Shiro Hatori:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Higher Ed Demand Gen video podcast, hosted by Concept3D. Concept3D has served the education community for over a decade with our award-winning interactive maps and virtual tours. Improve your campus communications, engagement, and recruitment with our powerful visual communication solutions. My name is Shiro and I will be your host today. I’m speaking for my mountain home in Silverthorne, Colorado, which is just an hour west of Denver. And today I am so excited to be joined by Julee Mitsler, who is the Director of Communications at Lindenwood university. Julee, thank you for joining us today. Can you start us off with a quick fun fact?
Julee Mitsler:
Sure, one of my fun facts is that I have worked with applications and prospective students from all 50 states in my years in higher education. So had a great chance to work with students from all over the country and learn about their needs for campus visits and how to make the most out of their recruitment process.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Do you wanna tell us a little bit more about yourself as well as Lindenwood University?
Julee Mitsler:
Sure, so my name is Julee Mitsler. I’m the Director of Communications at Lindenwood University. I’ve been in higher education for 14 years. I’ve worked at both public and private institutions, in both admissions and visitor services. And now on the PR communications side of the house at Lindenwood University. Our team works really closely with all internal and external communications. And what’s unique about Lindenwood is that we’re the second oldest institution west of the Mississippi. So we’ve got this really deep and vibrant heritage. We are founded as a women’s college in a time where educating women was a little bit taboo. So we’ve always been one to push the envelope and it carries over now into what we’re doing at Lindenwood so many years, almost 200 years, later. We’ve just unveiled our new five year strategic plan. And so we’re working to be a really cutting edge and innovative institution and looking to be a little bit disruptive in the field of higher ed.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Yeah. You were telling me a little bit about the history and I didn’t know that. So I was like, we have to, we have to talk about that today. I know that you’re very passionate about campus tours and now potentially virtual tours. How have you improved your processes in 2022 learning from obviously 2020 and the pandemic? Are you implementing any tactics over at Lindenwood that are helping with that strategy?
Julee Mitsler:
Yeah, so I think the virtual tour went from being this checkbox that higher ed institutions had as part of their admissions recruitment process, but really went from just being something we all did to being mission critical. When things shut down in 2020 and prospective seniors, couldn’t go visit campuses that virtual tour took on a whole new life. And so at Lindenwood, we’ve done a few things to adapt to that changing module change that to that change. One of the things that we’re doing right now is we’re offering our on ground campus tours for those students and families that are able to make the trip to campus and come see us in person. But for those students that aren’t able to make it to campus, we still want them to have that same experience where they get to see campus and get to engage with a student and get to visualize what it would look like to live and eat and study on our campus at Lindenwood. And so we started doing tours on FaceTime and through WhatsApp giving the student that individualized experience that they’re really looking for, and that they’re really wanting in the recruitment process, even if they can’t physically come to campus.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. And I know when we last spoke you talked a little bit about your, your role with CIVSA and the last event. I think that happened that was student led. And I think the students actually talked about some of the pain points with the current virtual tours and, and campus tours. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Julee Mitsler:
Sure. So I was at the collegiate information and visitor services association, or CIVSA, student development Institute. This event brings together campus tour guides from colleges all over the country for two days of networking, professional development, educational sessions, and just kind of sharing best practices. It’s great for both professional staff and for the student staff, because a lot of times they’re kind of an isolated group on their college campus. So it’s nice to get to talk to other students or other professionals that are in the visitor services field and really see how you can share and improve your pro your program from what some other schools are doing. There was a great session that I went to that was put on by students at Wichita State talking about some of the ways that they are adapting their campus tour programming to be multilingual, to really serve the community that surrounds their campus. And their students are leading that initiative, which is really great to see
Shiro Hatori:
Wait, so the students are actually helping to create this multilanguage program out of their tours.
Julee Mitsler:
Yeah, so the two students that led the session one is a native Spanish speaker. The other one is a Spanish second language speaker. And so they were talking about how they worked together. They actually created their own kind of dictionary to use for campus tour specific words that may not translate exactly. So they’ve established some kind of guideposts for how to communicate on their campus tours in Spanish and really just looking for unique ways to serve their Spanish speaking community, to make sure that they’re getting the same campus tour experience that an English speaking student would have.
Shiro Hatori:
Right. Wow. That’s amazing. I didn’t, that’s crazy that the students are really leading that charge. Is there anything that you’re doing right now at Linwood University that makes on-campus tours really unique and special? I know you said you were very passionate about that. And so I was just more curious to hear more about that.
