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The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.
Rachel Duval 0:03
Thank you all so much for joining us this week. The panel that you're about to experience is going to be recorded for the higheredjobs podcast. It'll be a discussion featuring five staff and faculty members from the very local University of Louisville. The panelists will share their expertise and students success, program development, leadership and funding that fosters institutional commitment for the military connected community at U of L. The panelists discussion will include creating buy in and leveraging existing institutional mechanisms, establishing a veteran employee resource group, hiring military connected staff and faculty and funding best practices and strategies. You all will help welcome our panel up here.
0:51
Thank you for that lovely introduction and thank you for having us. I'm Andy Hibel. I'm the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs. In 2020, we founded another site called HigherEdMilitary that was specifically designed to serve this community. And with that, my co-host and partner in this endeavor, Kelly Cherwin.
Kelly Cherwin 1:13
Thanks, Andy. Like Andy said, I am the co-host of the Hire Items podcast. I'm also the director of editorial strategy. So
MW 1:21
Let's rejoin the panel where we left off last time.
Kyle 1:23
But that's. Just one example of the kind of things we. Work. Collectively on.
Kelly Cherwin 1:27
Thanks to Kyle and Meghan and Alan just texted me and said, Can you please turn off Kyle's microphone now?
1:36
I mean, actually the thoughts and stats and everything and the importance of hiring military connected staff and faculty actually transitions quite well into the next question here. So, Alan, this. Is for you. So can you share how and why? I mean, I think we can kind of understand the importance of why, but how do we get more staff and faculty into higher ed?
Allen 1:58
I mean, I think that's one of the things that Jess and I have had long conversations with about We're very fortunate that we have Fort Knox being so close as military members get ready to transition. So a lot of individuals have a strong interest. That's what I was really surprised about is the number of people that have an interest in getting into higher ed is just kind of breaking that gap and understanding what is the next step in overcoming their fears of what that environment will be like and the opportunities that exist. From my own personal experience, I think the internship was the pathway for me. If I did not have that internship, I don't think the opportunity that I'm currently in right now would have existed and I would not be where I'm at today. So I'm thankful. And so as I talk to folks, I often tell them, you know, take advantage of that internship, follow something that you're really passionate about. And, you know, the great thing, the way it's set up right now, at least on the Army side of the house, is you don't have a prescribed path that you have to follow, much like myself, the internship did not exist with the athletic department, but we helped create that internship too, to open some doors. But we're making a concerted effort because we know the impact of what veterans bring to the table each and every day. I mean, it's everything from leadership skills to accountability to the ability to work in a resource constrained environment. If you think higher ed has a lot of money, we do not. If you think the athletic department has a lot of money, we do not. And so how do you move and operate in a resource constrained environment? The other thing I think is very attractive to the higher ed community is we bring time management skills and probably most importantly, we have a strategic vision of where the organization is now and where it should be as we look towards the future. And so a lot of my job is planning not for what's going to happen next week, but planning for what's going to happen five years from now, ten years from now, and trying to set the conditions for success.
Kelly Cherwin 3:48
So kind of a follow up question, and I like two part question, so I'm going to ask a question from the employer or the institution side and then go to the job seeker side. So are. There there certain considerations. Institutions kind of have to keep in mind when they're hiring some of the military connected population?
Allen 4:03
I would say is is I reflected on people that we've hired from the military connected pool. I always tried to articulate to them as I talked to our staff, what they bring to the table. So some of the stuff that I talked about previously, the strategic vision, the time management skills, the ability to work in a resource constrained environment. Having said that, is, you know, helping to get their foot in the door. So sometimes it's that fear of the unknown of walking into because, you know, from my military experience, that's all I ever knew. You know, I graduated college, came on active duty, and then once I retired, it was at fear of the unknown. And I leaned on, as Kyle talked about earlier, there was a lot of resources, not only here at U of L, but other departments across the country that I kind of tapped in their experience and tried to learn from them in order to help open some doors and at least have a knowledge of what I was walking into. So I think that's kind of the important piece of what we try to do is serve as mentors. So a lot of times we'll have coffee, we'll have lunch with people that are preparing to transition from the military and what's next. And we at least give them a perspective from our perspective, if they have a desire or at least kind of walk through our lesson learned because we have a lot of lessons learned from from our experiences.
Kelly Cherwin 5:17
Thanks. So just to turn it over to you for the job seeker side, what considerations do the job seeker have when they're stepping into that role? And then also you mentioned the fear of the unknown. What can institutions be doing to kind of help relieve this fear then on and make it a bit more welcoming and comfortable environment for applicants to to want to work in higher ed?
