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Kevin Tyler
Welcome back to Higher Voltage. I’m so excited for today’s conversation. Today we have not one, but two guests. We have Chris Nelson, Chief University Relations Officer and Secretary to the University at University of Utah and Lauren Griswold, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at Boise State. I love that you’re both here. Welcome to Higher Voltage. I’m very excited about this conversation because it is about some partnership and collaboration that’s going on in your two states of Utah and Idaho to (a) kind of reposition the value and ROI of higher education within the state, raising awareness of that value.
I also feel like this is kind of a response to some of the decline in trust that we’re seeing in higher education. In Idaho, I learned about this from you, Lauren, in just kind of casual conversations. And then being on the planning committee for the AMA conference, higher ed conference, one of the sessions that we saw at that conference recently was about a similar effort in Utah. In the Utah example, there are three institutions that are working together to raise the profile and the value of higher education in that state.
So, before we get into the meat of our conversation, I would love for each of you to talk about what the effort looks like inside of your states. And then we can get into some of the questions that I have lined up about how that partnership works among the network of institutions. So Chris, let’s start with you and what it looks like in Utah today in this effort.
Chris Nelson
Well, thank you. First off, Kevin, thanks for having me. And Lauren, good to see you. So, our initiative actually started last December, and it was at the Utah Board of Higher Education, which is a board that oversees the Utah system of higher ed. And just for background, that’s 16 colleges, universities, and technical colleges. And the frustration of the Board of Higher Ed was, why are we not getting more credit in Utah for all the great things we do?
And part of that also was like, why aren’t we growing the pie of students? And so a group of us from all the schools got together as communications and marketing professionals and said, let us take a crack at kind of reframing this narrative a little bit. And what we found and where this campaign came from was really trying to get us on the same page. And one of the things I think we found is that people love their schools, but they don’t trust higher ed.
And that’s what this campaign is really about is trying to unify the messaging, so that as we reach all three and a half million people in Utah, it’s like, you not only love the University of Utah or Utah State or Southern Utah University, and can you see how that is applicable to the entire system of higher ed? So, in a nutshell, it really was, a goal to try to get folks to understand not only just their local university or technical college but really the value of higher ed for the whole state.
Kevin Tyler
That’s excellent. Lauren, tell me about what’s going on in Idaho.
Lauren Griswold
Yeah, we started this initiative at the end – we first launched at the end of 2021, and we ran the campaign for two years. We had to pause it last year, but we’re looking at bringing it back for this upcoming year. And we really wanted to address that national narrative of the value of higher education. Idaho has one of the lowest go-on rates from high school to colleges in the entire country.
And so we really wanted to shift the perceptions collectively as public institutions of what we bring, the impact that we bring not only to individuals but to communities and across our state. And so similarly to Chris, our community colleges and our public universities all report through our Idaho State Board of Education.
So, I actually pitched this idea back in 2021 to our President’s Leadership Council, which was made up of all of our presidents from our community colleges and universities, and the universities decided to move forward with this. So it was an integrated campaign with digital, print, outdoor, and we did see a lot of great success, and I look forward to this conversation today.
Kevin Tyler
I’m glad. Thank you both for that high-level overview. I think that thinking about it in terms of a campaign is really helpful and about repositioning the value of higher education inside of your states. I think this is something that higher education marketers like yourselves and lots of others have thought about how not only do our individual brands need to be repositioned in the market, but the market itself, like the industry itself needs to be repositioned, kind of rebranded and reintroduced as a pathway towards success. Maybe not the only one, but a pathway. And I think that these initiatives around partnership, which kind of in this industry and in this environment sounds almost contrary to what we have been taught around competition and higher education. And here are two states that have institutions working together for a common goal, which I think is really, really exciting.
My first question around this is kind of like a nuts and bolts kind of question. Like, how do you approach the collaboration with the institutions that are involved in this effort?
Lauren Griswold
You know, it all starts with relationship building and having a shared understanding of the bigger picture and what it is that we’re trying to achieve. And I like what you just said there, Kevin. It’s not about competition. It’s not about our individual institutions. It’s how do we reposition that value of education as a whole? And so for us addressing that national narrative was really important.
