education works and a passion for helping non traditional students to achieve their academic goals. So that's been the passion of my life, is helping non traditional students reach their academic goals. 05:32 Rick Upchurch While I was there at that small college, I started an online program and then moved to another school in the Midwest to start to work in their adult degree completion program as well, but also started their online program while I was there too, along the way, because those were early days for online programs, figuring out what that looked like, what academic rigor looked like, and all the parts and pieces of that. And I've been here at Belhaven University for the last 11 years. And when I was hired to lead their non traditional on ground campuses, the adult degree completion program. That worked really well up until the pandemic. And the pandemic literally was the death of adult degree completion in the form that were doing it and in the form that most schools were doing it. 06:31 Rick Upchurch So with, since then and during that time frame, my focus has been shifted away from that into working with online programs, specifically dealing initially with faculty as well as curriculum and now focusing almost all of my work in the LMS and the curriculum development here at this university. So kind of have an affinity for it, figure out how things work and what is and what is not viable. 07:06 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's a really interesting background and context you set. And I say that because, I mean, we've seen online, this idea of online groaning learning grow so significantly over the past, you know, 10, 15, I'm gonna, dare I say 20 years, what that's mean, what that means for learners, for teachers, for access. Right. Just the ability to be able to get higher education, to be able to attend a university, to, you know, what that means for families and students all kind of all over the world. You know, you've seen kind of firsthand how the needs of non traditional and online students have evolved in that context. Within what broader shifts are you seeing in the higher ed space and how are they kind of influencing how institutions are serving this particular population? 07:57 Rick Upchurch Yeah, great question. I kind of like to characterize the evolution as becoming more sophisticated, but not necessarily better, if you will, kind of like an individual who may have grown up eating with two utensils, who can learn to deal with the complexity of formal dining experience. And it might mean they've learned or achieved a certain level of sophistication, but it doesn't necessarily mean the final results any different. They're still eating. So what we're doing is much more sophisticated than what we did 20 years ago, in fact, night and day, literally in the whole process of online education. But the sophistication of tools and processes has increased really at a rate that's been nearly impossible to keep track of. 08:52 Rick Upchurch The various student information systems, how they relate to the CRM systems for enrollment, not to mention financial aid and the LMS systems and all of the stuff that goes in with those and their constant race to improve their product and add to their products so they can upsell the university. Boy, there's always that will, can we upsell to the university some other aspect of that? The benefit is huge, but the change has been fast paced and it's becoming more fast paced. Honestly, the amount of changes and the competition is literally fierce. And many of the products are serving niche needs that may or may not fit an institution's need. Some are trying to be the Swiss army knife, you know, where they can do all things for all situations and sometimes not hitting very many of them very well, you know, in the process. 09:55 Rick Upchurch So I think institutional strategy like this, as you ask at the very beginning, is kind of it's affected by three main factors. So for me, perceived need. This is huge. The perceived need of the institution relates to how the students perceive the need. But how the faculty perceive the need, how the institution perceives the need. That need as it is perceived is a driving force in all of the evolution of the online program. It also has to do with return on investment. So that's the second main factor. There is a return on investment. Return on investment is literally, I can have a perceived need, for instance, I perceive a need. And, and I could give you a perfect example. 10:48 Rick Upchurch I perceive a need in the online programs that we have that would have the capability of adding software to be able to check our discussion posts for plagiarism. 11:03 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right? 11:04 Rick Upchurch They do make that software. And, and I know at least one vendor that does that. Right. However, the return on the investment piece has at this point in time made the adding of that particular software not viable for our particular campus. So even though there's a need and even though there's a product, it doesn't turn into being an investment. And then even when you get older, all of those things lined up then it becomes back of which of the products that you select. And all of them have their strengths and weaknesses. A few years ago went through a, a process of selecting a video management system. And we looked at so many Panopto and Kaltura and Yuja being the primary ones, but so many of them, and did the evaluation of all of those to try and determine which one. 11:54 Rick Upchurch And I found a really interesting thing that it isn't always which one because many of them have very similar factors. It's the person who does the recommending. 