Jesse Murnock 5:39
Yeah, sure. So again, Jesse, I work in the President's office. I retired in 2020. I too was able to walk into this job as an intern. I created it myself much like we created it for Alan as well. And the only way I was able to do that is as a professor of military science at the time. I was on campus for about four years in that role, which I had a great opportunity to stay here in that capacity for four years. And I got to know the president and at the time we had significant budget cuts and it was a very small presidential staff and it was very clear, as you all know, higher Ed does not have great support structure across the board. Right. Every deans office looks different. Every president's office looks different. Well, the military has great structure and great experience, and all of those capacities are just great role clarity. So you kind of bring that context with you. And so when I was interfacing with the president at the time, I just said, I think you need an XO. And we walked along this path to create a position and tried out the internship. And then there you go. I was able to get the job, so I got very, very lucky. It was time and place, but it was also a leader. It was a president that was very interested in supporting and helping military people transition. Right? And so what I would say is find I mean, obviously everybody in this room has a great affinity for military connected folks, but find the other ones across campus that also have the affinity and create opportunities for those transitioning service members. What we try to do with transitioning service members that are interested in higher ed, the first thing I ask them is why do you want to serve in higher ed? I mean, define that for yourself. What is it that you want to do or what is it that you think you want to do? Because the military culture is exceedingly different from the higher ed culture, both in structure, both in how decisions are made, how problem solving is done. Shared governance alone is very, very different in how the military is. And so we try to describe that environment and then ask them, you know, why do you want to come to higher ed? And then from that, just explaining the different opportunities. Right? The faculty has different requirements than staff versus administrators. And so helping them create the resume that might reflect the path that they're seeking and then trying to connect them with a mentor on campus will help them with that transition. So we try to do that on a personal level, I will tell you, the DOD systems in the Army systems, when the internships don't connect well with our our HR system. So we're sort of from the grassroots trying to infiltrate higher ed with more military people, candidly, because of all the skills that I just talked about. So from a veterans perspective, if you're seeking higher ed, focus on those skills, those leader development skills, those project management skills, your adaptability, your resiliency. For the family members, I mean, your sacrifice is Incredible, right? Your adaptability and your resiliency is incredible. Highlight those to an organization that could really use somebody like you on their team to really advance our cause. Hopefully that sums it up.
Kelly Cherwin 8:35
I think I can say answering my own question of how higher Ed can help hire more people like you on this panel and in this room. So thank you. I didn't say it at the beginning. Thank you for all of your work that you you do in this space.
Andy Hibel 8:47
I think I'd add one other wasn't a thing on there. For knowing that three of the panelists actually fit this profile who've made those transitions in recent years. Your mission focus as a candidate? I think when we talk to employers broadly, it's hard for institutions across the board to find people who want mission based work. They're not necessarily a lot of folks who are wired that way. And to have to say, hey, look, this is part of the great part about working for an institution of higher education. Is it perfect? No. Are there bad days? Yes. But on those bad days, you can have many special moments when you look across campus and see the difference that your work makes. Somebody can walk into an office and just absolutely change your day on a dime and see the difference it makes. And I think it also speaks Jessie, too, to what you said. I would imagine all three of you, if somebody calls you who's looking to transition, are you taking that call and saying, sure, we can sit down for coffee? There is an even a hesitation. And that that sort of willingness to share that mission based work. I don't think from a recruitment standpoint is easy to find in higher education. I think that's why it makes it so special. I also think and I actually going to steal this from you, Alan, and forever will, I understand in higher education today, attribution is very, very important. So I will forever attribute this to you. But we talked about resource constrained environments. Let's talk about it. So I'm a planned giving officer by nature. And when people talk to me as a plant giving officer? They love to talk about that giant stack of money that sits at every university's foundation called an endowment, where you can just go up to it and sneeze and enough falls off of it. That's going to fund whatever your funding dream is. But that's not the reality. And we won't talk about the legalities of how it works, but it is a resource constrained environment. There are not dollars that aren't already spoken to. That does not mean there aren't a lot of dollars already spoken to it. So it creates this world in academia where if you have some success, people kind of want to try to figure it out. So with that, Jeff, I'm going to direct this at you, not putting too much pressure on you, but we're talking about lessons learned from funding military connected hiring programs, initiatives. And the main challenge is the funding. When I talk to faculty, staff and leadership at the University of Louisville, you have had this success in finding funding and making things happen, so much so that you're asked to serve in different roles. What would you say are some of the keys to success?
