Community College — America’s Best-Kept Promise

Community colleges are redefining student success through innovation, hyper-personalization and a commitment to meeting the needs of diverse learners.

34 minutes
By: Higher Voltage

 

Community colleges are often overlooked, but they may just be the unsung heroes of higher education. Host Kevin Tyler welcomes guest Devin Purgason, assistant vice president for student experience, marketing and outreach at Forsyth Technical Community College, to shine a spotlight on the dynamic world of community colleges and higher ed marketing. From predictions for 2025 to the transformative power of AI and micro-credentials, the discussion highlights how institutions like Forsyth Tech are driving innovation, personalizing student experiences and supporting diverse learners to achieve success.

Read the full transcript here

Kevin Tyler

Hello and welcome to Higher Voltage, a Volt podcast that explores what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change in higher ed marketing, leadership and administration. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler.

Kevin Tyler 

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to Higher Voltage. I am joined today by one of my favorite people in higher ed, the kindest, most thoughtful, genuine people, Devin Purgason from Forsyth Tech Community College. Devin, thank you for joining me today. This is gonna be so fun, I already know.

Devin Purgason 

Thank you. I am so excited to be here with you, Kevin! I echo the same, you are literally one of my favorite voices for so long in higher ed. Like, I remember when I followed you on Twitter for the first time. We don’t talk about Twitter anymore. 

Kevin Tyler 

We don’t. No.

Devin Purgason 

No, no, no, no, she’s gone. But I remember when I followed you on Twitter and would just be like, oh my gosh, everything he says is amazing. Retweet, like, retweet, like. And now I’m having a conversation with you. It’s amazing. 

Kevin Tyler 

I am humble too. And yes, this will be great. Well, thank you for that support early on. It was a, I do miss the higher ed marketing community on Twitter, but we are rebuilding that on Bluesky. 

Devin Purgason

Absolutely.

Kevin Tyler

So I’m really excited to see what the future holds for that group. Such close ties that I know that you have as well. We are here to talk about the article that you recently have published in Inside Higher Ed called Three Higher Ed Marketing Predictions for 2025. I am very excited to get to that discussion. 

But there are a couple of things I’d love for you to share first. One is, that I can’t really recall the last time we had a community college guest on Higher Voltage. And so I’m curious if you can just share some of the high points, the demos, some of the things that you want our listeners to know about Forsyth Tech Community College.

Devin Purgason 

Yeah, absolutely. We, here, at Forsyth Tech, we serve two counties within North Carolina. There are 58 community colleges in North Carolina. We’re one of the #Great58. And we serve Forsyth and Stokes County, two very different counties. Forsyth County with Winston-Salem, which is the fifth largest city in the state, very urban, whereas Stokes County is very, very rural. So, you know, we have tons of people with even issues having internet connectivity in our northern county, Stokes. 

So whenever it comes to our curriculum students, we have about 9,000, and then whenever we think of our continuing education students, so they’re in programs like certified nursing assistant or electrical line worker. Some of those fast-track courses, we actually have about 22,000 total students. We have nine campuses across Forsyth and Stokes County. A huge majority of our learners are either adult learners or they’re first-generation college students. We’re also an emerging Hispanic serving institution. So we are very, very excited to become a Hispanic-serving institution here in the near future. We’ve got some really strong goals for that. We have a fantastic president who herself was a community college graduate. And so she’s very, very passionate about our students, about their success. And I feel like you can sort of see that through all of our marketing and all of the material and things like that that we produce. That’s a little bit about Forsyth Tech.

Kevin Tyler 

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think, one of my goals for 2025 is to have more community college guests on Higher Voltage. There’s so much that traditional four-year and other kinds of institutions can learn from community colleges, especially right now. And so I’m just really pleased to have you join me today on Higher Voltage. 