And so collectively, I started reaching out to the other CMOs across the other institutions. I put a group of us together. It started out with all community colleges and our four-year publics. And then once we moved forward with our four public institutions, we kept meeting and discussing.
And I think it’s a rising tide lifts all boats so that we’re stronger together than we are simply on our own. And it was really just getting that buy-in and we were seeing the same type of sentiment just about education across Idaho. And so how do we shift that collectively together and work together? And when we took that approach, and we pitched that to our president’s leadership council. There was buy-in from that very top level, it really kind of trickled down through all of the institutions. And there was this real desire for us wanting to work and to collaborate on this together because it will help us all collectively.
Kevin Tyler
Right, right. Chris, how does it work in Utah?
Chris Nelson
Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, in Utah, it helped to have the board of higher ed kind of say, hey, we want you to do this. And again, I’ve been around, this is my 20th year at the University of Utah. And what I know sometimes is when outside boards do it, we’re going to get an outside firm. Really my premise was we’ve got really talented comms marketing people at these schools. Let us take a crack at it. Now, the interesting thing to me is our schools, our systems there, are fierce competitors on the marketing enrollment management side. So collaboration, that usually doesn’t work as well. And so we actually approached it from a message platform, was the first part of this. So getting on that continuum of communication to marketing, we really focused on that communication side because that was a shared message we could all get behind and coming up with the value of higher ed. The idea that all the schools would benefit from shared messaging. And then yeah, on the marketing side, on the enrollment management side, you can kind of keep competing at that level.
It was interesting because it also changed the people who were in the room, quite honestly. This was not a campaign. I say this with respect to my enrollment management colleagues. That was not the group that came together. It was me bringing the spokespeople together. And some of the CMO folks, you know, those shared titles, some have separate comms teams. And that was helpful. And also just resetting, this was not, this is really kind of taking, this is less about competition and more about messaging and public perception. I know that sounds subtle, but even as we explain that to our board of trustees at our school and the board of higher ed, they’re like, yeah, but are you gonna get more students? I’m like, maybe, but really that’s not the goal here. The goal is to get everyone on the same page that we’re talking about it. So kind of a subtle one, but that would be one of our takeaways from our presentation at AMA was manage expectations and find that common ground where the schools can come when you’re looking to that collaboration.
Kevin Tyler
That’s really great. And I love the perspective of taking it from a messaging platform approach without getting into the details of all the nooks and crannies of the messaging. What is the messaging for this effort that you’re using in the state?
Chris Nelson
Yeah. We got it down to four key points. I’ll just lay them out. And you’re gonna be like, really? That took like three months of work. But the reality is, all this is kind of based on data.
And so one of our key messages is higher education lifts Utah. And so the sub-points to that would be the economic value and the cultural value. Second point is more graduates means higher paying jobs and you can explore that. Our third point is we want to empower every student to pursue at least some college. And that gets to something you said earlier, Kevin, you know, we get like four-year degrees are not for everyone. And there are amazing jobs out there that you don’t need to go to college for. And so we wanted to really emphasize that for our technical college peers. And then the last one is higher education creates dividends for everyone, graduates, families, the state and society.
And so you might be anti-higher ed for whatever reason, but we wanted folks to understand, for the University of Utah, I mean, we have almost a billion dollars in research, and that research generates downstream revenue in terms of tax dollars and jobs, and we have to order supplies. So if you’re running a small company in the western part of Salt Lake, you may not even know that the University of Utah is helping you economically. And so it was trying to, just also the breadth of a major university, especially a research university. And so it was really just trying to get to that, simplifying messages. I call them grocery store talking points. It’s when a trustee is stopped in the grocery stores and they’re getting there, somebody’s wagging their finger at them about how bad the University of Utah is. These are the points we want them to come back to. So, that was the approach there.
Kevin Tyler
I think that’s really quite brilliant for many reasons, but one of them is to generate this idea that the system or network of institutions inside of your state is what powers the state, which I think is a much different kind of thing than like come here and find your future, right? This is much different, we’re having a much different conversation inside of the state around what higher ed does and how it functions and benefits the citizens of the state. Lauren, did you want to touch on what the messaging kind of sounds like for your campaign in Idaho?
