How BGSU’s Investment in Career Readiness Drives Record Enrollment

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by the 12th president of Bowling Green State University, President Rodney Rogers, and Steve Russell who is BGSU’s Associate Vice President of Corporate Partnerships and the Executive Director of the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections. Thank you both for being here.

Rodney Rogers:

Thank you for having us, Meredith. Looking forward to the conversation.

Steve Russell:

Likewise. Yes, thank you. And you got the whole entire title right, so you’re off to a fantastic start.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s a good title, very substantive. All right. Well, yeah, I’m super glad to have you both and I’m excited to talk to you both today about how BGSU has invested in career services and career readiness campus-wide and how that has led to some really significant wins, including record enrollment and increased retention, which I know every higher ed institution is interested in.

And on that note, for everybody watching or listening, the 2024 and 2025 academic year marked the second consecutive year that BGSU has set enrollment records. So this year, they welcomed one of their largest and highest achieving freshman classes in university history, with new student enrollment up 14% compared to fall 2023 and up 22% compared to fall 2022. BGSU is also seeing a ton of success with retention, leading to some really notable rankings, including this one from the Wall Street Journal which lists BGSU as the number one university in Ohio for student experience. And I know that’s just one of many rankings. I could read a laundry list.

So clearly what you all are doing over there at BGSU is working, so I’m excited to dig into what you’re doing and why, how you’re using this life design approach, how you’re getting buy-in campus-wide, and more. But before I get into my questions, is there anything else either of you would like to add about yourselves, your backgrounds, or your roles there at BGSU?

Rodney Rogers:

Steve, what do you want to add?

Steve Russell:

I think, well, we could jump right into it. I think we’ve got a lot of good stuff going on here. And if I’ve learned anything, if you put President Rogers and I in the same room together, we can take up an hour real quick.

Meredith Metsker:

Noted. Well, I will get right into it then. Before I get into my specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Rodney Rogers:

I’ll just respond. I think Career Everywhere is really, in my mind, is having this growth mindset where students and all of us in the jobs that we have each and every day, we’re constantly thinking about our professional life and how we’re getting better at the work we do. How do we find connections? How do we build momentum? And so at Bowling Green, at least from a student standpoint, we want to make sure we have an ecosystem where students are given opportunities to explore and to build momentum to think about the career that they will have as they leave us.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Steve, you’re up.

Steve Russell:

He stole all my lines, but I think maybe the easiest way to think about it in my eyes is really this idea that students thinking about their careers on campus should be built in and not bolt on. And so I think that’s a big part of having an ecosystem where rather than a student assuming that the only people on campus focused on their career are a career center, it should be the inverse. Our students should assume that every single person on this campus cares about their career and the life of careers that they’ll have, not just one.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. And I know that’s something you all really focus on there. Rodney, I’ve heard you mention this before on another podcast that it’s not just about where you go to college but how you go to college. So I know we’ll dig into that, but that’s what I think about as you were talking about what Career Everywhere means to you.

So on that note, now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again, how BGSU is driving record enrollment by investing in career services and career readiness. So to give us some context for the rest of this discussion, I’d love to start with a lay of the land. So Rodney, can you share your thoughts on the state of higher ed right now and why there needs to be this increased focus on career readiness?

Rodney Rogers:

So yeah, thanks for the question. We’ve all seen the Gallup poll of declining trust in higher education, and it’s been a multi-year decline. I would just add there’s a declining trust in all sorts of civic organizations right now, including higher ed, but I think part of the reason that we’re seeing that is a mismatch of expectations from our various constituency groups. I think here in higher ed, we have certain expectations of what it means to go off to college and have a degree. I think parents have another one, a student may have another one, an employer has another one, a government official has another one. And that mismatch is there’s some historical reasons we won’t have opinions on how we got to where we are.

But I think there are some key things that we’ve got to keep reminding people, which is it isn’t one or the other. To Steve’s point that he made earlier is it’s not a bolt on about a career outcome. A career outcome is a part of why you go to college. Preparing students for great careers, absolutely, but then also great lives, which doesn’t necessarily mean the highest paying job. It means a career that you’re finding meaning, and to be prepared for a lifetime of careers. So I think part of our problem is we’ve got to make sure that we quit debating this, “Well, no, it’s an educational outcome of critical thinking and citizenship,” and, “No, no, no, it’s a career outcome.” Actually, it’s all of these things together which will achieve great careers, great lives.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. It seems like you’re taking a very holistic approach to higher education there at BGSU, that it’s not just about career, it’s about building a meaningful career, meaningful life. Hopefully, they align well too. You find a career that aligns with your goals and your values too. So it sounds like that’s been very effective for you all.

