Summer Break? Not for Higher Ed Strategy

Erin Hennessy 

Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Erin Hennessy, alongside Teresa Valerio Parrot, and in each episode we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher education leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’re often joined by a guest who shares their own experiences and perspectives, but we also make time for one-on-one conversations about what we’re seeing, hearing, and thinking. Trusted Voices is produced by Volt, the go-to news source for higher ed leaders and decision makers. Remember to visit Volt at voltedu.com and subscribe to Trusted Voices on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

Hi, Teresa.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Hi, happy end of the semester, Erin.

Erin Hennessy

Hi, happy end of the semester and end of the season and the happy beginning of June. Happy Pride. Happy all of the other things that happen in June.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes. Yes, happy Teresa finally needs to start training for her half marathon. 

Erin Hennessy 

Hmm. Yeah, well, best of luck with that.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes. So by the time we return in the fall, I will have either completed it or I will have not done it. 

Erin Hennessy

Excellent. Well, way to leave folks with a cliffhanger at the end of the season.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes, but here’s the truth. I am one of those people that will make myself do it, you know this, even if it’s ugly and should not be done. 

Erin Hennessy

I mean…

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

So I can’t wait to show you all the medal. Next time I’ll wear the medal as we record.

Erin Hennessy

A 13 mile walk sounds lovely as long as the weather cooperates. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Exactly.

Erin Hennessy

I just bought a treadmill because, for reasons, because life is complicated for me at the moment by a number of things and so I have not been making it to the gym. And so I reasoned if I put a treadmill in my house…

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Good for you. Yes.

Erin Hennessy

I would be more likely to just fall out of bed and use it. And I don’t measure things. Somewhere my father is like, this is no child of mine, but I don’t measure things. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So does it not fit?

Erin Hennessy

And I have a tiny little hundred year old house and I wouldn’t say it doesn’t fit. I would say it dwarfs everything around it.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Is it now the focal point of the room?

Erin Hennessy 

Oh yeah. A thousand percent. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

I love that.

Erin Hennessy 

Thousand percent. And it’s not even set up yet, but it’s going to look like it fell through my roof into my house.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Does it fold up? 

Erin Hennessy

Yes.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Okay, so that’s good. It can almost be like a Murphy bed. 

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. It can almost be like a Murphy bed.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Do you remember when I went to Australia and for like five minutes I was famous in Australian social media? Do you remember? Have you heard this story? 

Erin Hennessy

No.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So when I run, if I’m listening to my music, I don’t just run and I don’t prancercise. I kind of dance while I run. And so I was in Australia and I had a fire playlist and I was dancing my little heart out. And I didn’t realize until after some guy at this hotel gym was videotaping me and laughing hysterically. So while I was in Australia and Kevin was there too, he knew what was going on. He did nothing to stop any of this. And he was curious to see what was going to happen. I kind of went viral in Australia for being the weird lady dancing and running, better than Phoebe, let me say that, on a treadmill. I actually had a really good pace, so I was pretty proud that he got my pace in the shot so that people could see that I was actually doing a fantastic job.

Erin Hennessy 

DJ, I’m just gonna flag that we’re gonna need this for the show notes. So, start Googling, my friend.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Let’s see if you can find it. That was like 10 years ago. While we were in Australia, we actually had people like, it’s the running lady. I was like, it’s me. Yeah, that happened.

Erin Hennessy 

Okay, I look forward to seeing that. Should we perhaps talk about higher education or should we chase the rest of our listeners away with more stories of treadmills and…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I mean, we’ve only been talking about stories about treadmills for three minutes. So the reality is everybody, we’re taking care of ourselves and our health. Now let’s talk about taking care of higher ed. 

Erin Hennessy

Wow.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

You like that transition?

Erin Hennessy

Yeah! Yup. I am approaching our conversation today from the following perspective. That it is the end of our season. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes.

Erin Hennessy

And I wanted to flag a couple of things for folks to be thinking about over the summer because, news flash people, the issues in front of us are not going to change between now and then. So I know that a lot of folks use the summer as time to catch up or build skills or think big thoughts. And here’s what I think you should be thinking big thoughts about. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Nice.