Now, the second piece that I think I would be remiss if I did not call out, celebrate, mention, shout from the rooftops is that I am currently joined by the 2024 AMA Marketer of the Year. And this is, you know, if I had that air horn, pew pew pew, that’s an amazing accomplishment. I just wanted to like, did you go to Disneyland afterwards? Like what happened as a result of you winning that really, really cool and well-deserved award this year?

Devin Purgason 

I got a Kevin Tyler hug after. That was really cool. No, yeah, it was so amazing. Just being a finalist, being nominated, I know it’s one of those cliches, just to be nominated. No, seriously, just to be nominated. I was blown away and very, very honored.

Then to become a finalist, I had won the award at that point. Just to be able to say that I am a finalist with the other two amazing, amazing marketers. Everything has just been like, it’s a cherry on top. You know, it’s just been amazing. And to be able to experience it with one of my close mentors, Jaime Hunt. You were there, you were like right front row, you were going on stage very, like very next.

So I got to hug all my favorite people and just sort of share this, this collective moment. You mentioned earlier about like the community, the higher ed marketing community. And I just felt such love in the room. It was just one of, one of the best experiences of my life. I’ll never forget it. And I was in Vegas. So, I mean, that’s, I guess the way I celebrated it.

Kevin Tyler 

I love it. Listen, it makes good sense to me. It’s so well deserved. You’re right that it was a very strong pool of candidates, super strong pool of finalists. And, you know, I would have been super pleased over the moon with any of you all winning. But I’m so glad it was you. It’s just a testament to the amount of work that you put in, not just to your institution, but also to the practice of marketing in higher education. So I just wanted to say, I really appreciate that. 

Devin Purgason

Thank you so much, Kevin.

Kevin Tyler 

You are welcome. Now listen, we’re not here to talk about you the whole time, all right? 

Devin Purgason 

Oh, what?! 

Kevin Tyler 

We kind of are. This piece that you wrote for Inside Higher Ed from a couple of weeks ago brought to mind a lot of things. Obviously, we’re at the time of the year when a lot of predictions are coming out about all types of things. And we generally, typically see predictions for higher ed. But it felt like this one kind of carried a different kind of weight and tone to it, right? We have three sections. We have a student success prediction. We have an AI/technology prediction. And then we have like a micro-credential prediction, each of which we’ll talk about today. I am curious about what got you thinking about these predictions specifically, and then I’m going to dive in more into each of those after that.

Devin Purgason

Absolutely. So I think the first thing that I was thinking about, I feel like we are at such a quickly changing landscape whenever it comes to higher ed and whenever it comes to marketing. With the advent of generative AI and it becoming such a prevalent part of the market and vendors and the suite of things that marketing agencies are providing for higher ed. The way that we, you know, it’s changing the landscape of the way that we communicate and interact with our students, with the way that they communicate and interact with us, the way that the entire world is sort of working. That was really top of mind. And so I wanted to stake a prediction on that. 

And then it really got me to think about a couple of the things, I think, kind of what you had mentioned earlier, that community colleges do fairly well that I think people are finally starting to realize. Our president, Dr. Spriggs, I’ve talked about her already, but one thing that she has said over the last year is, colleges were once America’s best-kept secret, and now people are realizing that they’re America’s best-kept promise. And so, yeah, yeah…

It’s her, that’s Janet Spriggs, not Devin Purgason. She’s amazing. But no, I think that is sort of the ethos behind me sort of putting these three predictions to pen and sort of submitting that. So the student success piece, the AI—the transformative AI piece—and then the micro-credentials.

Kevin Tyler

So let’s start with the student success piece. I’m curious what you think are some of the biggest opportunities that many institutions might be missing when it comes to messaging about student success.

Devin Purgason 

Sure. So, I think, a couple of the things that come to mind whenever I think through opportunities that some colleges, institutions, universities may be missing. I think a lot of people, the “low-hanging fruit” whenever it comes to student success is telling those student success stories. The, oh, here are the graduation rates, here are the job placement rates, here’s, here’s what this credential can do for you. This is how this, coming to school here for two years or four years or six months or whatever it may be, this is how it can translate into a credential for you which can help you get a job. That is what we are, that is what higher ed is doing, especially specifically community colleges. We are here to help people create and earn a family-sustaining wage. That’s our goal. 

