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GSD Episode 3: Get to Know Kevin Shriner
15 Plays2 months ago
Kevin Shriner is up this week in our getting to know your hosts episodes. We will talk about how his life as the son of a member of the military took him all over the US and even Europe and had an impact on his path into higher education.
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Transcript
Introduction and Co-hosts
00:00:21
Speaker
All right, everybody, welcome back. This is technically episode three of getting stuff done in higher education. As always, I'm Fritz Vandover, one of your three hosts. always joined by Kelvin Bentley and Kevin Schreiner.
00:00:37
Speaker
Say hey, guys. Hey, how's it going? Hey, Fritz. Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone, yeah. So...
Getting to Know Kevin Schreiner
00:00:44
Speaker
Continuing with our theme from last time, we' are going to can we're continuing with our get to know your hosts session. So today we have Kevin Schreiner, he's up.
00:00:55
Speaker
So as last time with Kelvin, we're gonna talk about what has brought Kevin up to this moment, this day in his professional life and personal life, if you wanna get into that. So Kevin,
00:01:08
Speaker
Why are you here? I'm here because I had a great introduction and opportunity to be with the two of you, which I just absolutely love. This is this is awesome. I am. I am so glad that we're doing this.
00:01:21
Speaker
um You know, I thought you know it's interesting when you hear someone else kind of like do their where they've been and how they got here. And so listening to Calvin talk about his his pathway really started to make me think a little bit about how how I kind of want to share this, because I think there's a lot in my like my my youth background, like just my growing up background, that kind of shapes a little bit probably like at least how I think about higher ed. Not necessarily the role that I have in higher ed, but just how I've always thought about higher ed in general.
00:01:56
Speaker
um So I'll
Military Family Background
00:01:58
Speaker
start there. um I am a Texan. I was born in El Paso, Texas. um I literally have a certificate from the state of Texas with my birth certificate that says once a Texan, always a Texan.
00:02:11
Speaker
um And so, you know, whether Texas decides to become its own country or whether or not it's going to stay a state, I am stuck in in that world of being a Texan. um No judgment. No judgment.
00:02:23
Speaker
now um'm you know And it's okay. i mean it's It is who we are. um But my dad was in the Army. so i was my My father was art had already served probably about five years before i was born.
00:02:38
Speaker
um And so I have an older brother and sister. So I was born in El Paso on the military base. My dad went to Vietnam in I was born in November and in January he was he he he went to Vietnam.
00:02:55
Speaker
Are you going to share what year that was, Kevin, or is that off limits? No, I mean, it's fine. I mean, and I have no shame as to how old I am. So i was born in 1969. So in January of 1970. So I mean, if you if you're a history person, like pretty much at the height of um scorch and terror that was going on in Vietnam where we were burning, trashing, bombing, everything.
00:03:26
Speaker
And so in 1970, he went
00:03:29
Speaker
went out to Vietnam. And clearly, I mean, I don't remember any of this, right? Like, this is just things that I am aware of, of of what happened. And so My mom, my brother, my sister, and myself, um Fort Riley, which is in Kansas, um had taken over an Air Force base in Salina, Kansas, um that was used during World War two And they made that basically a wives' barracks, wives' and families' barracks.
00:03:56
Speaker
And this is for this is for families from all over the armed forces, right? I, you know, I think it is pretty much all over the armed forces. Um, I, I, I don't know if it was con since it was connected with Fort Riley and Fort Riley was the big red one.
00:04:11
Speaker
If there was a connection, like if, if, if your spouse got sent overseas and you were in the big red one, you weren't going to stay, like we weren't going to stay in El Paso. So was, but I don't, i don't, that's a great question that i honestly, I don't know the answer to.
00:04:25
Speaker
Um, so we were there for a year. um in those barracks, there's a couple of books that have been written on the, on the, on the women that, that lived through that experience and what it was like to, to not want to see a car come driving down the road and tell them that their husband, um you know, was, was not coming home or they were not coming home alive. They were potentially coming home in a box.
Living in Germany During the Cold War
00:04:49
Speaker
um And so i think, you know, that early piece and not necessarily, you know, just the fact that my dad went to Vietnam, but, having i mean i grew up in essence and in you know the vietnam cold war era um and had an opportunity when i was um fifth to seventh grade we lived in germany for three years and so we actually like czechoslovakia was still a country yugoslavia was still a country um and and the and so they would do these exercises in the military it's called reforger and you
00:05:28
Speaker
you would but you would do it right on the border of Czechoslovakia and Germany. And ah basically it's just showing military might. So that the US Army's there with all their howitzers and their tanks and they're running them all over the ground and stuff.
00:05:43
Speaker
But when you we took this a little dirt road ride out by the fences and there's literally literally a sign that just says, landmines, next 50 yards. And there's this barbed wire fence and then there's space.
00:05:57
Speaker
And then there's another barbed wire fence. And then that's the Czechoslovakian Russian side with a tower of some, you know, with a Russian in that tower watching everything that's going on, just waiting, you know, for stuff, for stuff to happen.
High School and Early College Ambitions
00:06:13
Speaker
um And so this is in late seventies, early eighties. mean, this is, this is vivid memories. This is, this isn't the foggy memories. This is your early. Yeah, no. So, i mean, for me, I mean, this would have been, i mean, so my brother graduated in 83. So this would have been 79, 80 83.
00:06:30
Speaker
And think in 82 is when we were actually, and i think in eighty two is when we are actually in Fulda, Germany, F-U-L-D-A, on the border of Czechoslovakia, watching all the Army stuff going on. So my dad was a mechanic, um engineer, and so um basically he worked on the tanks, fixed the diesel trucks and all those types of things when they when they broke down and stuff. And so he wasn't necessarily doing military components.
00:07:03
Speaker
He wasn't firing a gun and all that stuff, but clearly trained. to be able to do all those things. But
00:07:10
Speaker
so that I think, you know, so I, I share all that. Cause I think in part having grown up in the military, like, so just to kind of like, just real quick.
00:07:21
Speaker
So from, from Salina, Kansas, when my dad came back from Vietnam um we then went to, actually, I don't know if we spent a year in Texas first, like around the Fort worth,
00:07:34
Speaker
area and then we went to alaska but we ended up in alaska um so we're in alaska for about three or four years and then we went to louisiana um fort polk which is close to northwestern right louisiana um so funny total total funny side story so like wrestling was a huge thing right like hulk hogan all those, like all the, like the mega wrestlers, like, so this was 77, 78, 79. Like that was like the big, like people actually went to, to wrestling events and saw these wrestlers in, in arenas and all this stuff.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I remember we were driving from home to, it was either Alexandria or DeRitter. I think it was Alexandria to watch a wrestling match. And it came on the news that Elvis Presley died. And my mom about lost it.
00:08:24
Speaker
Like huge Elvis, like, But like, i mean, like, so stuff like that, right? Like, so it's like, but anyway, so I share all that to say, you know, going from Alaska to Louisiana to Germany. And then when left Germany, we came back to El Paso, which is when my dad retired.
00:08:40
Speaker
um It's just all those experiences I had when I was young, right? Like living, like having an opportunity to live in not only a different country and experiencing a different country, but even just different parts of the U.S.,
00:08:54
Speaker
Um, and what it was, I mean, I learned French when I was in Louisiana, right? Like most people are learning Spanish in grade school because, you know, France actually was in Louisiana, right? The Louisiana purchase, you learn French Creole. Right. And so it was, so like all those types of things are just, were just interesting and different.
00:09:15
Speaker
Um, so anyways, kind of speeding up a little bit, um, So when my dad retired from el Paso.
