Integrating Student Voices into Strategic Decision-Making

John O'Brien: Welcome to another Community Conversation. I'm excited you're here with us and that I'm here with Vanessa Kenon, who is an old friend and who is the Associate Vice President of Technology Compliance and Community Engagement at the University of Texas San Antonio. Welcome, Vanessa.

Vanessa Kenon: John, it is so great to be here with you today. Looking forward to this conversation

John O'Brien: Together. Finally, we've been talking about doing this for a long time and while we were waiting for the record button to go on, we were trying to figure out, as people do, how long have we known each other? And you mentioned that maybe it was at an Achieving the Dream event maybe 10 years ago. You'll notice I'm wearing an achieving the dream. This is not accidental. I normally wear all the Ikas logo possible, but I recently joined the Achieving the Dream Board and a meeting's coming up. So I have that in my mind. And I'm also aware that we're here today to talk about students and so wearing and achieving the dream logo wear seems like the right thing to do. So I think we're here today to talk about and around the whole idea of students, and it's a big part of EDUCAUSE. Our new vision statement is inspiring the transformation of higher education in service to a greater good. And a lot of that greater good is the amazing research institutions do and all the other ways we impact our community. But who could argue that a big part of our engagement and the greater good we make is with students. We once did some math and figured that our member institutions probably serve over 14 million students, which says a lot about our community. So I think it's important for us to spend some time thinking about students. So were you involved in IT governance when you were a student? Dare we ask questions like this?

Vanessa Kenon: We didn't see much of that, especially from the IT governance side of it. Most institutions have what's called a student government association, but they really are not as involved and they weren't involved back then for me. And that's been when I finished my doctorate degree. That's been about 17, 18 years ago. So I was a graduate fellow for a while and we did a few little things here and there, but nothing really with IT governance. I didn't see that until I came into the IT department. And we started to do a little bit more with our previous CIO and with under all of current CIO, Kendra Ketchum. We've done a lot with student governance. We started back when Ken Pierce was here, we did quite a bit of events where we'd have students to come in, but we've really taken it to a whole new level. I think we are really looking at the importance that the students are the people that we are here to serve and they're in places where we are not. They see things no matter how much we think we know about what's going on on our campuses, they're here 24 7, they're using our technology 24 7. They see things and experience things that we never can as the people who are running our IT departments.

John O'Brien: I love the way you talk about that because it's an important experience We need to tap into, we need to be aware of. And yet, I don't know my experience anyway, being on many campuses over the years has been that student governance or student involvement is usually one or two students serving on a committee and they come to the first few meetings and then oftentimes stop attending. And why? Well, because we use acronyms that we don't bother to explain. We cover topics without providing context and then we're astonished when they don't feel like they're being heard or listened to. Does that ring a bell?

Vanessa Kenon: Yes, it does. And I really think that we have started programs here at UTSA that have kind of broken through those barriers and those cycles where you have students that come in and students come and they leave. That's why you have to have that continuity. And one of the unique things we started through our Bold Careers Interns and ambassadors program, which is run through the IT department, is very, very rare to have a internship program spearheaded in the IT department. And we have that at UTSA. So as a part of that, one of the things that we started in our CIO asked us to get this started was a student console. Once again, we'd had something like that going before like a committee and exactly what you just said, we'd see some of that. Sometimes people would come, we had a good relationship with the student government association.

Vanessa Kenon: They always kind of had people to come in. But you want to expand that beyond just those one or two students that you're talking about. So what we have found with the console that we set up here through our IT department, we have 25 to sometimes 35 students to show up and give input. And those students are from students who either are working in it, some of those students that are working at the help desk, they get the calls that are coming in. So if there are issues and they see issues that are, Hey, we see this a lot. We are getting a lot of calls for this from students, then they can give us the feedback. Or we're getting a lot of calls from this from faculty or staff. They're a big part of what goes on there. But also in that group, we have students from our Bold Careers programs.

