SPEAKER_03
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, the podcast for marketing professionals in higher education. Join us every week as we talk to the industry's greatest minds in student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where marketing in higher ed is going, this podcast is for you.
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SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. My name is Troy Singer with Ring Digital.
SPEAKER_02
And I'm Bart Koehler from Koehler Solutions.
SPEAKER_00
And today, Bart and I speak to Dr. Kirsten Turner from the University of Kentucky about the innovative initiatives the University of Kentucky is doing to empower their students. She is currently the Vice President for Student Success and the Chief Student Affairs Officer.
And the one thing that Bart and I keep on talking about is how intentional Dr. Turner and the University of Kentucky have been in order to put these programs out and having the strategic focus that they have.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. You and I have talked just how impressed we are with the University of Kentucky. She spends the first half of the conversation just talking about the problems and some of the strategies and the intentionality that they've done and the programs that they've put in place.
That alone is very impressive when she gets done talking about that. But the second half of the program is the one that we kind of tease throughout that you really want to stick around to listen to because it's one of the most innovative and creative programs that I've heard of any higher ed institution doing. It involves marketing.
It involves communications. It involves strategy. It involves just some creative thinking too.
And so you definitely want to stick around and listen to the entire episode. It's one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_00
I'm confident that you will be as inspired as Bart and I are. And here's our conversation with Dr. Turner. Dr. Turner, if you would, offer something that you recently learned that you feel that our audience would deem interesting or maybe fun.
SPEAKER_04
Sure. Happy to Troy. As you know, I've come from the University of Kentucky, which is a basketball school.
And I've just recently learned that Caitlin Clarks from the University of Iowa has become the second highest scoring of all time in women's basketball. And that's an interesting story for me because she's from my hometown. We are from the exact same hometown.
And it might be kind of interesting to know that when I learned how to play women's basketball, we were still playing six on six in Iowa, where you could not cross yet three on defense and three on offense and you couldn't cross half court. So it's kind of fun to see how much women's basketball has evolved over time.
SPEAKER_00
And she is remarkable in taking over college basketball by storm, not just female, but college basketball has the spotlight on her. It is fun to watch. Very fun to watch.
No, no. We are with Dr. Kirsten Turner from the University of Kentucky.
And like she said, off camera to us when people think about the University of Kentucky, a lot of them think about basketball, me being a sports person, I am guilty. But if you could, Dr. Turner, if you could please like introduce your role and give us a snapshot of University of Kentucky that some people might not think of.
SPEAKER_04
Sure. Happy to. So I serve as the vice president for student success at the University of Kentucky.
Student success is an umbrella organization where we do everything from the moment a student might think they're coming to UK all the way through to graduation. So we do the co-curricular and extracurricular types of scaffolding and support network for our students. So everything from student organizations and activities, which we have more than 600 to the counseling center, to our tutoring center, admissions, financial aid and everything in between.
So we were really there to help support and provide the scaffolding for our students. What you might not know about the University of Kentucky is that we are one of eight institutions nationally that have the full complement of all the disciplines on one continuous campus. We also are a Power Five Athletics School and we are a academic medical complex.
We have four hospitals that we we provide good health care to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you. And Bart and I are going to be asking you to offer details about a wonderful program that you have at UK later on in the podcast. But to set that up and to add perspective to it, we'd like for you to kind of give us a background, especially as it comes to the initiatives and the strategic focus that you have around retention rates and also graduation rates.
And I think that will set up this wonderful program that you've offered.
SPEAKER_04
Happy to. This story starts in about 2015, 2016 under President Eli Capiluto, who is the third president at the university to serve more than 10 years in a row. He's in the 13th year right now.
Along with President Capiluto and the Board of Trustees, they really put a spotlight on student persistence and student graduation for the entire campus to embrace. So we embarked on a massive kind of refocused and kind of laser work on how do we enhance the student experience so we can get more students to cross that stage with that diploma. And as President Capiluto says, go on to lead a life of meaning and purpose.
So in order to do that, we really rethought the way in which we deliver a lot of the services on campus. We've used a conceptual framework that we've created in-house that really looks at four primary areas that we think students may need some support or help in. The first one is academic preparation.
