In this episode, Shiro Hatori welcomes back Andrew Sogn, CMO of Dakota State University, to discuss his experiences and insights from his first year in the role. They explore the transition from a larger institution to a specialized STEM-focused university, the challenges and surprises of leadership, and the importance of building trust within the team. Andrew shares early wins, innovative marketing strategies, and the impact of the Cyber 27 initiative on the university’s brand positioning. The conversation also touches on the integration of AI in marketing efforts and the future goals for higher education amidst changing trends.
Key takeaways
- Andrew transitioned from South Dakota State University to Dakota State University, focusing on STEM education.
- The role of a CMO requires a shift from doing to strategic planning and delegation.
- Building trust and communication within the team is crucial for success.
- Early wins included the grand opening of a new athletics complex and e-sports arena.
- Investing in team members’ tools and resources enhances productivity and satisfaction.
- The Cyber 27 initiative positions DSU as a leader in cyber education and technology.
- Success metrics include student success stories and partnerships with industry leaders.
- Innovative campaigns, such as the Fortune magazine cover wrap, showcase DSU’s strengths.
- AI is used as a tool to enhance marketing efforts without replacing human creativity.
- Future goals include expanding graduate programs and addressing the enrollment cliff in higher education.
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Welcome Back
01:12Transition to Dakota State University
04:23Reflections on the CMO Role
07:55Early Wins and Team Growth
11:14Building Team Trust and Communication
15:26Marketing Strategies and Success Metrics
20:38Cyber 27 Initiative and Brand Positioning
22:42Innovative Campaigns and Community Impact
26:15AI Integration in Marketing
27:57Future Goals and Trends in Higher Ed Marketing
Read the transcription
Shiro (00:00.865)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Higher Ed to Manage in podcast hosted by Concept3D. If you like our content, please follow and or subscribe to us. My name is Shira Hattori and I’ll be your host today. And I’m really excited to circle back with the previous guest on this episode today. And we’re going to talk about first years of Higher Ed’s DMO. So lots of learnings, experiences, we’ll talk a little bit about how that progress has been going. So I’m very thrilled to have
Andrew Ston join us again today. Andrew is now serving as a CMO at Dakota State University. Welcome back, Andrew.
Andrew Sogn (00:36.93)
Hey, thanks, Shiro. I appreciate the opportunity. It was fun to hear from you again and reach out and kind of do a recap.
Shiro (00:45.367)
Yeah, and I forgot to mention this. I’m actually like lowering our cadence of our podcast episodes a little bit. So I’m really being picky about who I picked to join this podcast. So it’s great.
Andrew Sogn (00:55.726)
I’m honored, honored that I could be one of those for you. So I appreciate it.
Shiro (00:59.809)
Yeah, well, this is great. Well, let’s start off with a little bit about how the adjustments been, right? Tell us a little bit about Dakota State University and how it’s different from your previous institution.
Andrew Sogn (01:12.354)
Yeah, you bet. So I spent about eight years in some different roles previously at our state, at our state’s land grant institution, South Dakota State University. And then in June of last year, so then just over a year that I’ve been here, made the move down to Dakota State University, which is really the computer science, technical, STEM focused.
university within our Board of Regents system. And so it’s about 45 minutes away from South Florida State University where I previously was to live there and drive down every day. it’s great. DSU has so many fun things happening. We talk constantly about the need to just tell more stories and showcase all the work that our students are doing, faculty are doing, staff are doing, right?
the athletics team and their growths and things like that. so STEM focused university that is really on the rise. We’ve seen significant enrollment growth over the last 10 years. We’ve dedicated a lot of attention to those cutting edge technologies, those technologies of tomorrow, if you will, and bringing kind of cyber into everything we do type of stuff.
Shiro (02:31.149)
Mm-hmm.
Shiro (02:38.315)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I know there’s been a bit of a learning curve in like just the topics that you speak about too, right? Cause you’re being more specialized, being more focused now in terms of marketing.