Rodney Rogers:

It resonates with students and families. I have twin boys that have both gone through college now, and I think as a parent of two boys that went through college, I’ve seen it through the parent standpoint. And I learned some things when they were going through that I don’t think I thought of as a faculty member or as a dean or a provost or now in my current role. And so that’s where I started seeing some of this divide or this split of expectations.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Steve, do you have anything to add?

Steve Russell:

My little one is too little to have gone through college just yet, so I’m going to take maybe a little bit of a different approach. I’ve spent the last decade visiting just constantly with partners externally, the companies out there recruiting the nonprofits, the educational systems, et cetera. And I think the common thing that BGSU is actually doing really well right now that maybe doesn’t get the credit it deserves is how welcoming we are to bringing industry closer into that discussion. Because I think in order to have a great career, in order to have a great life, you need to be introduced to some of that context that will be your future life and your future career. And we can’t wait.

The classic model was for those organizations to sit at the end of the conveyor belt and just pick up their talent on the way out. And I think when we have these discussions now about people who are 10, 15, 20 years out who are saying, “Oh, I’m not quite using my degree in the same way,” it goes back to Rodney’s point about the misperceptions. And I think if they are involved more closely in the student experience, which I think BGSU does an exceptional job of we end up with people who are much more cognizant of the career that they want to be in, much more intentional about the path that they want to go down. And so I think that’s really something we’ve done great, is an open invitation for those organizations to come back in and be a part of this experience with us.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great point and I appreciate that both of you talked about how career services needs to be built into the overall college experience. Because I think as we see a lot in career services, especially that students wait until the latter half of senior year to pop in and they think, “I just need help with my resume,” or, “I just need help with the mock interview,” when there’s really so much more that goes into preparing for a career, preparing for life after graduation. So it’s great to hear how you all are taking a really holistic approach to everything. So on that note, what does a focus on career readiness look like there at BGSU? How are you investing in it?

Rodney Rogers:

So I’ll maybe kick it off by saying in my career, I spent 15 years in the private sector before I went back and did a PhD and decided to do a career in academics. So that period before, I think I worked in the business world and so I had a certain perception of what higher ed, how to interact with higher ed or how difficult it was to interact with higher ed. So I want to reinforce Steve’s point of making sure that we are connected with employers, businesses. We have a large college of education, so how are we linked with school districts? How do we support K through 12 education? How do we support healthcare? We have a large healthcare offerings as well, hospitals and those careers.

But I would add that during that time when I went into higher ed, I kept thinking about all the ways to enhance the academic ecosystem. So the way you design curriculum and integrated curriculum, co-teaching, active pedagogy, thinking about applied projects, co-ops, interns, you think about all the ecosystem around careers and linking students with companies. So all of that ecosystem, I think we in many universities build these amazing ecosystems. My learning has been to reframe it to say, “You know, that is great.” And the students that are very proactive in perhaps have families or mentors that are helping them understand how to navigate that ecosystem. They do really well.

But I worry about the first generation college student, I was a first generation college student, or the student who may not have those mentors. So my aha moment was how do we empower the students to navigate these ecosystems that we create, these amazing ecosystems we create, but we’ve got to empower them and give them a tool to navigate that academic/career ecosystem that we’ve created. Because if we create this, we’re going to miss some students. Not everyone is able to take advantage of it. So for us here at Bowling Green, we invested in an initiative called life design, which is all about helping students from day one to begin to think about that college experience, purpose, passion, career. They’ve got a Falcon Flight Path they have to complete at the end of the first term to lay out how to take advantage of the ecosystem.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, yeah, I love that. And I am curious how you came across the concept of life design and what made you decide that that was the approach you wanted to take there at Bowling Green.

Rodney Rogers:

There’s probably a thousand approaches that we can take. And in academics, what we get tied up in is we realize there’s a thousand different ways you could do this. And so you never do it because you’re just constantly thinking about the thousands of ways. So I’m a big believer is you commit and you pivot and adjust to tweak and make adjustments, but let’s choose a strategy and give the students those tools.

Having come out of the business world, I guess I was interested in design thinking and in the way in which design thinking can be used to address challenging issues when you’re trying to do creative problem solving to try to figure out what the next step was. And by chance, I happened to read a book co-authored by Bill Burnett out of Stanford in the design school there, and I read this book and I thought, “Well, here’s a framework we could use at Bowling Green. Somebody should apply this to higher ed.”