So thinking about how much a student's prepared for college and college work, thinking about their executive functioning skills, thinking about time management. Are they able to pass calculus or chemistry or things like that? So really try to think about putting our different resources and ways to help our students be academically prepared. The second part of our conceptual framework is looking at belonging and engagement.
Do the students feel like this is a place they fit? Do they feel like they have community and friends? Or is this a place that they feel comfortable? A lot of times students might leave an institution if they don't feel like it's a place that they belong. The third piece is mental and physical well-being. Is a student suffering from anxiety? Are they emotionally well? Are they physically well? And how do we provide the right resources to keep them operating at the highest peak of their physical mental well-being? And then the fourth one is financial stability.
That's what we call it. Do the students have financial concerns, financial woes? Are they working one or two jobs in order to pay for college? Are they concerned about their tuition? All of the different types of issues around financial needs. We think about these four areas and in our conceptual framework, we have them designed as a swirl because we know that these intersect.
A student who is working two jobs, can't get to the tutoring center, might not have made friends on campus. That these sometimes are discrete issues for certain students, but they can also be compounded with each other. And what we try to do, what we've been doing since 2015 is realigning our resources and creating different types of interventions around one or four or more of these different areas.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. And it's fascinating to me because I think that that's the way that you articulated that. And it's obviously very strategic and it's very intentional.
I think that's what impresses me so much is that the way that you kind of go through. I mean, I think a lot of schools might stop at maybe academics and maybe they would drop in and have some of the belonging, you know, kind of a strong student life, a strong campus life type of thing. I think those are pretty typical when we think about college.
But I think the fact that you've taken it a step further, a lot of people are talking about mental wellness and that that's not only an important aspect of things, but it's also something, especially Generation Z is hyper sensitive to, especially after the pandemic. And I applaud you all for doing that. And I know we're going to get into that last a little bit further, the financial stability, because I think that that is something that I think a lot of schools miss out.
I think that, you know, we kind of run them through financial aid and think, OK, we're all set now. And I think that that doesn't tell us the whole story sometimes. And so I'm sure that that's how did you all come up with kind of these buckets? And you said it was kind of done internally.
I'm just a little curious on what the process was in that.
SPEAKER_04
A great question. We looked a lot at our internal data and did a lot of different statistical analysis. We try to call every student who leaves to find out why they left, try to map it back to one of those careers.
And we use some national literature that's out there. There's a lot of literature out there on retention and graduation persistence. And so it was a combination of internal data grounded in the natural literature.
And we have yet to find a reason why a student reports, self reports, why they leave that we couldn't map back to one or four of those areas. And so we've really base grounded in the data and the literature. The other piece of the conceptual framework is kind of an outer band that we have that surrounds those four areas.
And those are more infrastructure pieces that we put into place back in 2016, 2015 in that range. One is we wanted to usher in this culture of evidence. So we really try to ground all of the work, all of the initiatives, all the things we do based on evidence, based on data.
And I can talk further about that if interested. The second piece of that kind of infrastructure is, and I think to your listeners, will be very interesting, is we wanted to usher in a culture of strategic communication. And so we went with a CRM, we went with Salesforce and our chief marketing officer has been a partner in this all the way through from the very beginning and works with us daily on a lot of these issues.
And in the third area that we wanted to kind of an infrastructure piece is what we call a culture of care. We wanted to bring in a care orientation. The president, as the president says, we want to be both high tech and high touch.
And so all the data, all of the communication strategies are really imperative. But you still a lot of this is hand to hand relationships working with students. And so we wanted to make sure that we ushered in this culture of care on top of those really important infrastructure pieces.
And so those three areas kind of bound in the outer circle around those around those four reasons why we think students might persist or why they might drop out.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. That's great.
SPEAKER_00
So are there any highlights or maybe one or two results that you can offer as examples that were a result of this without giving away our big result and the big program that we're going to highlight at the second half of our podcast.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. So what we did is we mapped all of our different retention and graduation efforts. And then we started to sunset some of those and we started to start thinking about anchor initiatives that we could implement to help move these numbers.
The president and the board had challenged the campus to try to hit a six year graduation rate. That was at 70%. We had been around 60 for about a decade and then also challenged us to hit a 90% retention rate.