Vanessa Kenon: Those students are students during their internships or their students during their ambassadorships. So if they're in that program, they're coming from across the campus, not just IT students who have a good feel for it. And like you said, they may understand some of those acronyms, but the students who don't as well are a part of that program. So here's a good example. Even though we're IT department, we have interns from our healthcare program. So you stop and think of it, wow, what do you do with students from public health? And when we first started this program, that was a decision. Me students that are coming from marketing communications, we could always use them to help us to utilize better communication skills, getting messaging out. But my question was what do we do with public health professionals? And we started to think about the fact that anything that goes on with health and public health all surrounds it.

Vanessa Kenon: So why not have these students if they want to come and be a part of this program, have them to do research work? So that's what we did. So we accepted those students. We've had about 16 of those students to go through this program in the last three or four years. And those students come in and they write and do research papers. A lot of undergraduate students come in, they've not had that experience. And all of those research papers are associated to public health and technology. So they're looking at everything from how wearables affect us that I'm sitting here looking at my Samsung, that gauges a lot of things that I do, how much I'm walking and what my health is like. They're looking at those type of things. They're looking in our publishing articles on eSports. How does that affect the brain? How does that affect the future students hearing the whole works?

Vanessa Kenon: The things we don't think about This semester, that particular group will be looking at technology and our veterans, they're going to be working with our veterans department as well. We realized being here in San Antonio, which is military city USA, we have a lot of veterans on our campus. So we started to look and say, Hey, we've got these great programs in ServiceNow. We have these great programs in all these different areas. We're working with Rackspace, we're working with all of these different Department of defense contractors, but we don't have a lot of veterans in the program. So we decided that why don't we just take some of these interns and help them to go look at what are some of the issues? What are some of the needs of all veteran students in public health? And look at some of those students, how does this relate to what they're doing with their research? So really, really excited on what's going on with that program.

John O'Brien: I mean that's, I've never heard anything like that in my travel. So it seems like you're leading the way in

Vanessa Kenon: This. It is very rare. It's so rare that David Crane, who is the CIO for the UT system, had us to come in and do a presentation for all of our UT system schools on what we're doing in our IT department is several of them are using this program as a model. And a lot of things to give some credit to EDUCAUSE we got a lot of ideas running through EDUCAUSE looking at, we've done publications for the EDUCAUSE Review. We've done stories for them. And some of those students who are working in the program have written the stories. I remember having two students to come in and they were undergraduate students and their first semester edco asked to do a story on what we were doing. And those two students came in and here it is, they get an article in the EDCO review, their first semester working in our program. And I remember one of my students, it was so funny, she says, I sent this to all of my relatives in India and all over the place and they're just so proud of me. So you never know where you're going to pick up new things. And so that has really expanded.

John O'Brien: Well, that's part of what I wanted to ask about and that's one of the answers to the question I'm going to ask, which is, okay, so you sounds like you maybe personally are involved in learning all this about student experience with wearables and you talked about that. But then what do you do? Where's the feedback loop for that to the larger IT governance? How does what you learn from these interactions with students that seem to me so extraordinary, how does that find its way into impacting the university's technology strategic plan? I mean, I'm saying it in a way that's provocative.

Vanessa Kenon: No, this is great. So to add a little bit more about that, these public health students, and that's just one small group under us because we have quite a few students that have gone through this program. In fact hundreds at this point out of our cybersecurity, engineering, computer science, the whole works. But for these students and the students who serve on the committee that are coming from on the console, that's coming from all the different areas, when they come and they meet, they are not just with me. Our CIO is there and her whole cabinet as well. So the deputy CIO is there, the associate deputy, CIO, the director of strategic services, the director of support services, they're all in the room with the students. So they're getting the feedback from those students right there. They may come in and say, Hey, we are having a problem with an IT issue in this particular building.

Vanessa Kenon: Things are not, the wifi is not the best there. So all of the things that they experience, it goes both ways. They're giving us some impact things on that too. When we're looking at making changes in particular software, we just moved from what my goodness gracious blackboard to canvas. Those are the type of things you want to get input from the students. When we had, everybody was on Google and we moved all the students from Google Mail into Microsoft Mail. So here's the difference on that and having those kinds of discussions and what are you going to see out in the world when you go to work in an office. And then looking at our teachers, because remember we have a huge education program here as well. So some of those students have to have the Google suite. So we have some students who have the G suite and they also have the Microsoft Suite. So getting feedback, how is that working and being able to share that feedback, not just with our IT folks, but having our CIO and our deputy CIO to share that as well with the president's cabinet. So that way you're getting really, really good feedback from the students.