So we got in contact with Bill and Bill said, “Well, Rodney, we’re already doing that at Stanford, but we’re only doing it for a select group of students. It’s not really scale. It’s just for a very small group of students.” And so we sent some folks out there and then we had him come here and we did some workshops for, oh, about a hundred faculty staff across the university, and we got some momentum. That was in February of 2020 just before the pandemic when that workshop was held. But out of that, then while we were adjusting to a COVID world and to an online world, we continued to do the work because we decided it was more important than ever that we developed tools to help students navigate the complexities. In that case, it was not just college, but it was COVID and college.

And so we had two donors that stepped up in a significant way to endow two centers to the Radbill Center for College and Life Design, and then the Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections to put the linkage together to embed design thinking as a navigation tool for students to navigate our fairly complex ecosystem that we create.

Steve, what did I miss on that?

Steve Russell:

I’m learning that we’ve talked enough because all the things that I want to say are-

Rodney Rogers:

I’m sorry.

Steve Russell:

… all the things that you’ve already said. No, it’s great. I think that’s part of the point I might make later, but I think for right now, what I would say is within this ecosystem, having these two sister centers on our campus, I think, is pretty unique. And I think one thing we’ve learned from visiting with colleagues across the nation is it’s really difficult to have career conversations with students if they’re not in a place to have them. And so I think having a separate center on our campus that’s helping to empower students to navigate this ecosystem allows them by the time that they are prepared to have a career-related conversation, it’s much earlier on during their time on campus instead of the traditional student who has had to figure out every other thing and then they finally get to career when they’re a senior.

And so now the work being done in the Radbill Center for us is crucial for our work. And I think our work becomes very complementary to theirs. And so I think what I’m quickly learning is that the career milestones that we have for our students on our campus could not be as rich as they are without that investment in the Radbill Center because so many of those milestones are teed up early on in the student experience that traditionally we would’ve had wait a while before we would’ve gotten to, which means we probably wouldn’t make it as far along that trajectory with as many students as we do.

Rodney Rogers:

I might add to that. One advantage that we have at Bowling Green that not all universities will have is we are a pretty traditional… We serve over 23,000 students a year on our two campuses, but on our main campus here in Bowling Green, Ohio, we have a pretty traditional undergraduate population. They come here, they live here, they go full time, they graduate in four years or less is our goal. And I don’t know if we were fully taking advantage of this opportunity to more integrate and holistically approach their education. That might be more difficult at another type of institution that would have more part-time students where they’re coming and going. But for us, this approach, I think, leverages one of our key assets of the institution that prior to this, I’m not sure we were fully leveraging.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great point that I hadn’t thought about. And it makes sense that if you have students that are living their lives on your campus in addition to going to school, they should have some help with life design. It makes me think back to my experience at the University of Idaho. It’s where I went to undergrad and I lived on campus, and it would’ve been helpful to have life design resources available to me to help me understand and connect how my coursework maybe fit into my extracurricular activities, like I was at the marching band. I know I was picking up skills there, but I just didn’t know how to communicate that.

Rodney Rogers:

Steve, boy, did she set you up? Go ahead and you reinforce that because-

Meredith Metsker:

Teed you up there, Steve.

Rodney Rogers:

… that is absolutely just a wonderful observation, and I think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here at Bowling Green.

Steve Russell:

Yeah. And I think it’s amazing, whether I’m speaking to an alum or whether I’m just talking with some of our corporate partners, it doesn’t matter who, but everybody has that same comment. I wish I had this piece because as I look back on my college experience, I’m thinking about some of those key points along the way, but there’s probably a lot on that journey that I let just wash over me instead of having an intentionality around it. That is so important when people are wondering about what’s my return on investment? You’ve also got to factor in how much you’re investing. And I think this strategy for us helps students invest more into it, so they’re going to get more out of it. And I think we could probably talk about this until we’re blue in the face, because I think we’re all passionate about, “Gosh, I wish I could go back in time to my own college experience and really rethink that.” But for the time being, I think it’s just best said when we talk about maximizing the student’s experience.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Yeah, for sure. There’s some great additional points there.

Rodney Rogers:

What instrument did you play in the marching band, Meredith?

Meredith Metsker:

Trumpet.

Rodney Rogers:

You are a trumpet player?

Meredith Metsker:

Yes.

Rodney Rogers:

Excellent.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep. It’s where I met my husband actually. He was a saxophone player who decided to play the trumpet that season in marching band, and that was when I happened to join.

Rodney Rogers:

And you gave him some tips on how to play trumpet?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, yeah. Oh, you know I did.

Rodney Rogers:

Very good.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I hear you’re a musician too, Rodney.