Impact of War on Family
00:09:23
Speaker
Both my mom and my dad were from Kansas. um And so they decided to retire back into the town that my mom grew up in.
00:09:31
Speaker
And so I did my sophomore year through my senior year in that town. um At that same time, my dad passed away um when I was a junior in high school.
00:09:46
Speaker
And here's the full connection. um his tour in Vietnam took him 20 years to die from that tour from agent orange.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. We talked about that when we were at the conference. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, when you kind of, when you start, so ah again, we start to think about like people that are coming back from Iraq and I, and Afghanistan and all those things that people go through. I mean, war is just not hell when you're in war, war is hell when you're back from war.
00:10:19
Speaker
and the things that you don't know that's happening to you. And so, and then not to jump in and, but to the impact on kids and other generations, it's real. And we'll get into this, my experience with that when, in my episode, but yeah, it's, you see it and you feel it. Um, and it it affects your dayto day to day.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Academic Excellence and College Choices
00:10:42
Speaker
And so, so I've always kind of had, so I've, I've had this military history, like for, for my entire life, right. Has been, has been, has been the military in some sense. So living on, on base, living off base, you know, all those types of things. And so um when I graduated high school, I really thought I was going to be a wildlife biologist. That was, that was, that was what I wanted to do.
00:11:04
Speaker
um Had the opportunity when I was in high school to spend some time with the Kansas, uh, Department of Wildlife and Parks. We went out and shocked fish to do a fish count. We transferred turkeys from one location to another. dropped fresh trout into this to this stream and in in November. So it's like one those career exploration type weeks.
00:11:26
Speaker
um So that's what I was going to do. But I had no idea where I was going to go. My brother, who's about four years older than me um me, when we end up back in El Paso,
00:11:38
Speaker
He was kind of like, wasn't really for sure what he wanted to do. And so he took a couple of classes from, um the community college in El Paso. Um, it still really hadn't quite, my sister was just, so when I was in eighth grade, my sister was graduating, um, high school.
00:11:54
Speaker
And so she went back to Kansas state. So she means it was like right away she knew where she was going to go. Um, so she took off to Kansas state. Um, when we got back to Kansas, my brother who in high school ran cross country, went out to Colby Community College on a cross country scholarship and did physical therapist assistant. And so that was that was the the degree path that he chose.
00:12:19
Speaker
um And has been a physical therapist assistant his entire life. And so for me, I was, and again, so I think it's also kind of going back first generation, right? So clearly, it I mean, my father did not um attend school or college beyond high school. My mother did not attend college beyond high school. and that's another story I'll get into because I think it's really unique.
00:12:43
Speaker
um And so I just, I honestly, I, and then, so in high school, I did tennis and I did track. So I did had tennis for two years, went to the, went to state both of those years, both in singles and doubles.
00:12:55
Speaker
And then in my third, my senior year, um between my, between my two junior year and my senior year, they had this, like this workout summer. right So if you were an athlete or if you were a non-athlete or whatever, you could use the gym at the high school and you could lift weights and all these types of things. and of course, it was always you know the football coach that's running it and stuff.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so we did sprints, me and this other person that were that was there that morning. We had to do a 40-yard dash. And he does his. And then the coach is like, all right, ready, set, go. And I do mine.
00:13:32
Speaker
he's just looking at it. He's looking at me. He goes, do you want to do that again? i'm like, yeah, I can do it again. so I ran it again. He's like, that's a four, three.
00:13:46
Speaker
And he's just like looking at me like, cause I mean, if you know me, i have long lanky legs. I mean, I'm not built like most typical sprinters, but honestly, I think my time on the tennis court like shaped like, cause you,
00:14:01
Speaker
All your fast twitch muscles. There's a lot of moving back and forth on a tennis court. mean, you got to get to the net. You got to get back. Like you're running more than I think most people think that you're running. So anyways, he's like, you should one, he was like, you should do football. And I'm like, I'm not playing football.
00:14:15
Speaker
um And plus it's a small town. Like I graduated the town. There was 52 kids in my class when we graduated. Most of those people grew up. Like you're already you already, you already know who the quarterback is going to be. You know who,
00:14:29
Speaker
who's playing what positions because they've just done it their entire lives. Like, no, I'm not playing football. um But i did go out for track. And so my senior year, I ran track, ran the 100, 200, 400, and the four by one.
00:14:41
Speaker
um And I believe we still, the four of us that ran the four by one, I believe still have the record for the fastest four by one. at the school.
00:14:53
Speaker
So anybody that's from Ellsworth, Kansas, that want to call me up and correct me on that, feel free to do so, but I believe that's We can do that. This can happen. We can do that. I don't think there's any records going back to 1988. um So then I was like, okay, so what are you so what am I going to So not really knowing, i oh and I also i did dual enrollment in high school my senior year.
00:15:17
Speaker
um In part... because there's a big difference between curriculum in El Paso, Texas and curriculum Ellsworth, Kansas. I had already taken history my freshman year.
00:15:29
Speaker
In Kansas, you don't take history until your junior year, like right? There's a path that there are certain courses you take at certain times and all these types of things. I'd already done all of that. I'd already had my foreign language. um I'd already taken the lower level freshmen.
00:15:45
Speaker
i was one, i was one one year i was always one year ahead i took algebra in eighth grade so i was one year ahead in math going into my ninth grade year so was older yeah you're kind of gettingd you're getting primed with advanced level curricular materials course yeah not not to brag or anything fritz but i i've been considered a gifted child um my entire life um which is also That's a whole nother story for another day. It is. i I bet we can all relate to that too.
00:16:19
Speaker
So I was always ahead. I wasn't in a gifted program. i But I mean, so when I when i got to to to Germany in fifth grade, I was put in a total, I was almost in the sixth grade because I was so far ahead in math and reading than anybody else in the fifth grade.
00:16:36
Speaker
So when I got to El Paso, El Paso requires you to take Texas history in the seventh grade. Clearly I didn't take it because I was in Germany. So I had to take history and Texas history my eighth grade year.
00:16:51
Speaker
But the teacher in my Texas history's class, he's just like, basically I was just like the tutor for everybody else in class. He's like, you already know all this. like And so, but then I took algebra and so I was already a ahead. So i already had, so I was in geometry in ninth grade.
00:17:08
Speaker
And so then when I got to Kansas, There was no math left when I got to my senior year. So I did dual enrollment and we took, I think it was college algebra ah that we took.
00:17:21
Speaker
But anyway, so I did dual, I mean, so it's interesting, you know, to think about all the higher ed things that you're kind of, that um that you see and you're involved with now that you don't really think about as a student then. It's like, yeah, i mean, I took dual enrollment in 1988. Like, why is this such a big deal that we have these conversations around the value of dual enrollment? It's like, I did it.
00:17:41
Speaker
So a question. yeah I want to do, did, um, so dual enrollment, did you go to a campus for this dual enrollment or was a more like, um, AP? No, it was actual dual enrollment. was college credit. So I have, I have three credits from Barton County community college for college algebra.
00:17:59
Speaker
It was taught by our math teacher. So our math teacher, so Barton County kind to know the layout of Kansas. So Barton County is great. Ben great. Ben is probably like, 30 minute drive for them from from Ellsworth.
00:18:12
Speaker
um But our our math teacher taught us the college algebra class. And there's other stuff I'm not going to talk about on this podcast, but there's other things like like. You think you get a colleague, like trying to do a college experience experience like there is three of us that were in that class, probably did some things that we probably shouldn't have done um in that class, but.