John O'Brien: And since we go way back, I think you were involved in what we then called the IPAs work of bonus points. If you remember what IPAs meant? Stood

Vanessa Kenon: For? Oh, let's see.

John O'Brien: Integrated.

Vanessa Kenon: Integrated planning. Oh my goodness gracious.

John O'Brien: For advising And student services.

Vanessa Kenon: Student services. And we started off with one S and then we went to two

John O'Brien: S. Yeah, we added an S that took committee, hundreds of hours of committee work. Oh my to get there. Unbelievable. But I'm remembering this was all about, so how do you integrate technology into student services in a way that's appropriate and responsive to needs? And it was a great, great work that ED cause did in collaboration with partners. And there was a report at one point that I'll never forget, and it was on who's on the key committees that determine how we're going to integrate technology into student services. And I remember because it was a slide in my slide deck for many years after, and it was who are the least represented groups on these governing committees that decide how we do these things? And then the two lowest represented groups in my memory were students and faculty were thinking like, well, these are the two groups that are most necessary for it to succeed and who it's built for. So it sounds like that might have sort of affected your approach to how we make technology decisions.

Vanessa Kenon: No question at all. So much has changed. And one of the things we did coming out of that IPAs program is we made a lot of change. And when we did our integration, especially with the first S, I'll never forget my IPAs, my manager at the time said, Vanessa, you guys are doing things a little bit different in your program. Some of the programs were doing their student success things with maybe just one department. They kind of put a tip in the water. We did the entire university. So when you do it that way and you're doing an entirely the whole university, a big change like that, bringing in some of the tools we brought in, then you're always going to have some naysayers. So you've got to get folks on board. And for us, our advising group was absolutely so important because at that point in time, they really didn't have as much input.

Vanessa Kenon: Now if you stop and look at advising groups across the country, I think that IPA work made a lot of changes. And so those questions came back to me, you guys are doing this not just at a department level, you're doing it at an infrastructural level. And I remember my program manager saying, bill would like to know how are you doing that and how is you guys different? And I remember saying, you mean Bill Gates wants to know what I have to say or what we're doing with this? I mean, they were putting their money into this, the Gates Foundation, but I was really impressed at how involved he really was and the fact that for some of our meetings, he actually came in, showed up, we put things on the wall, we looked at, hey, here's our next steps. And once we put degree works here at our school, we did not have a degree planning tool that made such a difference. That tool is still here. The students still love it. And when I see students with degree work shirts, I'm always asking them about that project and I always say, Hey, that was our project. We put that here is still here. And many of the other tools

Vanessa Kenon: That we put in through the first IPA program and the second IPAs program are still here. And we've added so many more.

John O'Brien: Well, you mentioned naysayers, and I'm watching your face here when I say this, so you tell me if you disagree, but my sense over many years of working in campuses and so forth, is that the whole topic of IT, governance is not exactly a warm and fuzzy welcome topic. So my first question is, and I haven't been on a campus in half a dozen years or well obviously not nine years since I left Minnesota, but has that changed? Is it governance? I mean it always seemed like it was kind of a necessary inconvenience would be how I would describe how IT governance was generally perceived as opposed to what I hear from you, which is an opportunity to get feedback and do things better than you might otherwise have done in isolation. But am I remembering it wrong and am I being nostalgic? I've been accused of this.

Vanessa Kenon: No, no. I think you have it right on the nose and there's so many different things about governance and I'll go out to conferences, I'll go out and speak at events, and you have CIOs here and we're talking about governance. One of the things I like that Kendra Ketchum brought here is she's got this little funnel as to how things work. So the big thing is a lot of times people will get grants for things. Those grants run out. Then how are you going to fund that afterwards? That's a big, big one. So the way the governance program is that they've set up here with the IT governance is with business relationship managers. And when I talk to people about that, they're like, wow, you guys have bms. And you notice I said what it was before I said bms, you have bms,

John O'Brien: Another acronym?