Lauren Griswold
Yeah, absolutely. Our landing page is educationforidaho.org. And we utilized our branding from our State Board of Education to help unify the look and feel as our group collectively. And we went with For you, for us, for Idaho. And we talk a lot about a stronger Idaho one degree at a time. And so we break it down to the individual because that’s what we’re trying to do is improve our go on rate from our high school graduates coming to college and creating that pathway, that accessibility. For us collectively, as a community, this makes us stronger and then will result in a stronger Idaho and a stronger state.
And so, we start down at the individual level and then really try to show that impact of how it is about the individual, but collectively when we look at education as a system and togetherness, it’s really about improving the impact of our state. So, we conducted market research. We actually did utilize a local agency to help us with our messaging platform and our campaign assets. Mitchell Palmer, they’re a local agency in Idaho.
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Kevin Tyler
So you both mentioned that you have measured some of the results. Can you talk about what some of those results look like, and is there any sort of goal beyond recruitment and raising the profile or reputation or awareness of the higher education systems in your states?
Lauren Griswold
I’d be happy to share some of the things that we’ve done. So of course, you’re doing an integrated campaign. You’re putting media out in the market. You have video streaming, audio streaming. You’re doing environmental. People are getting served advertising left and right. We targeted ours around January to the end of March during our sessions.
Some of our results, so we did post-testing after our campaign during the second year. So we’ve done pre- and post-tests. And the most significant thing that we have seen is a 39% of respondents that had a negative view on higher education were swayed after seeing our ads. We had 65% of respondents say that they were favorable to our ads about higher education. We had 46% of respondents say that they were likely to talk about higher education in Idaho with others after seeing our ads. And the top five sentiments that we saw were hopeful, inspired, excited, motivated, and happy.
And so, after two years of running our campaign, for us, this was the best-case scenario of what we could possibly see come out of this is that we’re having people really engage with the content and understand the stories that we’re telling and see that it’s really about each individual and the impact that they’re creating and that it’s shifting the way that they’re seeing the value of higher education. So, we’re really proud of, collectively, the results that we saw.
Kevin Tyler
That’s really fascinating. There’s some compelling metrics coming out of that campaign. Awesome. Chris?
Chris Nelson
Lauren, I’m jealous. I’m jealous of those metrics because that’s good baseline and then you should have improvement. We’re kind of building the airplane as we’re flying it. So, I definitely, our goal would be market research to validate that. We’re still fairly early on and we’ve actually … I mean, our metrics are a little bit, you know, I’m a comms guy. So, you know, I deal in fuzzy, fuzzy metrics. But one of the things we did, because it was kind of a really grassroots effort, is we’ve asked the schools themselves who are participating to track where they’re placing these stories. And it’s like, did you do it? And so for instance, in my world, I oversee our alumni magazine, which goes to about 200,000 households. And so our cover story for our summer issue was, “Is College Still Worth It?” And then we’ve placed op-eds in statewide newspapers and media outlets.
Interestingly enough, I would love to take credit for this, I think we get a piece of the credit, actually enrollment across the state of Utah is up. And at the University of Utah, we have a record incoming first-year class this past fall. It’s hard to show that direct correlation, but I do think the work is there. And definitely, our goal, as we get more organized and actually can propose a budget for this, would be to show that.
Because one of our target audiences, quite honestly, is influencers around college-age students. So that’s parents, grandparents, loved ones, aunts, uncles – the folks who are kind of whispering in the ear whether you should go to college or not and the value. So that’s an audience where a lot of our media, we recognize that the media we’ve done is probably not hitting to that 16 to 20-year-old age group. And that’s okay. It’s that other side.
Now the other thing I would say I am really excited about is if you go to Admit Utah, so admitutah.org, this is a secondary campaign that I’d like to think kind of came from our messaging platform. This is an initiative by our system of higher ed to basically say it’s a fun system developed through the system, and it basically shows you just what schools are available. You know, what your GPA is, what your likelihood is, where you can get admitted just right away. And again, that’s kind of the pointy end. I think of the message platform. We’re using messaging to change perception and then some of these systems to do this.