Telling that story widely, I think is one of the main pieces, but that’s not what I would say revolutionary for 2025. I feel like this has been, any marketing conference you go to, this is probably something that has been discussed or talked about. 

I think whenever I think of student success, one thing that I am imagining is holistically thinking about the student experience and the student themselves. What I say about that is, we, at Forsyth Tech, we started this Forsyth Tech Cares program and it was a holistic wraparound support program that’s aimed, we had several aims, but one of them was to have pantries on all of our campuses. So any student, no matter if they were in between classes or about to go home, if they needed food or toiletries or notebook paper or pencils or baby formula, they were able to stop by in a judgment-free, non-stigmatized way, to come and get the things that they need. And one of the things that I kept hearing about over and over again was a hungry student can’t learn. Right? 

Kevin Tyler 

Yep.

Devin Purgason

If you’re a student and you’re in class and your stomach is growling, it’s hard for you to pay attention and it’s hard for you to learn. And so we started shifting from just being academic based and looking at, how are the students doing in their grades-wise? What does that success metric look like to how can we support the whole student? One way that I think of student success being king is are we marketing the programming that we have? Are we using that as a recruitment tool to sort of say that we are here to help you be successful as a student? So instead of, for instance, we have a lot of adult learners at our campus. So instead of inviting all of these adult learners to a night social or something like that, we start thinking through, oh, well, we should probably have free childcare there, right? 

 

Kevin Tyler

Right.

 

Devin Purgason 

Because if they have children, you know, family is the most important thing. We wanna make sure that they are able to feel like they are supported whenever they come to one of our events. So making sure that we have childcare. 

You know, first-generation college students, one of the biggest barriers is all of this inside baseball language that we have as colleges and universities, right? And so simplifying that language is a way to ensure student success. And so I think it’s a lot more nuanced than just job placement data and sharing those things. It’s what can the institution do to ensure that the student is being successful. How can we show those things that our colleges and universities are doing and use that as even a recruitment tool for them, to let them know, hey, if you come to Forsyth Tech, we got you, we got you, we’re gonna support you, we understand that you’re an adult learner, we understand that you have a full-time job. We understand that this is the first time that you’ve ever been to college. We understand that you don’t have a social security number. Whatever it may be, we get it, and we want you. And we’re gonna help you do whatever it, we’re gonna help you in whatever capacity to make sure that you’re successful. 

Kevin Tyler 

It’s an interesting idea, right? So I think that one of the things I’ve said on the show a number of times, and this is not a new thing by any stretch of the imagination, but what we know is that institutions of higher learning have become more responsible for more things as the populations that they’re serving have changed and evolved, right? And so, making sure that not only are you offering the kinds of services and supports that students need, talking about that in a very open way that doesn’t feel like a secret or a hidden like, oh my God, if you go over to the food bank over there behind the, behind, go in the back door and down the hallway and whatever else, talking about it as if it is an asset to your campus, right? We are looking out for everyone as much as we can. 

And then from an outputs perspective or an outcomes perspective, I think that the other part that is not new on this show is like diversifying the stories of success that we see coming out of institutions of higher learning, right? Of course, there are the people who want to make millions and millions of dollars. That’s totally fine. There are also people who want to be art teachers. There are people who want to be park rangers. There are people who want to be nurses. And so where are those stories of success from an outcomes perspective that starts to change the nature and tone of how we are defining success coming out of college or community college, traditional four-year, year whatever.