Rodney Rogers:

I was a music undergrad, so I did some marching band. And you brought the marching band up and we’re happy to have the second-largest marching band in the FBS in the country. And the conductor of that actually does talk about the leadership components of the section leaders and then how they have to deal with the logistics. A band that size, there’s just great lessons to be learned in terms of how to get projects done, how to motivate, how to organize. And John Waters often talks about that component. So our goal is to make sure students intentionally think about that and link it back to where they want to go with their career though and their life after college, and to make sure they can talk about those experiences when it comes time to either prototyping or talking with external employers about their Bowling green experience. So some of this is helping students be able to describe all that they have accomplished that is in an appropriate way in the language that is appropriate to help employers understand what their skill sets may be.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more. I wanted to go back a little bit to this focus on career readiness because Steve, I know there’s several specific things that you all have done there that feeds into this campus-wide focus on career readiness. I think your marketing team’s placement, partnerships with enrollment, data collection, distribution, things like that. So I wonder if you could maybe touch on those things a little bit.

Steve Russell:

Yeah. I think some of those things are really proud assets to our hub, our career hub here on campus, but some of them are institutional strategies that we just really believe in and we realize have empowered us to do some special work. So I think one thing for us about data collection has been becoming much more intentional about not just collecting data for the sake of collecting data. What do we actually do with that to bring it all the way back in and then start that student’s experience when they’re going through a life design course? How are we empowering them with that data to know what have our students been doing? Who are the organizations that our students have found success with and what does that look like? And so I think the data collection piece has become really important and I think will only become more important the more teams that I talk to around the country who are investing in the data side of things. It makes a lot of sense.

I think if you shift away from what are we doing to more of what does campus already do so well to empower us, I think we lean heavily on a really amazing centralized marketing team that is able to continually help articulate our work into the terminology and the phrases that our prospective students and their parents need to understand. But I think what’s also really important about that unit is they help us wind that back the opposite direction. And so they’re actually helping us take some really cool enrollment data and that type of information and get it into the hands of economic development professionals and our employers and the companies out that we’re trying to support as a public university in the state. So I think the way that those things are structured on our campus empowers us to play a role in so many different conversations, and I think that overall just elevates career on campus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Rodney. Anything to add about some of those structures or the decision-making behind that?

Rodney Rogers:

I think it is the other, I think, advantage we have at Bowling Green is we’re the right size. We’re big enough to have an ability to support the infrastructure, to engage with the external business community, and to have systems in place to support students that live here. We’re small enough where students actually can take advantage of and we can do it. We can quickly make adjustments. I think so that’s another advantage that I think we have at a place like Bowling Green.

The other piece is we’ve been highly involved in the region from an economic development standpoint. Jobs Ohio is a statewide initiative around economic development across the state. We’ve aligned our degree programs within the sectors of the economy that they support, and then there’s regional groups throughout the state that we work with. We created some new structures to interact with certain sectors like our center to advance manufacturing, and the list goes on. But in many of those cases, the reasons we’re doing that is making sure that our portfolio aligns with where the needs of our region are, and then to build out those connections. And Steve’s done an amazing job of building strong connections with major employers in our region, but even the smaller employers who are looking for opportunities to connect with great talent. And so I think our size is another asset that we have that has helped us achieve, I think, great results for our students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it sounds like you all just really play to your strengths, for sure.

Rodney Rogers:

There are better funded institutions in the world. There are bigger institutions, bigger brands, all of those sorts of things. We are going to get defined by the success of our students. That’s our focus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. We’ve talked about this increase in enrollment that you all have seen record-setting years for at least the last two years in terms of enrollment and retention. So I want to focus on that a little bit. In particular, this partnership between career services and enrollments. I know they work very closely together there at BGSU. So maybe Steve, we’ll start with you. Can you share a little bit more about what that partnership looks like, how you all work together?

Steve Russell:

Yeah. It’s started since, I don’t even know, my second day on campus. I think I was given and am always given the opportunity to visit with our amazing admissions teams to be able to really help them understand that we are doing something very special in this space and it isn’t the norm and this isn’t a traditional career center. And the fortunate thing is that’s a win for them too. We’re providing really good work that helps them to better educate prospective students about the opportunities here at Bowling Green. But as I said before, it’s that two-way street where we’re building partnerships. We really rely on our enrollment team and the data on that side.

So I think we’re talking often, really always. I was just with one of our very large partner yesterday and the conversation, there was a gentleman who decided to join the meeting who said the whole reason why he wanted to join the meeting was because of how well his daughter was treated during her enrollment process when she was thinking about coming to school at BGSU. That was the whole reason why that person was in the meeting, and it really helped me. And then by virtue of that, it helped our students as we grow those partnerships.