12:05 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay. 12:06 Rick Upchurch Yeah. My personality comes into that factor nearly as much as. Because whatever one I champion is the one that comes to the table first. So all of that kind of, I think, fits into answering your. Just squat your question here. 12:23 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay. Okay. I like what you talked about there. The one, the, you know, one thing that comes to mind as I, I think about some of the tools you even mentioned there is this idea of really finding and figuring out what the return on investment is. And I think about, you know, the changing landscape of education now, the use of AI, for example. And you know, a lot of thought leaders are thinking about that and talking about that. Things like plagiarism. Right. Students are going to be using AI to do their essays and to ask questions and to get the answers that they need to answer to the questions that they need answered. And the larger question for us in higher education becomes what are we looking for? Are we looking for whether or not they used AI? They're using AI. 13:06 Sharlyn, Content Strong What we should actually be looking for is beyond this idea of plagiarism, but more so the idea of have they used any critical thinking to come back to the table? And that gets to what you talked about, I think, even a little earlier in our discussion with this idea of rigor. Right. Once programs moved from an in person setting and they came online, I'm sure a big huge part of the discussion was are we continuing to ensure that we have academic rigor in our programs? What does that look like now in our current climate? And how are we being able to ensure that students are coming to their academics rigorously and learning what they need to learn and being able to think critically so that they can take that into the real world? 13:48 Rick Upchurch Yeah, no, you're exactly right. That has been such a huge part of trying to make these programs work and to make them work in a responsible way. And, and what you mentioned about students using AI has, you know, the advent of AI. And I know that maybe we'll talk more about this in A little bit. But the advent of AI in since November 2022 has been. It's been like us, an avalanche. Literally. It's. It's felt like an avalanche. You know, it may have started as a snowball at the top, but it's not a snowball any longer. And everything I'm reading, and I read a lot on this particular topic because it's a passion point for me. Students are using it. You're correct. Students are using it, actually more than faculty are using it. Interesting point. 14:41 Rick Upchurch And faculty think they can always spot when it is being used. And. And of course, I say of course. But. But they can't. Not always. In some cases, it's fairly easy. It. I can spot it in some cases. Most people can spot it in some cases, but not in every case. And it's becoming more and more difficult as we go along. So all of those pieces are working together to make what we're doing now probably the most challenging time in my mind in higher education. This is probably one of the most challenging times in higher education that has existed literally in the history even more so than the Internet. This is. This is the most challenging time that higher education is facing. 15:31 Sharlyn, Content Strong So I love when you. I mean, I don't love that you're. This is the most challenging time, but I like the fact that you've pinpointed. So, you know, one of the bigger challenges is how. How are we integrating AI mean for all of us? A lot of people I've been speaking to are talking about the political pressures as well, surrounding, you know, higher education and what that means for our ability to roll out, you know, programs, our ability to really spell out the value of getting a higher education. What's, I think, about what kind of what you're doing specifically in your role right now and in your institution, what's going well right now in terms of, you know, growth or engagement or, you know, your online programs in general. 16:04 Sharlyn, Content Strong And then thinking about the challenge piece there, like, what's been especially difficult for you guys? 16:10 Rick Upchurch Yeah, that. That's, that's really great. We've been working diligently over the last several years to refine our processes, and that has led to significant improvements in efficiency and accuracy. I really can't, I don't know how possible to over emphasize something that is so boring. It's really. It's a really terrible thing. But, but the processes at most institutions are so fragmented and siloed and departmentalized and have so many individual barriers to make them work. I. I've Often sat back and thought to myself, how in the world can higher education even work at all? Literally because of all the different parts and pieces that are pulling at it, seemingly all of them pulling to destroy it and set. And yet somehow it still works together. 17:03 Rick Upchurch And that's what we've done in the last several years, at least in the area where I'm working, is we have worked diligently to try and refine the processes. And I think maybe our biggest friction point was and is our own perceptions. Combating that has been a serious focus on my part and a focus on team dynamics within the curriculum and the LMS teams. We spend time together at extended workshops two or three times a year just discussing those dynamics, personality profiles. I'm a big fan of Lynchoni's working genius material and how that works together with the team and getting everybody in the right seat, on the right bus. Like Jim Collins would say, position description, alignment, all of those parts and pieces. 