Andrew Sogn (02:48.45)
Yeah, you bet. I still sit in rooms every day that people talk about stuff and I smile and nod, right? Smile and wave, because I’m surrounded by brilliant people and people who are doing just big picture things and huge impact things. And they’re humble about it. And they just kind of say, yeah, we dealt with quantum computing yesterday. Or no, we have a power cyber lab that people can work in this virtual space.
test all the hacking and test all their technology skills and whatnot. And it’s just, it’s nothing for them, right? They talk about that stuff over coffee. And to me, I’m sitting there like, that is, that’s just amazing. It’s things like that. So, no, there’s been, there’s been some good surprises. There’s been some good learning growth, but good people.
Shiro (03:37.047)
Yeah, that’s great. I had this random shower thought the other day about just like random like arithmetic and like the hypotenuse, how to calculate hypotenuse. Like I don’t even think I remember that anymore, which is pretty crazy in that you have these like AI engineers who are doing like the most insane, you know, probably mathematical equations. And I was like, wow, I can’t even calculate the angle, but the triangle probably anymore. So it’s pretty crazy.
Andrew Sogn (04:00.854)
Yeah, yeah, we got people building AI, using AI, integrating AI, all of that stuff. And it’s fun to be surrounded by people who are really going to change the world in the future.
Shiro (04:13.101)
Well, let’s talk a little bit more specifically about your role as a CMO, becoming a CMO, looking back on your first year, what surprised you most that you weren’t expecting about this position?
Andrew Sogn (04:24.662)
Yeah. you know, I thought about that before of what kind of the answer, what are the surprises? you know, one of the things that I came up with, I don’t know that it’s a huge surprise because I knew it going into it. need to do it, but maybe how hard it is, to go from doer of things to planner, big picture thinking, strategic efforts on it, and then handing it off. right. spent, I spent a lot of time.
running social or building plans or working with students on stuff or creating content or working hand in hand with And now it’s, you know, I meet with, with fellow strategic leaders and they say, we really need to market this. can we do? And it’s my job to take it back to our team and say, I trust you guys to bring it to life. and so I’m not, my hands aren’t in it all the time, right? I’m still doing a lot of things and busy and things like that, but it’s that it’s that switch from.
the doer and the activator to the planner and strategizer type of stuff. So, you know, the other thing that I laugh at frequently, and I hope he watches this so that he can hear me say thank you to him, of when I was right, that kind of number two assistant director of marketing at SDSU is I found myself going to the director, Mike, a lot of times and saying,
Hey, I have this idea, or can I run with this? Can we buy this? Or if we get this, we get to change XYZ type of thing. And now I’m in the spot that I’m in my kid and I have people coming to me and saying, hey, I have this idea. What can we run with? And I’ve texted him more than once and said, I’m sorry for always trying to make you spend money on big ideas or things like that. And he laughs and we have good relationship there, but it’s.
There’s so much to do and there’s so much time. And so there comes with this, need to really grow in time management, need to grow in delegation, need to grow in trust with people. and just knowing that you’re surrounded by a good team who does good things and, you need to be really strategic and a, and a strong kind of. Advocate for yourself, on time of that’s a really great project that I have to dedicate energy to this right now because it, it.
Andrew Sogn (06:44.248)
means bigger things type of stuff.
Shiro (06:47.703)
Yeah, I mean, hearing your story there, I think learning to say no more frequently is like a theme I heard. I know you didn’t say it specifically, but I know that can be difficult. And there’s a lot of things. Yeah, go ahead.
Andrew Sogn (07:00.662)
Yeah, and we, it is, right? I’m a people person and I want to make stuff work for folks and I’m surrounded by a group of people that really one of their favorite things to do is to make others happy. And so when people come to us with stuff, it’s, yeah, we want to make it work. We want to make your vision come to life and do stuff. Sometimes though you have to say no to…
what doesn’t quite fit in your bucket and you gotta learn to stay in your lane and you gotta say, this is where my role is at the university and this is what I get to impact every day. And anything outside of that, I gotta go find other partners to make happen.