I also do want to say, you’ll laugh at me, but we, actually, we went old school. This is a three by five index card with the messages on them. And again, when I talk to our trustees and when I talk to our administrators, I’m like, keep this with you and one of my metrics has been like, you know, just anecdotally when I hear them using this message points and so far it’s been really good.
The other thing I wanted to say is I do want to give credit to some other places who have done this work. So one of the first things we did like all good marketing communication folks is like who’s, who else is working on this? And so we looked at what Idaho is doing, but we looked at Tennessee as a great for the future campaign. Washington State and University of Washington have been doing good work. And the university’s agency of record, RW Jones was really helpful in helping do that research and helping us refine this a little bit. So I want to make sure I put a plug in for RW Jones as well.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, that’s great. Regardless of the concrete kind of metrics, obviously that’s an important part of the conversation. I mean, even if there is a shift in the types of conversations that you’re having around what the institution is offering, what your state education system or network offer is, I would call that a win in and of itself. And the fact that you are training reliable narrators like your trustees, like the other folks who are stakeholders in this effort on how to talk about this thing in new ways that might not feel revolutionary on paper, right? Like, but are when we’re talking about it in the space with other people who are traditionally considered competitors. It gives it a much different complexion when we’re going at it together. So I think it’s a super cool idea, and I’m really grateful that you called out those other campaigns, Tennessee specifically. That’s a really great one that folks should check out as well.
So, knowing that there’s like different kind of structures or models for your collaboration/partnership, I’m also wondering like just how the day-to-day gets done. Like who’s funding it? Is it like we all throw in equal buckets of money? Who makes the final decision? Are there presidents involved? Like all of these kinds of things.
Lauren Griswold
Oh, I can talk to that. So, I think we had a pretty large buy in the marketplace. We divvied up the cost between the four-year institutions based upon enrollment. So we did percentages based upon our overall enrollments, so that we weren’t splitting this equal four ways for our smallest college and universities. So we did that. I actually led the effort, but with my counterparts, we were very close collaborators. We’re a small state. It’s easier for us. There’s only four. When you’re talking to the scale of larger states, I could see where it would be much more difficult to kind of navigate some of these areas. And with those four institutions, I served as the liaison with our agency as well. And because our presidents have a regular meeting with our state board executive director for the President’s Leadership Council, I was able to come in regularly and with my colleagues, if they were able to join, and give updates where we were at. And what we would do in the meantime between those meetings, if we had creative or messaging or needed feedback, we wanted to have each president’s buy-in on every step of the way. So each one of our colleagues would work one-on-one with their president, get feedback, bring it to me, and then collectively, we would work together with our agency.
To make it sound really easy, it was not. You have four CEOs who all are used to their own branding. But in the end, I really felt like I built trust and respect with the President’s Leadership Council because there were times I would have to make a call, and I would speak to them in meetings and say, hey, I understand we’re looking at this from this perspective or that from this perspective, but here would be my recommendation. And more often than not, they would move forward with my recommendation or our collective group recommendation from the marketing and comms side.
So you have to have a good funding model and what that looks like and have it agreed upon by each university. And I think having a point person is really critical. I pitched the idea and gave up the idea. So I needed to own this idea. But if it’s coming from the state board, I think just having someone who can kind of be that person to filter all the information and collect all that information is really important. Otherwise, it just feels like you’ve too many cooks in the kitchen. So we work really well together. And that was critical to our success.
Kevin Tyler
Totally. Chris, anything to add there?
Chris Nelson
Yeah, you know, ours to-date does not have a paid component. So really, I think that the clever thing we’ve done is it really is up to the schools and colleges and technical colleges themselves to do it. But what I love that my counterpart at the system office has done is, and we all kind of rolled our eyes and hemmed and hawed at first about it, but she actually put together a spreadsheet and was like, hey, please put all the work you’re doing on this front. And at first it’s like, I don’t want to do that, it is actually proven to be really great because when you look at 16 schools all doing this, it’s actually, it’s really significant.
And again, I don’t see what’s happening in Southern Utah very much. They’re not seeing what’s happening up in Salt Lake City. And that’s fine. Because it’s very localized, and it kind of gets that point, which is traditionally, you know, folks love their local school, their college. It doesn’t matter if they love the University of Utah, if they love Southern Utah University. That’s the value of higher ed. And so that’s one of the things I love about the work that we’re doing as well.
