Cheryl Broom (00:00.078)
Hi, I'm Cheryl Broom, CEO of Graduate Communications. Raise your hand if you've had to work on guided pathways. I think everybody listening to today's podcast has either started the guided pathways process, finished the process, is in the middle of the process, or has been approached to start working on guided pathways.

Well, I am super excited for today's guest. Renee Craig Marius is the Vice President of Student Services at Readley College and was one of my clients last year when we embarked on a very aggressive communications campaign to unify communication around guided pathways and to help bring everybody on the same page when it came to how to best communicate with students.

Renee and her team at Readley College are five years in to the Guided Pathways experience and have made tremendous progress in really re-evaluating, re-examining, and creating a guided pathways model at their school. I ask her a lot of questions around why guided pathways and why now, and she provides just the most amazing answers. I think you're gonna learn so much from listening to her.

And I am really excited to have her on the podcast. Well, hi, Renee. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much, Cheryl, for having me. I'm excited to have this discussion with you. Yeah, you know, when I started my own company, I had just left MiraCosta College and had left the Guided Pathways Committee, kind of right in the middle of our work. And I thought to myself, I am never going to have to work on guided pathways again.

And here you are. Here we are. Here we are. And I've actually really enjoyed the guided pathways work that I that I got to do with your college. But before we dive into guided pathways and the communications work, I wanted to give you a chance to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background. All right. Well, thank you again for having me on your podcast. I'm currently the vice president of student services at Readley College.

Cheryl Broom (02:20.844)
Readley is one of four campuses within the State Center Community College district in the Central Valley. And I've been at the district for about 23, 24 years and have worked at pretty much all of the campuses in some capacity. But in terms of my background, I was born and raised in the Central Valley, Fresno, primarily. As a youngster, I moved around a little bit because my parents had lived in Bakersfield for a period of time. But around second

Third grade, my parents divorced. And so my mom brought us back up to Fresno, where her family was. And so I spent my K-12 experience in Central Unified, going to McKinley Elementary School and El Capitan Junior High and then Central High at that time. And so my mom raised me as a single mom, you know, and there were quite a few challenges, you know, we experienced being on public assistance.

just struggling in terms of finances and housing and those types of things. My mom had not had, she hadn't completed her college education. And so she wanted to, but she just never could finish that. My father, he went on and did complete his degree at Fresno State and received a master's degree, but he also was had the opportunity to do that because of athletics.

remember listening to him about the struggles he had and dealt with in his family and being poor and working in the fields and and it really was education and athletics that that helped him get through and provided those opportunities. So on both sides of my family, education was extremely important. And they really pushed me to see that as it's a non-negotiable, it wasn't an option. You're just going to college, Renee. And so I I grew up with that. But

Not having financial resources and struggling with housing insecurities at times, going to school was like a safe haven for me. And so as I went through school, graduated from central, decided to I was able to get into Fresno State and went to Fresno State for my bachelor's degree, my master's degree. But I had to work pretty much full time and get financial aid to cover. And even with that, I I couldn't cover all my expenses. So, but during my undergrad time, I began to seek a path of

Cheryl Broom (04:41.236)
know what I wanted to do with with my life and and and things like that. But I I know we have another question coming up on this, but being in the educational space was very supportive for me and really helped me see the value of higher ed and the value of the community college. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in marriage and family therapy. And I am currently working on my doctorate in organizational leadership.

And I am working on dissertations. So my hope is to be able to defend in the spring. So that's who I am in terms of my background. Well, first of all, congratulations on getting close to finishing your doctorate degree. That's really exciting. And I think your background is particularly interesting as we talk about guided pathways, because part of the philosophy behind pathways is meeting students where they are rather than waiting for them to come to us.

And I think your background, you know, being the first one to graduate from college and having to work and having, you know, struggles to overcome is why the pathways model exists, is because students don't know how to navigate college if they come from backgrounds where, you know, they don't have that experience or they don't have family members to support them. So I'm sure, you know, that's given you a lot of empathy and helped you in implementing.

kind of this new philosophy towards supporting students. Yeah, you know, it's as I look back on my college journey, yeah, I didn't know how to navigate it. I actually did not see a counselor or an advisor. I didn't seek one out. And I I told myself, well, I can figure it out on my own. I'll, you know, I didn't have really resources and kind of a previous exposure to other people who had graduated from college to know how to navigate it, but I didn't reach out.