00:18:36
Speaker
Guess what it is. I think he's retired. Well, it's not necessarily what he did. It's more of what I did or what we did. And it's just like, yeah.
00:18:48
Speaker
Another day over cocktails, maybe. No, don't I don't make this necessarily. here Those are the secret digital badges, right? That we're not going to talk about. Shadow badges, yes. It was. Shadow docket.
00:19:01
Speaker
It was. It was. um So then I graduated high school.
College Journey and Kansas State
00:19:06
Speaker
um And actually, I went to Colby. Um, so I got a track and cross country scholarship, um, to go to Colby community college.
00:19:14
Speaker
Um, so I'm a first generation community college graduate transfer student. Um, if kind of keep track of some of those things. Um, so I did my two years at Colby, um, met my beautiful wife at Colby.
00:19:32
Speaker
Um, she was also and as a physical therapist assistant, did the physical therapist assistant program. um She was Angela. I should just say her name. Angela was born and raised um in Kansas. Her dad was soybean corn farm corn farmer right outside of Topeka, small town of Rossville.
00:19:54
Speaker
um So she graduated high school from Manhattan, Kansas. But anyways, ended up at Colby and we connected at Colby and would say that's 30 36 years ago that we've been or 36 years that we've been together 35 years married next year that's great congrats really congrats yes 35 this no yes next year you need to know this now it's really out there very hot at 34 so 35 years let this out of the uh i can i promise kevin knows his anniversary dates and years
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's just trying to think, you know, i get lost sometimes on what year it actually is. And so it will be 35 next year. we got married We got married in 91.
00:20:40
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. when you, I just, this is not really a question. It's just, it's interesting about your time in Kansas, you know, how your family spent some time there.
00:20:51
Speaker
Interesting enough, I spent some time in Manhattan, Kansas as well. like i was I was making all these connections when you were doing your thing. like I did consulting at Northwestern when when I worked for EAB. like It's really weird, right? like Yeah. yeah we're We're connected in a lot of different ways. you know like Kevin, Kelvin, there are similarities in name, and grew up around the same time. mean, we could maybe do our own version of Ebony and Ivory as. We can actually play that pretty well on the piano. So if you guys want to do that, I can't do that. Yeah, we should. That would be good. I think that would be amazing.
00:21:31
Speaker
No, but no, I appreciate you kind of spending more time talking about your time in Kansas because, you know, I did my pre-doctoral internship at K-State for a year and didn't really know anyone there. But the the people there that I met were really nice. The ice cream on campus was amazing.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yep. Paul Hall. You know, for someone from Detroit, you know. Yeah. and I didn't have yeah easy access to Michigan State, so where their ice cream is also very good as a state state university. but Yeah.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah. I think we can debate ice cream. I've had this. I have actually had this conversation at EPSIA last week um because folks were talking about ice cream at different places and someone had been to Nebraska. Nothing against University of Nebraska ice cream.
00:22:20
Speaker
i will I will still hands down say Manhattan, Kansas, Call Hall ice cream is is the bomb. There's nobody, nobody can compare.
00:22:31
Speaker
Isn't Penn State known for theirs too? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I think if you had a ah sampling of all of them in a case states would rise, that would be the cream of the top.
00:22:45
Speaker
That's a challenge I'd love to take because I love ice cream. So yeah. Yeah. I would happily be your blind taste tester. There you go. I can take the bias out of it because you probably can peg it right away just tasting it. So You know, honestly, probably not. I think it's just more of a bias of being an alum. and ah but So, okay.
00:23:03
Speaker
ah yeah I'm interested in what took you, because said you're first-generation college student. Yep. What compelled you? Because this is the mid to late eighty s So, I mean, the post-war boom has ended-ish, you know, eighty early 80s. We've got inflation, unemployment, yada, yada.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yep. So I'm not saying we didn't have a manufacturing economy, but what pulled you towards a college path versus a similar-ish path to your, or maybe to your dad or to the communities in which you grew up?
00:23:40
Speaker
um You know, that's that's an interesting question. And I really never thought about it other than the army right out of college for me was not ah a choice.
00:23:53
Speaker
And was that because of your dad's experience in Vietnam? Did he? did so that's you know Honestly, i don't you know I don't know. I don't know if it was more of just I lived it for 16 years. like Like, it's hard to separate. Even though you're not you're not in the Army, it's hard to separate your living, basically, in the Army during during that time when you're growing up. And so I don't know if subconsciously or consciously, like, that was the decision.
00:24:24
Speaker
I think having seen my brother go to school and my sister go to school, think, I think, and, and there's, and and again, small town, 50, you know, 52 people in my class.
00:24:36
Speaker
I think a majority of us went to college, like in, in some capacity. I, but I think what was nice about my choice was, I don't, nobody, nobody was like, oh my God, he's going to Colby.
00:24:49
Speaker
Like he's going to a community college. Like there was none of that type of conversation. Like, Why, are why are they, you know, cause we, i had a lot of my classmates went to community colleges. Um, many on like, I mean, have a good friend who went and played basketball, um, on a basketball scholarship at a community college. So, and I think, and I think that's the other thing that's probably a little bit different when you think about it' a little bit of the community college structure in Kansas at the time.
00:25:15
Speaker
um and I think it's kind of evolving a little bit more in other places, but athletics was a big thing for the community colleges. I mean, you had baseball, softball, track, cross country, um basketball, men's and women's basketball.
00:25:32
Speaker
um You had football at some of them. And I didn't realize this until I got to the University of Arkansas. Barton County Community College, which is in in the Wichita area of Kansas, was actually a feeder school for a lot of SEC states.
00:25:47
Speaker
So back then, if you didn't score high enough on your ACTs or your SATs and you wanted to play football, you weren't eligible through the NCAA to go to school. And so they would, these coaches would contact these coaches at these community colleges. And I think Texas is a little bit like this with the community college structure, but they would send these players to the community colleges to get their grades up yeah or so they could be admitted based on their grades since they weren't admitted based on their test scores.
00:26:15
Speaker
And then they would come back through and, and I didn't realize that until I got to Arkansas and was processing applications and stuff. And it's like, why are all these athletes come from the same school? And it's just like, oh, duh, it's a feeder.
00:26:28
Speaker
This is a potential tangent, but it's really interesting. I mean, I don't know how much it's like that now. I mean, so I'm from St. Louis. I'm a big Cardinals fan still. Albert Pujols was, you know, an iconic player. he He went to a community college and then he's drafted like 9,000th in whatever year that was.
00:26:44
Speaker
But, you know, so community colleges, there's a long history of being places to recruit college or collegiate and even professional athletes. They, yeah you know, they skip over the, the, the, uh, baccalaureate college, four-year university, et cetera. But it's a, it's an interesting topic.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and mean, I didn't realize until I went to, to, to community college. I mean, there's, it's the national junior college athletic association, right? Like who, who knew i didn't, I mean, you don't read about it. You don't, you don't think about it. again, other than, you know, my brother had gone, he knew the coach.
00:27:19
Speaker
And so it was kind of like, well, you know, why not? So, so that's what I did. um And I think my two years at K-State, so my goal before I met my beautiful life um was I was going to do two years at K-State and then I was going to go to North Dakota State University and finish their baccalaureate program in wildlife biology. Like that was like, I had already all that planned out in my head. That was, that was the direction I was going to go.