Kevin Tyler
It’s so important. Thank you for sharing that. Those are the questions that come to mind most immediately whenever I hear about collaboration in higher ed is like, who’s paying for it?
Chris Nelson
Right, right.
Kevin Tyler
What obstacles have you faced in this process? I can’t imagine that it’s been easy, right? Lauren’s description made it sound super easy, as you said.
Lauren Griswold
I know, I really just made that sound too easy.
Kevin Tyler
But what was like, what have you learned from the obstacle? What was the obstacle? And I have another question about what the biggest accomplishment has been as well, but we’ll start with the obstacle.
Chris Nelson
I would say for us, it’s the biggest obstacle, interestingly, is managing expectations, managing expectations of the State Board of Higher Ed, our own trustees, the presidents. It went from, hey try this, to why aren’t we getting more students enrolled? It’s like, well, that wasn’t the purpose. And so, I’ve been taking the lead to say the goal is getting us on the same page. The goal is when we put out information, are we looking at these four message points?
To me, what made my heart so happy is we had a conference call a couple of weeks ago and everyone kind of agreed that everyone now asks the question, before anything goes out in the president’s speeches and magazines, are we addressing these four things? And that to me is such a tremendous win that we’re being intentional as schools in the system.
But again, the biggest thing was like, is this going to have a direct one-to-one value? Well, maybe over time, but when you step back and be like, yeah, it seems like getting all these schools on the same page with messaging, that’s not an insignificant step. And I’ve had to really emphasize that in a lot of conversations, let’s celebrate that step before we get too much further.
Lauren Griswold
Yeah, I could definitely add in. For us, we based our campaign, we started with market research for messaging. So there was a lot of buy-in from our presidents and from our marcomm folks because our messaging was based upon what the data was saying. And so when you start out campaigns with data driving your strategy, you’re just going to have much higher success rates.
But obstacle-wise, I mentioned it, you have four CEOs, and you have colleges with multiple nursing programs, and you’re featuring each school’s choosing four people to feature who’s going to feature the nursing programs, right? So there’s things like you’re bartering, you’re going, okay, if we’re trying to best position higher education, take off your individual institution hat, and which program you think, you want to feature, how is this going to best benefit the state? And so us to overcome those obstacles, it was always me going, okay, let’s all take a step back. Let’s go to 30,000-foot view, what’s going to be best for the state? And how do we address that?
Funding is a challenge, and I love that Chris and his colleagues have taken a different approach on the communication side. We’ve started that on year two, and we did do that last year as well collectively on shared messaging. But the funding model is tough because we are public institutions, and we do have our own enrollment goals that we’re trying to reach as well.
And so that’s why we ended up pausing it this past year was we needed to take a break for each institution to kind of invigorate and make sure that we’re still moving up, which we are, in enrollment in Idaho. But that is something that was significant for us was the funding.
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Kevin Tyler
The political climate that we find ourselves in now will require more of these kinds of efforts to take place inside of states. I would love to see it across states or across the country at some point, of course, as well. But part of this, I feel like there’s a policy play here, too for public funding of public education. And there is a concerted effort to try to reposition the conversation among community stakeholder citizens of the state. And there’s a recognition of that at your state houses. And I’m hopeful that some of that conversation there will shift as well.
What about accomplishments? What are you most proud of in this effort? I would imagine it’s getting those four CEOs together, but it could be something else.
Chris Nelson
I’m proud of a couple of different things. For a relatively short window of time, we’ve had a tremendous amount of productivity. Now, I’m just looking through some of our slides from our AMA presentation, but we’ve had almost a dozen pieces of earned media or op-eds locally placed.
I’d have to add up all the social interaction we’ve had on this. And so the work itself, our alumni magazine, I’m proud of the fact that, in a relatively short time, the schools in their individual ways kind of came together with messaging, but then utilize their own mechanisms to get the word out. And I think that’s a unique thing that I’ve never seen before, at least in Utah, in higher ed, is us coming together on a shared message and using our individual platforms to get that out.