Like I should have early on. And realizing though, it as a result, I struggled in terms of trying to figure out my major, trying to figure out resources. And so the path wasn't very clear. colleges don't make it very clear for students who don't have that exposure in their background. So I definitely understand the struggle it is for our students to navigate these processes that we put in place that really don't always

Cheryl Broom (07:05.178)
are helpful unless we relook at it in a different way, so that we are changing the way we do things and changing the way we do business so it is more student-centered and student-focused. And so taking a step back, because our main discussion, and you've done so many amazing things in your career and have great things on the horizon. But really, what I want to focus on in our discussion today is guided pathways. Like, what is it? Why did your college decide to?

Go down the path towards implementing this, you know, kind of philosophy towards offering student services and instruction. So can we start at the very basics for our listeners who are like, what is guided pathways? There's a lot of colleges out there that are kind of wondering that. What exactly is this movement? Well, you know, I think in California, the framework or the perspective of guided pathways came a little later as opposed to other colleges maybe across the nation who had been work doing this work prior, achieving the dream.

Completion by design. A lot of other work has been done, but it's not always been, I think, called guided pathways. You know, we've we've kind of coined that term and we use that term regularly nationwide. You know, we call it a framework. It's not an initiative. It's not a project. It's not a just kind of a thing you do for about a year and you see, does it work? And if it doesn't, we give up. It's a change in mindset.

It's a paradigm shift in how we see our students, how we serve our students, and how we change our institutions from the inside out. For me, it's focused on improving that student journey and that student experience by creating a structured way or approach to serve the students, especially our students who are disproportionately impacted, our students of color, students coming from low-income backgrounds who

Don't have those resources, who don't know how to navigate. And so we have to think about our institutions in a way where we change it so it is accessible and easy for those students to come in and complete and get the help that they need. So really it's about helping students kind of clarify what they want to do, getting in the institution on a path, helping them through that journey.

Cheryl Broom (09:29.664)
And supporting them all along the way with whatever unique services and programs they need, and then connect and engage both inside and outside of the classroom, and opportunities for employment later or transport, whatever their educational or career goals are. So it's really this wrapping around our students, becoming the village, I call it, for our students, so they feel connected and supported.

And welcome and engaged to complete their goals. And that sounds, you know, absolutely wonderful. And what comes to mind is why hasn't it always been that way? Like what has happened in institutions where where that type of approach hasn't always been followed? Or why is it difficult to move in this direction? Because it seems like when you talk, I'm like, of course, this is the way college should be. It should have always been this way. but what were the challenges that made it difficult, you know, for students and for

institutions to have this type of holistic approach? You know, I think that higher ed and colleges institutions are structured in a way historically, honestly, that are did not serve our students of color, students from marginalized backgrounds. And so it is set up, I think, because of our structures and hierarchies and

Bureaucracies and those types of things are in place that we focus a lot on transactional and these processes that we need to make sure that we get everything to the student, all the information and the expectation that they will have to figure it out. And we're just not built that way. Higher ed's not built that way from that perspective in general, because I just think that.

Funding, resources, different things have have limited us to do things that we want to do differently sometimes, or legislation or regulations. So there's a number of factors that play into it, but I also think it's about our mindset. And it's about how we view students. And I think sometimes we forget who we're serving and we approach things from our own lens.

Cheryl Broom (11:47.872)
As higher ed professionals versus the lens of the student and what they're experiencing. So it makes it a challenge because you have different, diverse perspectives, viewpoints, approaches. And it's a matter of, I think, trying to bring people together to really have a common vision about the student experience and how we want to achieve student success for those students.

I think you hit the nail right on the head. And many of our institutions here, you know, here in California and across the nation were formed in the earlier to mid-1900s, right? Where they were very much formed for people who, you know, knew what they were gonna do and maybe had a family member who'd gone to college. And then community colleges grew and grew and grew, and the mission has changed, and who we serve has changed, but the institutions haven't changed.