00:27:44
Speaker
um When I got to Colby, um colby Um, really just, and I think even just being around different people, like, um, Colby's, I mean, it's the most Western community college in the state of Kansas. Um, it's very close to the Colorado border, um, and the North Northwest corner, um, rural farming, agriculture, like the, ah like like they had an ag unit. Like I was in a residence hall with, with,
00:28:17
Speaker
everybody that wore shit kickers and I'm wearing tennis shoes, right? Like everybody had cowboy boots on. Everybody was going to the, one of the, one of the guys in there, Jeff, I'll never forget, like big dude, like six to probably like 300 pounds. i mean, Jeff was freaking awesome and hilarious, but he's a sheep farmer.
00:28:37
Speaker
And so he would go out to the the farm of the community college and, hey, you want to go out this morning? We're going to, we're going to breed, we're going to pop sheep out, you know, lambs out of the sheaves breeding time and stuff. it's like, sure, why not? So, you know, you start to learn things, like you see things and you experience things that you didn't really experience even in a small town. Cause like, unless you lived on a farm, you weren't doing those types of things. yeah You know, I had an opportunity i was little coming back and forth to Kansas to go through wheat harvest and, you know, experience those types of things. But
00:29:09
Speaker
mean, i I probably lived being like a pseudo farmer for two years, which was fun. It was cool. um But I started taking all those courses and stuff. And then again, meeting Angela, I don't know if that necessarily totally changed my direction of what I wanted to do, but um started to to see that there were other types of programs. And so there was a program at Kansas State called Park Resource Management, where you basically could learn to manage national parks, state parks,
00:29:38
Speaker
um closely aligned to wildlife biology, but not necessarily wildlife biology. And then I worked two summers. I worked the summer between my freshman year, and sophomore year, and my sophomore year and junior year at Wilson State Park from Memorial Day to about a week and a half after Labor Day, basically working in the park, doing doing what you, I mean, I was primarily picking up trash and mowing lawns and those types of things, but just the experience there of ah working with people in that field really kind of shifted. And so that's what I transferred to K-State to do. So I transferred to K-State, um, and with an AS s degree, all of my credits transferred, um, did not have to take anything extra, um, at K-State to graduate.
00:30:26
Speaker
As it should be. As it should be. ah know, but it's, but it's funny. Like it was an AS, it wasn't an AA. It was an AA. It was an associate of science and general science degree program.
00:30:37
Speaker
Um, So I get to K-State while at K-State, kind of thinking more about, and so also at this point in time, getting married at some point in 91.
00:30:48
Speaker
um I graduated in 92. So yeah we got married at the end of my junior in my junior year. um Kind of like trying to figure out what I want to do how and stuff. And so you start to look at jobs in this area. $13,000 a year, year.
00:31:08
Speaker
You know, the the idea of going and working at Yellowstone, you know, and maybe you get housing, but you're still not making above the poverty level with a bachelor's degree it was kind of like, it's appealing, but it's not that appealing. So the more you start to look at other jobs, you're like, oh, you know, people that have really, like have really good jobs in the national park system have master's degrees or they have a degree in history or something like that. So I did a unofficial minor Um, in history while I was finishing my baccalaureate degree in park resource management.
00:31:44
Speaker
And the reason I didn't do a minor minor two different colleges, but I didn't to have to meet the arts and sciences requirements. So I just, I just talked to my advisor and I'm like, I want to take all, I want to take as many history courses as I can for my electives. He's like, go for it, go ahead, do it.
00:31:58
Speaker
Um, so that's what I did. And so this is, so this is the life changing moment right here.
Influence of African-American History Course
00:32:05
Speaker
So I took a course in African-American history. And in that course, um I really, i learned, had opportunities to learn a lot of things, but I really honed in on the Buffalo soldiers, which were men of the 9th and 10th Cavalry that were created right after the end of the Civil War in segregated military units.
00:32:30
Speaker
And that, the reason that I kind of honed in on them was they were stationed in Fort Riley. And so Fort Riley is is literally like 25 minutes from from Manhattan. The 10th Cavalry was in was formed physically formed at the end of the Civil War in Fort Leavenworth, which is also in Kansas.
00:32:48
Speaker
So it's at the height of the Indian Wars, right? Like people moving west, Santa Fe Trail, Oregon Trail, all those types of things. But the more I did research on them, the 9th Cavalry was stationed in Fort Harker, which was a fort 15 minutes from Ellsworth.
00:33:06
Speaker
which I didn't know that, I mean, you don't, you don't see the, there's no sign when you go to Fort Harker that says, Hey, the ninth Calvary and 10th Calvary used to be stationed here. They were stationed in Fort Larned, which is further west.
00:33:18
Speaker
Cause that was the military trail. So there was a military trail that went from, um, Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley de harker to Larned. And then ultimately the people in the, that military trail ended up in Colorado Springs, Denver, slightly north of the Santa Fe trail. So Santa Fe trail,
00:33:34
Speaker
came out of Fort Leavenworth and really kind of took a big divergence south down towards Oklahoma. But that the 9th and 10th Cavalry supported those and individuals riding on that.
00:33:46
Speaker
But here's here was the here is the here is ah big shocker for me. So if you're if we're familiar with history at all, especially the 9th and 10th, Armstrong Custer, who ended up Lieutenant General of the 7th Cavalry,
00:34:04
Speaker
had an opportunity to be the the white leader of the 9th Cavalry and turned it down when he was in was when he was in Fort Riley and decided to take a lower commission with the 7th Cavalry.
00:34:16
Speaker
And we all know that fate, right? but Little Bighorn. The 9th Cavalry and the 7th Cavalry were stationed at Fort Riley at the same time. And I had already read this book by Leakey, The Buffalo Soldiers.
00:34:29
Speaker
And so I knew a little bit this information already. But in my class, I had an opportunity to go to the museum and the library of Fort Riley. And I read the quartermaster reports. Like the physical, what they actually hand wrote is in this library. had to put on white gloves and everything. It's like the first time really touching like old documents.
00:34:54
Speaker
and And William Leakey's notes are all over this thing. Like he had been there, like part of his research in in his book is there, his yellow his yellow pages of notes. He left all the stuff that he wrote. And so i was just kind of flipping through the pages and stuff and you get there's this one part.
00:35:08
Speaker
There was a cholera, I can't remember if it was a cholera or an influenza epidemic, but but something came through and and killed many people that that were in Fort Riley, women, children, and and members of the 7th and 9th Calvary.
00:35:21
Speaker
Mm-hmm. in the quartermaster's reports in these doc in these actual physical documents that you can read there's a cemetery and you can go see it there's a cemetery in fort riley it's the old cemetery there's a slight hill and has a tree on the top at the top of that hill and around the tree are members of the seventh cavalry they're buried there you follow it down at the bottom of this hill are members of the ninth cavalry Which is like, okay.
00:35:53
Speaker
But when you read the quartermaster's reports, it specifically says, we're going to bury the seventh Calvary at the top of the hill and the ninth Calvary at the bottom of the hill so the blood of the ninth Calvary doesn't taint the blood of the seventh Calvary in death.
00:36:07
Speaker
So not only were they segregated in service, they were segregated in death. That blew my mind. right like That was just like,
00:36:20
Speaker
Holy cow. And I think for me, and so i just started reading more and more and more about ah military African-American history. And there was, so Willard Gatewood, who was at the University of Arkansas, wrote a book called Smoke Yankees, which is about the time.
00:36:39
Speaker
The Spanish-American War, where the sinking of the Maine and the cause of the sinking of the Maine, but then the soldiers that came down from 23rd Infantry and the 9th Cavalry, how they were segregated out of the city of Key West, how they were segregated out out of the city of Tampa.
