Episode 121: Sarah Williams on Creating Connected Student Journeys
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How can higher education institutions connect the entire student lifecycle from applicants through alumni using a unified technology platform? How can consolidating systems curb digital sprawl while enhancing user experience and data quality and lowering cost? We talk through these with Sarah Williams, Product Manager and Interim Associate Dean for Online Education at the University of Utah. Discover how leveraging role-based access, overcoming political data silos, and deploying personalized platforms and communications can transform student engagement, streamline operations, and support continuous institutional improvement across campus departments.
Breaking Down Silos to Unify the Student Experience
Higher education has historically operated in functional silos. Academic affairs manages current students, student affairs oversees campus activities, admissions focuses on prospects, and advancement takes over after graduation. From a student's perspective, this operational model creates a fragmented journey filled with digital clutter, redundant communications, and disconnected systems.
To create an environment where learners thrive, higher education institutions must shift from viewing individuals in narrow operational buckets to understanding them as lifelong community members. Achieving a seamless, personalized experience requires rethinking campus technology platforms, unifying data ecosystems, and prioritizing human-centered design.
Overcoming Digital Sprawl to Map the Unified Student Journey
The average college student navigates dozens of disparate software tools, portals, and messaging apps during their academic lifecycle. This digital sprawl creates friction, increases institutional costs, and dilutes engagement. When a student must log into separate applications for housing, athletics, academic support, and campus events, they are far more likely to miss critical updates or feel disconnected from the campus community.
To address this challenge, institutions are turning to unified digital ecosystems. Rather than deploying standalone software for every department, forward-thinking universities are consolidating the user experience into a centralized, single-entry-point application.
By leveraging flexible role-based access architectures, a unified platform can deliver dynamic, contextual views tailored to an individual’s immediate needs. A single app can display dynamic, targeted information based on whether the user is an undergraduate, a campus housing resident, an athletics fan, or an alumnus. Consolidating these touchpoints curbs digital sprawl, reduces software overhead, and ensures that students experience the university as one cohesive institution rather than a web of disconnected offices.
Unlocking Higher Ed Data Integration Across Campus Silos
Creating a single entry point for students requires breaking through deep-seated data silos. Historically, university departments have maintained separate databases. Alumni records sit in advancement systems, ticket purchases remain in athletics platforms, and enrollment data stays locked within the registrar’s office.
The barrier to higher ed data integration is rarely technical—it is fundamentally political and operational. Departments are often protective of their data or concerned about disrupting established workflows. Successful integration hinges on passive data collection and clear value exchange.
Key strategies for driving cross-departmental data alignment include:
Implementing Passive Integration Protocols: Systems should ingest data via APIs or scheduled batch updates so individual departments do not have to double-enter records or alter their existing daily operations.
Creating a Value-Add Model for Stakeholders: Departments are more willing to share data when they receive tangible benefits in return, such as targeted push-notification capabilities or enhanced audience segmentation.
Empowering User Self-Identification: Rather than attempting to manually reconcile multiple email addresses across databases, platforms can allow users to link secondary emails or select secondary roles themselves.
Applying Real-Time Data Appending: Continuously checking system credentials enables platforms to automatically grant access to specific campus groups, housing channels, or departmental updates without requiring users to fill out tedious forms.
When institutions bridge these disparate data sources, they gain a holistic view of community engagement, enabling proactive support and more meaningful interactions throughout the entire student life cycle.
Leveraging Personalization and Segmentation for Student Engagement
Modern students live in a world driven by smart algorithms and curated content feeds. Their consumer experience with modern digital products shapes their expectations for university communications. When an institution relies on mass emails aimed at tens of thousands of recipients, critical messages get lost in the noise, leading to communication fatigue.
Effective student engagement requires shifting from broadcasting messages to delivering targeted, personalized touchpoints. Implementing structured role management allows institutions to segment audiences based on specific attributes, such as academic major, campus residence, or co-curricular interests.
Personalization in higher education extends far beyond digital communications. It directly impacts safety, belonging, and student retention:
Micro-Communities and Belonging: Establishing verified, non-anonymous digital groups for residence halls or peer groups gives students a secure space to connect, reducing isolation during critical transition periods.
Targeted Safety Communications: Rather than sending institution-wide alerts for hyper-local incidents, emergency safety teams can deploy targeted push notifications to specific campus buildings or zones.