And so this is an opportunity, I think, for institutions to take a hard look at who do we serve and why are we doing what we're doing and how do we serve people better? Right. And the community college is an engine for social and economic mobility. You know, we are open access and we have an opportunity, a responsibility and obligation to serve our communities. And they have changed. Demographics have changed over the years, but yet our structures haven't.

So you're you're right, it's really important work if we're going to make change in individuals' lives, their families' lives, and you know, it's about also addressing generational poverty and low educational attainment in our communities so we can help all individuals reach whatever goals that they have, but also attain high wage.

Jobs and careers that can help them sustain their families. Exactly. Now, as you started out on the guided pathways work, what was the first thing that Readley College did? How did you approach this? So I started at Readley in January of 2017. But prior to my beginning there, the college began looking at how they wanted to do some things differently in terms of serving students better. And it was Dr. Sandra Caldwell at the time she was the president.

Cheryl Broom (14:10.302)
And she began kind of exploring some of the work that had been done through Achieving the Dream and the pathways work that there were some colleges in California doing some of that work. So I do remember that Bakersfield College, I believe, came out and did a presentation to our academic Senate, you know, giving information about how they were going through the process, because they were one of the very first pioneers in California doing this work.

And when I came on in 2017, the college had been kind of starting to talk about it, but just didn't know what it would look like and is this something we want to approach. And there was opportunity. The Chancellor's Office had provided some resources for us to look at and colleges to look at things differently in terms of our institutions. So we were looking at data. The data was showing across the state, but also you know, in all of our community colleges.

That students were not achieving, especially our students who were disproportionately impacted, not achieving very high success rates. The outcomes were not good for them. They're disparities, primarily based on race, racial equity disparities. And so we began looking at our data. And one of the really initial pieces of data that was kind of the aha moment and really gave us a sense of urgency is looking at our incoming freshmen.

Our incoming students from our high school feeders. And I think it was the fall of 2015. We wanted to look at that data and how their trajectory to completion. And we found just in simple data showing each semester we were losing a huge number of students. They were not coming back. And we found at the end of two years for that first cohort that we looked at data, fall 2015, after two years, we lost 61% of them.

And it wasn't losing them to they graduated necessarily or got a certificate or transferred, although some did, but the majority did not. We did not know where they went. But we realized that was the equivalent of the senior class of three of our feeder high schools. And we we looked at this and we said, my gosh, we're losing our students. And the communities we serve need educated individuals, and we're not doing our job.

Cheryl Broom (16:34.338)
But this was an urgent call to all of the community colleges. So we were all seeing this kind of data, but that really drove us to begin to look at ourselves differently and begin to try to be better for our students in terms of our processes and our structures. So that was kind of the impetus, and that drove the urgency around to do this work and to be part of the California Guided Pathways project, demonstration project at that time.

That is something that I talk to my clients about all the time in terms of marketing versus retention is if you can focus in and figure out how to help students through the journey so that they do complete an institutional level, you've solved a major marketing problem because you don't have to go out and keep fill in seats with new students if you can really help those who are already there achieve their goals.

And plus, that's our entire mission is to get students to graduate and onto to a brighter future. So I think that looking at the data, discovering where you could make an impact was fantastic. That makes sense. That's your first step. You know, where are you losing students? And now what can you do within this framework to help? And then I guess from there, I'm guessing that you started organizing your instructional offerings into pathways. Is that kind of the next step after that? Or what happened next?

So as part of the California Guided Pathways project and a demonstration project, there were 20 colleges in that initial project. We all engaged in a lot of professional development. We went to institutes. It was a really good experience in terms of learning about the student experience, looking at our data, really doing an institutional self-assessment on how we're doing and serving our students.

So we really had to kind of step back and look at some things that we're not very comfortable to look at. It was hard data to look at. You know, we all want to serve our students. We were passionate about, we're committed. We're all doing great work. There's so many things that we're doing in terms of efforts, but we were realizing they were not integrating. We were duplicating efforts. We probably weren't leveraging our resources as effectively and efficiently as possible. So it took some time.