Erin Hennessy

Three little, well, yes, three little things. Number one, there’s a big story in the New York Times Magazine that will come out this weekend. So it will have come out last weekend by the time you hear this about the Cal State University systems approach to AI, particularly focused on San Jose State’s approach. And it’s really, I flagged like six passages in this to read out loud. And of course now I can’t find any of them, but it really dives deep into all of the tension between students and faculty and there’s enough in here to get folks worked up about how this was or was not appropriately rolled out. And perhaps didn’t leave enough time for buy-in. This was rolled out right before finals last year. So at a time when students and faculty are just not in the best headspace anyway.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Especially for change.

Erin Hennessy 

Especially for change and same for, you know, for all of us, it’s, it’s, you got to think about this stuff. But the passage that I was really interested, or caught my eye and that I think folks need to swap out CSU and put in their institution’s name: 

CSU’s AI initiative has set off an institutional identity crisis. The debate about AI on campus is also a debate about exactly what public education in California is for. What does it mean to train the next generation of Californian workers and citizens when neither students nor faculty nor administrators have a solid grasp on what that requires or what the “AI economy” will even be in four years? “No one knows what it’s going to look like.” Brian Johnsrud, a leader on Adobe’s education team, told me in a small library in the company’s headquarters. “And even if they say they do, they are highly overconfident.”

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I agree with that part.

Erin Hennessy

Yup!

Teresa Valerio Parrot

But I do think that identity crisis part is significant because having done work with different CSUs, you and I know that their pride is that they’re a teaching institution, that it is that one-on-one, that it is that no student is just a number, but instead that they have that holistic care. So I can appreciate why for somebody in the community, that would be a tremendous identity crisis. And to your first point, go through that article, and I know you had a number of passages flagged. And I would say for anybody listening, go through that article and think through what are the tabletop drills we could run as we’re implementing AI or not, or we’re thinking about how AI can really give us a crisis tied to our mission and our identity if we don’t do this the right way. So if you’re known as being hands-on and caring and individualized and personal, does AI help you accomplish that?

Erin Hennessy

Yes. And there are, as I said, there’s so many strands in here. There is a whole strand about labor relations and what it means to bring AI and faculty together. And there are some folks who are eager adopters and there are some folks who are hell nos, and there are a lot of folks in the middle. And how do you respect academic freedom, shared governance, all of those things and bring in something that I know it’s a fraught topic, but I believe our students should be familiar with this as I believe they should be familiar with the internet. But then there’s also a thread if you want to look at how do you pursue and execute partnerships with organizations, particularly tech organizations, and what are all the many potential risks and pitfalls when you think about partnering with an open AI or partnering with a Google or partnering with a Microsoft? What do all of those things mean? So there’s so much in here. I don’t want to say it’s a cautionary tale, but it’s definitely, I think, really important reading that should be parsed during this time when some of us have a little bit more time on our hands.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Well, and I would also say, I think there might be an extension that ties to some of the letters and some of the protests we’ve seen on campus. Because institutions are spending so much money on these programs, is there the potential for students who we saw at commencement and other events, not big fans of AI universally, coming back to us and saying, we don’t want our tuition dollars spent this way. We don’t want our institution investing in some of these companies for a variety of reasons. And how will our institutions respond, especially if we have signed multi-year contracts without the input of faculty and staff and students who are going to be living this? So I can see this being something that it’s not just how do you consider the change on campus, but it’s also how do you prepare, should people push back on that change.

Erin Hennessy 

And optics, optics, optics, right? Now the CSU system, a number of those institutions are in some pretty difficult financial positions and…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes, as are a lot of institutions that are also going big with AI.

Erin Hennessy 

Yeah. And if the system is going to decide to make an enormous investment, what’s the optics in terms of, you know, benefit cuts, salary freezes, hiring freezes, all of that. So lots to think about.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Hiring of adjuncts again, so you can get that class ratio down to have the mission-based approach. All of these things tie together, and this is such an interesting ecosystem that we’re in. And I hope everybody is considering all of the different pieces that come together in this reality.

Okay, ready for mine? It’s one piece. It was in the Hechinger Report. It was both in their newsletter, and I’m gonna pull from the newsletter, but we’ll include the full article if you wanna go deeper into this. It is about five changes coming from the federal government starting July 1st. All of these are tied to financial aid, and I wanna make sure that people have these on their radar screens for a number of reasons. Think about the change as we talked about. Think about the support for students. Think about the gaps people may have. Think about how you need to buy a coffee gift card for anybody who works in financial aid. Think about the admissions counselors that are now going to get calls from incoming students and continuing students asking, what the heck? And what this all will mean for what our campuses look like in the fall and moving forward. So here are their five points. We’ve talked about many of these over the course of the year, but I just want to flag this article that sums it up really well. 