00:36:56
Speaker
like They were there to protect from rioters and all this other stuff. They couldn't carry guns. like So like they were restricted from the things that they could do, but they couldn't handcuff a white person.
00:37:07
Speaker
They definitely could not touch a white woman. like There's just a lot like kind of like in all of that. And so for me, I think- It sounds like it was shocking to you in that not unlike many people, that especially because where you grew up in the South, all that kind of knowledge and history was never acknowledged, kept separate so that- Seeing this and encountering it is stunning.
00:37:32
Speaker
I mean, I didn't learn. I mean, you know, you think back to like what we learned and I didn't learn any of that stuff in high school. No. I mean, and I, I mean, i would even have considered myself like a history buff in high school. Like I love reading history stuff. Oh yeah.
00:37:45
Speaker
Um, but we get you ended up getting a master's in it, didn't you? yeah that was Yeah, so that's kind of where this is going. but but i mean But I still didn't read any of that stuff. I mean, even when I took Texas history, there was nothing in the Texas history book about the service of the 9th and 10th Calvary and what they did during that time period and nothing.
00:38:05
Speaker
so So part of it was like really eye-opening and part of it was like really disturbing, right? like Especially when you put on the lens of, You know, I grew up in the military.
00:38:16
Speaker
I remember going fishing with my dad and people he worked with. They were black. They were Hispanic. They were like, there was no like, and so like this whole idea that the, and and not even knowing the military was segregated up until 1950.
00:38:32
Speaker
nineteen fifty s Right. Like who i I would have never, would have never even thought that that was even something that was even possible. Yeah, so that that whole, climb I mean, honestly, I will say the after my African-American history course that I took at Kansas State University is what put me on a trajectory really for where I am. Like that whole class is what made me go do a master's degree.
00:39:02
Speaker
And so I actually sought out where Willard Gatewood was, didn't know didn't realize he was at Arkansas. So I applied to like, I think three schools. I applied to Oklahoma State, Arkansas, and I think Oklahoma. Maybe I may have applied to KU, but I don't think I did.
00:39:19
Speaker
To master's program? superior to To a master's program. No, to a master's program. um So this is where the gifted stuff comes back to bite you in the ass. My grades are not were not great as an undergrad.
00:39:32
Speaker
Like I just
00:39:35
Speaker
have a hard time like staying focused on things that I think I already know. um or can get from somewhere else like i was i had poor attendance in class like we we could all kinds of yeah ah things around that but it was yeah so i was lucky to get into arkansas i think um And so when I went to Arkansas, I got invited down.
00:39:58
Speaker
So they interviewed me. So I went down to to Fayetteville. um I met Elliot West, who is like the historian of the West. So it's funny, his last name's West. He's the historian of the West.
00:40:09
Speaker
um And I had read some of his books, too. it' just like I don't think I remember at all in my undergrad reading a book that one of my professors wrote. And so here I am now, the opportunity to study with Willard Gatewood, who has like three books that I wrote, Elliott West, who has a book that I wrote.
00:40:27
Speaker
was like, good this is I hope i I really hope this is where I end up. And lucky for me, that's where that's where I ended up. um And so I worked with um Willard Gatewood I worked with Nudie Williams, who wrote a lot about African-American cowboys in the West. and so he has a lot of work from Oklahoma and
00:40:52
Speaker
how how how the how black individuals were able to get into that type of of of space and really have the freedom that they didn't have in other places.
00:41:03
Speaker
and So he was my master's thesis chair.
00:41:09
Speaker
so i did my whole So I did my whole master's degree. um My emphasis is in African American history, though it's just an American history degree. I wrote my thesis on, and and I've always debated, I really should go back and change the title. I wrote it as African Americans in the colonial militias. They really weren't they weren't Americans then. I should really say slaves or blacks in the colonial militias. But what I did was, there's a lot of history that's also been written around that.
00:41:35
Speaker
but there's a lot of primary sources. And so I try to go and look at the primary sources and interpret them the way that I think what they were trying to say versus
Master's Thesis and Career Start in Higher Education
00:41:46
Speaker
some people, you know, again, you can read primary sources go, well, this is what they really meant.
00:41:50
Speaker
um But really kind of honed in on how flippy floppy the colonials were when it came to using blacks and when they were going to arm the blacks and what purpose they were going to have. And it's just like, you know, the minute they were going to get overrun by a thousand marauding Indians, oh, let's give them guns and let them die. I mean, you know, it's just like this flip of the, yeah, and then take hope take them all away. and you know, put them, put them back into the fields and all this stuff. But a lot of had to do, like, there's a lot of other things in there, like just the, the population of slaves in South Carolina and Georgia versus the, the number of white people that lived in those States. And so that's what my goal was after with the master's degree for, I think entering, I still thought I was going to go to work at Gettysburg or.
00:42:36
Speaker
Okay. yeah I was going to ask what's the, what was your intent in getting a master's besides its own, you're, clearly you were intensely interested in it but yeah that that's where I started like that was my goals going in was I was I was gonna be the superintendent of of Gettysburg right or or something that's I was gonna work at a national park military national park um but then I started thinking I've been the more I got into it i was like teaching would be interesting and the reason teaching became interesting was I did tutoring at veterans upward bound I did tutoring in the athletics and in the athletic department
00:43:11
Speaker
And so tutoring kind of like spurred this, you know, you can actually, you can become a teacher. You could, and I didn't want to teach K-12. um So I thought i was going to go to a community college and teach at a community college. I was familiar with community colleges.
00:43:24
Speaker
Towards the end of my program, sending out resumes and now no no interviews, no nothing. So then it's not- This the early nineties, mid nineties? This would have been, I graduated with my master's in the summer of 94.
00:43:40
Speaker
so i started So I graduated K-State December of 92, started at January of 93 Arkansas, and and finished my I finished my master's degree in a year and a half.
00:43:51
Speaker
Can I ask some technical questions? Yeah. our paths are very similar, and we'll you know we'll talk more in my time. But did you get funding for that master's, or did you have to pay out of pocket?
00:44:02
Speaker
I paid for my master's. I loaned my master's. That's probably a better way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. No wonder they were happy to welcome you in despite your thinking your grades kept you out.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah, there weren't. I don't. To my knowledge, the only people that were really getting funding at Arkansas were the PhD. Yeah. There were very few master's students that were getting.
00:44:25
Speaker
any sort of funding. um So then, you know, not getting opportunities, not getting jobs and those types of things coming my way um really started looking about, OK, what are you going to do?
00:44:37
Speaker
And so my wife at the same time is going, what are you going to Because you already had your first child by then, didn't I? did. So Cali was born in January of 94. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:48
Speaker
yeah That'll light a fire. Yeah. So that and so in part, that was part of it, too. So luck I mean, so I wished every dad had this opportunity. You know, I spent, I basically spent the first six months of her life.
00:45:02
Speaker
I was the person at home. I mean, I was doing my, I would go to school at night. i would do my, my schoolwork, you know, i would stay up later and do my schoolwork, but I, I was her caregiver for her six, for her first six months.
00:45:15
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I mean, it was great. Um, but it's also that realization is like, okay, I, It's time to, you know, you got to do something.
00:45:27
Speaker
um So really started just looking around in Fayetteville. It's like we weren't really interested in leaving right away. My Angela had a great job. Callie, we, you know, we we had a good church community. Like we were connected with community and all these types of things. We weren't looking to leave.
00:45:44
Speaker
And I basically, I took whatever job I could get at the university. And my first job was as a data entry clerk in the admissions office um processing undergraduate applications.
00:45:57
Speaker
And funny story is, this is 1994. In 1993, they had just stopped doing punch card mainframe. Oh my. like This was like brand new student information system stuff.