Cheryl Broom (18:58.008)
To do that self-reflection and assessment and gauge where we're at. As we began to do that, we realize that in order to do this work, which is institutional-wide, it's a complete institutional kind of redesign. It takes the entire college to do it, but it does take some core people to initially start with the planning. So we developed a Guida Pathways core team of individuals that were key stakeholders in the college.

To start some of the planning pieces and attend professional development. And then we expanded that to what we call our transformation team, which was almost about 40 people. And they represented a cross-section, cross-functional stakeholders across our entire institution. And that was key because you have to bring everybody in and all the voices from the beginning. And that's a lesson learned that I know some colleges.

start with a certain group, maybe only student services or only instruction or only certain groups, but they're not bringing everybody to the table because all of the perspectives are important. That was really key is that cross-functional collaboration that helped us set a good foundation to take a look at our college and our processes and how to do something different. I love the fact that you involved so many stakeholders because to

Do something this large and this important, you do have to have everybody on board. Did you ever have a any times in the process where there was pushback, or was it difficult, or did it move slowly with that many people? yeah. yeah. yeah. You know, whenever you're trying to do transformational change, big change that goes beyond just process and procedure, but also deals with mindset and

Attitudes and culture, right? Organizational culture. You get pushback or you just get this resistance, you get this kind of sense of like, what are you doing? I like the way I'm doing things now. What's wrong with it? If it's not broken, why fix it? Right. And then the other thing we we heard, and we took time to listen to people's voices, it took time to listen to their concerns. Everyone's tired, you know, there's what we called initiative fatigue, right? We had all these things that we were doing and

Cheryl Broom (21:17.738)
Sometimes, you know, guided pathway was was viewed as one more thing on our plate for instructors, one more thing for them to do, you know, and they're they're doing great work in the classroom and working with their students, but this is one more thing for counselors, one more thing, you know. So it was trying to build urgency, but understand the why behind we were what we were doing. And that means having lots of conversations about where people fit in the work, their role in the work.

And that it really wasn't about doing a new thing in terms of an extra initiative, but a matter of bringing all the good work that we do together in an integrated fashion, in which we are serving our students in a much more effective and efficient way than duplication. Very excellent, really good point is that what's the why? And I think with any initiative, you can articulate why we're doing this, and you have the data to support that.

It helps bring people along the way rather than just telling them this is what we're doing. Now, this is why we're doing it. And this is what we hope to accomplish. And I think that's one of the big positives with the guided pathway model, is that it's set up to really explain the why. And there's now colleges, you know, like yours who have done the the work behind it and the implementation to showcase like this really does work. It's worth the effort. It is worth it in the end. Now, in terms of

Like the student experience, what has changed now that you've done the implementation and the work? How is it different for a student? Well, I would say in the process of us doing this work, and you know, one of the mottos that we have that many colleges have is decide and design with the student in mind. Bringing in students in this process early on is critical because we're doing it for them. And we tend to sometimes think and you know that we know what students want, right?

We've been in this business for a long time. We're educated. We know what students want. But many times when you talk to students, they have a different perspective about what they want and what they need. And so bringing them in is so important. So we did do some work around student voices and prioritizing those voices and bringing students into the process. And so we did several different we call experiential kinds of activities college wide. We would do things during our opening day.

Cheryl Broom (23:43.658)
And engage faculty and staff in experiences that help them understand the student journey and student experience more, realizing that the barriers we were creating, how could we break those barriers down? How could we eliminate those barriers? So over time, you know, it's been, we've been on doing this work for five years now. We found some key things as far as the framework that we wanted to implement. One, we needed to identify our pathways. The community colleges are not set up to have.

Pathways in terms of a school of STEM or College of Engineering or, you know, those kinds of interest areas that our four-year partners have set up in their structures. Community colleges didn't. So we had to actually reorganize our programs into pathways and then map those programs accordingly. That took a lot of work cross-functionally with all stakeholders to do that. We also wanted to make sure that.

The student experience was such that students knew who their people were. Who do I go to for help? Who is that one person that's gonna help me get through this and I can always rely upon? And we didn't have that kind of case management model set up. We had students who would just see what whoever they could see in terms of getting an appointment with counselor or whoever they were gonna talk to in financial aid or admissions and records, or it was just kind of like the student had to find us.