And so the only thing that I might add, which goes beyond the partnership of career services and enrollment, is just to say I’ve never been a part of a campus that leans more heavily into enrollment and understands the value of it than BGSU. When we host days on campus where our prospective students show up, every unit across campus is involved. And they’re not involved just standing there. They’re involved and lively and helping students to engage in that experience. And so at the end of the day, we say this probably once a week here, if our enrollment team isn’t doing the great work that they’re doing, we have no one to support with their careers. So we probably want to start there. So I think fundamentally that’s where our heads are at.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Rodney, anything to add?

Rodney Rogers:

I think Steve said it all. I do think the enrollment growth that we’ve seen, part of it is I’m a big believer in the importance of differentiating. And a minute ago, you made a comment that we seem to be leveraging some of our unique assets, and I think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. And there’s 4,000, I guess, colleges and universities across the nation.

Our curriculum and accounting curriculum at Bowling Green looks a lot like the accounting curriculum at Ohio State or Cal State, fill in the blank, or University of Idaho. Similar textbooks. Faculty are probably educated at similar institutions. There’s so much similarities between all of the universities. We in higher ed, we don’t do a great job of really differentiating. And when we do, it tends to be differentiating on a one-off academic discipline. “Oh, we have a unique program in forensic science investigation that nobody else has.” But we’re trying to truly differentiate in terms of the whole student experience at the core.

And that’s why this holistic approach there again. We’re the right size to do it, we’re big enough but small enough, we’re in this great college town where it builds a community. To Steve’s point earlier, the whole campus community comes out for activities, not only to support prospective students coming in, but once they’re here too, the various activities that go on, they’re committed to student success. Now, we also have PhD programs. We have active research agendas. And I want to be clear, that’s important as well. But anything that those can do to be leveraged to benefit the student experience at the undergrad is critical. So if we can get an undergraduate student connected to a research project and connected with some graduate students at many institutions larger than us, that would be virtually impossible.

Here at Bowling Green, we’re committed. “Okay, so you are thinking about a career in that space. How do I get you connected with a very active research lab that a faculty member’s running, get you connected with some of those graduate students?” So we are truly this community that we’re trying to do as much of the integration as we can to maximize students’ experience because we know when we do that, they’ll have more options when it comes time to leave us.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great point. And I appreciated you bringing up the differentiating or the importance of differentiation because I have worked in marketing for a higher ed institution before, and I specifically worked in marketing for enrollment management. Now, I remember trying to figure out how do we differentiate ourselves from other institutions in the state or in the region or across the country. And it seems like everyone’s always using the same words, the same descriptors. And I appreciate that you all are you’re not only talking the talk, but you’re walking the walk too. You are proving that you are helping students and you do a great job of telling the story through the enrollment and the admissions process and throughout their student journey. So appreciate you all sharing those details with me.

Steve Russell:

Hey, Meredith, let me make one other comment. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention… So we’ve talked the enrollment as if the admissions, those students coming in, but I think we also have, again, through Rodney’s leadership, a Division of Student Engagement and Success run by Glenn Davis here. And I think what’s been really interesting is you’ve got people like Rodney willing to commit to a strategy around life design. Then you’ve got people like Glenn willing to commit and build a system that has empowered us to drive career readiness across the student experience too.

So again, there’s a million systems, there’s a million methodologies. This campus is really leaning into being intentional about we pick a strategy and let’s move forward. And it makes my life much easier. When we choose to do things, we’re choosing to do them based on really solid foundations where we have a lot of clarity that that’s the strategy. We’re not confused. We don’t know which path is the right path, which target to hit. That helps a lot.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And that’s a great segue into my next question because I think obviously that clarity is important and it needs to come from the top. So President or Rodney, how do you as the president create that campus-wide culture of life design and career readiness? How are you getting everyone bought in and rowing in the same direction so that everyone has that clarity?

Rodney Rogers:

Yeah, I would… Probably not everyone has bought in, let’s be clear, because in the academic world, we know how this works. But I do think we have a huge momentum in that space and we have a great deal of individuals that are absolutely committed, our faculty and our staff. I do think a big part of that is it’s consistency over time, having clarity on where we’re headed. And I think early on, another strength I think we’ve had here at Bowling Green prior to… I’m in my seventh plus year here as president of Bowling Green. Prior to that, I served as provost for about six years here at the university. And so my predecessor, Mary Ellen Maisy, who was the 11th president of Bowling Green State University, I served as her provost. And so I would say Mary Ellen has set the direction of making sure that we are focused on great outcomes for our students.