We had been about at an 80% retention rate for a similar decade. So fast forward seven, eight years this past spring we hit that 70% goal for a six year graduation rate and we're at 87% right now for a first first fall to second fall retention rate. So we have seen a lot of these efforts, a lot of these initiatives, the way in which we've we've thought about this really pushed those numbers.
And the thing I'm really proud about and with this entire campus effort is we've done that with a materially similar first year class. So our class looks academically as well as financially very similar to what it did a decade ago. And what I mean by that is we're we have we are a flagship land grant research one institution, but we have about a 95% acceptance rate.
So we were able to move those numbers without becoming more selective. And in fact, we grew, we grew demographically and we grew just shared numbers over the same time. So we as the president said, opened our doors widest to Kentuckians kept to our land grant mission, but we're able to move those numbers at the same time.
And that's something that I'm really proud of being a part of campus.
SPEAKER_02
As you should be, I mean, congratulations on that. I think that's that's an amazing thing for the University of Kentucky to do. And I think that part of what I wanted to stop and pause with here, because I mean, you mentioned being a land grant and R1 and all the other traits that come with that.
Obviously, you're the largest institution in Kentucky of higher education. And so naturally, because of that, you're going to be graduating 10% more based on those numbers. That has to make a big impact into the community in the state.
Talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, so our focus at the university and a president, Cameludo is to really advance Kentucky. He says that we are of for and with Kentucky. So we are the University of for and with Kentucky.
And we really focus exactly on on that issue is one of the ways we meet that mission is how many students can we have crossed that stage and go into the workforce. So we try to tie a lot of what we do into the workforce needs of Kentucky and really think about how can we help advance the Commonwealth. And that is a deep, deep mission within the institution.
SPEAKER_02
I love that. I love hearing those types of stories as well.
SPEAKER_00
Before we move to what we've been promising the highlight for the past 15 minutes, Dr. Turner, are there any other insights or things that you think it would be important for you to share that other. Professionals from institutions could benefit from.
SPEAKER_04
I mentioned that we really believe at the institution that we're advancing Kentucky, and that is our focus. But we also think that the institution sits in an interesting space in place within the national dialogue. And so a lot of times what we also think about is the things that we're doing in the work that we're doing in Kentucky has ability to be portable to other parts of the of the nation.
And so thinking about ways in which we can help with the student persistence or graduation, thinking about what we do at the medical complex and the medical enterprise on our campus. It's all focused for Kentuckians. We don't think any Kentuckians should have to go out of state for their medical needs or go out of state for their educational needs that we offer the highest quality care, the highest quality educational experience.
But what we also think is the things we're doing in Kentucky could be portable nationally so that we really try to think about designing implementations so that we are helping guide the national conversation.
SPEAKER_02
I like that. And I want to tease that out for just a moment because I know that Troy has been teasing everything else. Before we get to that point, I do want to talk about that because we've got a wide range of listeners on this podcast.
And I want to just kind of encourage them to, you know, keep listening. But when you say portable, I mean, you talked a lot about and I have a lot of maybe smaller schools are thinking, well, that's UK. They can do that.
They're they're a flagship. They can do that. She's talking to other flagships on portability.
But I don't think that you are. So maybe kind of maybe tease that out a little bit to say, you know, something that even a very small school might be able to, you know, engage with. I know you and I both talked to before we got going here.
We're both products of small privates here in Indiana. And so when I'm thinking about that type of school, how would something like this be portable for them?
SPEAKER_04
Well, I'll give you one example based on the retention work. So we have a meeting on campus that I personally believe is one of the key drivers in our success over the last seven or eight years. We we call it.
It's a very boring name. We call it the retention meeting. So we haven't been very creative on that.
But we meet every Friday for an hour and a half from 10 to 1130. It started with about 10 people that would show up. We now have over 80 people on campus that come.
We have a companion online quote unquote course that we've created through our learning management system that we post to all the different proceedings from that meeting. And we have over 300 subscribers that of faculty and staff across campus who who can tune in through that through that that online version of it. We start that meeting with the data of what's going on this week with students.