17:56 Rick Upchurch I've also spent a lot of time focusing on Tasha Urich's material, on focusing on psychological safety for my team so that they can speak up and actually feel free to express their opinions and concerns. And that has really helped us to iron out challenges within our processes so that we can deliver a high quality product. And we are delivering a high quality product. We continue to work out the bugs, if you will, and try and work out the communication pieces. And we've established a few, you know, working models that help us do that. But a lot of it is just the nitty gritty of staying focused on the process. 18:44 Rick Upchurch Most of my job literally isn't so much doing the job as much as making sure that there is no grit in the machinery, there's no dirt cluttering things up, that everything's oiled and working smoothly and that my team has exactly what they need. But we do have sometimes barriers that come from outside, for instance, from the administration or faculty. Sometimes they do raise barriers. They want certain changes made or they don't like certain changes that are being made. Trying to figure out which of those are viable and how we can or can't implement those is part of the job as well. 19:36 Sharlyn, Content Strong Yeah, I kind of, I, I think those are, I mean, they sound like common challenges across the board. Many people I speak to talk about this all the time. This idea of, you know, siloed work and how that impacts, you know, overall internal strategy and, you know, development and vision towards working towards that one goal. So I, you know, I am interested in hearing that it is, once again, kind of, you know, at play in your organization as well. Is there anything else that you think is a barrier directly to your work? 20:11 Rick Upchurch There may not be, you know, not really. I think a lot of that comes down to personality. 20:21 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 20:22 Rick Upchurch And so willingness to. You know, I meet with the deans, I meet with different people. I. I intentionally form relationships that allow me to be able to collaborate, negotiate, and work on problems across the board. Really, those things are kind of crucial as far as beating down barriers. There are barriers. You know, there are silos, but most of the silos can be addressed. I don't know if that's the right word, but they can at least be eased if you can have a working relationship with the people involved. 21:03 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, right. If we think a little bit about something you touched on, or we both touched on earlier, is this idea of, you know, AI and AI exploration. I mean, you mentioned you started. You started kind of exploring AI in your work. I know. I think you do some writing on AI. What excites you about the potential of AI and what kind of hesitations or barriers do you see as you begin to adopt some of these new. These new tools? 21:25 Rick Upchurch Yeah, I am both excited and terrified. I'm just going to be honest with you. I am excited and totally scared to death about what AI is bringing to the table and the fact that it's evolving so quickly. I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to do a presentation at a small conference for very small colleges in. In Southern Ohio, Southern, in Orlando. While I was there talking with them, my presentation was literally about how AI has become, you know, a disruptive force in the. In the higher education market. Well, so here's what we're doing and here's why I think that is a disruptive force. So what we're doing right now is, what we started with is, of course, in October 22nd, you know, I was sitting at. 22:24 Rick Upchurch At lunch with a group of guys, and one of the guys there said, hey, have you heard about something called Chat GPT? This was in November. We were having lunch in November. He said, just came on the news. I tried it. It's. And. And I'm sitting there thinking, if this is true. And it turned out it was. This is going to change everything. Everything, everything. And literally it has been changing everything since. So we have. We do not have at this point in time, an enterprise version at our institution for AI we are all using, except for a few people who have their own personal accounts. Most of us are using free versions. You know, I have my own personal account, but the school's not paying for that. Some people may have school paid for accounts, I don't know. 23:13 Rick Upchurch But, but most of us are using free versions of AI. But we did manage to run into a partnership with a, an AI company called Axio AI. Axio AI. And this particular acts, this particular AI is very educational format. In other words, it's not a really good AI to use. If you want to dump a lot, dump some spreadsheets into it and ask it to do analysis. It's not what that's for, but it's an educational one. So instead of asking it to answer, what's the answer? If I post my question here, how can I get answer that I can cut and paste into a assignment? It doesn't really do that. It begins to talk with you and try to help you understand. So it's very interactive Socratic and so it does that. 24:03 Rick Upchurch So we were, we came across this company, we've got a good relationship with them. The, the founder, Mark Knopfel, super guy, has worked with us extensively and we initially tried and are still doing that putting AI, putting a link to that AI into our courses so that a student can go to there and they can get help with their discussion question. You know, their discussion question is this and it will actually walk them through a process of asking, basically tutoring them on that discussion question so that they can answer. Same with thing with their writing assignments. And it does a really good job with that faculty. Some of them like it, some of them don't like it and some of them are terrified and scared of it. 24:49 Rick Upchurch So it's a mixed bag and generally what the faculty support and push are what the students incur, are encouraged to do. So it's not, it didn't receive the full use that we thought it would, but this company. Go ahead. I'm sorry, you started to say something? 