Actionable Communication Design: Moving away from long-form emails toward clear dashboard notifications and targeted push alerts ensures students see time-sensitive action items immediately.
Co-Curricular Gamification: Tracking event attendance via location-aware features or digital check-ins allows colleges to reward student involvement through digital badges, creating a continuous record of involvement that persists into alumni status.
By prioritizing clear user experience design and active audience segmentation, institutions can deliver relevant information to the right audience at the right time, fostering higher satisfaction and stronger institutional affinity.
Elevating the Lifelong Learner Experience
Higher education technology should reflect the continuous nature of learning. A student does not cease to be part of an institution upon receiving a diploma; their relationship simply evolves. By adopting centralized digital platforms, bridging data silos, and deploying targeted communication strategies, colleges can create connected, responsive, and supportive environments that serve learners from their first day as prospective applicants through their entire journey as alumni.
Episode 121 Transcript
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Sarah Williams: they have silos of data. Typically, okay, here's my alumni data. Okay, here's my student data. Here's my athletics ticket holder data. And, we're actually bridging that. would say it's a politics problem, not a technology problem, right? How can we win hearts and minds, get buy-in, go through data stewardship processes and, and make sure that we could get access to all that data?
Elliot Felix: That was Sarah Williams, Product Manager and Interim Associate Dean for Online Education at the University of Utah. We had a great conversation about how the right technology platform, used the right way, can connect the journey from applicant to alum -- and enable more engaging experiences with better data along the way. This also curbs digital sprawl reducing cost and complexity at the same time. Let's dive in.
Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and the way they're organized to enable student success. Join me for insightful interviews with higher ed innovators, sharing the stories, stats, and strategies to create better connected colleges and universities.
Elliot Felix: Welcome, Sarah. I'm so excited about our conversation the role that technology can play in breaking down silos and really creating this much more holistic sense of the student journey across the whole life cycle from, prospective student, current student, alumni, and beyond.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, I'm excited to, to discuss this with you as well.
Elliot Felix: Tell us a little bit about how you got started in higher ed and what you're up to today.
Sarah Williams: I actually started in higher ed when I was getting my master's program in instructional design. So I was working for the university, and I rapidly realized that I wanted to be out making software. So I left the university and joined the software industry. And I've been doing that for a few decades. So started in development program management, moved into product management, and then product leadership. So worked at a number of companies doing product design and leadership. And when the university, they had an issue with creating an app for their athletics program the CEO of the university reached out to me. He worked with some friends of mine in the software industry previous. And so he asked me to join. So ironically, my very first meeting the, day one, I was in a meeting with people that I had worked with 20 years ago, and they had stayed in the university, and I was coming back, so that was funny. But it's really taking that kind of software industry view on things, I think is a, a very different perspective than the academic view that you might necessarily get in higher ed. I think it's really applicable, and I think it's solved a lot of problems for us, revealed a lot of problems for us. But really it's having that kind of outsider perspective has helped us really go fast in a space that sometimes doesn't go very fast.
Elliot Felix: And it's interesting, this like full circle moment for you.
Sarah Williams: Ja.
Elliot Felix: reconnecting with people and then being able to bring in the industry expertise, back into the fold sounds very similar to your view on folks should think about the student journey more holistically, more circle than a line or in, connected rather than siloed.
Sarah Williams: It's... Yeah, there's definitely... there's a, a couple of things that I would... I think directly applies to the journey, like the, the whole student journey that, that mirrors exactly what you would say is a customer journey out in the industry, right? So what I noticed was that there are buckets of kind of functionality and data and people who are looking at the student as chunks, right? So you have prospective students, you have current students, you have grad students may be different than current students, undergrad students. And then you have, alumni, and they're all seen as completely independent pieces rather than one human going through a journey, right? And so you have people who are like, "Oh, I'm very focused on student success. Oh, you graduated? Ah, that's somebody else," right? And then, and people get lost in the cracks. So one of the things that we were trying to do is how can we make it a continuous journey. Let's say, one human is going through all those different phases rather than, hey, here's a bucket of students and a hey, here's a bucket of alumni. So one of the very first things that we did was we were creating an app, and we wanted to make sure that all of the different audiences with all of the different affinities for the university had one app. So it wasn't like, oh, this is your app that you download for athletics, and this is the app that you download for alumni, and this is the app that you download here. We were trying to create one focus point that no matter who you were, we could personalize the experience, personalize the data. All of that type of thing. But there was at least one entry point that everybody could go to, and we could consolidate all of those different audiences and then also create that kind of student journey all through their life cycle.