And we have just been able to continue this focus on making sure students are prepared for great careers and great lives. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. And I think in my first address to the campus, the state of the university address, I made that argument, and I make that argument every single time that I’m in front of faculty. We’ve got to do both. And I think we also lean in to making sure that we are committed to every student. I try to make the point that all students can do this. Well, sure, but we want to focus on each student. So I try to be much more directed to say, “How are we taking care of each of our students?”

And I think that resonates with our faculty, our staff. None of us are in… The reason we’re in higher education I think is to disseminate knowledge, absolutely. And there’s research agendas, absolutely. But the key is how are we developing the next group of leaders and successful individuals that are going to drive our civic organizations and our businesses and our healthcare? That’s a pretty important goal. And how fortunate it is that we work in that sector of our economy, preparing the next group of leaders. So I think a lot of it’s communication, a lot of it’s consistency, a lot of it’s focus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. And clearly that clarity and that focus on outcomes has driven some pretty impressive results for you. At the top of the show, I mentioned a few of those stats but I’m curious if there’s any other outcomes or results that either of you would like to highlight.

Rodney Rogers:

I would maybe just add one. I think our retention rates, placement rates, and we’re getting more disciplined in gathering some of that data. And Steve’s been such a great asset to the university when he’s come in to bring that systemic view and that approach. And so those numbers are all going the right way. I just saw some data around the students’ understanding of why they are in college at the end of their first term here at Bowling Green. We have seen a dramatic increase in the percentage of students who basically say, “Yes, I know why I am in college.” And that is part of what Steve mentioned earlier, is this intentionality, this idea of going to go to college with intentionality and making sure they’re thinking about that career and life they want to lead when they leave here, and how to navigate the ecosystem, as we said. So intentionality and understanding why they are in college is another metric that has pretty important to us because that leads to retention, graduation rates, and satisfaction as well with their experience.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. Anything to add, Steve?

Steve Russell:

I think Rodney probably hit on the ones that we’ve got really good data on the good numbers. I think maybe to flip that and say just anecdotally, when I talk with students that are 16, 17 years old, they have an extreme lack of confidence in some of these paths and the clarity that they have. And so I think one of maybe the unspoken metrics around here too is the pride that we take in helping students to feel more confident.

I think a first gen student who’s coming to college, maybe majoring in something that maybe their family isn’t as well-versed on, going through that and maybe finds their first hiccup along the way, what happens in that moment? Because quite frankly, if you don’t have as strong of a student success model as we do, that student maybe never makes it to having the conversation about their career. And so I think building up their confidence comes from providing them with this design thinking toolkit. It comes from hearing that they understand why they’re in college. And then that confidence really transitions then into something that’s really tricky for a lot of students at that age, which is failure and being able to accept failure and pivot appropriately. And again, so that all stems, you can see that these things are a system that are lining up to enable the students to, I think, land in that great career, great life.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. Again, it’s that holistic approach helping people navigate life. And I liked your note about dealing with failure. I think part of the issue, especially for that age group, is that when you fail, it’s hard to know what to take from that. It just feels like this personal failure it’s hard to be like, “Okay. Well, what did I learn? What will I do differently? How can I apply this to my future endeavors?” So yeah, I think that’s a great point. As part of that ecosystem, of course, is career services. So I’m curious how both of you see the role of career services evolving in higher ed, particularly in response to changing student and employer expectations.

Rodney Rogers:

Steve, why don’t you take that one first?

Steve Russell:

Yeah. I think I maybe even said it in my interviews sitting across the table from Rodney when I first took this job, I said, “I’m not a career center director.” I thought about the experiences that I had had when I was an undergrad, different institutions I had worked for, and that’s not really what resonated with me. And I think it came down to a lot of activities and data, that all just felt really transactional. And I think maybe the future of career services is being positioned as a really institutional strategy to respond to what’s going on in the world to ensure that the university is continuing to be relevant and supporting the systems that support us.

I think if career services has really created and empowered an ecosystem, then our state governments who support us should be feeling really great about the workforce that we’re feeding back in and the talents. And not only the talent on that day one, but that we’ve really helped them to ensure that they can thrive throughout the rest of their careers, hopefully in our states and in our regions that also support us. So I think that’s a big piece to it.

Rodney Rogers:

Yeah, Steve did a great job there. The thing I would just add is we do not have a career center or career services at Bowling Green. We have a career hub. And this idea of a career… Well, and it was pretty intentional to try to come up with a different way to name the work that Steve and his colleagues are doing and all the partners that Steve has developed across campus and external to campus. But a hub, in my mind, are people coming together figuring out the connections. It’s not linear exactly.