00:46:11
Speaker
But this is also, it's like, If you kind of so like, if you know, like if you know where I've been and stuff like, here's the little pieces that start to like start to come together and stuff. It's like, oh, Kevin's got a jobs data entry, new student information system.
00:46:25
Speaker
So what does Kevin end up doing? Kevin ends up being the person who's training everybody and writing the processes and improving our processes and how to use these new systems and stuff. Because, but you know, here's here's the 20-something-year-old that can figure out how computers work and things like that.
00:46:42
Speaker
And it actually was really interesting, right? Like that for that was like the aha that there's something else here. but So we spent three years at Arkansas after that. I went on Arkansas um through being an employee.
00:46:58
Speaker
I did my master's degree in higher ed administration, student personnel services. So then moved up through the ranks and in admissions, became a road warrior, went out recruiting undergraduate students. and And funny enough, I was responsible for recruiting Native American students from Oklahoma and black students.
00:47:17
Speaker
So i was part of the minority affair recruiting component of the University of Arkansas, in addition to my Northeast Arkansas territories. um So did that for about two years. Um, then Angela and I decided, and so, um, also our second child on the way, Angela and I decided that we wanted to move to Florida. We had, she had a really good friend that she worked with.
00:47:38
Speaker
Her husband was an air traffic controller. She was a physical therapist. They had moved to Fort Myers. Um, it's like, you know, why not? Why not just like, let's just go somewhere totally different.
00:47:49
Speaker
Um, actually got offered an opportunity at Florida Atlantic University, their Palm Beach, North Palm Beach office where they were building an honors college um to start building their admissions, their transfer, like the things that they were doing.
00:48:08
Speaker
So I did that for really just about a year. um And then Walden University had an office in Bonita Springs, Florida, which is right by Fort Myers, early, early years of online.
00:48:24
Speaker
So I went, so I took that job as an associate director for recruitment. That was my first foray into really writing a recruitment plan, a model for recruitment, like the strategy behind recruitment, being responsible and accountable for actually revenue.
00:48:42
Speaker
generation so like that was that first aha so this was 19 this would be 1999 um so first for no 98 first foray into that um also though at the same time walden university is implementing data tell as a student information system who gets who gets tasked to be part of the data tell implementation kevin does um made some really good connections with data tell and a year later i i jumped ship from from higher ed into you know the corporate higher education space and did student information system implementations for the next year, year and a half.
Transition to Corporate and Online Education
00:49:21
Speaker
So this is something I find really interesting. and I hear this a lot, at least people of our generation in higher education. So, you know, folks who graduate from college in the early, mid, late nineties, is that?
00:49:32
Speaker
Us GenXers? Gen X all the way, baby. i don't have a back I don't have a degree in computer science, et cetera. you Neither of you two do, but somehow, honestly, it's almost it seems like it's because there was so much demand. few few people There are a lot of people who study comp sci and all that stuff from my cohort. i knew lots of folks.
00:49:58
Speaker
but not many people who at least had a ah nascent understanding of higher ed that could put it together in a way that you know they could get things through the culture, help build things in a way that were informed by the organization. so yeah So I'm hearing that from you too and Kelvin, I know. So somehow you become, we, people like us, like, oh, you're the tech person who knows how to implement this stuff, or you whether it's in teaching or research or administration or just function and business enterprise.
00:50:27
Speaker
I don't know what it's like now. I don't know if that everyone's so specialized. You got to come out with this, this and this to slot you right in. It seems very linear now. It was very meandering. And I'm hearing that from you too.
00:50:38
Speaker
meet You, you, you, you didn't back your way in, like you just fell into it, but you, it was a very indirect path to data tell from masters in American his history to data tell in less than 10 years, five years, seven years, you know, like that. yeah I graduated in 94 and in 99, I was, yeah, five years. i mean, I was at data tell.
00:50:59
Speaker
What's interesting. I mean, I don't, It is an interesting path. Like you don't really, but I think it's almost like the, the, the willing it's like people who are willing to learn it and do it. I mean, that's where I learned change management. That's where I learned like all my consulting practices that I know, um, in those first years or a data tell a data tell.
00:51:21
Speaker
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those, those, cause mean, I did, I did student information systems for about five years, two different companies, but for about five years, um, but But all of my, like, so I learned enrollment management at Arkansas, right? So our VP was a Noel Levitt, so before Ruffalo, Noel Levitt's, he was a Noel Levitt's consultant.
00:51:42
Speaker
And so learned all of the components of, like, how the funnel works, how you communicate with students. Like, I mean, got a nineteen in 1996, I mean, we were we were sending, I was sending birthday cards to students in my territory.
00:51:58
Speaker
Like that was our personalization. Like people today, like, it's funny how things like like cycle. Like it takes about 20 years and a new thing cycles back again. It's like, oh, we should be personalizing things and we should be sending. It's like, I was doing that and in the early ninety s You're saying that personalization is the skinny jeans, return of skinny jeans for higher admissions? Yeah, I think it is.
00:52:19
Speaker
Like, you're sending birthday cards to prospective students saying, hey, happy birthday, thinking about you, hope you're going to be a Razorback soon. um But now it's at a volume where that doesn't penetrate.
00:52:29
Speaker
Maybe if you mailed one in person, but there's so much volume. like My daughter's 16 and she's just going to be a junior. The volume of communication she to get from schools. It's just noise. I think, at least to me it is.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think we've gotten to a point where personalization is just over sending of, of things to people. But, um, so yeah, so got into the whole, so student information system thing traveled a lot.
00:52:56
Speaker
Um, Then there was a job opportunity in in Cape Coral where we lived um to actually run to be the director of education for ah company that did real estate and financial investment training.
00:53:10
Speaker
And they were so basically it's it was at that time. So this was would have been 2004 to 2007. But that was my first that was really my ah Walden was a foray into online, but Walden really still wasn't truly online.
00:53:25
Speaker
because of the way that they did their system and they had mandatory, you have to go to DC for for meetings and- Low residencies. It was very, it was low resi, but there was also no LMS, right? Like it was just, you got an email from your professor.
00:53:39
Speaker
They operated what they used to call KAMs, K-A-M's, which is knowledge area knowledge area module. And basically you'd be given a module that you're gonna work on. You do all the work, you send your paper to your professor, your professor reads and goes, no, this isn't quite what we're looking for. you know And then until you pass that, then you move to the next knowledge area and then you move to the next knowledge area and you move the, and then ultimately you get your degree, but it really wasn't online. You weren't interacting with other people.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah. It's like correspondence mixed with a bit of a early competency-based ad Yeah. yeah Yeah. yeah Yeah.
00:54:16
Speaker
The whole thing, i me was mean, it was real, we had a ton of military people that were doing it, especially in our business program. um um so i started so i did So I started doing that um and I brought in all my higher ed expertise like into this corporate world. So enrollment management. So people would sign up for all of these trainings and pay these thousands of dollars for these trainings.
00:54:38
Speaker
But then nobody was calling them to get them scheduled to go to the training and to get them into the classes. And and basically the way that works is from a financial perspective, if you're a company, you can't recognize any of that revenue until somebody actually sits and takes that class.
00:54:54
Speaker
So they're setting on hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars of unallocated revenue that they can't recognize because people haven't gone to training. So set up all that stuff to try to get people to go through training.
00:55:07
Speaker
but And we started using WebEx for some stuff. So we started doing some online stuff. And so we started using WebEx as that the the way to deliver that education. But what I also did was I had all the all those teachers, trainers, create DVDs.