Julee Mitsler:
Sure. So I think a few things that really enhance our campus tour and personalize it for the students as a product of COVID, we’re limiting our tour size. So we’ve got an individual student ambassador that takes out an individual family on their campus tour. That in itself is not extremely unique or different. But I think what’s really impactful for us is the research that our students put in ahead of time to learn about the student, learn about their family. Making sure that if the student is interested in a specific major that we’ve got information available for that major and then meeting with an admissions counselor is an important part of our visit as well. So our students get a chance to sit down and ask questions with their admissions counselor. Somebody who’s really there to be a resource and a support mechanism through that admissions process, because we know that that’s a really stressful time for students.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. And so is the guide do they do any research prior about the students or do they, are they are they informed to ask those questions during the tour?
Julee Mitsler:
A little bit of both there’s certainly elements that you can learn on paper or on an application before a student comes on tour, but there’s also that personal engagement aspect where the longer you’re on a tour with a student and their family, and the more you get a chance to talk to them, the more you may realize that while the student is interested in majoring in business, they may also be really artistically talented and interested in seeing our pottery studio or our maker space. And so I think our tour guides do a really good job of trying to personalize the experience based on how they’re interacting with the student and making sure that if there’s something a student wants to see, we’re giving them the chance to see it on tour.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Generally speaking are, are the students who do opt in for on campus tours, do they end up applying and enrolling,
Julee Mitsler:
You know, I think we’re seeing a change in the trend right now before it was that if a student never stepped foot on campus, they weren’t coming. Now I think with the implementation of these more fluent and more vibrant virtual experiences, travel limitations, ease of travel, not being what it used to be. I think we’re gonna start to see some shifts in that where students may not step foot on campus before they enroll. And so it’s our job as we’re having these virtual tour experiences or virtual visit experiences to make sure that the process and that the experience for the student is as authentic as possible. And we want them to see what campus really looks like. We want them to get a sense of what the university is and what we offer. So it’s really important that we’re being authentic and, and showing them what it would really look like in case they can’t get to campus before they enroll.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. And I, I think I remembered now you mentioned that about getting students to apply and enroll without the in-person visit. I think you were mentioning Lindenwood has a strong local student base. And is that experience helping you get more out of community or outta state student, student role as well?
Julee Mitsler:
Yeah. So one of the neat things about Lindenwood is because we’ve been around for almost 200 years, we have some great legacy histories and families. So even one of my team members who graduated from Lindenwood came to Lindenwood because her grandmother was a student here many years ago. And so we’re seeing a lot of family connections in the Lindenwood community, but as we continue to grow and expand our academic programs and our athletics programs, we’re starting to see a broader reach. So more students from, from throughout the US, more international students. So our campus community is just continuing to get more diverse and that’s something we’re really proud of and something we’re also really prioritizing.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. I think that also sparked – you have a bowling team and a billiards team. Right?
Julee Mitsler:
We do it,
Shiro Hatori:
Is it NCAA division two sport, right.
Julee Mitsler:
So those are club sports for us.
Shiro Hatori:
Oh, okay. Gotcha. Sorry.
Julee Mitsler:
Yeah. So Lindenwood has one of the largest athletics program departments in the country. We’ve got quite a few over 20 NCAA sports and then we’ve also got about 20 student life sports or club sports. So we’ve got something for almost every kind of athlete.
Shiro Hatori:
I love that I’ve been recently getting into bowling. So that’s really interesting to me. Some of my good friends are really, really into it. So that kind of sparked the light for me. Awesome. Well, I’m gonna shift gears a little bit. On our previous conversation, we talked about something that you’re also passionate about and that’s preventing overworking in higher education. I know now with the remote workforce and hybrid workforce, the hours are kind of, you know, never stopping for some people. And I know you’re figuring out ways to empower your team to make sure that they’re not overworking, but, and also having the ability to shift some schedules around. Do you mind telling us a little bit more about that?
Julee Mitsler:
Sure. So things that didn’t necessarily used to feel like they were important are now more important. It was really easy to stop your work day at 5 or 5:30 when you physically left your office. But now for so many team members where their office is in their living room or in their bedroom, or just one room over from their kitchen it’s really easy to get sucked in and not realize how many extra hours they’re putting in or that they haven’t taken a break in, you know, four or five hours of sitting in front of the computer, whereas in a physical office space, that’s something that you do kind of naturally is give yourself those breaks. And so just doing simple things like encouraging my team to block off time for lunch, or to take a 15 break on a beautiful day and go walk outside and just get some fresh air.q Making sure that they are taking those mental breaks from work is really important in this environment where going from your bedroom and your pajamas to your desk and work may only be a matter of 10 steps.