If we think about these things in new ways, have and talk about them in new ways, we have the opportunity to introduce our brands to new people who need different things. I think this blanket kind of we have 65% of our graduates are in corner offices and executives that make whatever fortune 500 whatever’s that is a great goal. I’m not like that. I’ve never wanted corner office of any building, right? So, the stories that we are telling about what is possible in a student’s life, those are different. And we need to have touchpoints for those stories to exist and be successful.

Devin Purgason 

Absolutely. And, I think, one thing that is really big in industry, we see this in the way that people interact with brands all over is this idea of hyper-personalization, right? And I know that we’re gonna talk a little bit about that, know, because that really feeds into the AI piece. But, sort of the same way, kind of what you’re mentioning with the student success. Not everyone is the same

Kevin Tyler 

Right.

Devin Purgason 

You know what I mean? Like we are all different. I like my plant, not a corner office. I want to sit in front of that. You have a beautiful painting. See? Yeah. Yeah. We’re like, I love that.

Kevin Tyler 

It’s true, it’s so true. And I’m so glad that you brought up some of the specific supports and services that Forsyth Tech offers. Have those supports and services made their way into your messaging yet? 

Devin Purgason 

Yes.

Kevin Tyler

Or are you working on that? And how are you doing that?

Devin Purgason 

Yes, we are working on it. We are in a constant learning and growing environment at Forsyth Tech, which I really love. I think there’s always an opportunity for us to do better and to be better. So yeah, but one of the ways that our recruiters, whenever they go out to recruit students and to let them know, we put those supports at the very, very front end to let them know, hey, yeah, we have this available for you whenever you come to our campus. You know, we have it on our website. We have it on messaging, advertising that we put out. We do specific campaigns about support services that we have to let people know that, you can do it. You can come back to college. One of our biggest demographics that we are currently going after is the some-college no-degree, right? We all know this, yes, yes. That’s our “answer” to the demographic cliff. 

Kevin Tyler

Thank you. Thank you.

Devin Purgason

There’s this huge group of students of some college no degree. So they’ve had a taste of a college experience. It probably more than likely was not a positive one because they have some college no degree. Or their life has changed in some way. So we want to get out in front of them and let them know that no matter how your life has changed, no matter where you find yourself now, you can come back. We are going to help you. That  you can get through this and that you can go on finish your degree, finish your program and walk across that stage skilled and upskill. So that is something that we’re doing from a digital advertising marketing perspective. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for us to continue to grow and to continue to integrate the student success portion and sort of the support services that we have within our marketing. But that’s just sort of the way that we’re starting at this point.

 

EK ad read

 

Kevin Tyler 

I would love to shift over to one of your other predictions. And that is in relation to AI. And the way it’s framed in your piece, it’s no longer about experimentation. It’s now about transformation. And one of the lines “Schools that embrace AI as a tool for transformation will lead the way in creating a student experience that is smarter, more responsive, and ultimately more human.” What are some concrete ways that institutions can be proactive in moving from experimentation with AI to transformation?

Devin Purgason 

Yeah, so I think one of the stats, this was from several months ago, so it may have shifted at this point. It was 80% of businesses say that AI is something that is really important for the future of their business. And then, when you looked at faculty, whenever they are talking about school and education, it’s about 10% say it’s important. So there’s a huge divide of industry, the speed of business, and higher ed whenever it comes to the importance and the usage, I think, of AI. 

I think one way, concretely, for institutions to move to a transformative space is to really invest in their faculty and staff with training for AI tools. Using those AI tools, making sure that it’s something that they have professional development with, that we are removing the stigma of people being afraid of using AI. I remember last year having a lunch and learn session with all of our administrative assistants and showing them what they could do with ChatGPT whenever it comes to helping craft an email or taking a bunch of calendars and finding the space within them. There were people in that group that were so afraid at the very beginning of even logging into ChatGPT or logging into one of these AI tools. 