And we in real time do different types of come up with different interventions and discuss what's what what the data is saying and what people are seeing play out with our students on campus. The reason why I think it's really important is it is open to anyone. Anyone on our campus can come to that meeting.
And what you get is this really interesting mix of institutional leaders along with frontline student support personnel who are all there to roll up their sleeves, dive into the data and really start to think about. What is happening to our students in real time and then being able to do some real in time interventions that other than. Staff time that doesn't really cost anything additional additional resources and it has democratized this institutional priority of student success where everyone's getting the same data.
Everyone's got this an equal voice to say, hey, this is my experience what I'm seeing with our students and everybody's part of the conversation about how to intervene and try to. Change those numbers if they're headed in a direction that we don't want them to be and I personally attribute a lot of our success to that meeting because we've been able to pivot quickly and it would be something that almost anybody could implement.
SPEAKER_02
I love that and I love I mean I said at the beginning how much I love the fact that you guys were very intentional and very really thoughtful and strategic. But now you're being so pragmatic. I just I'm really impressed and I really, really like everything that you all are doing because I do agree that this can be scaled up or down.
I mean, obviously you're a larger flagship and so you know you might be at the top end of. But I think it I think it works and I and I love the fact that you were able to kind of just I could see a smaller campus, the retention meeting might not be 80 or 100 people it might be more of like 25 or 30 but it might represent a similar percentage of their staff. So thanks for sharing that that's great.
SPEAKER_00
Let's talk about the UK Invest program and I'll admit that when we first was was presented this from you, I was speechless and I have shared it with a couple of my friends Bart and I talked about it after you first presented it to us. So could you explain how this started and the main objectives of the program.
SPEAKER_04
Be happy to see you came to us as our most recent initiative that we've launched around this whole theme of student success. And it's nested under our financial stability arm. So each one of these initiatives is kind of nested under one of those of those pillars, if you will, of student success in trying to help our students.
And what it is very simply is every student is it's optional. It's not required, but every student if they want, they can open up an investment account. We are partnering with Fidelity, who's been a fantastic partner on this and a student can go and get a brokerage account from Fidelity and start thinking about long term financial interest and financial investment.
We think that's novel in and of itself. But what we've done is we have designed habits, designed behaviors around one or more of those four areas that we think leads to a successful students progression towards graduation. And our belief is we want to hardwire good habits to help those students lead that life of meaning purpose be ready to graduate.
And we're micro scholarshiping we're giving them incentives each time they do one or more of those behaviors that we've identified. We're going to put a few a few dollars in their investment account. So we've given students the ability to earn money to put in that investment account while they're hard wiring those healthy habits that we've identified.
So I'll give you a couple of examples under the fine under the wellness of mental physical well being if a student takes a mindfulness class or if they go to the gym regularly. We might put $10 to $15 into that investment account. If they go to the career center and they do a resume workshop and they put their resume on file with our software program to to hook them up to different internship opportunities.
We might put you know $20 into their investment account students have the ability to earn up to about $500 a year. And then at the same time they are able to start to learn about the value of investing your money over time. It's both a financial stability piece of initiative as well as a overall student success initiative.
SPEAKER_02
I love that. And I love the fact that you've got I mean this is kind of baked in not only as you know financial literacy which I mean everybody can take an elective on personal finance and things like that. I remembered taking that my senior year in college.
And you know that was the extent of my financial literacy coming out of college. I love the fact that you've not only opened up this introductory you know you've partnered with Fidelity which is a great move. You've got these brokerage accounts the students can do.
There's there's this sense of almost gamification to it in a way too that if I do this then I can get that which we know is a big part of Gen Z and and will be a big part of Gen Alpha coming up. And so I guess I'm looking at it is what are you starting to see is that idea of that financial literacy that that education that's coming out because again this is not only for the students and not only you know helping form the the habits and the behaviors that you want to be able to make sure that they succeed. But there's got to be a big play you know long term for as we talked about the community in the state of Kentucky.
What are some of the thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. So what one of the first things we tell students when they participate in this. As we give them the tale of two students we show them that the first student decides you know they graduate at twenty two.