Vanessa Kenon: Yes, business relationship managers. We do. So when folks come up and they're looking at starting something new that is going to affect it and it's going to affect IT resources, we get them with a business relationship manager. And I can think of two projects right now that have come across through my Bow Careers program. One where people have reached out was our eSports program, looking at what we're going to do because we have a big eSports program right now with Six Flags, which is right across, I can look out my window here. Six Flags is across Loop 1604. And so we have a project with them where our arena is now, but we know long term we've got to get our arena here on campus. We just did a huge merger with the UT Health Center here in San Antonio, UT Health San Antonio, which is going to make us the third largest research institution in the state of Texas.

Vanessa Kenon: So we're talking a major, major move large in resources for funding. I mean, it's just fantastic what's going on, but we know what's going to happen with our students and what will need to happen with that. So what was the first thing we did? I thought about it. I was like, Vanessa, you have to make sure you're going through the process. We have a process set in place. They need to go and start to talk to that business relationship manager. We have another big program that's coming on campus with the veterans. And remember I told you our hcap public health students are going to be working with the Veterans Department. Well that's a major federal grant that's coming in. So how do we get all of this stuff done? Once again, getting them set up with the right people. So that's where it starts with having some kind of governance set up.

Vanessa Kenon: It doesn't have to be anything where that's rural negative. It can be positive. To me, when we set 'em up with those business relationship managers, they're looking at things that I would never think of. They could come to Vanessa and say, oh, Vanessa, I need your help with this. I would not think of some of the things those people think of. This is what it's going to take to do this. Great. We can put in eSports space here. Or what are you going to do to support it? How are you going to support that type of equipment? It gets hot. There's so much more to it. So that's a good side of having the governance strategy the way I was just laid out. And that's a whole nother conversation that you would love to have with Kendra Ketchum, the way that was set up.

John O'Brien: So I imagine that since that IT governance is seen as incredibly complicated and difficult and all of the reasons why I think people see it, don't always welcome it, but I could see someone saying, oh great, let's add students to that mix. And now things went from complicated to unwieldy. Has that been your experience?

Vanessa Kenon: It really hasn't because I think a lot of times the students see that, like I said earlier, they see things we do not because they're here all the time. They're utilizing the resources, they're utilizing the technology resources. They also see the things coming. Here's some of the funniest stories that I've seen around all the stuff going on with TikTok before we're banding that you can't use that in our stuff and on our network, the students have already figured out other ways that, oh, there's other stuff out there. There's other things way before we're starting to see some of the things. So it's like, wait a minute, we can't just ban TikTok. We have to ban it from, we have to do a ban from, okay, it can't come from this particular country, it can't come from this particular area. So you're always trying to run 10 or 20 steps ahead of them. And I've worked in IT and IT as a manager and it as a teacher, as a professor, the whole works for over 30 years. And I can tell you, you always have to come in the classroom. You have to watch what's going on on tv. You've got to listen to what's going on in the news or the students are 10 steps ahead of you. So it's one of those things where you have to have students involved. You can't exclude students because they're going to know how to get ahead of you on things.

John O'Brien: It's all true. Well, we've talked about governance on campus and students' involvement and may want to hear more about the internship program and your experiential learning in a bit. But I'm also curious, the landscape of technology innovation on campuses is driven by all kinds of things and our industry partners play a role in that as well. And so I'm curious, do the student engagement that you're talking about ever cross into the realm of solution providers?

Vanessa Kenon: Oh my goodness. Does it ever, and I love talking about our solutions providers because a lot of the things we do, we could not do it without them. So I had the fund at Edge cause this year, and I made sure, I said, I'm not putting in for any proposals this year you guys because I am going to be busy. Of course I was the chair. But also a lot of our solutions providers had asked, Hey, would you come and talk at our booth? Would you come and do podcasts? Would you come and do things? Those were all people that have been amazing working with our students as a part of our Bold Careers program, we have a very unique program with ServiceNow. So ServiceNow is huge. So they're doing a program with our students and for folks that are listening to this universities, I strongly encourage you look into what they're doing.