Elliot Felix: I really appreciate that, perspective because as you're trying to make those connections, it's also recognizing that people can be multiple things.
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: you're a grad student, you might also be doing some instructional design.
Sarah Williams: Right.
Elliot Felix: or
Sarah Williams: Or you're an athletics fan, and you're an alumni, and you're thinking about going back to school, or you're a parent. You have all that combination. And that was one of the things that was most critical for us early on, was how do I identify what people are, who people are, right? And having a platform that could actually let us... you're not just a student and that's it. You could be a student and an alumni, or a student and a baseball fan, or a student and an, a fan of the arts. And we could personalize that experience and capture your interests, but also capture your different roles and put that together. And honestly we're doing that in a way that is really unique even amongst the, in the university. Again, they have silos of data. Typically, okay, here's my alumni data. Okay, here's my student data. Here's my athletics ticket holder data. And, we're actually bridging that. So it's been interesting just getting access to the data. I would say it's a politics problem, not a technology problem, right? How can we win hearts and minds, get buy-in, go through data stewardship processes and, and make sure that we could get access to all that data? And then we're doing some cool things just matching on emails. It's really simple. Like we're, "Hey, you've logged in this with this email. We think that, this email belongs to you as a ticket holder, you as an alumni. Hey, actually, we realize that you probably have multiple emails and multiple accounts. How can we add a secondary email that you are actually you as the user get to identify?" So rather than me trying to figure out how you match up, letting the user have the capability of, "Yep, this is actually my second account." And then every five minutes, we're actually doing a query to figure out does that email belong to an alumni? Does it belong to, a ticket holder? Oh, you have a major in the fine arts or whatever it is. And then we append that back. So it's this constant iterative process of figuring out who you are, letting you self-identify, and then appending data onto it that I think is pretty cool. I don't know if I was gonna say unique. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Elliot Felix: that. And I think, you're fighting the good fight on so many fronts because you're curbing digital sprawl, right? Instead
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: there being a separate app for and alumni and learning and otherwise having it all be in one place is great from so many perspectives. But you're also just keeping track of these different identities so that you know who your people are.
Sarah Williams: I remember when I got there initially, I was like, "Okay, how many season ticket holders for football are alumni?" And everyone's like, "We don't know." And I was like but that feels like something important. I feel like we should know that," so yeah.
Elliot Felix: engagement is often so narrowly defined, right? So you can have people take the Survey of Student Engagement, and you can know how much time first years and seniors are spending of class engaging with faculty, Or, but there's also alumni engagement. Are they opening emails? Are they attending events? Are they going to reunions? Are they giving? And being able to have a more holistic view, and If, student affairs and academic affairs can inherit insights from prospective students who are now
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: so much the better. Likewise, I would think the alumni affairs office would be very excited to know more about,
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: who they're inheriting and managing and such.
Sarah Williams: Well, and it, and because the platform we're using has some capabilities with, are they attending events? Are they in groups? And so those are the kind of insights that I would say from, if I were out in the industry, like marketing touchpoints, right? I could say, "Oh, cool, where do they engage?" And usually it's like website views and clicks and whatever.
Elliot Felix: Yeah.
Sarah Williams: I've got these other kind of metrics sure, I get all of that in-app experience stuff, but I'm trying to also get, did they attend an event? Did they participate in these other activities that we can keep track of. One of the things I'm really pushing hard to do is to improve, safety information. So just, I have, I actually have, a freshman, I guess he's a sophomore now, on campus. And so there was definitely... And he lived on campus, and we had some incidents, like safety incidents, and it was like, hey, our safety team, who is awesome, could basically blast out information to everybody, or they can blast out information to just a, it was either all or nothing. And so being able to segment, again, these users, and being able to have more specific targeted communication, right? This is true of all, all of our student communication, right? People say they get too much email or whatever. Usually it's actually they just get too many emails that don't apply to them, or they don't understand their action item for it, right? So if we can use all of this data that we're collecting and replace, be able to create these different segments, and then really target action items, communication, whatever, towards that particular segment, it's gonna be more effective, right? I've been working with the safety team to create safety notifications. I'm trying to work with the housing team to create these little micro communities for RAs and students, 'cause that was one of the things that I noticed specifically, was that students would my student at least, really didn't know what was going on, right? And so we didn't have a formal platform channel for students to get information. And they felt like they were, lonely, not in a group, whatever. Like, how could we put them into a group and improve that, that student experience, right? And so we were trying to create micro experience, like this micro community for the students and the RAs to have a safe place to communicate that was, like, on platform, 'cause that, people were like Facebook or Instagram, or I guess it's Instagram and not Facebook anymore. But Instagram, there was some place called Yik Yak that's this horrible anonymous college student platform that's just full of grossness, right? Like-
Elliot Felix: Yeah, it's terrible.