Shiro (07:39.309)
Gotcha. this is great. And then it’s been just over a year now, right? Like just on the money, right? Yep.
Andrew Sogn (07:46.028)
Yep, pretty much. think I started June 24th of last year, basically.
Shiro (07:51.735)
That’s great. Do you have any early wins, team growths, any successes that you’re really happy about that you’d like to share with us?
Andrew Sogn (07:58.518)
Yeah. you know, we’ve, we’ve done a ton of big things, right? So it’s funny is when I came in, one of the first projects that I got thrown into was, we were opening a brand new athletics complex, and included a brand new football stadium, football field, and then, an e-sports arena, new training rooms, new locker rooms, new virtual.
press conference and streaming rooms and things like that and meeting rooms and whatnot. And with that, we hosted something called Trojan Nights, which was a kind of two part celebration, one being a concert, a pretty big concert, and then a football game as well to kind of celebrate this grand opening. so, you know, I start day one, I’m…
meeting people, figuring things out. What am I doing? And it’s, I’m walking around the stadium with partners and saying, yeah, I think we should do this or that or ending up on stage that night to hand guitars off to the president so she can give it to the donors and things like that. It was a great concert. We worked with awesome people. And so like from the get-go, our team is involved with how do we make this bigger? How do we tell the story? How do we carry the brand through a stadium opening, a complex opening and a big concert and things like that.
hands on deck. You know, the other thing that I think is a big win is, I’ve talked with our group about this a lot, is there’s always, when you have a new leader come in, you have this gap prior that people are just kind of surviving and hanging and trying to get stuff done and do the work, but you’re missing someone to sit at the top of a department type of thing. And then you have that person come in and it’s all bright and shiny and fun and…
They have new ideas and we have new ideas and we’re working and doing stuff and then you hit this lull you hit this period We’re like, this person’s actually hanging around this leaders actually here and they’re actually all these big ideas or all these changes and things like that that we’re doing Are happening and it can come with some tough choices and tough conversations and tough moments of Do I really trust this person? Do I really do they really invested? Do they really care?
Andrew Sogn (10:13.728)
about where we’re going and is that vision, is that direction where we need to go? And so you go through that and then after a few months of the excitement and then the lull, you get to this place of, yep, we’re all pointed in the ship together in the right direction. We’re all trusting each other. Things are good. And now we get to do the work. And so really, I think one of the biggest wins is that I’ve had people buy in to my vision. I’ve had people buy into
what I can bring to the table. And then in turn is I’ve been able to buy into them and try to invest in them and try to do good work. And so maybe that’s the biggest win, right? It’s just pointing in a direction and saying, this is where we’re heading. Let’s go get it done.
Shiro (10:59.629)
Do you have any key moments from your lens that you think helped other than just sticking around for the year, right? That really led to that buy-in from your team, right? Like to be like, all right, this is our new leader and I’m down. Like I’m here to support him and down to be part of this team. Like were there any key moments that you can reflect on there?
Andrew Sogn (11:17.029)
Yeah. Um, you know, I, from the get-go, I started doing, you know, I asked my team really some tough questions of, uh, you know, what’s your favorite part of the job? What do you really enjoy? What do you not enjoy? What, what’s something that you never want to do again? Uh, and can we afford to never do that? Um, and then two is, is where do want to go? Where do want to grow? What, what areas can I help invest in you and trust you? Um, one of the stories.
I think is our strategic communications coordinator, one of them, Jen. She is really, really interested in podcasting and multimedia and storytelling and things like that. you know, being able to sit with her and say, I trust you to go get it done. And you’re, really good at tying in our multimedia team into your storytelling. Be the driver of those things. Make your voice come to life. Advocate for yourself. I think it’s consistency too is.