And it’s not just a service to the students. The student has a responsibility here too. And it’s empowering the student to be able to navigate through this hub. And so I’m back to this navigating the ecosystem. We are really committed to that because I think that also is preparing them for life because we all need to navigate life after college, and part of the college experience, there’s some adulting that goes on to those traditional 18 to 22-year-olds, but we want them to be successful in their life and know how to navigate after Bowling Green and to navigate into new careers. Because I also think we’ve got to make sure students have an understanding of we really want to prepare you for a lifetime of careers, not just the first job.

And I know often government officials especially really are pushing, “Well, how many people are employed? How much are you making?” It’s just short-term training. We’ve got to educate students to be the future innovators, to be the future leaders, to be able to pivot themselves to think about where their career may go. I was a music undergrad who became a college president. Maybe it did prepare me though. There were aspects of that performance that I have to do as president that I think I gained from the senior recital I did, for example. But there are other things that I had to learn on my own that I didn’t get in my undergrad. But I had mentors. So this idea of a growth mindset, a learning mindset, the ability to learn to learn. And even better, if I can learn how to learn to learn, I am even better than at adjusting and pivoting what I need to.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that so much. And I’m so glad you brought up your background because I was going to try and ask you about that, how your career path went from music undergrad to college president. So I’m glad to ask you on that.

Rodney Rogers:

Yeah, I wasn’t that good at music, okay? So I need to find a job, so…

Meredith Metsker:

What is your instrument?

Rodney Rogers:

I’m a voice. I was a baritone, so voice. But I also played saxophone and paid my way through college playing in a big band that I brought down the average age by.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. So when Bowling Green needs someone to sing the fight song, they know who to ask.

Steve Russell:

That is the truest statement I’ve ever heard.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, I do want to be mindful of our time here so I’m going to try and get through the last few questions. But you’ve already, both of you, offered a lot of just great insights. But I’m curious, what advice would you give to some of the career services leaders who are listening to this podcast who want to be seen as a strategic partner in institutional goals like enrollment and retention, like you all have there at Bowling Green?

Rodney Rogers:

My advice and honestly, I’m not sure I understood this when I was a faculty member or a department chair or a director of a program or even an associate dean. I think when I was a dean, I started getting this a little bit. If I can align my initiatives with the overarching initiatives of the university, I am more likely going to get funded and support. So it seems like an obvious simple thing, but I think we often don’t look to the strategic plan overall and how do I fit into that strategic plan? So if I’m a career services individual or working in that space at a university, I absolutely would tie everything that I am working on to that strategic plan and then lay that on the plate of who I’m reporting to say, “This is how I’m supporting the direction of the university.” That becomes more difficult than to say, “Oh, we can’t do that because you can see that alignment.”

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, that’s great advice. I imagine that definitely the alignment and the time and effort it took to make sure that your plan aligns probably makes for a compelling story for you as a president.

Rodney Rogers:

And then having outcome metrics that you’re being held responsible for. So I think that’s the other thing Steve does a great job of. We’ve got mileposts and goals, objectives that we can track to make sure progress is being made, which is how you build them for more support. And that’s how you continue to grow initiatives.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. Steve, anything to add?

Steve Russell:

No, I would’ve said the same thing. It’s all about alignment. I think if you can connect the dots between your work and every other unit on your campus, then what you’ve done is that you don’t need to be the center of attention or the career center. And I’ll tell you, and I am sure Rodney didn’t even realize this, at our last board of trustees meeting, I sat in the back for an hour. I had no presentation to give, but there were three senior leaders on our campus who gave presentations. And every one of those presentations brought up our hub. I didn’t have to be there. I didn’t have to be speaking. My goal is not to be the center of attention. My goal is that those folks were empowered to give really meaningful presentations because of the work of our team. That’s what’s most important.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely.

Rodney Rogers:

That’s what hubs do, right? They’re connecting. They’re linked.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, they’re spokes.

Rodney Rogers:

That’s exactly right. That’s it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I was thinking that earlier. The use of the word hub implies that there are spokes that go out throughout the rest of campus and beyond. So it makes sense that you would use that terminology.

Rodney Rogers:

Right, right. Exactly.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, before I start wrapping us up, is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Steve Russell:

I don’t know if I have anything else. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me, but it may make you laugh. The fact that half of what I wanted to say came out of the president of our university’s mouth should send a pretty particular signal that there’s a lot of alignment here. And it didn’t just happen overnight. And I appreciate a lot of the support, but I think the strategy that has come down makes a lot of sense. We know what to do with it and it feeds back up. And we’ve got somebody at the top who’s actually listening and who genuinely cares about students. And I think that’s a secret sauce. I wish and I hope for all of our career services leaders across the nation that they find a leader that actually cares about their work as much as I truly believe that Rodney does.