Sarah Williams: It's horrible, right? And like, how can we just create a safe space that, it's not anonymous, so people are already better behaved, right? You have to log in and. we go through an SSO process. Students are verified before they can get in. And then we were using that same data append process to use for the rooms. So "Hey, we know you were in this room, therefore you were in this group." And if you move rooms, we could automatically update it because we, we were just every night we're checking which room you're in and putting you into the correct group. So we know who the RA is, we know you're in your group. And we did a pilot back in January, and most people were talking about whose laundry was there and what was pizza. But it was still like, where, who took my pizza cutter and wet laundry in the dryer, or whatever it was. But at least there was a safe space that was monitored that, could create that engagement. So that's one of the things that we're experimenting with. But again, that's just one little small piece of the whole student success life cycle that, was already included, super easy to do. Created the... created a scaffolding for students to be successful, right? And we could... And we can create multiple of those experiences throughout the app, right? And again, super targeted. We know who you are. We know exactly you don't have to tell us that you live in a room or this particular dorm or what, this is your major. This is all data that we should know, so how can we aggregate that data and then apply it so that we improve the experience?
Elliot Felix: Yeah, 'cause everybody likes out forms and giving information.
Sarah Williams: yeah, nobody wants to do that, right?
Elliot Felix: know. Yeah,
Sarah Williams: yeah, exactly.
Elliot Felix: love that being able to target the comms and also just the being able to connect With what people are actually doing, are they in a group? Did they go to an event?
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: so great because, are people satisfied is one thing, but what are they actually doing? voting with their feet,
Sarah Williams: Yep, exactly. Exactly.
Elliot Felix: but it also enables like proactive outreach, right? Because you could do a query in, who's not in a group and hasn't attended an event, Because those now table stakes for early alert systems is who hasn't logged into the LMS, but imagine if you could add the event component, the organization component, I think you just get such a richer picture that way.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. And so we're still, we're not 100% there. We still are, winning hearts and minds for the different silos in the university. I keep telling myself, "Okay, we've been live for a year now." We went live last June. We're at 55,000 users. That's really great, we have not achieved everything that I would have hoped to achieve. Some of the we have a separate group that does the organization, student organizations, and I've been really trying to bring them on but they already had an existing software. They weren't ready to migrate. So this is where I have to tell myself, like in higher ed, I need a little bit more patience than I probably would have out in the industry. Okay, if this takes a year to migrate, that's fine. That's one of the things that I'm learning doing this transition to higher ed, is that there's just sometimes a different timescale. But, we've had a lot of success I think we eliminated seven different apps in the first year so
Elliot Felix: A-
Sarah Williams: I'll take that as a win.
Elliot Felix: out of curiosity what, what platform are you using to do all this kind of unified informing and communicating and analyzing?
Sarah Williams: Yeah. It's Pathify is the name of the company. So we actually, We went and had an RFP process two years ago I was lucky that I saw all of my stars aligning from my alumni contract was expiring, my student contract was expiring, my athletics contract was expiring, and they were all lining up. So I was able to jump in and say, "Hey let's replace all of those at the same time." And then Pathify was the one that came out. And
Elliot Felix: That's
Sarah Williams: really nice because they really support the personalization aspect. They have a role structure where users can be multiple roles at the same time, and you can really customize the experience. The roles control notifications, the dashboards that when you log in, what even down to the links and the content that you see in the app can all be role-based. And so most of the stuff that we're doing, again, with that data append, is we're saying, "Oh, you're an alumni. I'm gonna give you a verified alumni role. Oh, you're in this particular college. I'm gonna give you this college role. Oh, your room is this. We're gonna give you this role, room role." And so that's... We're using their role system really heavily. I think we're up to 350 different roles. Went a little crazy.
Elliot Felix: you talked about attending an event or being part of an organization, which to me starts to bridge from the digital into the physical.
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Elliot Felix: push notifications or geofencing, location-aware stuff?