I tell our team a lot of my doors open to talk unless it’s closed. and that sounds really silly, like right now I’m not able to be available to talk because I’m on a call and, doing things, but most of the time my door is open and I want to hear what’s going on. want to know where I can come in, and assist, but then also I’m not going to go step in your, your area. I’m not going to take your cheese. want you to get celebrated. I want you to grow. want you to solve problems.
and be a face and a voice for DSU within your own role type of thing. so other moments of kind of, aha, we went through a little bit of a restructure as you come in and talk about, we built a creative services team out of our existing either positions that we had that were open or just kind of moving some people around.
to where they’re kind of now all working together on projects and things flow together so that the brand can really sit there and come to life between photo, video, social media, graphic design, athletics, marketing, things like that. All of these things were part of what we’ve done, but putting that team together to say, I need you guys to work together rather than just sit at your station and…
Andrew Sogn (13:36.216)
get your work done and then go home at the end of the day is really invest in the brand and invest how we do things. So getting that off the ground was good. We also had conversations, sorry, this is a very long-winded answer for you, of just investing in our people, right? If you don’t have the tools to do your job, if you don’t have the tools, the camera that you need or the computer that you need or…
Shiro (13:45.133)
Mm-hmm.
Shiro (13:48.981)
No, you’re good.
Andrew Sogn (14:01.358)
The monitor that you have works, but it’d be really nice to be able to have a dual monitor set up or different desk space or things like that. Even a different chair, right? Is making sure that we take allocations from our budget to say, I want to invest in our people to make sure that they can do their job well, because that is going to be so impactful for what we’ve done. If they’re comfortable, if they’re happy, if they’re ready to tackle the job, because they’re not going to get slowed down by a
computer that can’t render video or being able to have two monitors means I can work on a web project over here while looking at my notes and vision for what the client wanted over there.
Shiro (14:42.827)
No, these are really good points. Yeah, it’s as a more of an individual contributor myself. I know how frustrating it is to not have the tools or access to the resources that you need when you’re being asked to do things. And it’s like, I don’t have the resources. So like, what do you want me to do?
Andrew Sogn (14:54.594)
Yeah. Yeah, yep. D. Right, I had a conversation just yesterday about kind of that like employee satisfaction type of thing, and that that base level is do you have the tools to do your job? And I want to make sure the answer to that for our group is always yes.
Shiro (15:12.801)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love this topic. Let’s go, let’s dive deeper a little bit into the actual marketing itself, right? So you’re now at a smaller institution with a stronger specialized identity that’s tech forward, right? How do success metrics look like now that you’re in this position?
Andrew Sogn (15:32.46)
Yeah, good question. So we have our cyber 27 initiative that has several pillars of growth, right? I had mentioned the.
you know, AI programs, things like that. And it’s growing our Beacon College of Cyber and Computer Sciences, right? And growing enrollment in that, it’s building our ARL, it’s becoming a premier digital forensics lab. It’s all of these pieces that’s really tied into growth of that area. And really, this is what we’re good at, right? This is our niche. We are STEM at Dakota State University. And so let’s grow that and invest in that.
so, so that’s the, like, that’s the mission and what we’re after, but we’re also not right tech. You hear the word tech school or you hear tech, tech college, or that’s what it’s focused on. And I think it can get, misconstrued that, that we are in the coding side of things at all times. Right. And, certainly we do that. And certainly there are big things that happen there. but we’re, what we like to say is that we’re cyber savvy.
And what we’re doing is we are fulfilling the job market projections 10 years from now, not the job market projections of what we see today. And so what the future is, is cyber infused, right? Everything has a cyber job, be it a teacher, be it a physical therapist, be it a art major, be it an English major, right?
business, right? You have to be able to be cyber savvy if you’re going to be in a boardroom because you’re going to have coders that you’re going to need to talk to, but you’re also going to need to use the tools, those technologies of tomorrow. I’ve said that a couple of times already, right? But like you have to be able to use those because if you don’t, you’re lagging behind type of stuff. And so I think I mentioned it to you in our prep call of our education programs are
Andrew Sogn (17:32.43)
cyber infused education programs that you’re not just learning classroom management. That’s a huge part of it, but you’re learning how to bring technology into the classroom to give back to the next generation and prep them. We have this really cool thing here called our veil virtual avatar learning environment where students can come into our education students can come into a room and through AI and software and programming, they
work with a virtual classroom where you have all these different styles of students. One of them is the quiet kid who’s really smart. One of them’s the really outspoken class clown. One of them’s the ADHD kid that can’t sit still, but is really smart. And so you learn virtually through classroom management and you work with all of these people. And then on the backend, you get to review and look at a type of stuff. so like it’s, it’s infused in everything we do. It’s really cutting edge.