And then other thing I’m most proud of is, quite honestly, it has brought our system together in a really, really cool way. And I have to credit our board members, I have to credit our presidents. There’s moments in time where everything kind of works together. One of my premises is I think higher ed nationally needs to stop being an easy target for politicians to punch down on.
And this is something that’s like, we are, at least in Utah, we are combined by far the state’s largest employer, people working in higher ed. We impact every zip code in the state. We should be very hard to punch down on.
Kevin Tyler
Say that again, for people in the back, Chris. Yes.
Chris Nelson
We are, we are the voters. And our governor talks about, you know, we’ve shifted from all politics being local to all politics being national. And in Utah, we have very low rates of debt for students. We’ve got high success rates. And so I feel like we’re battling this national narrative in our states. And so I think one of the things I’m proud about is, you know, it’s a real call to action. It’s real work and it’s our system coming together, at least as public, you know, higher ed and doing the good work of really standing up for ourselves finally.
Kevin Tyler
Good. I love that. I think that you just stay on that soapbox because I couldn’t agree with you more about being punched down on. The benefits that higher education brings to each and every state is unquestionable. But we allow a story to be told that says otherwise because of X, Y, and Z. And some of them are valid, right? Price is a thing. That’s a reality for a lot of people. But the benefits of a degree, benefit of all the employees that work at an institution, the research, innovation that is happening, these are all things that higher ed can claim. And there are so many good things coming out of the industry that so often are muted because of all these other kind of shiny-ish things that people can glom onto and distract from the actual progress that higher education is making in each and every state. I really am glad that that is what is surfacing and the conversations that you’re having in Utah. Lauren, you’re up.
Lauren Griswold
I love that. Yeah, I love that, Chris. And I think I agree too. The collaboration and the shared messaging really is, I think, a huge accomplishment. You know, I think about a lot when places and businesses are in competition and you just have, you know, your lens of competition on, and you’re not looking collectively at an industry, we’re not able to combat large narratives in the same way.
And an example I like to use is where do I envision us going in the future is, think of the dairy farmers in America and “Got milk?” Why aren’t we as education coming together, building shared messaging about the value of education nationally? Why aren’t we as states, as regions, collaborating, building that so that we can combat that messaging?
And we’ve seen it successfully done within industries. Think of individual farmers coming together from their states collectively to the nation and having one simple message. And that’s where we need to be so that we can really start telling all of the positive things that are out there as a group. So taking off that lens of competition and bringing together that lens of collaboration.
Kevin Tyler
Well, what do you think it would take to get that to happen? I would love that. It sounds like utopia, especially in an industry like higher ed, to get people to stop thinking about the competition and even one step further, the rankings at that competition kind of, I don’t know, incites or encourages, whatever the word is. It feels like such a far-off thought, but like we have states that are doing it. So what would it take, do you think, to do this on a more, a larger scale?
Lauren Griswold
It’s a really complex issue. I think we need national organizations, whether it’s national university organizations or president organizations, or to come together and to start having these conversations. They need to help lead this effort and approach it from the top down across the entire country. I think we can show, this would be, I think Chris and I are at the grassroots level, right? Like we’re at the state level who are doing the thing that no one’s done before. And we’re showing you that it works. So you can use us as that use case, but it’s gonna require for sure some type of large organization. I don’t know which one, so I don’t wanna name all of them that are out there. There’s a lot of them, but who is willing to take that step forward and to take the lead on that? Because we’ve gotta look out for the greater good overall in the long term and it can’t be about the individual because if we just worry about that one small tiny thing, you know, we’re going to all shudder. So we’re stronger together.
Chris Nelson
Yeah, I would reiterate what Lauren said, I also put a plug for us as marketing communications professionals. I’ve got the best job at the University of Utah. I get to see things at 30,000 feet. Now, some of my day is spent dealing with crises, some of it spent proactively, some of it’s working with our government relations. But I had this amazing job where I get to see into parts of the university where I think our faculty don’t get to see that. Deans don’t get to see that.
And I think it’s the same thing nationally, which is, yeah, we, I’m not sure we’re in competition with Boise state, but if we are, there’s much more reasons for us to collaborate. And so I actually think marketing comms folks can, I think we could actually scale this not only in Utah, but you could scale it regionally. You could scale it by size of university.