Erin Hennessy

Great.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

The first is Workforce Pell. And this is something that we’re going to have some expansions on, and there are some opportunities, but Pell as a whole is really an interesting canary in the coal mine for how support for higher education is going. Where is it going? What does it look like in the future? And how can institutions be nimble to make sure that they’re getting the most of Pell dollars. The second is scrapping the save loan program. What does that mean for higher education, especially because it will impact 7.5 million participants in a transfer situation and potential additional costs? Public service loan forgiveness. There’s now a new caveat from the Trump administration that is creating what the Heckinger Report says is chaos for hundreds of thousands borrowers whose public service jobs may no longer qualify for loan elimination. And this is something if you were a month or two away, a year or two away, or this is how you were thinking about paying for your education, yikes. This gets to the heart of the purpose of funding higher education, right?

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. And then add that into new Trump administration regulations around what students should be able to make when they graduate. We’re pinching the people who do the service jobs, the teachers and the government employees and all of those folks who do these really important jobs. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Nonprofit work, yes.

Erin Hennessy

At a lower rate of compensation and we are sure as not incentivizing that are we.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Well, and the reason that so many people have taken the lower rate of pay is because they have been promised the ability for their loans to be forgiven. So expect some lawsuits, expect some fireworks, and also expect some really angry alumni who are going to say, so institution, what have you done for me lately? 

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. And it always, because I’m a former federal employee, it always makes me roll my eyes because the people who pass this or are implementing this regulation are also many of them beneficiaries of the program. The irony.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Correct. Yeah, yes, that too. The fourth item on their list is the graduate student loan limit. We’ve talked about this quite a bit with the 11 fields that were categorized as being able to have loan limits above $50,000 per year. What does this mean for students? What does this mean for institutions that either have programs in these 11 fields and now they’re still trying to bridge some gaps or those that are outside of the 11 fields and they don’t just have gaps, they have canyons. So what can this mean and what, again, are we prepared for our students to come to us and ask for additional assistance? Because this is gonna get really tricky really quickly and partner that with parent loan limits as well. So we now have caps on plus loans and that is now a lifetime total of $65,000 per dependent student. So if you have… 

Erin Hennessy

Lifetime.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Lifetime, that is all of your degrees pulled together. So if you have need and you are looking at maybe taking a job that had loan forgiveness and/or you’re in a capped program, right? When we try to put nurses and doctors and dentists and others in rural communities, et cetera, and your parents are now capped, what vulnerability are we asking from our students and their families?

Erin Hennessy 

Yeah, it’s the perfect storm.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So coming July 1st to a campus near you.

Erin Hennessy 

Yikes.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes. Next, bring me your next one.

Erin Hennessy 

Oh man, we’re never good news people, you know? 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

I have a fun one, a little bit!

Erin Hennessy 

All right, everybody in my world, and it says something about both my followings and my algorithm, I saw the Forbes college financial grades story, which dropped I think last week, earlier this week, all over Instagram for the last, I can’t tell you how many days. Snapshots of the, I think it’s about 20 institutions that earned a D based on financial responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. And full disclosure, one of my alma mater’s is on that list. And full disclosure, I got a donor solicitation this morning via email. And having seen the Forbes piece, having gotten the donor solicitation, I was in rare form this morning because we haven’t as alums heard from the institution about context around this rating and you and I do this for a living and I could see us in a conference room saying, but if we reached out to alumni, that’s going to draw attention to something that perhaps they weren’t aware of. And I can see us saying back oh transparency is the better part of valor here.

All I’m going to say to folks is this package, which again, we’ll link, I do think you have to be a Forbes subscriber, which is kind of a pain in the butt, but, we’ll link to the package, check out your institution. I’m sure folks have, have already seen it. but goodness gracious, Forbes dropped this in the end of May, beginning of June, for many institutions, the fiscal year is about 30 days away from closing. You’re doing your last minute donor pushes. Context is important not just for the data in these kinds of stories, but also when you look at these kinds of stories being out there and you don’t stop and say in this example, what are we sending to donors this month?

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Right. And if you have a content calendar, what are the considerations for when you actually implement that send?

