The Connected College Podcast with Elliot Felix

How can you solve the "need a job to get experience but need experience to get a job" conundrum? How can you help students find their purpose so they are more motivated, engaged, and resilient learners? Can you do this all in a way that levels the playing field for students and employers alike? We dive into these questions with Dana Stephenson, Co-founder and CEO of Riipen, an experiential learnin...

How can the right combination of curiosity, collaboration, community, and classes equip students to be changemakers? How can you expand the definition of and participation in entrepreneurship and what are the outcomes? How is AI changing education and work to prepare students for change? We dive into these questions with Cornell Suhartono, current Berkeley student, Samiha Singh former student and...

How can colleges and universities improve the employee experience and in turn increase student success? What do institutions need to do differently in terms of strategic planning, professional growth, and leadership development? How can institutions take on the tough decisions and conversations that come with cuts and consolidations? We dive into these questions with Kevin McClure, author of The C...

What's the role of technology in student success? How are online and hybrid learning and ubiquitous connectivity changing experiences? How do you make decisions about what's in the enterprise tech stack while leveraging personal devices? How can you use data to connect coursework, co-curriculars, and more to a career path? We dive into these questions with James Vasquez Associate Dean for Strategy...

What role can engaging companies in your community play in enabling student success? How can experiential learning help students not just learn skills but ways to apply new ways of thinking and working? How can students learn to work with people with different perspectives and backgrounds? What does this say about the future of higher ed? We discuss all this with Risa Dickson, President at Univers...

How can experiential learning help students grow personally and professionally? What industry partnerships best enable that growth in a learn and earn model? How do real stakes with real people and real metrics drive success? We dive into these questions with Nick Bayer, Founder and CEO of Saxbys, where they've turned running campus coffee shops into a platform for experiential learning – with mea...

How can colleges and universities be intentional about their governance so they are prepared to make decisions they've never made before, with higher stakes, in less time? How can boards strike the right balance between hindsight, oversight, and foresight? How can they create meaningful metrics on outcomes and the processes to achieve them? We dig into these questions with Steve Charles, Founder o...

How can public-private partnerships transform higher ed? What can institutions and industry partner on? Why are partnerships on the rise? What the best ways to identify, structure, and manage partnerships? What should you be on the lookout for as you partner in the future; for example as you look to partner on AI? We dive into these questions and more with James Sparkman, founder of the P3EDU Conf...

 What role can entrepreneurship can play in student success? How can colleges and universities embed entrepreneurial skills into their culture and curriculum? What are the events and programs to run? How can the right spaces support these efforts? We dive into these questions with Mary Ryan the Vice Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London and here all about their Enterprise...

 What role can marketing play in student success? How can it can increase alignment within the institution, improve awareness among students, and destigmatize or normalize getting help? How can it bust silos and build a connection to the brand? We dive into these topics with Jaime Hunt, former CMO at higher ed institutions and now consulting with institutions at Solve Higher Ed, host of the "Confe...

How can you implement evidenced-based practices for more engaging and equitable teaching and learning across research universities? What systems and process within them need to change? How can universities collaborate with peer institutions and with employers to get better outcomes? We discuss these questions with Julia Michaels, Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships at UERU, the Asso...

What role can mentoring play in student success? What are the surprising attributes that make for a good match? How can mentors connect students to other support on campus and online? How can data inform effective mentoring, reporting, and retention? How can working with a partner bring expertise, consistency, and scale? We dive into these fascinating questions and more with Erin Mayhood, CEO of M...

How can you get beyond the doom and gloom headlines to talk through how institutions can be more hopeful about their futures? How to build trust in those futures? What role can pilot programs and projects can play? We discuss these with Greg Pillar, Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs at Gardner-Webb University and author of the white paper “Rewiring the Academy: Leading with Hope in an Age of...

How can you transform higher education through human-centered design? How can you listen to people and gather insights that inform and inspire changes to programs and policies? What role can design play in helping institutions get real results to improve their student experience? We dive into these questions with the Radka Newton, Michael Doherty, and Jean Mutton, co-editors of the great book Tran...

How can you go from disparate technology systems and student services to a unified, personalized, and interactive digital hub to better support students? How can these bring together the services and information students need to drive engagement and retention while saving time and reducing costs? What is the role of AI in supporting students? We dive into these questions and the digital transforma...

How can you use the data you already have (but aren't looking at) to predict student success? How can you create incentives to drive the adoption of high-impact practices? How can you build caring, mentoring relationships that increase student success? We dive into these questions with Jeff Doyle, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Southwestern University and prolific blogger/poster of "D...

How can you combine people and an AI-powered virtual assistant to provide wraparound student support? How can you do this in way that makes things easier for the staff and faculty supporting students rather than adding more platforms and passwords? What are the right student success measures for institutions and how to you tie detailed data to the big picture? We dive into these and other question...

What are the competencies employers want and students need? How can you redesign your general education curriculum to deliver on those? As you do, how might you integrate AI, foster experiential learning, and engage with industry? We talk about all this and more (like a 90 credit hour degree!) with Brad Fuster, Provost at San Francisco Bay University where they are really reimagining what a univer...

How can you reimagine student employment as experiential learning? What projects can students work on to learn and grow while helping their university? What skills and relationships can they build along the way? We dive into these questions with Julia Allworth who founded and leads University of Toronto's Innovation Hub which trains students in design thinking and deploys them as consultants on pr...

How can institutions collaborate to share courses? How does this enable focus and differentiation? What do you have to change from mindset to culture to operations to make it happen? We dive into these questions with Josh Pierce co-founder of course sharing platform Acadeum. Along the way, we use the analogy of travel to think about the student journey – and see what can be learned from the travel...

How does an unconventional path to the presidency offer new perspectives? How can colleges and universities equip students to lead lives of meaning and purpose? How can leaders balance tradition and innovation to create living learning communities? How can students own their experiences and belong? We dive into these questions with Suzanne Rivera, President of Macalester College!

How can you create and operate an Honors College to make a big place feel small? How do you get the scale right to balance quantity and quality? How can you balance giving people what they want versus what's good for their growth and development? We dive into these questions with Sarah Holtan, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Carroll University and Host of The Get Down to College Business Po...

Instead of silos and separations, we need colleges and universities where all students feel a sense of belonging, courses lead to rewarding careers, students have the support to succeed, and everyone works together to make this happen, To learn how, listen to the introduction to The Connected College in this free preview of the audiobook. It's an encouraging, evidenced-based playbook for busting s...

What are the big ideas in The Connected College? What are the barriers to collaboration for student success and how do you get over or around them? I recently had the chance to give a keynote talk at the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities where I answered these questions and more. I talked about strategy, structure, and culture as barriers and went through case studies on how to addre...

How can you bring people from different countries and cultures together to create a better world? What are the evidence-based practices to promote interaction, strengthen communities, and take risks? How can you improve empathy, understanding, and communication? We dive into these questions with Shaun Carver, Executive Director of International House at the University of California Berkeley.