Julee Mitsler:
I think the other piece is thinking about not only has work changed, but life has changed for a lot of people. And so being flexible and accommodating and understanding to that making sure that if, you know, your team member needs to go pick up a sick kid, cuz there’ school calls that’s not the end of the world. You need to give your team members that trust. And you know, if my team member needs to take 45 minutes to go pick up their kid from school, they’re gonna make that time up. And I think really empowering my team to be adults right. And to, to make those decisions has really, really proven that they can do a great job. Their work hasn’t changed their output hasn’t changed if anything, they’ve really bumped up the work and, you know, they’re, they’re doing great things. So I think by really empowering your team and trusting your team in this virtual space, we’re gonna start to see really great things come out of our employees.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Is there a specific tactic that you’ve been using to help communicate that message like, you know, letting them know that they should feel empowered to go kick up a pick up their sick kid at school or that, you know, shifting schedules is okay, is there a certain way you’re relaying the information?
Julee Mitsler:
Yeah. I think just open lines of communication and being transparent with the team, being, understanding and saying things like, I totally understand where you’re coming from. That really validates that I’m, that I care about my team, that I’m listening to my team, that I understand that they’re balancing as many challenges as I’m balancing in their personal lives. And you know, one of the things that I do with my team members is we have a weekly check in, but every week of the month it looks a little bit different. So twice a month, our team has a video call. It’s 30 minutes. We all get on, we do a quick icebreaker. Usually one member of the team comes up with some kind of fun question. As our icebreaker question, we talk about that for a little bit, and then everybody kind of runs through just high priority, high level, what they’re working on.
Julee Mitsler:
It’s a nice way to level set across our department. And so we do that kind of on the first and the third month first in the third weeks of the month. That second week of the month, we actually do the same thing, but we do an audio only meeting. And this came out of an article that I was reading from Stanford about four causes of zoom fatigue and what you can do to fix it. And one of the things that the article identified was how exhausting it is to constantly be on zoom. You’re watching yourself, you’re watching the other person. Your face is four times larger than you’re used to seeing your face. And that can be really exhausting. We’re also locked into this position when we’re on a zoom call. We’re not sitting sideways, we’re not stretching our legs.
Julee Mitsler:
We’re not moving back and forth in our chair to get comfortable. And so by having an audio only team meeting, we’re still doing the same thing. We still have our icebreaker. We still do high level updates from everyone. But just by having that, your camera off for 30 minutes gives you a little bit of a mental break and asking my team for feedback on that. If they liked it, if they didn’t like it was really important. I don’t wanna be making those decisions for my team unilaterally. I want them to have an active voice in making those decisions too. And then lastly, the last week of the month, I do a 15 minute check in one on one with each of my team members. So that gives me a chance to kind of get a temperature check on each of them, how they’re doing, what challenges they’re facing, what they need from me, how I can do a better job of supporting them and, and being their supervisor and just checking in with them as human beings too. I think sometimes in pre COVID life, we, we forgot about that piece. It was easy to once you were at work, only think about work. And so checking in on our team members and having those conversations about just being human in life and what they’re balancing I think is really important and has been really good for all of us as we’ve been growing as a team in this kind of virtual remote capacity,
Shiro Hatori:
That’s really amazing advice. Yeah. Work is now at home. So we have to talk a little bit about what’s going on at home, cuz work is at home now, for sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Well I think we’re just about at time, I was just wondering, where can our listeners connect with you? Do you have a LinkedIn or a Twitter page that people can add you on?
Julee Mitsler:
Yes. Find me on LinkedIn, Julee Mitsler spelling is a little bit unique, so make sure you go ahead and double check that spelling. But I’d love to connect with folks on LinkedIn and love to share with them any of my strategies that I’ve used for my team, or also learn from them as well. So if you have any great tips that you’ve used in managing your team or in revamping your campus visits I am all ears and eager to learn.
Shiro Hatori:
Oh, I, I was gonna say one last thing was the CIVSA organization. That was really valuable information for me as well. I was wondering if you could tell our, our audience about that as well.
Julee Mitsler:
Sure. So if you are a campus visit professional, if you are a party of one or two or three who manage campus tour guides or visitor centers at your institution, look us up the organization is called CSA. It’s C I V S a. You can find us online at CIVSA.org. And this is an organization of about 1200 visit professionals from all over the country. And also we have some international partners as well. We get together for virtual programming every month, and then we have our Student Development Institute in January, every year for our student tour guide programming. And then we also have an annual conference this year will be in Orlando, May 31st through June 4th.
Shiro Hatori:
Amazing. Well, great. Maybe I’ll see you there, but hopefully my boss will be there at least.
Julee Mitsler:
<Laugh> great. Well, we’re looking forward to having you in Orlando and really appreciate you having me on today.
Shiro Hatori:
Yeah, it was great having you on today. Thank you for all your insight and great conversation and to our audience. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.
Julee Mitsler:
Thanks.