So we really wanted to create a case management model at scale. And so the other thing we have done is over time have developed and implemented pathway success teams. And that is that team that wraps around that student based on their pathway and based on their major. So that has improved the student experience in terms of the connection and engagement with students entering into our college. And we were able to

to do some of that work and you know through the help that that you've you've helped us in terms of our communication planning, how to communicate with those students and to get them on their pathway. Yeah, speaking of the communication plan, what I what I loved in working with Reidley College, and this was an experience I had when I was at MiraCosta and I've heard when I've talked to other communication directors is people get really excited about guided pathways and they want to start communicating about it like right away before anything's done.

Cheryl Broom (26:06.402)
And remember being back at Americoscent and saying, like, there's nothing to communicate right now. Like, I don't, we haven't made the progress, we haven't done the work. But people are excited and they want to market it and they want to get, you know, get out this new framework, but the work hasn't been done. And what was great with working with you and your team is that we came in to help develop a communications plan. And you'd already done all the hard work. So our job became

Now, how do we build touch points to help students succeed along their path and their journey, knowing that all this work has been set up and has been done? So I really appreciated that about working with Readley College. Yeah, it's true. We want to communicate these things out, but we're not mindful of how we're communicating or what the message is. And sometimes we over, I want to say overcommunicate, but we tend to be in in academia very kind of long-winded, right? So all of our messaging and the things we say are like long emails or

web pages that are full of words and and it's not easy to digest for the audience. But we struggled with even our internal communication. And so being able to work with you in terms of looking at that audience, our internal stakeholders as an audience was also helpful because we were kind of all over the board and we didn't have capacity, we didn't have resources or staffing, our marketing communication departments very, very small.

And so we really didn't have capacity to build something out. We knew kind of what we wanted to say, but we didn't quite know how to do it and how to sustain it. Yeah. And you're so right. I call it killing with kindness that academia wants people want to help so much that they do over-communicate and it's completely overwhelming and sometimes confusing and other times negative because you know you have admissions offices that are like, if you don't do this and this and this and this, then you cannot be a student.

Okay, let's just get people like let's help them become students before we we start throwing all these barriers up at them. But you're right. And so our job was to come in and to talk to your staff, to talk to your faculty, to speak to your students, and then to develop like a communication matrix, a framework to have touch points along a new student's journey, and also to develop materials to help faculty and staff better understand the guided pathways model.

Cheryl Broom (28:27.98)
And one of the things that we helped you develop that I was really proud of and that I liked was a brochure, which is simple, but it is something we develop for new employees so that as they come into the college, they are given something that explains this is what the guided pathways framework is. This is why we're doing this work, and this is how you can be a part of it. So it really helps set people up to be in that mindset.

From the day they become an employee or a faculty member. So that was something I thought was really good. It is because oftentimes in this work, people want to know what's my role, or they don't quite see their role or how it fits. And we all play a role. Everyone plays a role in institution to help students succeed. And so starting off with that and helping employees understand that is important. And we do a lot of that work in terms of informing them of guided pathways and their role in the work.

In orientations, new employee orientations now, new faculty kind of trainings. And we're even doing that work at the district level and onboarding and orienting employees around guided pathways from the beginning. So it's been very helpful to articulate it, to get it all in one place in a very easy, understandable way, so you can communicate that to whatever audience you're communicating it to. Yeah, and one other great thing about this project, so those people listening.

We developed a communication matrix and we wrote out, I think, 10 or 15 different pieces. And when we came back to the college with this communications plan, I had warned them like this is going to completely overwhelm you. Don't let it overwhelm you. These are recommendations and you can prioritize what you send out and when. And what Reidly did that, I was like jumped up and down in celebration.

about is that you actually brought somebody in to help with implementation. So a lot of times we'll do plans and we're so proud of the work. And then those plans just sit on someone's shelf or in somebody's inbox, but you hired someone to come and help you do the implementation. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how that's going and if that's been a help for the college. And yeah, when we first saw the matrix, the tactics, it was overwhelming, but it was good information. It was like,

Cheryl Broom (30:45.454)
I can see a timeline of how to do this and when to do it and when to communicate and using which communication channel, right? Social media, web page, email, different things. But then it was like the feeling of heaviness, like, my gosh, we don't have the capacity to do this. So we're like, okay, how are we gonna do this? This is really important. and so you know, honestly, what we did is we're all this is happening during a pandemic, mind you, right? So so communicating.