Shiro (18:06.605)
Hmm.
Andrew Sogn (18:32.234)
It’s a blast to be a part of. You know, the other part is we’re small, but we’re mighty. As we talk brand voice and we talk, share brand voice and thought leadership, that’s another part of the Cyber 27 campaign that we’re doing is pushing ourselves out there as industry leaders, our faculty, our administration, our leadership, right? We had our, one of my counterparts, colleagues, Sean, spoke at Cisco Live.
a couple weeks ago and is one of the people that’s on the main stage at Cisco Live talking about system integration and protection and all these different areas of software and technology. And then you have President Griffiths, our leader, talking AI to massive corporations and how you build it, how you invest it, how it works. And then you have our Dean of the Beacon College who has worked with our provost on
hundreds of partnerships and articulation agreements with, you know, Army cyber or different groups like that. And it’s pushing ourselves out there so that when you think cyber, when you think STEM, that Dakota State University is a part of that conversation, there’s some heavy hitters out there and we’re right there alongside of them of, know, there’s an individual who has said, you know, there’s something in the water at DSU.
We have students competing in cyber games, right? The US cyber games, the Olympics of cyber is, our students are there. We have students winning competitions all the time in AI. We have a cyber camp that has grown into afterschool activities and programming around the state and things like that that takes our students and our leadership and invests in the next generation of females in STEM to expose them to it.
have them see people so that they can envision themselves as great STEM focused leaders. So it’s telling that story, right? That’s the piece is we’re small but mighty and we can pack a big punch on that and making sure the message is out there.
Shiro (20:35.309)
Mm-hmm.
Shiro (20:46.445)
That’s great. It sounds like you’re really leading into this identity of tech savvy, STEM, cyber as a big part of your marketing strategy. it sounds like almost your competition is really like, or maybe your success metric is like, what is your brand lift amongst those categories, right? Like how often are you coming up in the cyber games that you’re talking about that students are, collegiate students are a part of? Am I hearing things right?
Andrew Sogn (20:52.78)
Yeah.
Andrew Sogn (21:15.308)
Yeah, yep, absolutely. It’s the student success stories that we’re telling. It’s working with our industry partners to make sure DSU is alongside the big names. But it’s not just for the glam and the joy of saying, yeah, I’m tied to the NSA, right? It’s that we’re investing in that, and we’re putting out graduates who will change the world.
Shiro (21:34.189)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Sogn (21:42.684)
you know, we’re one of, of 10, it might be 11 now that have all three, center for academic excellence, badges from the NSA. That’s a big deal to be a small school, in Dakota, in South Dakota, right. That, has these badges and we’re churning out good work and the experts who are doing the work every day are coming to us for master’s programs to scale up, to level up, to, do PhDs, things like that.
we’re right alongside them and grow.
Shiro (22:16.557)
It would be great to get one of those folks on an interview on your upcoming podcast launch with one of your creative team members. that’s great.
Andrew Sogn (22:21.408)
It would be good. Yep. We’ve done some of that stuff. Yeah, I’ll do a plug for that, right? I can plug for a podcast or our podcast cyber ology talks about that, how we’re cutting edge and how we’re leading the way in cyber and all of that different stuff. So yeah.
Shiro (22:27.329)
Of course.
Shiro (22:38.093)
That’s amazing. Is there one specific example of a campaign that you’ve run in the last year that you’re really proud of? Maybe it is this 27 initiative, but maybe like one specific part of it.