25:07 Sharlyn, Content Strong No, no, I just said interesting. You go ahead. 25:09 Rick Upchurch Oh, here's the, here's the thing that's just knocking our socks off right now. And this is something I'm really excited about. They have developed a, an interface that we are using now to co teach a course with AI. So we have set up our Canvas shell using their platform and so the student will go out to their platform and interact with this AI and it asks them first of all, okay, here's the topic we're going to be talking about this for this unit, right. How much do you know about that? And it, you say, well, I, you know, it says, here's the basics, how much you know? I say, well, I don't know anything, or I know a lot. 26:02 Rick Upchurch And from that point on it begins to back and forth in a Socratic method, begin to teach me what I need to know to achieve the learning objectives for that particular unit. So it's all based on whether the learning objectives are. Obviously writing good learning objectives becomes crucial because now the AI is using those to evaluate that process. So they do this learning objectives thing and students are out here in this sec. This AI, they're doing the learning objectives thing. It's going great. I mean, we're piloting right now and the pilots have come back so far. The students are loving it. I mean, I thought I would receive so many complaints. I was prepared to be inundated by a swarm or it's just complaints non stop. But they love it. They love that they can do it at their own pace. 26:59 Rick Upchurch They love that they can ask any question they want to. It's like having a personal tutor on that particular subject. And so they, it asks them questions, they do their response, it comes back and it works them through. And it, and it won't let them really proceed through this process until they've indicated that they have feel comfortable with it. Now they can say, no, I'm done, let's move on. But there's also an assessment they have to take. And the AI administers the assessment. And this is a verbal assessment. And so they get asked a question and they have to respond. They only have a certain amount of limited time to respond. I've tried to cheat it myself. I can't, I tried to figure out a way around it. I can't quite figure out how to do it. 27:43 Rick Upchurch Maybe a student will figure out eventually, but because there's a limited amount of time, it's not like they can go look up stuff. It asks the question, they talk back to it. So it's a verbal thing. It asks me a question, I talk back to it, and then it moves through other questions and gives me a score at the end that the faculty then can go back and look at all the responses. It can look and see if they tried to go to another screen because it shows right there. Student tried to go to another screen at this point, which I think is amazing. And so all of this is happening as they're working through that. And so that's the first part. And then coupled with that, we are requiring. 28:22 Rick Upchurch Not requiring, we're requiring the faculty, I should say, to host a weekly Zoom session with the students on how to use it. No, not on how to use it, but to interact on the material that they have learned from it and any deficits that they feel they've missed. 28:39 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 28:39 Rick Upchurch So now the faculty, you know, before our online courses were completely asynchronous. Right now, they're still completely asynchronous. This is. This is optional for students to attend, but if they do attend, it gets them out of having to write a discussion post. 28:55 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right? 28:55 Rick Upchurch So they don't have to write a discussion post. Instead, they're attending this, and the faculty person is being able to interact with them about the material for the week because they've gone through this material as well. They know what's going on, and they'll be able to answer the students questions as they ask in that particular thing. They try and set up even a. A breakout session inside the Zoom so students can get to know each other. So here's some things that are happening in the online program that weren't happening in most online programs. They're getting to meet their faculty on a much better basis than they ever have in the past, and they're interacting with other students in a way that they haven't in the past. 29:35 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 29:35 Rick Upchurch And then the final part of the course, the final part of each unit is an exit ticket. And the exit ticket asks them what. What they've learned and their experience with the AI and then how they can apply that material. So it's stepping them up into a higher level of blooms. So they're applying it in their own lives. And if you were to read these responses, I'd read these responses. I think, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. They're actually being able to make the crossover from this material into their personal lives. Incredible. And then it asks them what they didn't get, what they didn't understand. And the faculty person can either come back then and answer that right there, or use that material in the Zoom session for the following week. And so it feeds itself forward. I'm very excited about this. 30:22 Rick Upchurch We've done our first pilot. It's just ended. We're starting another pilot starting Monday, and we'll be running the pilot for a little bit longer before we see whether we're able or willing to turn it on wholesale. But. But believe me, Sherilyn, this is. This is very exciting, because in my mind, this is the future of higher Education, because everything else, an AI, you can use an AI to cheat and there's almost nothing we can do to stop that. 30:51 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 30:52 Rick Upchurch But this way avoids that whole scenario. 