Read the full transcript here
Kevin Renton
Hi there, my name is Kevin Renton and welcome to QuickFire from Volt. This is where we put higher education marketers on the hot seat and ask them 20 rapid questions regarding what makes them tick, what makes them successful and what their goals are for the future. In the Crossfire today we have Jennifer Umberger, Vice President for Marketing and Communications at Kettering University. Welcome, Jennifer.
Jennifer Umberger
Thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Renton
Give us your elevator pitch. What do you do at Kettering University?
Jennifer Umberger
Well, I am so fortunate to steward Kettering’s brand. So that includes everything from managing all of the branded materials, the website, digital marketing falls under my area of expertise as well. That has been a wonderful place to be for the last two years. Before that, I spent about six years in Pennsylvania with the combination, eventually, of Bloomsburg, Lockhaven and Mansfield universities.
Kevin Renton
I wanted to work in higher education because…
Jennifer Umberger
I truly love the mission, the energy, and the opportunity that comes from a university community.
Kevin Renton
The marketing tool I can’t live without is…
Jennifer Umberger
Anymore it’s ChatGPT. It truly revolutionizes the way that I work.
Kevin Renton
Wow, how are you using it?
Jennifer Umberger
You know, for sometimes the simplest things, whether it’s putting together outlines or helping to begin an executive summary of something. I use it quite frequently to even put together questions for interviews.
Kevin Renton
In the next five years, I’d like to…
Jennifer Umberger
Well, let’s see here. I don’t know yet, to be honest. I think you might have to come back to me on that one.
Kevin Renton
Okay, like you don’t know career-wise or professional or …
Jennifer Umberger
You know what, all of the above, this move to Michigan has brought me home after being away for 20 years and back to private higher education. So, all of that has put together some really wonderful opportunities to reconnect with people and topics and everything else. So, I’m really happy where I am and could potentially still be here at that point.
Kevin Renton
When I’m not working, I’m…
Jennifer Umberger
Hiking, golfing, reading, spending time with my husband and our Newfoundland. Truly, I’ve gotten into gardening over the last year and that’s been really a great way to spend some extra time.
Kevin Renton
I start my day at…
Jennifer Umberger
Well, 5:45, but that kind of sets the stage for my real alarm that goes off at 6:30.
Kevin Renton
Coffee, breakfast, exercise?
Jennifer Umberger
Mostly reading, getting caught up on the trades and email, and really just prepping for the day before getting ready and heading out the door.
Kevin Renton
The secret to students succeeding at my school is…
Jennifer Umberger
Effort. Getting through the rigor of Kettering’s 50-50 academic and co-op experience takes a ton of determination. Our students are spending 11 weeks in the classroom taking often more than 20 credit hours worth of courses in such a compressed time and most of them are engineers. So you can imagine the heft of those classes, but then they have a week in between and then they’re off to their paid co-op experience with an employer partner. And they’re doing real work, they’re earning real money, and graduating with the number one starting salaries in Michigan.
Kevin Renton
I admire the marketing at…
Jennifer Umberger
Many other institutions, but I’m actually often more inspired by brands outside of higher ed, some of the things that we’re not doing, or where could a school like Kettering that is truly unique find itself where others might not be?
Kevin Renton
The biggest challenge facing higher education marketers are…
Jennifer Umberger
Well, everyone will always say budget and staffing, but truly I think, bandwidth encompasses all of that. So it’s people, time and resources.
Kevin Renton
My favorite social media channel is, and why?
Jennifer Umberger
Ooh, I think it would have to be Instagram because it kind of gives me a peek inside the minds of so many different audiences. You know, no matter the platform, the algorithms both fascinate me and freak me out. So, I always say I maybe don’t love that I’m the subject of it, but I need to know how to wield it as a marketer.
Kevin Renton
Did you have a Twitter and X account back in the day?
Jennifer Umberger
Yes, and I still do, though I am much more an observer than so much of a native poster.
Kevin Renton
My biggest professional achievement is…
Jennifer Umberger
Building strong brands at three institutions and teams to match. It was a wonderful opportunity to start to actually in Pennsylvania at Kutztown University. That was the first brand that I built. It’s so satisfying to see that it’s held true. The research-informed brand strategy really is still in use today. Same thing with Bloomsburg and then the trio of Commonwealth University as well.
So that was a huge step coming to Kettering, making the time to build a brand first and foremost, and then building some of the additional infrastructure that we’ve needed. We actually launched our brand new website just a couple of weeks ago. And so we’ve had quite a succession of things that have been the focus, but the brand is really exceptional here.
Kevin Renton
Was each brand journey that you created different?
Jennifer Umberger
It was, in part because of the partners that we worked with, but in part also because of varying campus readiness and even the unique attributes of each are so vastly different. And so being at a specialized institution is far different than marketing a mid-sized public institution for all the wonderful reasons that those institutions are so broad-reaching in the audiences that they serve.
Kevin Renton
My biggest professional mistake was…
Jennifer Umberger
I think probably getting frustrated as a young enrollment professional when the decisions of 17 year olds, it felt like it was happening to me instead of really realizing how to effectively build a pipeline. And that’s one of the differences that I really learned in a portion of my career totally outside of higher ed.
I was part of a commercial real estate firm in two major metro cities and learning about building that pipeline really has changed a lot of how I work across higher ed now and especially how I work in partnership with enrollment.
Kevin Renton
What’s working in higher end right now is…
Jennifer Umberger
Proving ROI through outcomes storytelling. I think some schools are better than others at doing that. It’s been a huge focus for us at Kettering because we can prove our ROI in very different ways, but it’s not always the easiest thing to do.
Kevin Renton
What’s not working in higher ed right now is…
Jennifer Umberger
The arms race of trying to build the right tech stack. Truly there is so much that’s changing with so much of a rapid pace that it’s nearly impossible to effectively plan, then budget to be able to take advantage of some of these things with the speed that we could.
Kevin Renton
You mentioned creating brands. Have you kept the same tech stack throughout your journey?
Jennifer Umberger
No, gosh, no. No, I don’t think we’d be as successful if I would have, but I think you have to constantly be learning and iterating what that looks like and what that means. And sometimes it’s based on the skillset of your team or the breadth of the support services or connection that you have. So we have changed dramatically in the way we work compared to how I was working a dozen years ago.
Kevin Renton
A key to my success has been…
Jennifer Umberger
Taking a chance, doing the work, building an incredible network of talented colleagues and friends.
Kevin Renton
One thing I’ve learned about managing a team is…
Jennifer Umberger
It’s often hard, but always worth every bit of time you’ll invest into them. My job is to provide the resources and support to empower that team’s best work. And so sometimes it takes a whole lot of patience, but the coaching and recognizing people’s strengths, I think, goes a long, long way.
Kevin Renton
The hardest part of my job is…
Jennifer Umberger
Prioritization. Without a doubt, there’s so many things that we could be doing that it’s just a matter of setting those priorities and being pretty careful to protect those, so that you don’t whittle away your bandwidth.
Kevin Renton
I love my job because…
Jennifer Umberger
Because the work makes an impact and our product, the students are second to none in their preparation to impact industries worldwide. And that’s been incredible here.
Kevin Renton
Sounds great. Thanks for your time. We’re going to go off and look at the Kettering University website and check it out. And I look forward to seeing you at CUPRAP this year as well.
Jennifer Umberger
Wonderful, we’ll see you soon.