If they're an undergrad and that 30 and they wait 10 years before they start to put any money away for kind of long term financial stability. And then at thirty two they decide they're going to start putting 100 bucks away for a month and they do that for 40 years. So that's about 40 48 thousand dollars total.
And if you look at the S&P rate of return over the past 40 years it's about 11 percent. So that 48 thousand dollars they put in over the course of 40 years starting at thirty two will roughly come out to about 750 thousand dollars. That's nice.
Nasty. A lot of people will say that's a pretty good no say I'm happy. Then we show them the tale of the second student and the second student puts the money way starting at twenty two when they graduate and they have a hundred dollars that they put away for a month each month for.
But they only do it for 10 years. So they stop at thirty two. And so they put in 12 thousand dollars.
And then they just let that roll for the next 40 years. Same rate of return. And it's roughly about a hundred.
It's about one point five million. And the students when they see that they their eyes get real big and they go oh you know we say do you want to be student one who puts in 12 thousand or do you want to be student two who puts in forty eight thousand. Of course they all want to be student one.
And what we tell them is time is on your side right now. Time that you may not have money right now but you have time. And what we want to do is hard wire the habit of putting a little bit away.
We ask them how many of you went and bought a coffee. But not just plain old coffee but you know kind of a trick down coffee five dollars or more. And they all raise their hand.
And we say put that have one less coffee a week. Put that money away and let it ride. And you'll see what time does for you.
You've got time right now. That's the thing you have. And so let's hard wire that habit.
Long term to answer your question is we see that this has potential to help with generational wealth. Help with long term financial stability for our students as as they go on to leave those leave those lives of median purpose. That they will have started that nest egg and they will have started that understanding of kind of long term financial wellness early enough that they can benefit from it from that time bump.
If you will.
SPEAKER_02
Love that. That's that's so great.
SPEAKER_00
If you would please share how the integration of the university's course management system like Canvas enhances this program.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, this is why the team at UK is so great. And I'm just so thrilled to be able to be a part of that team. We had some members on our team who who had the idea of using our course management system.
So this is we use Canvas on our campus and this is a system that students are in and out of all day long because all of their courses. Have have sections on there so they're uploading simons. They're checking things out discussion boards all of that.
So someone had the idea of let's build out a course if you will. I mean it's not it's not an actual course, but it looks like a course when you log on to Canvas that's called you came best. And if you click on it like you would click on any other course it will show you all the different activities that students can participate in in order to get you know those those financial rewards.
And it will show you when they're offered and how to go about doing it and it will also show the students if they took advantage of it. So I'll have like a little green check mark that they did whatever the activity it was that that led to some income. And all of that is the interface with the fidelity bloom app that we are that we're using with them.
And so they can log on their fidelity app and look at it or they can get on their Canvas course and they can see how that money is flowing and they can see those different behaviors. And so it's in a place that's really user friendly for them and it's in a place that they really feel comfortable navigating in a way. So we wanted to make this as user easy as user friendly as possible.
We've had about 17% of our students take us up on this this year. This is the first year of implementation and about a third of our freshmen. So our third of our first year students have opened up investment accounts and about 17% of the overall 34,000 student population have.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. And is there like a where they can only enter it a certain season or do you find people say, hey, my roommate has this and I need to get into this.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, they can do it at any time. They could do it right now. So listen to the podcast.
They could get on and do it. We track our marketing team is is hand and glove was also on this project. And so we track a lot of the different ways in which we try to get students aware and we see what's working and what's not working and try to lean into those different pieces.
SPEAKER_02
OK, so as you kind of look at this, because I'm fascinated with this, especially as it relates to those behaviors is you've asked people to do. So as we kind of look at, I mean, we've talked about the structure and the implementation and, you know, the fact that what you're doing. But how I mean, it's early.
I know that, you know, we're in this is February of the first year. So, you know, we don't have a year under your belt yet. But what are the initial observations? I mean, how is this affecting those other three areas that that you've kind of identified that you've been very intentional about? Are those behaviors like with physical wellness or mental wellness or or even the academics? Are you seeing some correlation between those this early?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, great, great question, Bart. So one of the things that we've been doing, and as you mentioned, we've only had this for about a semester. So we're just now crunching the numbers from the first semester, but we are getting some really encouraging results.