Erin Hennessy

Yeah, yeah. So pushing that out without reaching out to people and saying, hey, you might have seen this, you might not. I want to bring it to your attention, number one. I want to explain the context around it, number two. And I do believe that there was a message sent internally, which is great, which is step one. Right? We always want internal audiences to hear before external audiences. But I’m just, I am just saying to folks context is not just something we provide, it’s something we need to look for. And, when things were very sensitive, when things dropped during enrollment season, what that means. And so for this to drop in the height of giving season, without a little bit of context from an institution, that’s that one. I felt poorly stewarded. Go ahead.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yeah, I think there’s two points to that one. The first is, to your point around alumni and internal audiences, you and I both argue that alumni are internal audiences. At our own risk, they aren’t. In often situations, right? You don’t have to go and tell everything, but this is a big enough topic, especially because the financial health of this institution has been discussed for a while and you all have been told as donors and as alumni that there is a turnaround plan. Explain where you are in that plan, right? Talk about what leadership means in this moment. And to the second point that you said, we always talk with enrollment. For many tuition dependent institutions, like your alma mater, like many institutions right now, it is always recruitment season.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. Yep.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Think about what this could mean for melt. And I know that they are on that list of institutions that are still taking applications because the list of institutions that are going beyond May 1st to accept applications and students is vast. It is not just those 20 institutions. So as we think about this, it is what should we be thinking about on behalf of our alumni and how are we characterizing them as an internal or external audience. Have some kind of a flow chart for when they’re in and when they’re out. And also remember, it is always recruitment season for many institutions.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. Yeah. So I love my alma mater very much. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

And you want it to succeed!

Erin Hennessy

That’s why I want the best, you know? It’s hard to work in this business and see institutions we love make choices that even with best of intentions just don’t pan out the way they think they might.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yeah, yeah. Just so that you know, I’m not on Instagram as you know, and I didn’t go to your alma mater. I didn’t know it had dropped until you sent me some key thoughts this morning with your frustration. So it’s, just know, come west and people won’t know, but if I were enrolling a child, I would sure as hell know, that’s for sure. So that’s one thing. And because you got me thinking about my alma mater, I had an interesting experience yesterday.

There are a number of chief marketing and communications officers who are in Boulder right now because they are attending a conference. So yesterday I got to go and sit with a number of them for a while and just, you know, talk about the industry. But I also got to give one, a tour of my alma mater. And I have to tell you, I hadn’t been on campus for a bit. And to see how beautiful it is and to, we went and had lunch at the Sink. So we went and got like the college experience. They were playing classic 90s hip hop clubbing music. So the two of us just danced along. We walked around campus and it was gorgeous. And just to see it in its glory and to say, this is the building where our Nobel laureates had this discovery. And this is our stadium so that you can see when it’s on TV and they have the backdrop. And this is where our history museum is. And this was the first building on campus. And to go through all of what made me fall in love with my alma mater. It was delightful. It also made me think, should I get another degree? I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. But I do have to say, it’s…

Erin Hennessy

I am resigning my job.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I fell in love with my alma mater again and it made me think, maybe I should get more involved with it. But again, it’s like you said, the heartbreak when the heartbreak comes is big.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. 

Higher Voltage Ad Read

Erin Hennessy

All right, your turn.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I have one that I thought was interesting. It was a fun read and I really liked it. It was in the Atlantic and it was from Michael Elliott who was president of Amherst and he talked about, this is the headline, College Should Be Way More Fun. I’m not talking about keg stands, I’m talking about the joyous mysteries of intellectual life. And I really enjoyed the piece because it’s reminding us of why we’re doing what we’re doing. But I want to add a caveat to this because my father-in-law and I talk about this. 

Erin Hennessy

You want there to be keg stands, more keg stands.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I’ve never done a keg stand. You know my coordination. It’s not going to happen. But here’s what I thought was interesting because my father-in-law and I have talked about this quite a bit. You only have the luxury, and it’s a luxury, of having joyous mysteries of intellectual life and the ability to have curiosity if you can afford to have those luxuries in college. And I can say when I was an undergraduate, I did not have as many of those opportunities as I would have wanted because I had every job I could possibly have. I was trying to keep my grades at a certain point so that I could keep all of my scholarships. I did not have the joyous mysteries of intellectual life, I love that phrase, until my graduate studies and until my doctoral studies because then I was in a position to be curious and to want to know more and to explore in ways that I just didn’t have the opportunity when I was an undergrad. So I loved this piece because it’s so important to remind us of, like I was just talking about, why we fall in love with our alma maters. But damn, is that a luxury for people to have that kind of fun and that kind of fulfillment. And it’s a real reminder about why some of our students want a credential for a job.