Sarah Williams: We're experimenting with geolocation. So we have a student group that does, like, student athletics. It's called the MUSS. It's the They're kind of the football, the, everybody with their shirts off with the football team or the football game. And so they were trying to track non-ticketed sports events, 'cause they were going to reward students for attending the tennis match and the soccer match and things like that. So we were using the built-in QR codes for student attendance. So basically because you were at softball or whatever it is, and then get credit for attending. And we really rapidly saw students cheating. They would take a picture of the QR code, and then they would hand it off, right? And we were trying to make it as asynchronous as possible. The MUSS didn't have the, the manpower to have someone standing there. 'Cause I think Pathify has a native function where it can automatically switch the QR code, but, you need to have an iPad or your phone or something to display it. So we were trying to figure out, how could I create a QR code? And We got to geofencing. So we added a geofence option that you had to be located within a particular geofence before you scan the QR code, that then you could go through and, get credit for attending. That's actually something that we are playing with a lot, is how do you make it easy to engage and get credit for things and prevent people from taking advantage of the system? That's kind of a constant battle.
Elliot Felix: And then you have some kind of badging or some kind of incentive scheme that went to the most sporting
Sarah Williams: Yeah, we had a leaderboard, and then you got if you were within the certain top percentage, you got put into a raffle for football tickets for this, the fall. Because there were so many people who were interested in football tickets versus, like, how many seats were available. That was the thought process is they were using that system to gate your football ticket activity. So that was something we played with. We're actually working on some badging. So you take your picture in front of the U statue, you go to a homecoming game, you attend an event. We're trying to create these kind of groups of activities that then you get badges for. They're calling it Tradition Keepers. What are the things that you should do before you graduate, and have different activities per year. And then what's cool is then that badge goes with you now into your alumni record, since it's the same app, same record. You graduate, you get now this alumni appended to you, but you still have your badges, and you still have that whole experience. You don't have to restart anything, so it's nice.
Elliot Felix: That's awesome. So then the alumni office is saying, "Oh, Sarah loves tennis and softball."
Sarah Williams: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
What’s Misunderstood About the Topic or Main Idea of the Interview
Elliot Felix: that's cool. What do you think, when it comes to using technology for student success, what do you think is-- what do you think people get wrong about this? What's the most misunderstood aspect of like that technology can play in student success?
Sarah Williams: So it's interesting 'cause what I see happening, at least at our university right now, is people are really focused on emails, which is very a Boomer focus. Not really Boomer, but students aren't looking for emails. They're not, Email should be the last backstop. It should not be the primary form of communication. So what I see is that,
Elliot Felix: last line of defense
Sarah Williams: that's the last line of defense is we send an email. Yeah, exactly, right? Is there a push notification? Is there a dashboard that they can look at? Is there some other form of communication that they can look at? And then, yes, and email 'cause I... again, from my experience, it was literally me telling my student, "Hey, did you check your email today? Hey, did you check your email today?" And them like, "No." So yeah nobody, I think, natively who's in college has the whole, "Oh, check your email." If, older folks, yeah, like I check my email every day, whatever, but that's just a habit that has been ingrained. Where the habit is not ingrained, I think, in this, this current crop of students. It's just a different communication vocabulary, right? Instagram, like these automatic reels of things, right? Not, it's not a let me go into a particular system and see what information was, sent at me and probably 50,000 other people, right?
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Elliot Felix: that's cool. What do you think, when it comes to using technology for student success, what do you think is-- what do you think people get wrong about this? What's the most misunderstood aspect of like that technology can play in student success?
Sarah Williams: So it's interesting 'cause what I see happening, at least at our university right now, is people are really focused on emails, which is very a Boomer focus. Not really Boomer, but students aren't looking for emails. They're not, Email should be the last backstop. It should not be the primary form of communication. So what I see is that,
Elliot Felix: last line of defense
Sarah Williams: that's the last line of defense is we send an email. Yeah, exactly, right? Is there a push notification? Is there a dashboard that they can look at? Is there some other form of communication that they can look at? And then, yes, and email 'cause I... again, from my experience, it was literally me telling my student, "Hey, did you check your email today? Hey, did you check your email today?" And them like, "No." So yeah nobody, I think, natively who's in college has the whole, "Oh, check your email." If, older folks, yeah, like I check my email every day, whatever, but that's just a habit that has been ingrained. Where the habit is not ingrained, I think, in this, this current crop of students. It's just a different communication vocabulary, right? Instagram, like these automatic reels of things, right? Not, it's not a let me go into a particular system and see what information was, sent at me and probably 50,000 other people, right?
