#168 How to Identify Student-Centered Colleges: Key Insights with Elliot Felix Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins  00:56

Are you worried about how your team will navigate the complexities of college life once they leave home, understanding what makes a college truly student centered might be the key to ensuring your teen not only survives but thrives during these critical years. Today, I’m excited to welcome Elliot Felix back to the show. He’s the author of the highly acclaimed how to get the most out of college, which we discussed on episode number 68 and the upcoming book, The Connected College. While Elliot typically works directly with universities to improve student experiences, his insider knowledge offers invaluable insights for families trying to choose the right college environment for their teens. In our conversation, we’ll explore what really separates student centered colleges from the rest, from integrated one stop shops for student services to meaningful experiential learning opportunities. Elliot shares eye opening statistics about how disconnected many campus services are, and offers practical advice on what families should look for when visiting potential colleges, whether your teen is just starting their college search or finalizing their decisions. This episode is for you if you want to help them find a college where they’ll be supported rather than overwhelmed by fragmented systems. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation. You. Elliot Felix, welcome back to the show. So great to have you here.

 

Elliot Felix  02:30

Hi, Lisa. It’s great to be back.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  02:33

I love your heart for really wanting students to get the most out of college, persist, continue to go to colleges. What was that born out of

 

Elliot Felix  02:46

Well, I do geek out on student success. I love figuring out and finding out how students succeed in college, and then helping however I can to make that happen. And I like to say I’ve been helping students since I was one. You know, how they talk about what you do outside of class is just as important as what you do inside. I’m, I’m very much a product of that. I was involved in student government in undergrad and in grad school, and it was always trying to, you know, understand and advocate for students, and it’s interesting, like when I was in grad school at MIT, not only did I have amazing classes, and not only did I meet my future wife there, pretty great, but the two of us, actually, and some others, were involved in student government, and what we did as students is not dissimilar to the consulting work I’ve done with now 120 or so colleges or universities, where we we did surveys and town hall meetings and understood what was working and what wasn’t. We actually did some benchmarking analysis to compare our department to others, and then we came up with some ideas and went to the administration and and the new dean was amazing. And she said, this is, you know, we have to fix this. These are great. We’re going to do it all. And we ended up doubling the pay of TAs. We ended up taking the kind of the thesis, capstone project from this thing that was kind of like an afterthought to something that was really celebrated and and then adjusting, actually the course schedule grid so that students could take classes across departments more more easily. So I think I kind of got the bug of educational consulting while I was still in school, and I’ve been lucky enough to have done it ever since now with more than 100 institutions, and helped more than a million students. Wow,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  04:50

those stats right there speak to why we’re having you on the fact that with that vast experience, you’ve seen a lot, you’ve helped a. Lot of people, and we want to help our listeners today, when you started way back then, studying these things, and then you have continued to what have you seen are some of the what makes students successful, or what? Are barriers? Which is easier to answer? Is it easier to say, like we talked last time, when you were on on episode 68 it was all about advice on how to get the very most out of college for the students, and that was based on your previous book. And now you’ve got this new book coming out, which we’ll put the pre order link in the show notes, but you’re talking to the colleges, the connected College, and how to enable student success. Is it easier to say what makes students successful, or what the barriers are?

 

Elliot Felix  05:53

Well, maybe it’s a maybe it’s a combination. But I think, you know, I we know students succeed when they feel a sense of connection to their college and their community, when their courses and their clubs have some kind of connection to their career, when they’re connected to services that support them that could be everything from advising to tutoring to writing, to the library to presenting, and so those connections are what helps students succeed. And my hope in in writing the connected college and doing my consulting work at Bureau Apple is is really to help institutions make those connections happen more more meaningfully and more often and more more successfully. I love that. Okay, certainly talk talk about why that doesn’t happen, but you know that we all want that those things to happen,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:56

right? So when you talk about you did a great job of explaining like there are all these different things going on on campus, or maybe some campuses don’t have them going on, or some of them not going on, but they need to be connected. Those connections have to be there. So in isolation, these services, these initiatives, well, they might look good unless they’re connected, then they are not going to help facilitate students having a successful and persistent experience. Is that? Right?