Erin Hennessy

Right, right. For the students who are trying to get through in three or two and a half and don’t have the luxury, I took an educational psychology class because I needed one more class in my senior year and I had the luxury of doing that. I had the luxury of doing study abroad and for so many students who are caretakers for their family or need to work full time or the major that they’ve chosen because they think it’s going to do best for them after graduation, won’t permit it. So much of what the shorthand term of art, the college experience is in people’s minds is a very privileged, very small slice of what higher education really looks like and really is.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yeah, you just mentioned my greatest regret for my undergraduate education is that I didn’t study abroad. And even as I roll it over in my mind of how could I have made that work, I know I couldn’t have made that work. And that really is the biggest regret.

Erin Hennessy 

Yeah, it was great. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I know, I wish.

Erin Hennessy 

You’ve made up for it. You’ve spent plenty of time abroad since.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I have made up for it, yes. And I think that’s part of why I study so much. My dream was semester at sea. And now… 

Erin Hennessy

Mmm, one of my roommates in college did it and loved it.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Oh, I so wish. And to be honest, I’m not a cruise ship person, so probably a good thing that I didn’t go on semester at sea, but that was like, that was it for me. That was the dream of what was just beyond my reach.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah, yep. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Next time.

Erin Hennessy

Next time. Okay, I have one more headline and then I have something about the joyful mysteries of whatever.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Of intellectual life. Yes.

Erin Hennessy

Thinking about things that are just beyond our reach. It sounds like the teach-out at Hampshire College for the fall semester, maybe beyond Hampshire College’s reach. There was a piece this week in Higher Ed Dive that they may need to close earlier than they anticipated because they don’t have the funds on hand to potentially pay for the teach-out semester for a variety of reasons, including a lot of vendors are requiring full payment upfront because of the institution’s wobbly finances. And so that story was out there. We’ve talked about Hampshire so many times we don’t have to go into great depth here. But I do just, I look forward to the book about Hampshire, because there are moments here where there’s so many lessons to be learned about how you communicate about financial position, about how you can be realistic while being optimistic, and what happens when you lean too far in one direction or the other. It’s just, it looks like it’s going to be a sad end to a sad story. And that breaks my heart because like we’ve been talking about, there are people that love this institution. The story outlines a couple of attempts, one that sounds sort of a little bit off the wall, to keep the institution or at least the mission of the institution alive. But again, it’s summertime, spend some time digging deep into what is publicly available about your institution’s financial position. And I would say, content calendar for the coming academic year, what are we doing to communicate transparently, to communicate frequently, and to make sure that folks understand. If we had a dollar for every time we have read about an institution’s financial position followed by, you know, as with much of higher education, we’re facing strong headwinds of… 

We need to go beyond the cliches and really start to help people understand where we are and where we’re going and how we’re going to fix it. If that’s what we need to do because blindsiding folks and leaving them no options. Imagine finding out that you just,

the fall semester you thought you were gonna have to play in your next move, you may not have. And that’s scary.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

And as much as…it has to be scary. And as much as you were frustrated with your alma mater this morning about this, when you sent me this article, I was super frustrated because you and I advocate with institutions, leave a runway. And we’re not saying this for your legacy. We are saying this for your community and for you to do the right thing.

And I’m not suggesting anybody at Hampshire isn’t doing the right thing. Please know that many institutions hold on too long because they think that is the right thing. And it’s a little bit aligned with the questions that we asked Belle Wheelan when she was on, right? What should that runway look like? How should an accreditor be playing into this? How can the general public know exactly how financially strong their institution is? And that brings it back around to there are some lists out there that are giving grades, what does that mean? And so how should we be thinking about the health of our institutions in a financial health, but also a community and mental health capacity and educational health for our community? Because sometimes when we think we are doing the best for people, we really aren’t, but we’re really making it, we think, easier as we get to the end. It’s not easier for anybody.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. It’s a heartbreaker.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

It is.

Erin Hennessy 

Do you have anything else to share? Because I have one little something in my pocket that I’m so excited about.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Go for your something in your pocket!

Erin Hennessy 

Okay. This is perchance…

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes. Okay. Here’s the situation. My parents went away for a week’s vacation.