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Elliot Felix: And where do you think this is going next? Is it about new communication channels? Or how-- If people are trying to use technology to segment, reach different audiences, how is that gonna change, do you think?
Sarah Williams: Well, I think, the obvious answer is there-- it will be more curated by AI most likely, right? I think if you're really getting into it, we need to create a curated stream of information for the students that is the most, And I always think it like kind of a Maslow hierarchy of needs, right? Like there's the base, are you gonna be thrown out of school? Will you not be able to eat? Will you not have housing? And then it's the, okay, great, are you failing your class? And then it gets into the, hey, let's engage and make your experience better. And then, and then there's just nice to haves, right? So I think that there's-- there needs to be a curated experi- like curated data processing system that is giving people the information that they need when they need it, and being clear about the action items. And do you really need AI for that? No, probably not. Old-fashioned software still works, right? But will-- I think more and more solutions offer an AI solution to that, probably. I see that, I see that's where it's going. But yeah, everybody from the outside thinks their information is the most important for the students. Some of it needs to then be the students identifying what information they think is the most important, right? And then being able to segment the information so they can make those decisions, and we can take those signals and then provide a more curated feed. It's really honestly it's the whole TikTok model algorithm versus the Facebook algorithm is what I would call it. I don't know, Facebook you said, "I like this," or, "I don't like this," and it took those signals. TikTok watched what you actually clicked on and said, "Oh," again like you said, vote with your feet, right? Because of what you interacted with, therefore we make these assumptions and we know what you like, whether you said that you like them or not. And I think that's where the system needs to go is like being able to identify signals and curate the information. That's gonna be the next big piece I think with the student comms and the student success.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, that's really interesting. The next version of this is not just what people say, it's what they do, being able to understand that in real time,
Sarah Williams: Sure.
Sarah Williams: That's not even the next one. That was the old one. That was TikTok, right? So that's already, that's old. The higher ed is just not catching up yet. Yeah, exactly.
Elliot Felix: Huh. Yeah, that's really interesting. And The AI that you use to curate that is only as good as what you're feeding it, right?
Sarah Williams: Exactly.
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Elliot Felix: earlier you talked about step one is even just getting access to the data from the various departments. How have you figured out how to do that? 'Cause sometimes people have their own platform, and they keep their data separate. How have you found success harnessing data from different departments to a more coordinated experience for folks?
Sarah Williams: But here, the key is nobody wants you to disrupt their own processes, right? get data without making them do something, double entry, whatever, and without disrupting their internal processes that they have already established and, The registrar has their own report. They have their own things. They won't be able to add another step for you, right? How can you get, whether it's a CSV file or an API access or something and collect that data from them passively so they don't have to actively do something. That's always gonna be more successful, right? And then obviously you have to win over those areas and convince them why that's a benefit for them, right? Athletics is pretty easy. "Hey, guys, you give us this ticketing data, we'll be able to focus all of your marketing messages to these specific audiences and send out push notifications." That was something that they couldn't do before, right? It's always better to have a value add for those different departments. And, this is true in, in the world, right? You're either gonna pay for an app or they're gonna take your data you're paying either cash or data one way or the other. It's a similar thing. You can either give me your data and then you can get this automatically, or data is the currency that we use for them to join the platform and get benefit out of the platform, is the way that I've been structuring it. Athletics, they give us the data. Great. They're in. We let them heavily use it. Same thing with alumni. We're getting alumni data, right? And I, I did notice pretty early on that, again, just the rate of adoption for the departments is way slower than I would've ever expected. I built all these tools and I've been sitting here for a year like, "Hey, I have these tools for you, and they will benefit you. Come use them." And it's been a year, and now the alumni is like, "Ooh, hey, can we use that for chapters?" I'm like, "Yes. Yes, you can. Come, please." And so I'm hoping that this is the year of engagement. Last year was our year of implementation and integrations and, and structure. And this year is gonna be the one where we're really getting engagement from the different departments. And I almost look at it, again, to use an industry term, multi-channel marketing, right? You have the company, you have partnerships, they do the marketing for you. That's actually my strategy for this app, our Utah 360 app is, hey, alumni, now they're gonna start doing marketing because they realize this is a value for them to get people onto the platform. And the business school is doing marketing for us because we've added features for them. And athletics is doing marketing for us because we've added features for them. And it's just gonna be a flywheel effect where- Everywhere they go, it'll be, "Hey, have you downloaded Utah 360?" Will be the message. And then I think we'll hit, like it'll really snowball where people will why am I not on Utah 360?" Is the message that I'm starting to get now, where people are like, "Oh, hey, wait a minute. I heard about the app and I'd like to participate." We have an employee appreciation day where they're, like, the committee that does the employee appreciation day was like, "Ooh, could we use this?" And "Absolutely. Come join." And so it's really starting to snowball. But yeah, I think the, the key is to have the value add that the departments will see that benefits themselves, and then therefore they will bring the data for the marketing effort, right?