John 11:37
Let me also start with I have had no prior service, so okay. So I want to give that make that clear. My prior service is playing with Nerf guns and some other things, and maybe you can say I was Calvary because I had like a fake, like plastic sword at one time. So really, I am going to be one of your allies. So for those of you who do have prior service and think about it, you want to find your allies the way we did it is we were and Megan was part of the team that that did this is we were looking for grants because that's our job as a faculty member. We have to find grants and we have to do research. And so what I want to do is I wanted to use my expertise, and my expertise is in law, policy and workforce development. So what we did was we started searching for those funds in that area. And so the area that we started with was this one area called the Master Educator Course, which we pitched to a cadet came in within the US Army. In fact, we have two products of this program who are here today. So John, who's there? John Harbaugh here from Boise State, and then Casey Geist, who is with the University of Louisville. So they went through the program. They were both professors of military science. And what we did for this program was we taught them about higher education, just about all those people from the Army who are coming into to ROTC programs. And you have them in the Navy. I'm in the Air Force, and they need to understand higher education. Like it doesn't make sense to us. How is it going to make sense to them? So what we try to do is we try to give them a taste of higher education and understanding what it's like, the administrative stuff, how to how to negotiate with your dean or the person whom you work with, and then how do you teach better, how do you work with students? And so it's stuff that many of you do today, right? You're doing student services work and then and you're trying to figure out how do you do it better. So we did again was we took our expertise. The second thing, what we did was then we said to ourselves, okay, well, how do we build networks? We're not going to do this on our own. There's just no way. So how do we look at what resources we have around, not just our university, but also people outside the university and people around the state even? What do we want to be known for in this Commonwealth? In the Commonwealth of Kentucky We have some great resources. We have this group called the Kentucky Council for Military Affairs. We have KD VA, which is veteran administration, but we also have the governor's office, we have the economic development area, we have workforce development. They were all interested in what we were doing. And so then we applied for Department of Labor grants. We applied for US Department of Education grants. We applied for other things in this area where we said we were going to make a concerted effort to focus on the military connected student population, many of them veterans, but not all. We also even got a grant that helped and said we mapped out how you could actually accelerate the learning and licensure for veterans. And so we mapped all those things out. We shared it with some states and then we became known as well in that area. And then we also knew some people in some other states, and we called on them for some things too. They were good at certain things. We were good at certain things, and that's how we looked at the networks. And I think the third thing we did was an element of design. We wanted to make sure that we had design elements that were very clear, that we were using our networks, we were using our expertise, but we were also thinking about the design elements of what do these prior service members need? Like what do they need? And we were actually even asking them. And so they would say things like, Well, you know, first job's a little bit tough. We get it. But, you know, we have some issues because we just don't know. And so what we were trying to do is work with some companies and we said, Can we test some of these things? Can we work with you? And then we'll also even help because we applied for an apprenticeship grant and got it for the U.S. Department of Labor. We said, we'll place some of these individuals who are recent vets who will start to understand your company and we'll develop some structuring, small learning for them. And when you work with us and then so far we've had pretty good success. So total of students, so not all veterans about we have had about 200 veterans, but 3000 students whom we've worked with on this area. And so and then we started doing some other things we like. Okay, so we said, okay, what about let's try this other thing, Like we need teachers in this state. You all do well, so and so. How can we get teachers and have it to be veterans? They'd be great teachers talk about discipline. So anyways, so we said, let's create a program and we called it VEST. You can imagine why it's best, right? So don't don't ask me what it stands for. I come up with these names and I have no idea what they even stand for any more anyway. So and then so they but it was a catchy name. And then people said, okay, let's do this, let's try it. It increased our our pathways for teachers in CTE, career technical education quite a bit. So not, not huge. I mean, we're talking like 10%, but that's 10%, like that's huge. So then we started focusing on our department and I was a department chair at the time, which is a dangerous thing too. But then so what happened was I said, Listen, let's do more for our military's population. Let's let's try to figure out what we can do, not just jobs. That's typical programming. Let's see, we also have one of our programs had prior learning assessment, which some of you are familiar with, So that helped them get their degree. Let's see what we can do in that space. Let's see also if we can find a grant to help with some of these things. So US faculty member feels supported and the students are military connected, also feel supported. Not only so much so that they felt supported that faculty were like, Hey, how can I do more of this stuff? Which you rarely hear from faculty, as I will admit. So then they started getting more excited about things. They were like, How do I get involved in this stuff? And then we started increasing it. In fact, so much so that a department now, an academic department with 1200 students, about 40% of our students are military connected. So we went from 17 to 40. So we were trying to make everything very intentional in that design. So you think of end states. The acronym was END expertise, network design. That's how we created it.
Andy Hibel 17:33
Megan you have anything you'd like to add?