Rodney Rogers:

Well. Yeah, that’s nice of you to say, Steve. But making sure that we’re focusing on student outcomes. And I’ll leave it at this, that it is really hard to predict the future success of a 17, 18-year-old. One of the powers of higher ed in America is that we have historically, at least, and I hope we’ll always continue to do this, we cast a wide net to give students an opportunity to come, to take advantage of what universities have to offer, and to be prepared to go out and do some amazing things. And it’s a wide net. It’s not just a few students from wealthy families or students who are connected here or there. It’s a wide net.

I’m a first generation. I grew up in a really small farming community. To be a college president, my friends from high school would say, “Are you kidding me? Really?” And Meredith, I don’t know your story, but what I love is hearing the stories of these students and where they have come from. But our job is to make sure that we not only offer up all of this ecosystem, that we actually expect them and hold them responsible for taking ownership and to give them the tools though to effectively navigate it. And when they do that, they will be prepared for great careers and great lives.

Meredith Metsker:

Well said. That’s a great, great, great place to leave it, so Absolutely. Well, Steve and Rodney, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Rodney Rogers:

I’m rrogersa@bgsu.edu. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on about every social media platform there is. So we’d love to connect.

Steve Russell:

Likewise. Any way that people want to connect, I think we’re always open to those conversations with our colleagues.

Meredith Metsker:

Perfect.

Rodney Rogers:

And the power, I think the power of working together, the power of networking, the ideas that come in. It’s that growth mindset and we all in higher ed need to have that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, we should all be lifelong learners, right?

Rodney Rogers:

Boy, isn’t that true?

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. All right. Well, at the end of every interview, I like to do this answer question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you, then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So our last guests were Justin Morris and Robin Houston of the University of Oklahoma and they left a super serious question for you. If you make a pot of chili without beans, is it actually chili?

Rodney Rogers:

That’s a great question. Oh, I’m going to have to ponder that. I think the answer definitively is yes, and the reason is because chili can be so many different things and the importance of creativity and pivoting. And you don’t have beans, you still have to make chili, okay? So Steve, what do you think?

Steve Russell:

Oh, I don’t know. I think the beans bring the soul that is chili. So you’re right if I was trying to make chili and I didn’t have the beans, I’d probably still make the chili. We still got to pivot, but I would prefer for them to be in it.

Meredith Metsker:

I love how we’ve taken this chili and made it into a metaphor for life. If you don’t have the beans, you still got to make chili. Metaphor for life.

Steve Russell:

Don’t forfeit the chili.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Rodney Rogers:

Each of us can leave a question?

Meredith Metsker:

I think. Well, sure. Yeah, let’s do it/

Rodney Rogers:

Okay. My question is, what was the first paid job you had that you had never put on your resume?

Meredith Metsker:

I pushed carts at a grocery store.

Rodney Rogers:

You did?

Meredith Metsker:

That was my first one. I did.

Rodney Rogers:

Minimum wage?

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. And I try-

Rodney Rogers:

You never put on a resume?

Meredith Metsker:

I don’t think so. Probably because I got in trouble because I was trying to be efficient and put way more carts on the machine than I was allowed to. And I got caught on the security camera, so I probably didn’t want to use them as a reference.

Rodney Rogers:

Okay. How about you, Steve?

Steve Russell:

I was an entrepreneur at a very, very young age and I didn’t know how much I could articulate that experience into all of my future jobs. And so I’ve actually gone back and put that back on. But there was a long time where I never included those experiences. So good lesson for all of our entrepreneurial students where some of the ventures they’ve had at an early age have taught them really valuable things that they should articulate.

Meredith Metsker:

Was it like a lemonade stand or something?

Steve Russell:

They have to be another podcast another time.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, it’s a mystery. All right. All right. Fair enough. Steve, did you want to leave a question as well?

Steve Russell:

What about if the new age of career services was a movie genre, what would it be?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, okay.

Rodney Rogers:

That’s a much more creative question. I love that.

Meredith Metsker:

I like that.

Rodney Rogers:

I love that one. Let’s go with that one.

Meredith Metsker:

Those are both great. I will pose those to the next guest.

Rodney Rogers:

Excellent.

Meredith Metsker:

Right.

Rodney Rogers:

We’ll be eagerly listening.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep. I’ll be sure to share that with you. Okay. Well, thank you both for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was a really fun conversation. I feel like we covered a lot and could have kept going for a long time. So yeah, thank you, Rodney, Steve, both of you, for your time and your expertise.

Steve Russell:

Thank you.

Rodney Rogers:

Meredith. Thank you. Great podcast. It was a wonderful to chat with you today.

Meredith Metsker:

Thank you. Likewise.