30:56 Sharlyn, Content Strong Well, I think it's a great example of using AI effectively to integrate and elevate educational experiences. And one thing that really stood out to me is this idea of a personalized educational experience because they're getting that one one back and forth with an AI system that is ideally challenging them. Then they take that over and they have that connection with their faculty, their professors or lecturers, whoever it is, that they didn't have before and with their peers in the classroom that they likely didn't have before that discussion is once again elevating their learning. And then the piece that really stood out to me with what you said was the end piece of how am I taking this learning and applying it to other systems, applying it to other scenarios in my life and applying it to when I graduate from here. 31:43 Sharlyn, Content Strong How am I going to apply this in a real world scenario in the workforce, which is really what they're supposed to be getting from, you know, their educational experience. So I think that's huge. You talked about a little bit there, this idea that, you know, students have that automatic ability to say, I didn't understand this didn't land for me, I didn't get this. And they, and you know, they have that almost feedback mechanism. I, I assume, and I, I think you mentioned that is something that you're measuring to be able to see. Well, this is a gap here. And how do we build this into the next week learning or into, you know, overall into the course? 32:15 Sharlyn, Content Strong What other, I don't know, metrics or measurements do you have in place to track how well you're doing, whether it's in course learning or whether it's strategically in terms of how you design online learning for students. 32:29 Rick Upchurch Yeah, great question there. Those kind of things are challenging, I think, to figure out because grades are not really a good metric. It's very difficult to use a grade to evaluate, particularly when they're all so subjective. So we do try and pay attention to a number of rubrics. I have a, I work with an online Dean. She, Dr. Wilkins has been incredible and her role of working with faculty. So she works with faculty. I work with the curriculum piece. Right. And she has faculty engagement metrics that deal with how many times the faculty engage with students, whether they're posting announcements weekly like that, we want them to, and ask them to do how well they do on their responses to grading assignments. Not just grading the assignment, but what kind of responses are doing. 33:34 Rick Upchurch So she has a number of metrics that she uses for that point. So a lot of what we're focusing on has to do with students and faculty student engagement, obviously, but the student engagement is fairly easy to track. Did they do the assignment? How well did they do the assignment? And the engagement in that piece. But a lot of it comes back from the faculty. How well are they being engaged? And so we spend a lot more time on the faculty side judging that, because if a faculty person is really doing their job, then we believe the students will engage. 34:08 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 34:10 Rick Upchurch That may or may not be the case, but that's been our experience. So we have Zendesk tickets that come from students, of course, and faculty. We respond to those and track those in a way that helps us to see whether there are any common themes that we need to address. 34:28 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 34:29 Rick Upchurch So we deal with that. We have feedback loops built in to the curriculum so that faculty and students both can notify us if they find errors or problems within the curriculum itself. And so we address those. But we really try to be more proactive, I think, than we do reactive. And, and I say that because both the online dean and I conduct lots of training for faculty. This is also an area that really, I'm pretty passionate about, is training people to be more effective in administering online education. And so every month there's a training session for online faculty. The online dean usually does some tips and tricks that they send out on a video that they're hosting. 35:24 Rick Upchurch Now that we're doing the Axio things, I've done several workshops and I've got more upcoming to train faculty how to use the Lighthouse Axio piece, the AI piece that we're working with, what to do, how to respond, and all the parts and pieces of that. So we're trying to be very proactive in getting our faculty really. I mean, if a faculty person, we even do end of you all, every school does this end, of course. Surveys, you know, we all do that. We look at those, though, and if we don't see a response that we like from faculty, we either engage in remediation to bring them up to a place where they perceive where they need to be, or we stop using them. 36:16 Rick Upchurch And we have cycled through a lot of faculty just to make sure that what we're giving our students has, is the best possible learning experience that we can provide given the Constraints of the whole nature of. 36:33 Sharlyn, Content Strong