 

Elliot Felix  07:31

Yeah, that’s absolutely, that’s absolutely the case. And there’s, there’s tons of smart, dedicated, well meaning folks working in higher ed, millions of them in fact. But sometimes the like the strategy or the structure gets in the way, like my the way I open the book, maybe the infamous, the infamous example, I was working with the University to help them reimagine their library as really a student success hub and bring in lots of different functions. And so we had everyone gathered around the table, and they introduced themselves, and one of them was about was a kind of a math lab to help with stats and visualization. And another was about presentation. Another was about research. And then there was one that said, Well, we’re the we’re the Writing Center. We help students write more more effectively, and we’re part of the English department, and this gives graduate students the chance to work with students. And then the next one said, Well, we’re the writing lab, and we’re part of the Provost Office, and we help students write more effectively and and we’re located in such and such Hall. And I was like, Okay, I’m confused. I bet students are too. What’s the difference between a writing center and a Writing Lab? Barely any difference at all. But, you know, just because of the parallel structures in higher ed things had, they kind of both grown up separately and both with the same mission, trying to serve students in pretty similar ways. And so I think that’s, you know, not every campus has a writing center and a Writing Lab, but they all have some version of that, where you’ve got different folks doing the same thing. And then, you know, folks are spread thin, or students are confused and and, you know, who knows, if you make one writing support function, you know, what else could you do? Maybe you could serve more students, or maybe you could serve them differently or better, or whatever it might be. So a lot of it is, is trying to find those you know, find those opportunities or address those challenges well.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  09:52

Because, of course, from a consumer standpoint, and I hear from families all the time that you know, I. And I’m working with 16 to 25 year olds. So that’s you know, you and I connected because we, we do serve a similar demographic on the front end of that age group that I serve when they take their first PSAT or pre, AC, T or AP test. All of the sudden the literature starts coming in from the college, right? And families don’t always know what initiated that. You’re like, Oh, son, we’re getting all this mail. What is the deal? And as you’re telling that story, I’m thinking, every university, because these are businesses, we should never forget that every university has flashy marketing and great PR people, and they look great, but what I’m hearing is all of us, whether you’re already on campus, or you are heading to campus soon, or you’re a parent, you work on a campus, you’re a school counselor at a high school level, we need to look a little bit deeper to really evaluate because the flashy brochures or websites going to make us think it’s all great, but it could. And I’m sure that school that you’re referring to that had a the two writing centers, writing center or writing lab, looked great from the outside, but they were missing the mark. Yeah,

 

Elliot Felix  11:19

and there is so much, you know, so much marketing and communication. I mean, I’ve worked with another school, this is at the master’s level, but, you know, they have a Healthcare MBA, and then they also have a Master of Health Administration, right? And that they’re the intersection of those two programs, might be quite a few prospective students. So, how do you coordinate your How do you coordinate your outreach? How do you help them figure out which program is right for them? You know, there’s other cases where large universities found they audited their communications and they found that just three or four departments might typically send first year. Students 1200 emails in their first year. So just just the registration, financial aid, and I believe admissions was the was, was the other. So there’s lots of opportunities to better coordinate, to better consolidate, so that students can better connect. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  12:23

when you talk about and because you’re consulted with over 100 universities and colleges, when you talk about the services that are connected, is there a first, a top service that you’re like, This is the one that’s enabling success the most. Like, if a university didn’t have it, boy, they should double down on this. Like, where’s the impact? First, there’s

 

Elliot Felix  12:50

lots of ways to be successful, and there’s lots of ways to collaborate and coordinate. One that certainly comes to mind is the idea of a one stop shop, I think years ago, many universities realized that students kind of administrative challenges, right? That like the business of being a student, paying your bill, registering for classes, the problems are often interrelated. The classic one is, you go to register for classes and you can’t, there’s some kind of registration hold. You talk to that office. Sometimes it’s called the registrar, and they say, oh, there’s a balance on your bill. So then you go to Student Financial Services, and they say, oh, it’s because you’re, you know, one of your loans didn’t come through, and then you go to financial aid, and you find out there’s a typo in your social security number, so through no fault of your own, you’re now not getting the classes you want, and you’re, you know, you’re in a downward spiral, yeah, long ago they’ve realized, okay, These inter these interdependent services. Let’s bring them together in one physical place so that the staff can work together. So students go to one place. People are cross trained, so that you don’t have to go three different places, three different websites make three different phone calls, whatever it might be, but they’re all in one place. And I think so finding a one stop shop, or sometimes they just say, one stop is usually a pretty darn indicator, a pretty darn good indicator, that a college or university is student centered and is really focusing on supporting the supporting the students. I say likewise. If the library has a bunch of other support functions in it a library is another, if you if that sort of one stop has an it has an academic twin, it’s the library. So if in the library, you can find a place where someone will help you practice a presentation, where you can get the writing lab, Writing Center, whatever it’s called, support, where someone. And there’s tutoring support, where it might be subject based tutoring, you know, I need help with calculus, or it might be skill based. I want to take better notes. I want to manage my time better. It might be obviously research support in a library. It could be they might have a maker space where you can learn how to 3d print and prototype things. So those are, those are two great things to look for, I think, to see that a college is doing that collaborative, connective work.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  15:34