And what we're seeing is that students who open up an investment account with us and or with fidelity, if you will, that they count as not actually with the University of Kentucky, it's with fidelity. But if they open it up and they participate in in those different behaviors, they are reporting out higher GPAs for that for that first semester. They're also being retained at a higher level.
And what's really exciting is when you look at it, you break it out by demographics. If you look at it and break it out by across income level or across academic preparation level, you're seeing the same results. So it's not just students who come from, say, wealthier families who are seeing that bump.
You're seeing it across the entire spectrum of our student population. And we have a student population of about 25 percent of our students come from median family incomes of $25,000 or less. About 25 to 30 percent of our students are first generation.
And so you'll see that you're seeing this bump across academic levels as well as across family income, which is also really encouraging. And what we're zeroing in on is if they do at least three or more of those activities. And so that seems to be the magic number.
If you can get them to do you see a bump at one or two, but it's use if they do three or more, you see, you start to see a bigger bump. Now, again, one semester, so we're cautious. Yeah, we're cautious on on making too many conclusions, but the early results are looking good.
The other piece that's looking really good, too, is we have worked with fidelity. And so the only is giving students kind of like three different options. We're putting some some kind of training wheels on right now where it's kind of these are the right terms, but it's low risk kind of medium and a little bit higher risk in terms of so that students can kind of figure out.
What we're seeing is a lot of students are leaving the money and less risky environment. And when you talk to students about it, they're saying, I'm just going to let this ride. And so they're doing exactly kind of what you want them to do.
And they're not they're just they're picking up on the things we've tried to teach them. And hopefully that will continue.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. And so I wanted to point out to everybody because I think you made a couple of comments that I think is important. You're seeing the the increase in the GPAs and the retention rates across all different financial backgrounds.
So, you know, I think a lot of people would look at this and say, well, yeah, so and so she came in her daddy's a entrepreneur. So she understands this. And well, that's that's not what we're talking about here because it sounds like participation is is across all kinds of economic levels.
SPEAKER_04
Is that true? That was absolutely true. And the other thing I should say is this is an initiative that we ushered in on top of other things we've already done. And I I offer that particularly in the financial stability area.
And I say that because we didn't rush right to long term investment to teach our students. We first thought through access issues. And so over the last 10 years, we've tripled our institutional aid budget from 50 million to 160 million.
That's that's money that students don't have to pay back in order to help them come to college. We are four year rolling average of tuition increases with less than 2 percent. So we've tried to contain costs.
We've had a couple of initiatives around work study, providing more opportunities for students to to earn money while they're there. We have a nationally recognized program that we that was part of this whole student success rebuild on campus called UK leads that really targets unmet need for students when they're currently students. And so this is kind of the natural extension of of thinking about investments.
This this project itself is not for students. It's for all students, but it's not a solution for students who have, say, more financial access issues. There are other programs that we've already built that are already in place for our students.
We want to give those students as well as all of our students an opportunity to also start learning to invest. We didn't rush in with this. This is the natural extension of some on top of other initiatives that we've put into place.
SPEAKER_02
That's pretty exciting. And I guess one last question I have just a pragmatic practical question because I can imagine there's some listeners wondering how do you roll this out? Is this part of freshman seminar? Is it part of orientation? How how does all this get communicated and opportunities for the students?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, in a multimodal way, right? We do emails, we do banners on campus. We have an information desk that's a pop up desk that's literally right next to the actual information desk in the students center. So OK, it's like the companion information desk that's just dedicated to UK invest.
I will tell you, though, one of the things that popped the most in terms of student enrollment is we put these cards, these postcards about it on the death of the students residence hall room, during or moving. And we had a lot of parents that saw it as they're moving their kids in and said, hey, you need to take advantage of this. That was one of the things that was the biggest driver into students signing up.
But we were hitting them in all sorts of different ways about it.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. I always tell I always tell my clients, make sure that you're using the key influencers in your marketing. You guys did that.
You know, mom saw it. Hey, we're doing this. So that's right.
That's right. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00
Troy, as we bring our episode to a close, I have two questions for you. Number one, thank you for offering this dynamic program and willing to share the details of it. Were there any other aspects of it that you think we should be describing or maybe anything else that we talked about that you would like to make sure you would to convey before we leave the episode?