In the regular sense, and a regular without a pandemic is hard, but communicating during a pandemic is even more difficult. so so just trying to make sure that we are looking at our enrollment recovery efforts because of the pandemic and re-engaging with students who might have lost communication was critical. And so we use some of our cares and her funding to build capacity in some limited term positions to help us with that. And our public information officer position.

We decided that was a priority to help that department do this work. Because, like as I said earlier, we're very, you know, lean in terms of capacity and staffing in the marketing communication department. So bringing in a PIO position to help with this is critical. And what we've been able to do now, which we didn't do before, was have a real email campaign. The data that you collected, Cheryl, during the surveys with students.

They reported that email was the best way to communicate with them. Even though it's still a challenge to get them to respond to email and look at their email, that was the best way. And we didn't have a comprehensive, consistent way of communicating via email. So our PIL has created that and has built up the student list in that email communication system and is actually regularly sending out information to students.

not only about guided pathways, but now we could actually use that for our different critical information and messages around the pandemic or around mandates or around deadlines. And so that has been a way that we've been able to build capacity. And it's important to invest in that, you know, even if it's if it's one-time money, invest in doing that so you can get something established so it can be sustained for the future.

Cheryl Broom (33:08.042)
Exactly. And once you build it, it becomes easier just to do the implementation. It's the building that's the heavy lift and getting that in place. And I remember when I first started working with you and your team, I had signed up to become a student. And so I wanted to see what type of communication was coming out to students. And the first email message I got was like so overwhelming that I like left it in my inbox for like three weeks. Yeah. I was like

I am getting paid to read this email. Like I am, that is my job. And I cannot bring myself to do it. And imagine what a new student feels like getting this. I mean, it was so overwhelming. And so we all gotta laugh at looking at that, but then actually doing the work to redo it. Like let's change the way we communicate right from the beginning. And you've done a great job implementing that. And

And have you seen any results from it? Any any positive feedback? I know enrollment's tough right now because of the pandemic, but but what have you seen as a result of the COM plan and as a result of your guided pathways efforts? So we have seen a lot more connection with students. And that was a big thing for us, making sure we stay connected with the student and welcoming the student to the college, being more personalized, because you know, in a in a multi-college district.

The initial emails going out were coming from the district in terms of you've been accepted, but there's there was no welcome from the president, for example. Welcome to Readley College. We didn't even have that. And so we're able to do that. And so we personalized that. We've been able to actually use those communication pieces and those touch points within our success teams. So now our pathway success teams are using content and pushing it out to students in Canvas in our learning management system.

So all our students have an account in Canvas because you know sometimes they're taking online courses or the instructor has their syllabi on Canvas. Those messages are being pushed out from the pathway teams. And we've created communities within Canvas of our pathways, and that is happening. So there's engagement and connection with our students. The other thing is we're able to actually now take a look at some analytics and data around student engagement with the emails.

Cheryl Broom (35:26.092)
or with other communication tactics. So we can actually gauge if something is working or not a little bit more effectively than we were before. So when we start seeing students not opening up emails, we can check the open rate. We can go, okay, so either this is not a good time to send this student this this message or this is their overwhelming. What else is going on in their in their life and in the context of the college?

That we need to kind of step back and maybe think a little bit more strategically on timing and pace and tone of the message. So we're able to use data a little bit more effectively in tweaking our approaches. And I think you also really hit the nail on the head. It's that communication really does create community. And especially during the pandemic when students weren't on campus, hearing from the college, from their support team, from the president.

That helps to create a community that the student gets invested in. And then, you know, that I think builds their commitment to finishing their education. Yeah. And, you know, during the pandemic, is, you know, people, this feeling of isolation and disconnect, a lot going on. People are just struggling in all different ways. And to just know that somebody cares about you.