Yeah, that’s so what I heard there. There’s two buckets there, really like an operations bucket and an academics bucket, yeah, and so on. Operations, it’s really as simple as going to the website and seeing like, is there something that, I mean, my son’s University had that one stop, and yeah, you see that term. My daughters had one catalyst. And so you see those terms, and you’re like, Okay, it’s central. It’s going to be able to support me better. So that would be one day, and then one way, and then on the academics, with the maybe the library as a hub, but having different uses, once you’re into that library system. Is there a different area, like, is there a way to look at student life, or anything like that that comes to mind?

 

Elliot Felix  16:26

Yeah, I think there universities and colleges often have lots of centers and institutes, and centers and institutes often play that connector role. So there might be, for instance, a center for experiential learning, which is a great thing to look for, because that means a it’s important to them, right? They want students to work on hands, on real world projects, get internships, do co ops, have a chance to apply coursework, test out a career path. So an experiential learner center or an engaged learning, learning center, that’s really a good signal that a they’re focused on something that’s really useful for students, you know, companies society. But is doing that coordinating work a Leadership Center is often, really, I think, a useful thing, because that’s often playing that connective role between student life and academics. And you know, because you may, you may be, you may want to be able to be a better leader for a class project or for student government or for your, you know, lacrosse club,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  17:41

yeah, you know, as you’re talking about the experiential learning, I think that’s never been more important than it is right now, right? I agree it’s I had. So we do a monthly Q and A with the families and the students that are in our launch Career Clarity course in this, the one that we just had this week, a mom who’s high schooler, teenager and college student are both taking the course to get clear on their career path. Said, you know, I was in and I, I’m guessing she met Facebook. I was looking at a conversation in a group. So parent group on Facebook is what I read that as. And she said, I’m seeing that there’s a lot of kids that are graduating from my son’s college that are still unemployed, who graduated last year. So here we are, January, right? And she said, What advice do you have? And she had some good advice, just about, like putting yourself out like you’re doing a great you’re, you’ve, you’re off to a great start. But what I layered on to that, and actually it was another student asked us a question that I actually think is a similar question. She asked me this week, should I pick up a double major or a minor? What would be more valuable? And I said, neither. I think you need experiential learning. I think you need real world skills. I think it would be better. So let’s just pretend like it’s marketing right, instead of going and adding on another minor or something like that. Go get an internship. Go learn HubSpot or Salesforce. Get a certificate that you’re HubSpot certified, because in marketing, you better know how to use HubSpot, right? And those are going to give them the experiences to get them the jobs.

 

Elliot Felix  19:42

Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. And I think experiential learning is, is one of these great opportunities where one plus one makes 11. And I think because you build skills, but you also build a network, because you’re you’re talking to real people who have real problems that you. Get experience solving and then though that you’re working, those projects become part of your portfolio. And, you know, people ask me all the time that how to get the most out of college. My first book has 127 tips, evidence based tips for really maximizing the ROI of your experience in college, you know, as a student and for society. And they ask me, what’s the, you know, what’s the if you can only do one, what would it be? And I always say it’s, you know, tip 69 do real world projects in your classes, because then you you know, let’s say, let’s say you’re in a marketing class. You could do a social media strategy for a hypothetical company. Or you could go talk to a company out in the community or community group nonprofit, and maybe they need an intern this summer, you know. Or maybe that’s where you end up. Or maybe they become a mentor. Or maybe you, you know, someday you’re talking to the CEO, and you figure out how they got their start and how they use their stats class all the time, but their calculus class not so much. And all these things are, I think all these things are super are super helpful.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  21:11

A quick word about your first book, that book, when we say it’s how many? 127

 

Elliot Felix  21:19

Yeah, which is a few too many, I’ll be

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  21:22

jealous. Well, no, no, I don’t think it is too many, actually, because I want the listeners to know I have the book, and we talked about the book on episode 68 so flourish, coaching. Co.com, forward, slash 068, but every tip is like a page or a page and a half. So I want to be clear, you’re it’s not 1000 page book that you want a college student to read. No,

 

Elliot Felix  21:51

each each page is, is one tip, and it has what to do, why to do it, how to do it, and the why evidence

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  21:59

is like one page ish, right,

 

Elliot Felix  22:01

yes, or yeah, sometimes, sometimes less, yeah, yeah. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  22:05

I just didn’t want any listeners who think like, Oh, I heard that title that sounds great to then think, Oh my gosh. 127 chapters on 127 tips. Now these are, like, small bite size. That’s what I loved about it, because it’s actionable on the part of a student immediately.