SPEAKER_04
I would end with this. I've mentioned earlier on the show that President Capoloto has challenged us to ensure our students are prepared to lead a life of meaning and purpose. And as we designed this, we realized that those four areas are reasons why students might persist or might not.
But they also lend themselves to a life of meaning and purpose. So are you financially well? Are you physically and mentally well? Do you have a community? Are you civically engaged? Are you part of something larger than yourself? And do you have an occupation or a vocation that you are prepared for and trained for? And so those four areas of academic preparation and so on and so forth really also lead to a life of meaning and purpose. And so when we think about UK and VAS, we think about these were hardwiring these skills to help them cross that stage in four years or however long it might take them.
But we're also are hardwiring the skills to what we think lead up to a life of meaning and purpose. And so it's twofold. It's to help them in the short term, but it's also to help them hardwire those habits for that life of meaning and purpose.
SPEAKER_01
That's great. Love that. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00
And then additionally, would you, as you know, from your professional seat, have a piece of advice that you could offer listeners that they may be able to implement right away? That would be able to move a brick as they go into their day today or the next few days.
SPEAKER_04
I was a sociology and political science major in college. So I was not. I was not financed, but what this has taught me is go open some account and just start putting a little bit of money away when you look at the rate of return.
You know, and I'm almost 50 and I still, you still, there's still runway. So it might not be as much as if I'd started at 22, but just a little bit of investment, not a savings account, just a little bit of an investment account. That's, as I've dug more into with the team on this, that's what I would tell people is just get in that habit.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's great. That's great. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00
We've been talking to Dr. Kirsten Turner, Vice President for Student Success and Chief Student Affairs Officer at the University of Kentucky. And Dr.
Turner, what would be the best way someone could reach you if they would like to get more information?
SPEAKER_04
That would be lovely. My name is Kirsten. It's Kirsten.
K-I-R-S-T-E-N dot Turner. T-U-R-N-E-R at UKY.edu.
SPEAKER_03
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00
It's been wonderful to speak with you. And again, we are so impressed with this initiative from UK. Thank you so much.
Bart, do you have a final thought that you would like to share? I do.
SPEAKER_02
And I, again, just congratulations to University of Kentucky and all the hard work that they've done to put this together. And I, I love a couple of things about this. I love that they were challenged by their board.
And so if you're, if you're a board member listening or you're on leadership team, even if you're at a small college, put some challenges out there, you know, kind of, kind of do that. We have this moonshot or something that you're going to do. We talk a lot about the, the big, hairy, audacious goals, the B-hags.
What is it for you guys? For UK, it was, you know, increasing those, those retention and those graduation rates by 10%. So I would challenge you to kind of think big and think what you could do. And then not only think about that and put the goal, but then put some pragmatic steps in place, put a strategy together.
I, I love the fact that they kind of put together academics and, and, you know, this engagement and belonging and then the physical and mental wellness. And then just the idea of the financial stability. And they, they define those things in their context of the student's success that was going to help them get to those and reach those goals.
They might not be the goals your school will do, but, you know, look for a way to put the goals together, strategize. And then I just love the fact that they've incentivized their students to adopt the behaviors that's going to help them. Ultimately, they'll help the students.
And so again, I think this was a great example of a way that they're doing it for UK. It's not something necessarily you have to do. I mean, sure, you probably, it's scalable.
You can do a lot of this same thing. And I think if every school in the nation did this, we would see better retention rates and graduation rates across the board. But I do think that there's just some other things for you to think about that can really help you move the needle at your institution as well.
So thanks again, Kirsten. It was great to have you here today.
SPEAKER_04
Thank you. Lovely to be with you all.
SPEAKER_00
Well said Bart and I are grateful to Rob Conlon and his team at Westport Studios. We also want to say the higher ed marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education, marketing and branding agency. And by Ring Digital, the ad targeting people.
Successfully increasing response and yield by precisely serving as directly to the handheld and household devices of your physical enrollment funnel mailing list. Again, on behalf of Bart Kailer, I'm Troy Singer. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_03
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