Erin Hennessy 

No. I…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

That was not from Public Enemy.

Erin Hennessy 

…was an English literature minor in college. And I miss reading books in a guided fashion. You know, having faculty help me think about what’s the symbolism and what is the social history around this novel and what is it, how does it influence the writer? And so I found this woman on the internet, which is the beginning of several bad stories. But I found this woman on the internet whose name is Haley Larsen and she has a PhD in modernist literature, I think. And she, four times a year, does guided deep readings of classic texts. And for this summer, her text is The Grapes of Wrath. And I’m so excited because the East of Eden by John Steinbeck is top five, one of my favorite books ever. I reread it every couple of years and I’ve never liked Grapes of Wrath as well. And so this summer, I’m gonna spend 10 weeks reading the Grapes of Wrath, reading John Steinbeck’s journals that he wrote while writing Grapes of Wrath. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

That’s great!

Erin Hennessy

I’m doing this with my friend Alex Sollberger who I have convinced to be a nerd with me and I’m going to spend 10 weeks reading Grapes of Wrath. How exciting is that?

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

I think that sounds like one of my side journeys that you would normally be like, that’s a great idea, enjoy. I loved the Grapes of Wrath. I think this just made me so happy because again, this is something that I would do and love. So what I want is at the end of the summer, I want you to talk about your summer read. I want you to give us a book report. I want you to talk about what you learned and how it has changed your life. And yeah, because basically you’re giving yourself a summer read like we all had in high school and then you had to write an essay at the end of the summer.

Erin Hennessy 

Exactly. And I will show you all my annotated copy with all my tabs and my underlinings.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Just like me. So get. Yeah, I have some apps that you might want to think about that are just fantastic.

Erin Hennessy 

Interesting. Okay. So in the show notes, I put a link to Haley Larson’s website because she just is super smart and talks about literature and literary analysis of all of this stuff. And it just scratches a tiny little part of my little brain. So if anybody wants to read the Grapes of Wrath with me and Alex and Haley Larson, we start on the 15th. Get your copy. Let’s go. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Of June? Yeah, so next week when this comes out, you have a couple days heads up. 

Erin Hennessy

That’s right. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yeah. OK, so I am not going to be reading anything this summer. Actually, let me rephrase that. I am going to be reading something this summer. 

Erin Hennessy

You better be, man.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Here’s what I’m reading. I am editing, co-editing a book with Ken Carter. And I need to be reading the chapters for that book that we have had submitted. The book is on public scholarship. And we reached out to about 30 people, look in your email soon, Erin, to write chapters for this book to talk about how we should think about public scholarship. Half are academics, half are practitioners. And this summer, I will be starting to read the first set of chapters that we received for our edited book.

Erin Hennessy 

If I am supposed to write something that you’re supposed to be able to read this summer, you better get that invite into my inbox real quick, ma’am. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yeah, yeah, I will.

Erin Hennessy 

Because I have a lot of homework already lined up, as you know.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

I know you have the Grapes of Wrath. Yeah. And also adventures. So I also want to make a plug for come and spend time with me this summer. So every summer, Erin knows I just kind of peace out on the team and I am at conference after conference after conference. So if you are thinking about conferences this summer, let me tell you where I’m going to be. And let’s see if our calendars overlap. I’m going to be at AALI, which is a leadership pipeline program. When this comes out, so hopefully you will already be there. Or you will be applying for the program for next year. And I can talk to you about leadership communications. I’ll also be at the CASE Marketing and Branding Conference, which will be in Denver. I will be a plenary speaker at the end of that one. So please, if you are a MarComm person, please come and see me and talk to me and let’s play in Denver. I’m also going to be at something called PodCon. Jack Stripling and I are going to be talking about podcasts. Erin, I was going to wear my shirt, as you laugh, that says, Ask Me About My Podcast. When we first launched this podcast, I bought a shirt for me and one for Erin that says, please ask me about my podcast. And I was so excited for us to wear them together for a photo, which Erin did not want to do.