 

Elliot Felix  22:23

Yeah, it’s it’s definitely written for the attention spans we have, not the attention spans we wish we had,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  22:30

exactly or years past. Well, that that made me think the stat you gave about all those emails from that university, the number of emails. When kids just want a Snapchat about it, they don’t even want to look at email ever.

 

Elliot Felix  22:46

Yeah, the camp, the and I think one, you know, you mentioned, is it easier to talk about the kind of successes or failures, or the, you know, the opportunities or the barriers. One thing that’s happening with technology is there’s, there is real digital sprawl. There is just more and more tools available to do each thing, and that makes college more costly and more confusing. On the upside, though, some of these technologies are doing a really good job of integrating a lot of things and simplifying things, and a lot of a lot of institutions have great campus apps where you go one place, and you can, you know, your classes, your course schedule, maps. Some of these can even do like push notifications and tell you, Oh, you’re, you know, tutoring appointment is coming up, or, you know, we know you’re interested in journalism, there’s a speaker this evening. So some some communication is actually getting nicely unified in in campus portals and campus apps, other places, another way that they’re connected, yeah, that’s, yeah, yeah. It’s kind of like a digital one stop, right?

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  24:01

So do most i My kids are a little bit older now, and I’m not doing the like the campus visits. I don’t have a student myself on campus any longer. Do most colleges have their own app like that? Or would that be something for families to look for?

 

Elliot Felix  24:19

Most of them have it, but of varying degree of quality. So I would, I would check it out, and I think you also check out the social media feeds of of the college and of potential departments. I think that gives you a window into how they communicate and how coordinated and and connected they are.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  24:43

Well, you know what? When you said, most of them have an app, but not, basically, not all of them are good, so you should check them out. It reminds me of when, oh gosh, was it 2012 that the government said you have to have a net price calculator on your college website. It was sometime around then and that it families had to be able to get to it in three clicks. And so watching that roll out was quite humorous for me, because I was already working in the space as an IEC, but I would have some families say, oh, oh yeah. University ABC, I was able to get it done in like, five minutes. It was great. I hated the net price calculator for university XYZ because it took me 18 minutes to finish it. It was such a pain. And I’m like, Yeah, but you get what you pay for. You might think that that shiny, quick, five minute net price calculator was fantastic from a user experience, but it’s not yielding accurate data.

 

Elliot Felix  25:49

Yeah, it’s you do, you know? It’s what was it? Hemingway, who said, you know, I wish I had more time. I would have written you a shorter letter. It it does take, it does take time to streamline and consolidate and make things seamless for students. That’s, you know, that’s, that’s for sure. But I think it’s, it’s well worth it, because then you can be more, you know, you can be more focused and and students have a better experience. And what I’m what I’m often telling colleges and universities now is everyone is like, stuck in this do more with less mindset. And I actually want them to do less with more. I want them to be more focused and put the resources where they have strength, where they have something unique and, and where there’s demand from students, from employers, from, you know, from society, whether it’s, you know, research on problems we need to solve together, or whether it’s jobs and, you know, in new critical fields and, and I think one of the big barriers, really, is strategy. And there’s a lot of universities that are, some maybe have the scale to do this, but most can’t, you know, really can’t be all things to all people. They have to pick a few things that they’re that they’re good at, and I love, you know, I one thing that I’ve always been a fan of in Chicago, post great recession, the Emmanuel administration, I think did a really smart thing, and then they got all the community colleges together, and they said, you’re going to focus on transportation and logistics, you’re going to focus on health care, you’re going to focus on manufacturing. That way, they’re not all competing for students, and they can really play to their play to their strengths, but a lot of a lot of colleges and universities are are still stuck in the in the all things to all people, which isn’t so great because one size fits none.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  27:58