00:55:24
Speaker
And I was like, we're going to just start sending DVDs to people. And the CEO's like, yeah, let's do that. And so the minute we sent DVDs, we sent one a month. Like if you signed up every month, you're going to get a DVD until you came to class.
00:55:38
Speaker
You could still come to a live class, but the DVD was our recognition. We gave them their training. So now we can recognize that revenue. So I brag all the time that, I mean, I made like $55 million dollars for this company because they had, they,
00:55:52
Speaker
had unrecognized revenue. like, boom, overnight recognized. So Edison Community College at the time was right there in Fort Myers. They had a job for an institutional research person, and I took that job just so I could get out of ah the environment I was in but had a really good run at Edison, which later became Florida Southwestern, five years.
00:56:20
Speaker
ended up, so I started as like, um, I don't even think I was a director. I think I was just an institutional research analyst and ended up as an associate dean, um, when I left, but that's, so I'm, I'm a late bloomer on the PhD, on the doctoral side.
Doctoral Program and Expanded Roles
00:56:36
Speaker
Um, that's when I started my doctoral degree. Um, when I was, when I was but at, at Edison, um, cause I started a certificate at Florida state, an institutional research certificate at Florida state.
00:56:48
Speaker
Um, and I was like halfway through i did like nine of the 18 credits so I'm like why am I doing a certificate when I can just go get my doctorate um so I actually applied to air the Association for institutional research and got a fellowship with air in the National Center for Education Statistics to do my doctorate um so I did my doctorate at Nova able to not have to travel anywhere did online majority of it was online. They had a campus in Fort Myers where we did some of our face-to-face classes.
00:57:20
Speaker
Really good experience. Loved my dissertation. so so I did it on students in nonde students that are in developmental courses and the impact that enrolling in and not in non-developmental courses has on their success. So in other words, if you are developmental in math, but you take a history course, are you are you Are you more apt to be successful in college because you're not just enrolled in non these developmental courses your entire career beginning part of your career?
00:57:53
Speaker
Or are there certain courses that we can interweave to get you engaged in the college environment, the college credit area, while you're doing these? And so um basically the data demonstrates that for math students it is.
00:58:06
Speaker
For writing and reading students, not so much. like and Because there's so much that other courses that require reading writing and reading and writing that youve you you've got to get through that first but so that was my dissertation um when I finished my dissertation 2012 I kind of bought into the whole idea that you know you have a doctor you can go change the world you can can do whatever the hell you want so I basically quit Edison um took a Dean of Academic Affairs job at ah at a college in Boca which was a predominantly online
00:58:41
Speaker
on-campus program, um um did not work out well for our relationship, and then kind of went into this consulting world.
00:58:53
Speaker
consulting world Spent a year and a half at Ave Maria doing, doing their institutional effectiveness, helping them get ready for SACS, COC, um, became an assistant professor at Argosy university during that same time teaching, um and worked for Argosy for a while. You taught about, you taught higher ed related courses, correct? i thought Yeah, that was all higher ed. So I had taught, so totally missed that, right? Like, so in 2004 was my first foray into online.
00:59:19
Speaker
Um, I taught history courses online through with angel software through a technical college, um, in Fort Myers. And I think that was kind of like, so when I was in this education world, having that outside, like getting back into the higher education community, teaching and stuff.
00:59:38
Speaker
Um, and I've really, since 2004, I've always had at least one, like adjunct job about one, eight one, like something every year still doing.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like even like this semester coming up at Lincoln, I'm gonna teach the community college here. But so I taught at Kaplan as an adjunct.
01:00:04
Speaker
I did history first with them. i designed their African-American history course. Then when I got my doctorate, I taught for them in their master's in higher ed program. And I was responsible for one of their other courses. I taught at Ashford.
01:00:20
Speaker
I taught at American Internship. internet international college, right? Is that right? American international AIC, I think. So yeah, so I just own my jealousy. That's one thing I have not done. I've done little stints, a little bit of teaching.
01:00:34
Speaker
I'd like to do more in that online adjunct space. Um, whether it's, I mean, my American history background, my master's is very rusty, but in a higher ed space, I'd love to, but, um, so I'm going own my jealousy. Yeah. I mean, I like it. I mean, it, it,
01:00:53
Speaker
I've always enjoyed the classroom and I and i enjoy teaching probably more so than the administration of higher ed, but I would never be a faculty member.
01:01:07
Speaker
Like I just don't have that. just like That desire went away a long time ago to like to just do that. because Because even like the two years that I was at Argosy as a faculty member,
01:01:18
Speaker
wasn't my bliss. Like that wasn't like, it was fun and I enjoyed it, but it's not like, Oh my God, I want to, I want this all I want to do for the rest of, of my career. Um, and so then, you know, kind of took like, that was like a two, two year kind of like Kevin, find yourself. What do you want to do Um, and then happened to come across a ah job at Pearson, um,
01:01:43
Speaker
which was for online programs, but it was really, i always look at it more like it was really more about strategy, like structure, organization. How do you get faculty to buy into online?
01:01:55
Speaker
but i i Other than teaching, I would say, you know, I am not a, I am not a curriculum person. I'm not a, um, I'm not into the pedagogy of, of online, like the instruction aspects, like how to structure and stuff. Like, can I talk about it? Yes.
01:02:13
Speaker
Scholarship of teaching and learning. Yeah. I mean, it's just not, I mean, that's just not where I fit more in the strategy and the planning, um, enrollment management, organizational structures.
01:02:25
Speaker
Um, And so I think that's where, you know, my role, you know, in online now is a lot different probably than a lot of other colos that maybe came through that instructional design process or they were, you know, they're more closely aligned to their, you know, instructional designers.
01:02:42
Speaker
i mean, instructional designers don't report to me, you know. um at nebraska um so they don't report to you no they don't no um but for me it's more about like the strategy like what are we doing like how do we how are we going to integrate these non-credit things into curriculum like how do we How do we help our students get further down the road?
01:03:03
Speaker
um it's It's always like I've always looked at everything from that enrollment management, student success lens, right? And I think Pearson really kind of drove this home for me. It was always the student first. Everything is from like you design and you build for for what the student is looking for.
01:03:22
Speaker
And then you go out. you don't come from a faculty and push what the, what they think the students want. You got to go the other way. And so having that lens of reversing things and kind of going, going out that way. But, um, so, i mean, I think, you know, I was just gonna say, I mean, I think that's kind of like, that's my path.
01:03:43
Speaker
Um, definitely it's not a traditional path in, in this space. And again, I think that's,
01:03:53
Speaker
I think that has both personal challenges for me, and but I also think it's it's things that, and when I say personal challenges for me, it's just like, I love what I do. So I don't anybody that's at Lincoln to hear this and like, you know, Kevin's not satisfied in his job. I love what I do.
01:04:08
Speaker
I struggle just with the day-to-day of, I like to see things happen. And so it's hard to to to wait. I have a hard time waiting for things. Yeah.
01:04:22
Speaker
to get to where you think they should be. Yeah, I agree with you. my My wife makes fun of me because I'll watch movies that I've watched in the past, which is fine.
01:04:35
Speaker
And then because of streaming, right? Like I can, I love fast forwarding to scenes because I only want to see. So there's a part of me that's just very like expedient, right? Like, yeah. Let's get to it. Let's go.
01:04:48
Speaker
and it's tough to balance that need with the pace of higher ed, which, you know, it we don't want to necessarily put every school, every community college, every university in that bucket.