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Elliot Felix: One question I have is just wondering, there there a point at which it-- you cross over from convenience and then you get overrun by sort of complexity? In other words, you're more and more in one place and Is there a point at which that no longer works? And I'll, of what has me thinking about this, I'll give you just as, as an analogy, I'm often doing strategic planning or operational planning or facility planning for libraries, and my agenda is how can I make a library a student success hub by students where they are and bringing in all kinds of other support functions there. It could be the math lab, the tutoring center, the writing center, study abroad, undergrad research. And that's a great way to meet students where they are. It's a great way to make things more seamless and have less runaround, fewer handoffs. But at a certain point, like you can't stuff the whole university
Sarah Williams: put the whole university in the library. Yeah.
Elliot Felix: right?
Sarah Williams: Right.
Elliot Felix: this-- At a certain point, it breaks. Is that an analogous situation where you have a unified portal it can be prospective students, it can be for current students, it can be for alumni, and it can do events, and it can do groups, and it can do communications and push notifications. At a certain point, does it get too much where then or value?
Sarah Williams: Well, I think that's what, exactly what happens with your traditional student portal link farm, right? I think that's exactly what happens, right? Where you have so many different things and you're missing the personalization piece, right? And again, that's the key piece is that segmentation and personalization, right? So if, again, I could have 15 million things that are happening, but if I can filter them by the things that I think are important to you or that you have signaled that you are interested in, right? And things are still available, but maybe you just have to search for them. is it because, "Hey, I'm actually super interested in the fine arts museum," and again, that's because you've signaled interest, and then I'm able to personalize your experience and show that up front. I think that's gonna be the big difference. One of the problems I actually face a lot, honestly, with the app that we're, we've built so far, is that it is so personalized depending on who you are. I get a lot of staff members saying, "Oh, you didn't add my stuff to it." And I was like, "Oh, I did, but only students can see it." So you as a staff member have a completely different experience than what a student sees. And so it's not that it's not there, it's actually quite literally you don't see what a student see, and you don't see what an alumni sees, and you don't see what the visitor sees. Because even though it's the same platform, we've created completely different experiences based on your identity and your interests.
Elliot Felix: So it sounds like the answer is you can put a whole lot of stuff there, it's just a matter of prioritizing according to persona or a, a role or or what w- what people
Sarah Williams: Yeah, whatever vocabulary word you wanna use for it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This is, but this is basic interface design stuff, right? This is not revolutionary. Nothing that I'm talking about is revolutionary, right? So it's just being able to apply it, I think, in a space that is used to that very static, very here's my list of links. And again, they're a corporate there are apps that students use every day. There are experiences that students use every day, and they expect you to know those apps have this personalization and these algorithms and everything built in. They are getting fed, spoon-fed experiences. That's what they are used to, so to have something that is, I have to go hunt and peck and figure out, and this doesn't even really apply to me, is such a different user experience than what students are used to. And I think that's the biggest thing, is I think a lot of people don't realize how vastly different student expectations are than what the experience that's being provided to them in most higher ed, higher ed locations. I think that's a big difference. I think, just the expectations of how things are expected to work. Students expect you to know things about them. We're missing that. That's a big gap.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, and for all the reasons you've so well about the separated data and the different processes the fact that we may not have the personas or ways to personalize all seem like great steps in the right direction, and I really appreciate your insights today. This was a really fascinating conversation on the power of personas and segmentation and thinking about the different roles that people can play and the best way to inform and inspire them. So thanks, Sarah.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. Thank you.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Go to elliotfelix.com for more information about my book, the Connected College articles I've written and talks I've given. There's also tools you can download information on upcoming events and information on booking me to speak at your institution or organization. Please support the podcast by rating it and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where all students succeed.