Yeah, well, it you know, what it brings to mind is when I’m working with my business coaching clients. So I also, besides my career development with this group, I coach business small business owners, and I will tell them every yes you say is a no to something else. So are you saying the right yeses, yeah, and there should be very few yeses that we’re saying. We need to say no to most things. So it really just yes from I wish

 

Elliot Felix  28:25

I could say no to that, but I have to say yes.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  28:32

Very good touche and so it but it is. It’s like I left. I was a public high school teacher. Back when I first started my career, I lasted for about eight years, for exactly eight years before I exited because I was so frustrated with I kept saying, this needs to be run more like a business. And I heard myself saying it so much. I was like, Well, Lisa, go leave and start a bit an education business, which is what I’ve done a couple times now, and so I agree with you. It’s really about strategic planning, doing more with less, and and you’re going to go deeper, right? And you’re going to be able to serve better. So here’s what I feel like this great episode was a if a listener is working at a college or university, you’ve given them a mandate, some hope, I think, as a catalyst for hope, what you’ve described, because you’ve been able to show how some people, some universities, have solved some of these issues already and are continuing to improve. Yeah. And if you’re or a student, you know what to look for, you almost just gave out. You gave them. You know, if you have some getting ready to go to college, or if you’re already on campus, you just gave a user guide checklist for what to look for and how to use it. Yeah,

 

Elliot Felix  29:55

for sure. And I do think it’s, it’s. Not all doom and gloom, right? I’m trying to create better connected colleges and universities. And to your point earlier about someone who’s, you know, their their their student or their child isn’t employed after X months, nationally, it’s, I think it’s 85% of college grads, you know, find meaningful employment or continuing ed within six months. Yeah, so, I mean not, not every student graduates, which is another, another problem, and why colleges need to be more, more connected, but, but I do think there’s, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of promise, and there’s a lot of potential, and lots of colleges are are performing quite well, well.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  30:52

I’m, I’m of you know, I’m not going to quit trying to get better or improve until I’m in the grave. So even when we’re doing well, we we need to learn. We where can we do better, right? So it’s not a hey, you guys all are not doing a great job. Where can we do better?

 

Elliot Felix  31:13

Yeah, and I think that the focus is what really helps. Because, you know, a lot of people think demographics are destiny, but I think differentiation is, I think you know, if you’re offering something unique and different and you’re doing it, well, you’re, you’re going to be, you’re going to be doing well, I think there’s people, there’s like, a deluge of data about what students need, who they are, what they’re doing, and If you connect it up, you get a great picture of what’s happening, and you can do a lot better. I Georgia State comes to mind as a, really, a shining example of that of using analytics to better understand their students and better meet their needs. And I think, I think, you know, bringing folks together digitally and physically, really fuels the collaboration, I think, like part of the reason it’s been so productive and and satisfying to, you know, work on lots of library projects is because they they really are great ways to co locate these different services and better support students and bring these different support functions together that makes it better for the institution and better for the student at the same time. And so, you know, if you’re thinking, win, win, that’s that’s this like connected college mindset, yeah.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  32:39

Well, Elliot, thank you. This has been fantastic, helpful for everybody, no matter what side of the coin you are on. Good luck with the book The Connected college leadership strategies for student success, and we will get the pre order link in the show notes.

 

Elliot Felix  32:58

Thank you so much for the chance to talk you. Thank

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  33:03

you for joining Elliot and me. I hope you’ve gained valuable perspectives on evaluating whether a college will provide the integrated support your teen needs to thrive. Remember, as you tour campuses with your teen, look for Elliot’s telltale signs. One stop shops for student services, libraries that function as academic support hubs and robust experiential learning opportunities that simultaneously build skills, networks and portfolios. Elliot’s upcoming book, The Connected college launches soon. The pre order link is in our show notes. If you found this conversation helpful, be sure to check out our previous discussion with him on episode number oh six eight. You can go to flourish coaching co.com forward slash oh six eight, where we explored his book How to get the most out of college and give tactical advice to your team. Part of having a connected college experience is absolutely affected by your students, major choice and career goals for more guidance on helping your teen find the right college fit. Download my free on demand video at flourish coaching co.com forward slash video where I share how your team can choose the right major college and career without missing crucial deadlines or making choices, you’ll both regret my friends, I thank you for listening, and if you’re getting a lot out of the podcast, do me a favor. Could you rate the podcast, review it and then share an episode or two with a friend, or post it on social media. Thank you for being part of our flourish coaching community.