So, I think, schools really, really investing in faculty and staff training for AI tools is huge. And then actually using some of these AI products. I think that we are far beyond or we are getting to the point where we’re far beyond people just sort of like thinking about or praying about an AI chatbot. Like, girl, you need to get on the train, we need you to start that procurement process on an AI chatbot. It’s something that is so prevalent with business and industry. I think the schools that have not moved into some of these concrete ways and concrete AI tools are gonna be left behind whenever it comes to the larger landscape. 

Kevin Tyler 

And the students.

Devin Purgason

And the students, and the students. You know, students also need this training and investment and understanding of what is ethical AI use and how can we use it. I think some of the schools like Michigan who have these amazing AI hubs, if you will, where they’ve created custom GPTs for their campuses and stuff like that. They’re so leading the way. I think we need to move from starting AI committees and AI task forces to actual concrete work and plans and building AI functionality within our student and faculty, staff, ecosystem.

Kevin Tyler 

Yeah, I agree with you. I think that the initial reaction to AI has felt so punitive and protective. And it was all viewed through this lens of cheating and getting around things and shortcutting learning or whatever else. And I am not here to say that having a healthy amount of caution about a new tool is a bad thing. But if we kind of try to also look at it from the possibilities that exist with new technology and then figuring out how we can incorporate or adapt that into the way that our campus and campus culture operates. It feels like a much bigger and more positive thing rather than protecting our campus from the chatbot. And the exposure that the adoption can then provide students means that they will have touched AI in ways that feel ethical and ways that feel positive and generative and whatever else once they get to wherever they’re going. And so, I think that, you know, with a lot of things and overcorrection tends to happen. And then we have like this white-knuckle grip on a thing. No, you cannot use it. No, we cannot touch it. Don’t type ChatGPT into anything, like, don’t use it.

And then we’re left with people at an institution who go out into the world and like, I don’t know how to use this. I wasn’t even allowed to. Right?

Devin Purgason 

Right.

Kevin Tyler 

And so how do we get to that point where it becomes a bit more progressive? 

Devin Purgason 

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Kevin Tyler 

I guess, the way that education should be, right? Education needs to keep up with what is going on in the world so that there can be application from what we’re learning to what we’re doing. I think the other part about it is, granted, we still need broadband in a lot of areas in the country, right? Not everyone has access to the internet. 

Devin Purgason 

Exactly.

Kevin Tyler 

And so once that gets taken care of, what that means for access to assistance, to customer service, “customer service” for institutions. There are a lot of benefits here. Even in the K-12 space, there have been papers as old as from 1984 that posit the potential for something like AI to help with individual tutoring. 

Devin Purgason 

Brilliant.

Kevin Tyler

That would be a remarkable one-on-one tutor who was a robot. We’re thinking like, and I want to date myself obviously with the Jetsons. That feels very Jetsonsy, but I think that if we can leverage things like technology to increase access, that is a win. That’s a win.

Devin Purgason 

Yes. 100%. 100%. I’m going to say when we were in school, Kevin, you remember when we were in school? 

Kevin Tyler 

I’m very old.

Devin Purgason

When we were in school, we were in math class and they were like, now listen, you can’t use this calculator because you’re never going to have a calculator with you at all times. 

Kevin Tyler

Exactly.

Devin Purgason 

Pulls out phone, for those of you who are listening to this. Yes, we do now. 

You know, and so it’s like, it’s sort of, Plato and Aristotle, they thought that the worst thing possible for humanity, the destruction of humanity would be if everyone could read, right? And then whenever, you know, universities started to exist, you know, we don’t need that, people can just go and can learn and libraries came online. Wow, now anybody can go and get a book and read it? The internet comes up. Oh my gosh, the internet, what? People can just search for anything now? People aren’t gonna need to go to college anymore. People aren’t gonna need libraries anymore. That’s just not the case. It’s not the way that the world works. We’ve seen this constant evolution of technology and systems and things of that nature and we’re still here and we’re just moving forward. We’re learning ways that we can constantly ease the human experience.