01:05:00
Speaker
Yeah. but I almost feel like even the the more innovative institutions, it's like, again, being in the matrix, right? Like you can do certain things that are cool, but at the end of the day, we're all kind of trapped in a system that is still very slow to change. And and how can we kind of do our dayto day to day, then always be thinking about other things that need to get done that still helps us to recharge our batteries and allows us to,
01:05:30
Speaker
to to be almost kind of like marathon runners, right? Where we know that there's an end inside. We just need to kind of pace more to to eventually get to that finish line.
01:05:42
Speaker
But we want to be like elite marathoners, right? Where you're at a really high pace. We're getting there, but we're getting there faster. But it's still long distance. I mean, to me, yeah um right now, higher ed is being forced to make so many changes.
Higher Education Dynamics and For-Profit Impact
01:05:55
Speaker
And I'm not going to say they're all great reasons, but even the demographic ones would push change.
01:06:01
Speaker
And this is a, and in a sector industry, whatever you want to call it, but that's the demand has been there for so long since post-war, they didn't have to change because such an expansion of students wanting to come, then the college going rate went up. Then, you know, it was just always there. You could dictate things like, no, we're going to structure it for the way we see it rather than for you as a student now,
01:06:27
Speaker
You know, as as students become more scarce for all the reasons their scarcity is growing demographic and otherwise, they institutions are really seeing that you have to it's not just given what they want, but meet them where they are more so than, say, in the 60s, 70s 80s, whenever.
01:06:45
Speaker
when now Yeah, and you don't have to be everything to everyone all the time, right? Like you can, right, like find what you're really good at, where you have expertise, find those partnerships as well so that you're not carrying the load always by yourself.
01:07:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting when you look back historically in higher ed, the shifts of like the for-profits coming to the scene. made ah made a huge difference in in accessibility.
01:07:21
Speaker
you know Even though the community colleges were accessible, for-profits made this big difference. And then in the online space, like you look at that peak that we had in 2007 to 2010, and then all of a sudden it just wipes away.
01:07:35
Speaker
But what people don't, if you would take away all the for-profit enrollments from 2010,
01:07:43
Speaker
The declines are not as bad as like, if you just look at that data, but if you would wipe those out and say, well, okay, those don't eat those didn't exist, they weren't enrollments. It's not that much. It's still a decline, but it's not the 15, 16, 17% we saw because the majority that was the for-profits, you know, that were just, that are not even here anymore. I mean, they just like fully closed.
01:08:07
Speaker
and we could And we could uncork a big can of worms. Do you think those closures were... that contraction in the forefront space is that was it warranted was it oh that's too bad and they shouldn't have i mean it that's a that's a whole topic we could dig into yeah i think i think it's a topic that we should dig into um at least you know have some some thoughts around it i mean i have some thoughts i think a lot of it was is political and it's kind of it's interesting how it flip-flops right like we We did gainful employment because that was to hurt basically the for-profits.
01:08:42
Speaker
But now we're doing gainful employment for everybody, and no one has a rhyme or reason as to why we're doing it other than we want to hurt, you know, we don't we don't want to give, basically now we don't want to give financial aid to any institution.
01:08:54
Speaker
And so we're going to make you meet these metrics versus before is like we're going to make you meet these only if you're a certain category of school so we can close you down. ah i you know I think there was some regulation like regulatory issues, right? Like how did we end up with so many for-profits?
01:09:12
Speaker
Were the accrediting bodies doing what the accrediting bodies needed to do for all of these institutions? Was it too much growth too fast? um but i But I would say, I mean, um you know you aren' in I don't know if you were in that conversation or not, but we were talking about University of Phoenix at UPSIA.
01:09:28
Speaker
I don't have... I don't have any, neck like, i don't think badly about University of Phoenix. I think the the issue is University of Phoenix has just been lumped in with these other players.
01:09:40
Speaker
But ASU wouldn't be where ASU is without University of Phoenix. Many of us in the online space would not be where we were without the
01:09:51
Speaker
The accessibility that the University of Phoenix put forward for a large population of students. Like I still, I still say this and I'll, this is how, this is where I'll end. Walden University still graduates more females, more African-American females with a doctorate degree than any other university in the United States.
01:10:11
Speaker
That statement should be wrong.
01:10:16
Speaker
But we as higher ed are okay with it. Because that's, I must say it, I don't, I don't, I don't think all of higher ed is still, is yet to be inclusive. And I think the for-profits created inclusivity that we're missing in the rest of higher ed.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah. I agree with what you're saying. There's a lot of nuance there. If you look at, you know, yeah default rates, earnings of graduates, and et cetera.
01:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. non complete non completers and outstanding debt. Yeah, but they did they their openness for people to get in pushed boundaries.
01:11:04
Speaker
I mean, I think the dear colleague letter 2011, you know, opening the gates to OPMs, especially it really juiced that whole dynamic and a lot in the for profit for profits favor, at because they were ready to pounce on that. They saw an opportunity. Yeah.
01:11:21
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Yeah. College Inc. is still one of my favorite documentaries about higher ed um because it it just shows you, you know, the for-profit model at its at its height, right? And then, of course, we know the rest of the story after that.
01:11:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. so as as we wrap up here, tell us, as we asked with Kelvin, what that's about a lot about your work and there's a lot of personal stuff there, but what do you like to do?
01:11:54
Speaker
Not just, what do you do? What do you like to do?
Personal Interests and Family
01:11:56
Speaker
Um, so Angela and i like to go camping, um, spending time outdoors. Um, my outside of that, I mean, I started playing golf again for the first time in about 10 years. Um, so i'm hoping to get back into, into, into playing golf, but we also have a grandson.
01:12:16
Speaker
our daughter had a baby. He's two and a half years old, little Leo. So we like, I mean, so it's and enjoy, I mean, I think now's having a little bit more family time from a different perspective, but, um, camping probably like, like the biggest thing. And then just spending, spending time with our, with our children and their spouses as often as we can.
01:12:37
Speaker
and bet you have a list of places you've camped that is enviable. So we, I don't know that we've camped a lot of places. So I didn't say, I didn't share these. Like I have been to every state in the United States.
01:12:48
Speaker
um I have traveled. I mean, I've lived in Europe and went to every free country in Europe that we could go to when I lived there. My wife and I have been to Ireland four times and we're going again in September, like So having, you know, those types of things, but I enjoy like moving to Yellowstone and not camping, but I mean, just the national parks.
01:13:13
Speaker
I think, I think the whole, I mean, the whole national park system, state park systems in States, I think are a missed opportunity for people oh yeah to get out and see, but yeah, I mean, hopefully start to do a little bit more camping and some other places that we haven't been to, but it's fun.
01:13:32
Speaker
Glamping is what my wife says, right? Because we have a travel trailer. Oh, you do? Okay, yeah. cause that's The very first time my wife and I went camping was actually in brand is was was in Branson, Missouri. We were at the Silver Dollar City and we had a tent.
01:13:46
Speaker
um But it's funny, we were driving back from from Kansas just recently back to Florida. And but like I asked her, I was like, when you When you think of Branson, what do you think of? And she's like, the trip that we took when we went camping.
01:14:01
Speaker
you know it was the It was the best time. so Camping, whitewater rafting. Oh, yeah. You've been a whitewater rafting conference. That's one thing you shouldn't i didn't hold back.
01:14:13
Speaker
I did. i did. that was that was That was amazing. That's a story for another day. I think that would be a good story for another day. That was good, but yeah. Well, I guess we're going to sign off. So thank you everybody for listening to getting stuff done in higher education.
01:14:29
Speaker
And we will be back with another episode very soon.