Andrew Sogn (22:50.466)
Yeah, that cyber 27 initiative is just overall a really powerful one. think maybe one of the cool things that we’ve done with it last year is we got into Fortune magazine as a cover wrap and brought in this virtual reality, augmented reality type of programming alongside of our marketing firm partners and kind of brought STEM to a printed publication and kind of tied it back to it type of stuff.
Shiro (23:04.237)
Hmm.
Andrew Sogn (23:19.554)
That one was cool. I think EasyTalk stories, one of the really cool stories that we’ve had good partners with and telling is our program, our teacher apprenticeship program. Teacher apprenticeship pathway program that we do, is higher education, or excuse me, education overall, right? Teachers, there’s a gap in the job markets. And so what we’re doing are,
our Dean, College of Human or Education and Human Performance started this TAP program alongside some really good partners of taking paraprofessionals or taking aides or taking things like that. And they can work in a school to go get their teaching degrees, get hands-on experience while taking classes to get full-time teaching degrees so that they can then step into those schools where they have job openings and be qualified to do so.
Shiro (24:14.285)
Is this more for like K through 12? You’re saying like to get, that’s incredible. Yeah, there’s such a big gap there right now. It’s, that’s incredible.
Andrew Sogn (24:16.536)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
There is, and so he would be, you should have him on this, right? He’s fascinating and great to talk to, and he can tell that story so much better than I can because he’s in it every day, right? But we’ve been able to, you know, our first cohort went through and graduated, and so we got to tell that story. Right now we have a pair of twins that are taking it together, and so like, how cool is that little nugget to be able to tell? Or…
Shiro (24:31.213)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Sogn (24:47.274)
You know, we’ve been able to do a video on it where we went out and talked to the first person that said yes to a TAP program and now they’re teaching in the state full time. And so we drove our video team out there to tell her story and things like that. so it’s those, I think the really fun successes are when you get handed a project and it’s the scope of it is I’m going to have you do this. And what you get to do is then work with your team and work with partners to go, no, it’s so much bigger. There’s so many different ways to tell the story and so many different avenues.
Shiro (24:55.629)
That’s awesome.
Andrew Sogn (25:16.962)
to keep it fresh and keep it top of mind. So yeah, that’s been a win.
Shiro (25:21.611)
Are those teachers now like local or locally in your area too? Which is amazing because that’s gonna feed into more curious students for your future too. So that’s incredible.
Andrew Sogn (25:25.772)
Yeah, yeah, I mean we have them.
Andrew Sogn (25:32.588)
Yep. Yep. Absolutely. It’s a, it’s a fantastic program that, that David and then, Phoenicia on our team and so many others, right? I shouldn’t name drop because there’s too many to name drop. but, but they’re all just outstanding partners that are just, they’re visionary, and to be able to sit alongside, right? Like I don’t, it’s funny as one of my notes down here, when you talked about like, what, what would you tell yourself is like, trust yourself that you’re at the table for a reason, but at the same time, it’s like, I sit around some of those people and I’m like,
Shiro (25:44.215)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Sogn (26:02.838)
man, are you visionary? Man, can you think ahead on stuff? And like, how do I get there? How, what’s my big spark idea that someone’s gonna say that about me? So.
Shiro (26:04.642)
Haha.
Shiro (26:13.687)
That’s incredible. Yeah, that’s great. I know you mentioned AI a few times, right? Are there ways you’re thinking about implementing AI with your team as a marketing tool or make marketing agent?
Andrew Sogn (26:25.11)
Yeah. I mean, I think it, it, it’s a tool, right? It is. don’t, we don’t rely on AI to do the job for us because we have bright minds in this office to, do some of that work, but it’s a tool to make things easier. It’s, bringing it into our videos to make a process quicker. It’s, it’s graphics, things like that. It’s, you know, leaning on, dropping it into, instead of having to listen to a transcript for two hours to
to do a half hour interview and type stuff, it’s plugging it into that and then listening through quickly to say, this accurate, is it right type of thing. And so we’re using it on a lot of stuff, Or sparking ideas or brainstorming or, I wanna build this page, could you give me a quick outline of what should be included in it based on best practices, stuff like that. So we’re using it, it’s a part of what we do at DSU. It’d be…
It’d be hypocritical to say that we don’t use it, but we teach it, we believe in it. Right. And so we want, we want students to see us using it. We want students to see us hands on actively applying the technologies that we’re teaching them, to model good behavior and do it ethically, do it right, do it, so that you’re not taking away the creativity of, of creatives because again, they’re here to be creative and they’re, they’re human thinkers and they’re connectors. And that emotion comes through, through them, not through AI.