 

TVP ad read

 

Kevin Tyler 

I want to dip into the conversation around micro-credentials and flexible pathways and alternative credentialing. There’s a part of your piece in which you state that “In 2025, it will not be enough to market these programs as standalone options. The real challenge will be integrating them into the broader brand story of the institution.” I love this thought. Because there are things about higher ed marketing that we have kind of left out in the margins that we talk about in a different way, whether that’s adult education, whether that’s micro-credentialing, whether that’s whatever it is, that doesn’t find its way into the main story that we’re trying to tell. And I think this is a great example of that. And I’m curious if you could share how Forsyth Tech is evolving its messaging to incorporate this new kind of thinking around pathways into its brand story.

Devin Purgason 

Absolutely, and this is one of those things, also Kevin, where we are really conceptualizing some of these pieces and we’re not anywhere where I want us to be.

Kevin Tyler 

Sure.

Devin Purgason 

It’s something that we are really working hard to integrate, I think, more fully within our college’s brand. Right now, we have several programs, especially within IT, that have these micro-credentials that are layered in to what we have. 

But then we also have things like, think about someone who’s come to our college and they’ve gotten their CNA. And then they went on and they got their EMT, so they can be an EMT or whatnot. What would it look like for that person to then go into nursing school? What would their pathway look like? Because it would look very, very drastically different than someone who came from high school who says, I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse my entire life, and how do I get into the ADN program, the associate degree nursing program at Forsyth Tech?

And so one thing that we are working on right now, we’re actually working with Electric Kite. They’re wonderful to work with. Louis Miller at Electric Kite is helping us.

Kevin Tyler 

I love Louis. I love Louis.

Devin Purgason

Isn’t he the best? 

Kevin Tyler 

I love Louis. 

Devin Purgason

Salt of the earth, amazing person. So we’re working with them to reimagine our program finder on our website and how can we add these pieces and visually represent like, okay, here’s an on-ramp onto this path and here’s an off-ramp, right? So if I come into the emergency medical science program, I don’t have to stay two years to have something. I can move off. And one of the things that we think about is this whole idea of some college, no degree, some college, no credential, people who have, all they’ve come to college and the only thing they’ve gotten out of it is debt.

Kevin Tyler

Right, right.

Devin Purgason 

Right? They’ve only gotten debt. And so, how can we ease or alleviate that? Because I did a digital media and marketing certificate at Duke a few years ago. And it was one of those things where I was contemplating, should I do a degree or like, what about this credential? Would that work?

And everyone that I talked to said the moment that you walk across that stage, everything you learned is obsolete. The things that I learned about Facebook, pay-per-click advertising seven years ago is not the way it is now. And so this whole idea of incremental learning, these micro-credentials and continuous improvement kind of pieces I think are huge. And I think that’s the way that we are shifting and moving to.

Kevin Tyler 

I think that’s brilliant. I think that makes perfect sense. And I agree with you. I have nothing to add to that. Oddly.

Devin Purgason 

Yay.

Kevin Tyler

One of the questions that I ask every single person who comes through these “doors” is, and especially coming from a perspective of like predictions for 2025, is what you think higher ed is going to look like in five or 10 years? Like what does that look like to you from where you sit now?

Devin Purgason 

Yeah, that’s such a good question. I think there’s a lot of possibility. The future is limitless. But what I see that I mentioned a little earlier is this idea of hyper-personalization. And I think that you can see this hyper-personalization through AI, okay? So using AI to help make students, whether it’s tutoring, like, oh, okay, this person, this is their learning speed. Like an AI could say, okay, I understand how the student learns and this is how I need to help the student or this student really understands these concepts well, these concepts well, but doesn’t have these certain competencies. So I see AI being this, whether it’s predictive analytics for retention or AI powered virtual advisors or tutors, adaptive learning platforms, like where people can analyze based on job data that’s out there. Oh well, there’s new credentials out here for this specific job. This should be added to the student. 