Megan 17:36
So I was very much just a junior partner. So he's giving you the big picture of how he got these different federal departments knocking down his door. And my mind is constantly thinking about the little picture of what we were doing on a day to day basis. And I think an indirect path for funding is something we all know to be true, which is there's no substitute for expertise and it takes time to build the knowledge and the relationships and the designs that we're talking about. And I think that's where we have a lot of untapped potential, because whether you identify as first as a member of higher ed or first as a member of the military, we both come from professions. We both come from these slightly weird different parts of society that are not mainstream, where we know our community and our culture and our language in our world and we know how to interact with civilians, but we also know that that's not really what we're like. So in some ways that can seem like a larger divide to cross, that there's the norm and there's the military over here in higher ed over here, we have found it to be very important to dispel that type of perception and to actually say we've got the resources on both sides to build the best bridge. So let us be the ones to do it. You know, in the moment, there are days when we're going after very large grants and trying to get to very senior leaders and there are days where we're sitting across from veterans or soon to be veterans saying, tell me what you bring to the table. Why would you like to work in higher ed. Sometimes frequently that starts with nothing. I bring nothing to the table. I thought this would be cool, but now I don't know. And and I'm really good with a weapon system and I can move as much equipment and I know how to get things done. So they're nothing. Just forget it. Right. Which it's part of what we love is building the trust to have these authentic conversations and share some of these concerns and vulnerabilities. And we've you know, the first time that happened, we were like, oh, gosh, oh, wow, maybe you're right. Well, I didn't go the way I thought it would. But of course, we can't give up. We can't stop there. And what we learned to do is to say, let's put that aside for a second. Tell me what you've loved about your military career. Oh, I've had the best training and I've learned how to really manage large teams and small teams with totally diverse compositions. And we've been through some really tough challenges. And I remember this time we did not have what we need, but we were successful. And really the reason we do it is the people we want to take care of, of our service members and their families and we want to serve the country. Well, then I have all kinds of points of entry to say, Oh, you're comfortable in diverse environments. Do you know how to manage resources in your mission minded and you care about how people feel? At the end of the day, we would love to have more of that in higher education. And so it really has allowed us to to build a shared language where, you know, two plus two is ten because we both bring passion and training and expertise and different perspectives. And higher ed needs more leaders at any level who are committed to the good of the nation and who are invested in our young people, who are interested in diverse ways of making sure that we're producing the right kind of graduates at all levels and thinking about the workforce and thinking about everything from history to national security to music, you know, everything that we get to do in our universities. So success begets success. We haven't been afraid to start small, and in many ways that's most motivating because you're working with other people. But we've had leaders like Jeff who have really challenge us to say, as you're helping these people in one offs, you're building expertise that you're compelled to use for the greater good. And so that has fueled us to be bold in our efforts, even when they're not always successful, we're always learning and getting stronger.
Jesse Murnock 21:19
Can I chime in here? I think the key, though, is that you guys are willing to take a risk. I mean, you started this with the intention of supporting military and seeking a better paths for them. And so I would just implore you, you all that work in this space to support military connected folks, your span of influence is is significant and it's broad. Right. And so I would implore you to even reach out to those administrators or reach out to those leaders that may not have the understanding of what military connected folks can bring to their team and just ask. Right. And like you said, invite them to a commissioning offer an opportunity to do an internship. I mean, I can't emphasize enough the success of the internship program and trying to create that space. There are plenty of gaps in higher ed that need some problem solving, some operational capability, some budget management, some project management, I mean, all kinds of stuff, right? And so all of those skills are really, really lacking across the board in different areas. Leader development that I just I would implore you to please just connect with other folks on your campus to just give them a chance.
John 22:24
You know, Well, let's all admit to this. We are all resource constrained. Like, let's just be honest, we're in higher education, otherwise you're not in higher ed. Okay, So when you say that you want to go find funding, there is not a VP out there that's going to say, No, please don't do that. So they're going to ask the SEC, Sure, take a chance, but give them a proposal and think about your allies who are there. I think about Dr. Casey George, who's in the audience, to whom I see who's also on our faculty, who also got a grant as well in the area. And she's doing work and I think she's presenting on that work. And so I think what we have to figure out is, is how do we work with together? Don't hesitate to contact any of us like, you know, and try to figure out who your other allies are and who your other partners are through this experience, because we want you to do this and you'll see that you'll be successful in it. If you actually stay focused, you've got a clear plan and you have something to deliver to the university, but make sure it ties to your university. So what we did was things that tied and made sense to us. Notice I didn't say anything about the stuff that's going on that some of you probably can do or some other areas of logistics. That's not us. We can't do that. However, some of you in your institutions can do that. So think about the specialties. What are your flagship programs in your university and like, how can you how can you help them move that to the next level?
Kyle 23:45
Sorry, last time I'll speak, I promise you. Jeff mentioned the. Kentucky Commissioner Commission.
MW 23:50
Join us in two weeks for our next edition of Recorded Live at Naspa 2024.