And is is interested in you and where you are and your well-being and your education and reaching out makes a huge difference in their lives. And so that's where I think communication is so beneficial, especially during this time when we're isolated from each other. I remember when I was a teaching assistant at Chico State and part of my master's degree program, right? My professor had just come out. And I went on there to read. I I was TAing for a public speaking course. So I ran the sections and then.

The professor did the lecture and I wanted to read what people thought of the professor because he's very engaging and wonderful. and he had, of course, like amazing comments, but one that really stuck out to me and actually influenced me as I started teaching at community colleges is that a student had written that she had been in his section and that he had emailed her that she'd missed two classes in a row and he had sent her a personal email saying, Hey, are is everything okay?

Cheryl Broom (37:46.516)
Noticed you've missed two sections. And so she'd written on rate my professor, like, wow, that really impacted her and made her come back to class. And here was this, you know, kind of he's famous, he'd written books, and he had taken the time to notice a student was missing and to ask her if everything was okay. And that's always stuck with me. It's like the sometimes it's the littlest things that can make the biggest difference in somebody's lives, like noticing that they're not there and reaching out.

Is a way to make a major impact. It really does. And you know, we use EAB Starfish technology platform. And so part of our early alert system is reaching out to students. The instructor does, the pathway teams, the case management approach we do. But one of the things that we found, which was just fascinating, but it makes so much sense, is that we can send a kudo to a student. Instructors are doing that and saying, hey, I noticed you did XYZ this week.

Great job. And my gosh. Students love that. It actually was motivating to them to stick it out and work through, you know, the class and reach out for help because their their faculty member reached out and just said, hey, great job. I see you. I value you. I notice you. Yeah, I remember that came up in the focus groups with the students. They loved the kudos. They loved them and you had just started using them.

And what a wonderful way to do exactly what you said, to tell people we we see you and keep up the good work. Well, as we wrap up our discussion, just one final question. You know, California put money behind guided pathways as supported institutions, and your college also took advantage of achieving the dream, but there are some colleges out there who are just beginning on this journey. And is there one piece of advice that you can offer them as they take the first step?

I would say just know that the work is hard, but it's worth it. That you have to be willing to, and this is something we've talked about in many of our meetings at Really College, trusting the process, being willing to kind of get through this murky ambiguity, uncertainty, because it's not going to be easy.

Cheryl Broom (40:12.93)
But building your team of those champions willing to start the work and then begin to build more champions, I think that's important. But just know going in, it's going to be tough, but it is so worth it from the students' experience. And I would say the other thing is just be aware of who you're serving. Look at your data, disaggregate it by race and ethnicity and gender. Really be reflective.

And be willing to have those conversations about what that data says and how to make change so more students are served. And so I think those would be two things and just collaborating and knowing that you'll get through it if you're really committed to just doing the work and walking through it together. And I think that's how Readley has done that. the collaboration, the connection with each other, the foundational work we did, and we went slow. That was another thing.

It's okay to go slow in this work. And I say that because we thought we had to hurry up and do things really fast, but you'll miss a step or you'll you'll miss people, you'll lose people along the way. So build the foundation first. And then that foundation or is like roots in the ground for you. So when changes occur, like a pandemic, you're still grounded.

You're still focused on your why and your North Star vision. So just knowing that ahead of time and anticipating that and just knowing to keep moving forward is the best advice I can give. Excellent advice. Well, thank you so much for coming on and and talking through this with me. I've learned so much from you just in this conversation, but also in our work together last year. And want to congratulate you and the college for the amazing work that you've done. Thank you so much, Cheryl. And thank you too for you and your team and what you

were able to do with us. And I just so much appreciated your responsiveness, you and your team, and coming in and just listening to us and wanting to learn about us and help us in terms of communication be the best that we can be in terms of our students. So I appreciate your efforts and your team's efforts in helping us move forward. Thank you for listening to Higher Education Coffee and Conversation.

Cheryl Broom (42:37.398)
If you like the podcast, please leave me a five-star rating. And to discover more great higher education related content, make sure to visit us at Graduate Communications.com. And with that, I'm going to say thank you for listening. Thank you for the hard work you do for students each and every day.