I would really like to see AI helping with folks who have credit for prior learning, right? So people who may have 15 years experience but they don’t have a degree being able to characterize that and leverage that and see. how they from a transcript perspective can can you know move some of that into a degree program. I think there’s a lot of variety of potential help there but, I think, the umbrella is this hyper personalization that’s made possible through artificial intelligence.

Kevin Tyler

I agree with that. The hyper personalization, I think, is the thing that is going to help higher ed stay in the game. There’s got to be a way to, for lack of better phrase, like diagnose expertise and background and experience, right? You’re coming here with something that we might be able to build upon, capitalize on, help you get to where you’re going faster. But we shove everyone through the same tunnel.

Devin Purgason

Right.

Kevin Tyler

Okay, here’s the pathway. What we get to where you’re trying to go. And what we know is, what you said before is that that is always not, that is not always in alignment with what employers are looking for. 

Devin Purgason 

Exactly.

Kevin Tyler 

And so, is the process the right process? And what can higher ed do to get a better handle on who is arriving, so they can get to where they’re going a little bit quicker? I don’t know when that could happen but that’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately.

I always love talking to you and if folks who are listening to this have not gotten enough of Devin, which I imagine you have not. QuickFire has a new episode dropping at the end of this month, January, 2025. So, be on the lookout for that.

Devin, congratulations on everything that is happening for you. Congratulations on Marketer of the Year. Congratulations on your recent promotion to associate VP for student experience, marketing, and outreach. That is a huge title. And congrats on being published on Inside Higher Ed. This feels like the year of Devin. So, it’s been such a pleasure connecting with you here. I appreciate you sharing your expertise and I hope our paths cross again super soon.

Devin Purgason 

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Kevin. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you.

Kevin Tyler

My pleasure.

Kevin Tyler

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Higher Voltage. You can stay up to date on the latest higher ed marketing trends and news by following Volt on LinkedIn and Bluesky, and you can find me, Kevin Tyler on Bluesky as well. We’ll be back soon with another episode. And don’t forget to catch Trusted Voices, hosted by my friends, Teresa Valerio Parrot and Erin Hennessy, also on the Volt network.

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A graphic design with the title 'Trusted Voices' and the words 'with hosts Teresa Valerio Parrot, Erin Hennessy,' and showing the pictures of two women, both with light skin and light brown hair, one of whom is wearing glasses. All of this is set against a black background that gets orangeish around the images of the two women.

Higher Ed Has Always Been Political

Teresa and Erin forecast 2025’s higher ed landscape, highlighting enrollment trends, crisis communication, and shifts under a potential new Department of Education.

By: Trusted Voices
A graphic design with the title 'Trusted Voices' and the words 'with hosts Teresa Valerio Parrot, Erin Hennessy,' and showing the pictures of two women, both with light skin and light brown hair, one of whom is wearing glasses. All of this is set against a black background that gets orangeish around the images of the two women.

10 Resolutions for Higher Ed in 2024

Erin and Teresa explore 10 areas in which higher education can do better in 2024 and offer indispensable advice to leaders seeking to address evolving issues proactively.

By: Trusted Voices
A graphic design with the title 'Trusted Voices' and the words 'with hosts Teresa Valerio Parrot, Erin Hennessy,' and showing the pictures of two women, both with light skin and light brown hair, one of whom is wearing glasses. All of this is set against a black background that gets orangeish around the images of the two women.

Higher ed sucks. My institution is okay.

Erin and Teresa dive into the IHE’s annual president survey to determine if university presidents are being introspective enough about potential campus issues.

By: Trusted Voices
An image of Dr. Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges. She is an older, dark-skinned woman with short gray hair wearing a pink blazer and multicolor silk scarf.

Feet to the Fire

Dr. Belle S. Wheelan joins Teresa and Erin to discuss accreditation, the responsibilities and roles of accrediting bodies and the plans for higher ed under a second Trump administration.

By: Trusted Voices