The one thing I really love about the work we’ve done, and I know Idaho’s kind of in the same boat is. It’s that partnership with the technical colleges as well. I would say if I were to, if I were to cite the University of Utah, we’re, you know, we’re kind of snotty. We’re the state’s flagship and we’re very proud of that. And I’m proud of that as well. But we’ve got amazing community colleges. We’ve got amazing technical colleges. They’re producing amazing graduates.
And so I think if I were to level a criticism at higher ed, marketing comps, people, including myself, it’s like forgetting that the collaboration needs to happen at that level and bringing all those folks to the table. And so I’m actually pretty optimistic that the marketing communication folks can do this. We kind of to Lauren’s point, we probably need a rallying cry to get that going.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
Lauren Griswold
Let’s do it, Chris, we’re neighbors. I can get Montana up here. Let’s do this.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s important you think that way though.
Lauren Griswold
Yeah, let’s bring it together.
Kevin Tyler
There’s no other way to do it.
Chris Nelson
Yeah, I was just gonna say, Lauren, so, you know, Utah’s got three and a half million people. I think you guys are just smaller than this. It’s also helpful to, I mean, we’re not even the size of like Orange County in Southern California.
Lauren Griswold
We’re not even the size of LA!
Chris Nelson
So, you know, some people roll their eyes when I say that, but I actually think it does make us a little bit more agile. I mean, we’re big geographically and small in terms of population, but I think it actually allows us to be a bit more agile.
Lauren Griswold
Well, we’re nimble and we’re able to do things because we are smaller that a lot of very, you know, much larger states probably would have a lot more challenges with.
Chris Nelson
Yeah, I think it would be very challenging in California, for instance, or Texas or, you know, in any of the larger states. So yeah, again, you know, the smaller states, you know, punching above our weight in terms of influence, hopefully.
Kevin Tyler
I mean, even in those larger states, even the systems are doing things differently inside those same systems, right? The CSU system and UC system, and then of course the UT system, their different kind of ways of talking about themselves. They have a brand, but they’re not working together to lift up the value of higher ed in the state in ways that you all are, which I think is really exciting. And the desire for innovation and higher education is great. We know that. And I think innovation just looks different in different industries. Innovation in higher ed is not going to look like innovation at Apple or in tech. It’s going to just look different. And it’s about the approaches and who we’re working with. And I think that this is a really great example of innovation in higher education.
I’m curious if there are people listening to this conversation who are interested in kind of stepping off into this direction that you all have. What advice would you give them? What’s their first step?
Lauren Griswold
I’m happy to talk to anybody. And I have before, so you just reach out to me through LinkedIn. And I’m happy to set up my work email, and I’m happy to set up time to chat. It’s about taking a small step. So first step, start bringing together your institutions within your state, your marcomm leads, and set a meeting and have a discussion and meet each other. That is the first step, because it starts with relationship building.
And once you get there, like find out what’s the desire for folks to want to take that 30,000-foot view and to address the national perceptions and the value of higher education together as a group. And if you get that, that kind of buy-in from the very start, I think that you’re going to start to see some amazing things happen and take shape.
Chris Nelson
Everything Lauren said, plus do research, what everybody else has done. I mean, there are some great campaigns out there. I very openly say we borrowed from Tennessee and Washington and some of the national trade associations. I don’t think they mind. And they’ve been super generous to us in looking at that information. I think the other thing, I think Lauren, you were kind of getting at this, but it’s also don’t need the credit.
So the only reason this works, I know, you’re in the same boat, is this is not a University of Utah initiative. I mean, I can wear my thing in my office, but this is about the value of higher ed. And so I think that’s where the national organizations probably can help us as well, is it can’t be about whatever acronym, it’s gotta be about higher ed. It doesn’t matter who it’s brought to you by. And that’s hard, that’s hard in our profession, right? Like we are paid to be spokespeople and advocates and market our brands. So it’s the ultimate, like, what’s the collective good out there? The collective good is the value of higher ed and that’s tricky. So anyone, I think you’ll be more successful, kind of Lauren’s point, like start small, but just keep that in mind as a principle, which is don’t worry about getting your own brand out there. Get the brand of the higher education and improving society, basically.