Erin Hennessy 

Correct.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

And this is what I have found. Anybody who is looking for people not to talk to you on an airplane, wear a t-shirt that says, ask me about my podcast and nobody will even look you in the eye. So now I wear it on planes. So PodCon, please join us. Jack Stripling and I will be talking about what it’s like to cover different topics in the industry and also infuse our own personalities in our podcasts. And finally, if you have any junior staff, or anybody who is new to higher ed and they are looking for a crash course on marketing and communications or higher education, please look at the Summer Institute for Communications and Marketing. It’s a four day program. It’s in Wisconsin. It’s a lot like summer camp. It is so much fun. So this is on CASE’s website. And this is a really neat way on the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus to really give a solid bootcamp. Again, to either people who are new in their career, to the field or to the industry as a whole to get a leg up before school starts.

Erin Hennessy

Plus cheese curds.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Every year I do a cheese curd crawl. 

Erin Hennessy

Nice. Nice.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

That is my own creation. So there you go. And my favorite thus far are the ones from the student union, which is on a beautiful lake.

Erin Hennessy

Yes. I will add one conference that I will be at in mid-July? I think that’s right. Which is the NACUBO Annual Meeting, which will be in Anaheim, California. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

So you’re gonna go to Disney, right?

Erin Hennessy

No, I’m not going to the park. No, here’s the thing. A dear friend who will also be there, asked if we could go have a fun day and go to the park. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes!

Erin Hennessy

And I said, I said, if you’re not, if this isn’t clipped on social, I am right now pointing my finger at the camera. I said, sure, I’ll do that for a lark. It’s not my jam, but I’ll do it with you. And then I looked at the prices, man. And one day one park is like 200 bucks and that…

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

You should get a conference discount.

Erin Hennessy

That is the conference discount! 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

What?

Erin Hennessy

That, my friend, is too expensive of a lark for this girl who has to get her gutters redone. 

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

No it’s not, it’s Disneyland! I will pay for your D…your Minnie ears. 

Erin Hennessy 

No. I won’t do it. You know that Disney and all Disney adjacent people are just not my jam. Sorry.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Erin, college should be way more fun because I’m talking about the joyous mysteries of intellectual life.

Erin Hennessy

I know. Yeah, dude. Well, it’s not going to happen for me at Disneyland. I’m sorry to say those joyous mysteries will remain mysteries.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

While you are at Disneyland, I’m gonna be in the Tetons hiking my little heart out for 4th of July.

Erin Hennessy

That’s great. Fantastic.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes, I could not be happier. Yes. So while other people are watching the 250th events in Washington, DC I will joyfully not have Wi-Fi or be checking in on America.

Erin Hennessy

Excellent! Okay, I will clear my calendar then. Hope those dates are already on your calendar so I can clear mine.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

They are, they are. I am happy as can be. 

Erin Hennessy

Excellent.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So everybody, please have a joyful, mystery-filled, intellectual, life-fulfilling summer. I truly do love that phrase, everybody. And I hope everybody gets some peace and some rest, but also does some really solid planning with all that we just outlined here. And if you want to know anything else we think you should be planning for, go back to what we talked about in January, because I think all of that stuff still stands.

Erin Hennessy 

Yeah.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

And we are no less complex than we were months ago.

Erin Hennessy 

Amen to that. And as always, if you have guest suggestions or you have questions or issues you’d like us to talk about during next year’s season five, please send them to us via email, which I believe is included in our little closing out monologue here. But you can always find Teresa and I on LinkedIn. You can find us on email via our website. We are so grateful and I’m a little bit amazed that we have now put four seasons of this in the can. And we’re deeply grateful and really tickled every time somebody says to us, I was listening to your podcast. That is…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

We had that this week! And the two of us had grins from ear to ear. So thank you everybody who listens. You really make our hearts happy.

Erin Hennessy

Yes, and people who say that, that’s an enormous compliment. We know how much stuff is out there and how much is on your to-do list. And the fact that you spend a little time with us is really, is really lovely. So thank you for that. Have a wonderful summer. Teresa, I’ll talk to you later.

Teresa Valerio Parrot 

Yes. And everybody keep me accountable for my miles. I need to keep, I need to go.

Erin Hennessy 

Yeah. Okay. Thanks everybody.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Thank you, everybody.

Erin Hennessy 

Bye!

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Bye bye.

Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to the topics and articles referenced, as well as a copy of the show’s transcript on the Volt website, Voltedu.com. Remember that you can always contact us with feedback, questions, or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Follow Trusted Voices wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out Higher Voltage and Campus Docket the other podcasts on the Volt network. Until next time, thanks to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, and the Volt team, including Aaron and Maryna, for a great episode. And thank you for listening.