Education, of higher ed. Yeah, I think that's a. I think that's a great answer. I think, you know, sometimes we don't always hear that is the importance or the significance of getting that direct feedback and building that directly into, you know, strategically how you design programs, who's carrying out the programs, how, you know, how it's delivered, how it's received, you know, My final question is my magic wand question. Some people find this really difficult to answer. Some people love it. I'm interested to see how you react to this one. 37:09 Sharlyn, Content Strong If I give you a magic wand right now and you can kind of wave it in the air and remove that one big barrier to, you know, progress your institution and specifically in your role, whether it's budget, whether it's buy in, whether it's tech access, whatever it is, what would you change first and what would that mean for you? 37:26 Rick Upchurch Yeah, my one big magic wand. Do you have one of those? Can you, can you give me that? 37:33 Sharlyn, Content Strong Because here's a pen. I also have to be pretend. 37:36 Rick Upchurch There we go. If, if I had that magic wand, I would really want to wave it over faculty, because faculty buy in particularly for new changes and innovations. This isn't across the board, but the holdouts can sometimes be so vocal or verbal about the whole process that it can have a tendency to undermine what is good for the institution. And, and that's generally motivated by their perception of what should be. But if were to drill down it's probably also motivated by a great deal of fear about what will be. And so if I could wave my wand, that would be it. That would be the big one is that faculty would be more embracing as a whole. But we have it here. We. We have a great faculty here, and many of them are supportive of this process. 38:55 Rick Upchurch I find that our leadership is pretty supportive, honestly incredibly supportive of the processes. All of us would love to have a bigger budget. Don't get me wrong, if you could increase my budget significantly, I would not be opposed to that. But I really believe our institutions walk in a pretty good balance point at this time, because we're in a. You know, higher education is in a strange state right now. We have this enrollment cliff that's. We're all dealing with. We have the lack of credibility that is rampant across America about the viability of higher education. That's only becoming worse. We have all of these new things that are hitting higher education, like AI, but Even more than that, credentialing and the whole credentialing process and now the financial aid scenarios and all that's going on with the government and what that's looking like. 40:00 Rick Upchurch So all of these things together, I think our institution's doing a pretty good job in walking that line. I, I really hope that we will be able to continue this axio to its natural conclusion. This axial pilot will come to its natural conclusion. But what that will look like for our institution in a year is a little scary. It really is. And how it's going to affect our faculty and our staff and our footprint. I, I'm a little concerned about what the future looks like, but I don't see that there's a way around it. I don't see that we have much choice. And I think if you were a very small institution, I think you can survive. If you're a very large institution, I think you can ignore it to some degree, but they won't because they're very large for a reason. 41:02 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, exactly. 41:03 Rick Upchurch But it's the middle institutions that are going to be suffering. The, those that are mid sized institutions, they're going to have to make it a stand. You know, I think we have two years, in my opinion. I think we have two years, maybe three, maybe less. I think we have two to three years. 41:29 Sharlyn, Content Strong I'm gonna come to you in a year and a half and say, hey Rick, look what's happening. Do you. This is what you predicted? Is this what you predicted? I think you're probably right. I think that the change is so significant across the board. I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head. There are, there are people who are definitely excited about the changes, but everyone in general has this apprehension, this fear. What does this mean for us? Because the future is uncertain and there are so many different external factors that are impacting the way institutions are able to do the work that they're known for doing. And you know, they've, everyone really has to figure out how to adapt or, you know, fail. 42:06 Sharlyn, Content Strong And we are seeing that, quite frankly, a lot of institutions across the board that are just not able to make the shift as quickly as they need to in order to sustain themselves and build themselves back up and you know, thrive in this kind of, in this current climate. So I think you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, I really do think you did, Rick. Thank you. Big thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your time. Your Experience your perspective with us today. It's been a thoughtful, generous conversation to our listeners, to our watchers. I hope the episode sparked some ideas, affirmed your own experiences, or helped you see a challenge in a new light. If you're a communications or marketing leader or a leader in higher ed in general, you could be an advancement, you could be a president, whatever. 42:46 Sharlyn, Content Strong And you want to contribute to this conversation, I would like to hear from you. The truth is, we're trying to build a road map together for the future of our field. So let's get to work. Thanks so much again, Rick. 42:56 Rick Upchurch Thank you.