Lauren Griswold
I also love too. I think, it’s a lot of people put up unnecessary barriers at the beginning, like, no, we can’t do this. No, this will be hard. This is impossible. How am I going to get all of these presidents to buy it or all the CMOs? Start with yes. And I think if you can start with yes, that’s where you’re going to start seeing success too.
Kevin Tyler
I’m sorry, Lauren, are you suggesting that people often say “no” in higher ed?
Lauren Griswold
Yes!
Kevin Tyler
I’m just kidding. Wait, you mean people say this is the way we’ve always done it?
Chris Nelson
Let me appoint a committee. Hold on.
Kevin Tyler
Right. Right. Committees. Oh lord. The question I always end our conversations on Higher Voltage with is the following. What do you think higher education is going to look like in the next five or 10 years?
Lauren Griswold
Do you want me to start? I’ll start. So I love this question because the academy was founded by Plato in 357 BC. And so the academy is going to withstand, it’s going to persist, but it may look a little bit different. And we’ve seen the evolution of higher education really shift and change, especially with the emergence of new technology and disruptions we’re currently experiencing with AI. Who knows what’s next?
And we hear the national narrative, how people are actually perceiving higher education. Chris’s point earlier, is college worth it? So I think it’s going to withstand, we’re going to be strong. We just have to continue to evolve and keep doing the work and keep remembering our missions of teaching, research and service. But I think collaborating and coming together for and understanding our industry and promoting the greater good of education is going to be critical for us to move forward successfully as an industry and not leave anybody behind.
Kevin Tyler
My gosh, Lauren. I came here for a conversation about collaboration and got a history lesson about the history of higher education. I was not prepared.
Lauren Griswold
I did Google the year because I was going to say thousands, and I was like, well, let me make sure I have the year right.
Kevin Tyler
I love it.
Chris Nelson
I would say “amen” at the end of that, Lauren.
Kevin Tyler
Well, that was great. Chris, what do you think it’ll look like?
Chris Nelson
I’m hesitant to leave it at that, but I’m a spokesperson, so I should speak. I love the word you said, Lauren, is evolution. I mean, I’ve sat through a lot of meetings lately on millennials and distrust of institutions and organizations and how do you adjust to that? Higher ed is not perfect. The three of us know that. The reason people don’t trust higher ed is there, you have to listen to the people. There are some reasons why we’re not trusted. And so I don’t know what it’s gonna look like in five to 10 years. I know it’s gonna look different. And I think the academy has to get comfortable with that.
Like you said, we are old institutions and we still wear robes and hats and celebrate medieval kind of clerical things. We love that part of it. But we’re also in the vanguard of social change. And so reconcile that, right? You know, it always surprises me, what I know is that higher ed lifts people in every way, economically, culturally, regardless of what your political background is. And so I’m actually, I am optimistic about it as well.
I think what my colleagues, at least I’ll speak from only my institution, we just have to get comfortable with change. It may not look exactly the way it is and that’s okay. And we just have to like, we need to not hold on so much to keeping it looking the way it is, but be, be willing to let it evolve a little bit.
Lauren Griswold
I love that! Change is good. I love that, Chris, and change is tough in higher ed, but change is good.
Kevin Tyler
I couldn’t agree with the two of you any more than I already do. I think those are really excellent points that change is excellent in a space that has not changed since the first day it was delivered, right? It still looks the same. Yes, I think those are excellent points and I hope that those predictions ring true because a lot of people depend on the types of work that we all do in higher education, higher education marketing and these initiatives, like the ones that you all have launched in your respective states, will help people understand how important it is for the state and for individual citizens.
So, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation today. It was really great to have this conversation. I hope that people reach out and talk to you about how to approach this in their own state. I think the more of these efforts that we can see kind of popping up across the country.
Even if it’s between two institutions and that’s it, any level of collaboration that lifts the reputation and perception of higher ed is only going to serve the industry. And I just hope that more of these initiatives kind of pop up. So thank you for what you’re doing for your states, but also for higher education. And I hope that you have a great rest of your week.
Lauren Griswold
Thank you so much, Kevin.