But it’s a tool that we use every day and it’s
Shiro (27:54.207)
That’s awesome. Well, you’ve been in your seat for just over a year now. Do you have any goals that you’re looking forward to a year two or three or any trends that you’re seeing right now within higher ed marketing?
Andrew Sogn (28:06.934)
Yeah, you bet. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge in the elephant in the room, That funding is a real thing. And as we talk about what higher education looks like five years from now, one year from now, 10 years from now, all of that, it’s how do we do more and how do we be self-sufficient and tell our story in a unique way when there’s some uncertainties?
It’s our job as leaders, I think, to be transparent about those, to be upfront about those, but then also to say, everyone has a voice in this, everyone has a role in this. What can we build together to set a course for DSU over the next 100 years that that rise continues and that even when there are uncertainties that we have the steadiness of knowing we’re headed down the right road.
You know, the other thing I think that we’re seeing and that we’re already doing and investing and only going to grow in is grad programs, right? We’ve talked about this. Everyone in higher education talks about this enrollment cliff, right? I bet you’ve never done a podcast where you haven’t heard the term enrollment cliff zero. What is it? Right? We, we know it’s coming. We know what’s there, or at least like it’s out there that, that there’s no point in dancing around it, but.
Shiro (29:12.813)
I’ve never even spoken about it. What is it?
Andrew Sogn (29:26.37)
There is so much to be done in that next level of education, that up-skilling work, things like that. And it’s not always a PhD, right? The PhD process is right for some folks who wanna do certain levels of work, but it’s the student who got their bachelor’s degree that is saying, boy, if I could learn this next skill or level up, it means my career hits a different trajectory than just goes. And so we’ve…
really invested in our master’s programs. We’re also fully online in a lot of our programs. And that’s not something that every university has been able to do, right? We, I think it was 1998 that we offered our first online class basically. And so like right as the worldwide web was launching, we were doing online education and how it’s, you we have a virtual student union. We, we can bring all of our classes into the virtual space and so that a student can learn from anywhere.
if that’s their choice and the learning out rate classes look different online versus in person but the learning outcomes are the same and the the work that we let you do to be able to prepare yourself is the same type of thing and so that that online growth that masters growth the grad programs in general is a trend that I think others are In higher education are looking at and we are we’re doing it. We’re building it. We’re chasing after
Shiro (30:55.149)
That’s fantastic. I love to hear your vision and the transparency too. So I appreciate that a lot.
Andrew Sogn (31:01.356)
Yeah. And you know, it’s not, I get to make, I get to make the vision look pretty. I get to sit alongside people, like our president and our provost and our other, our deans and directors and things like that who see this path towards greatness. and they say, come with us, let’s go do it together type of thing.
Shiro (31:22.285)
That’s great. Well, I know we’re just at about time. Where can our listeners and our followers learn more about DSU and then also the work you’re doing as well?
Andrew Sogn (31:31.79)
Yeah, come find us dsu.edu or search that cyber 27 initiative to kind of see what we’re doing. Feel free to connect with me. I’m linked in Andrew Song, SOGN. Love to connect, love to meet people, things like that. And, you know, was funny. I had a conversation yesterday with someone is the most important work that we do here isn’t the marketing and isn’t the crazy stories. It’s investing in the people.
And so it’s from the students to the staff to the faculty to my team to myself to my colleagues is it’s about connection. And so I’m always happy to connect with people, to meet new people, to chat, to be a listening ear, to ask questions, to do all that. So it’s great. I appreciate the opportunity.
Andrew Sogn (32:21.848)
Thanks.