Vanessa Kenon: They're doing a program. It is free for students. Students have been doing this across the country where they can get badging and certifications through ServiceNow. It's a completely different portal. So right now I'm running that portal on UTSA's campus, but we run it as a cohort. So ours is a little bit different. Most universities run that program and they run it with the students just going out on their own. We run it as a cohort. So they have, it's just like a class they sign in Canvas, they have to keep up with us, let us know what they're doing. We have some of the cybersecurity students that are also going through this program and they have to go in our cyber range in addition to that. But can you imagine being able to finish an internship program and get your full ServiceNow certification depending on the path that you take?

Vanessa Kenon: And right now there's four different paths. So it's different ones that are part of this program. Rackspace has been phenomenal. And of course they're based here in San Antonio. So we get to see those folks. They come not just on campus, they've been supportive of us. We have banners hanging all around campus that they supported us with our program to talk about our students and where our students give testimonials of them. They sponsored all of those for us as well as our giveaways and stuff like that. So they have been a phenomenal partner for us, but not just in a financial partner. They come on campus and they do presentations for all students, all faculty and our staff. They've done things on artificial intelligence, what they're doing, what are some of the next steps in the future. And they're doing those. In fact, we should have one coming up here pretty soon.

Vanessa Kenon: We try to schedule at least once a year and they'll do a lunch and learn where we have 50 or 60 students, faculty and staff. And it gives that chance for them to all integrate together and come on campus and work together. Weaver as well. We've done some things with them with eSports weaver and the eSports trade association. Just phenomenal partners. And I cannot go away from this question without talking about Dell. Our partnership with Dell here at UTSA has just been phenomenal. If there's something I need or I have questions on when we talk about going into governance, our Dell persons and our Dell personnel, because they do a lot of things with us. They know what's happening in our governance process. They know what they need to step through to go through that process, and they're always so helpful. So that's just a few of the,

John O'Brien: Well, it seems like a tapable resource for, I mean these as really great exemplars and anybody listening could say, well, I wonder who we work with and I wonder let's something to definitely build on

Vanessa Kenon: And reach out to them. eSports trade association too. I did not even realize that was out there. And so we've been working with them out of Chicago. They have been phenomenal in helping us to look at resources and folks that work with eSports. What else? There's one other one. Oh, CDW. I cannot go away without talking about CDW. Another great partner who I can reach out to the folks there for things that have to do with eSports, things that have to do with experiential learning. I do believe they also did an article on some of the things that we're doing with experiential learning here. So they have been phenomenal as well. And I know I'm missing others, but

John O'Brien: These are examples, representative examples and other campuses listening would have their own potential list or list. Maybe I'd love to hear from you if you're listening and you're doing this kind of work, we need to build on it. I think you have this great, bold career. Bold careers is the internship program

Vanessa Kenon: That is internship and ambassadors because sometimes you'll have a student who will come in as a freshman and they want to be a part of the program, but they're not at an internship possibility yet. But I still want to be involved. So we put that aspect there so that they could still participate. And also some of the interns we have, those people may not be getting credit, they may have already gotten their credit and still want to come into the program as the intern. They can do that program because we are working with both the city of San Antonio. We have a program there that's a grant funded program by the citizens of San Antonio where we're working with someone out of Atlanta for students to be able to be in that program and actually do programming. So there's so many different things that aspects of it.

Vanessa Kenon: We have students that are working for Department of Defense contractors and I love to talk about those because the students who come in our program, if they're working on our systems, if they're working on UT systems, because we have students working for UT Systems as well, if they're working with a Department of Defense contractor, they all have to go through all of the same training and background checks that our staff do. So they go through that. If they're working for A DOD contractor or UT system, those are paid internships. All of our positions are not paid. Those are paid internships and those students have to go through an FBI background check as well. So they're getting wonderful experience while they're here in school. And some of those people will hire those students afterwards when they're finished. They keep them one. If they're doing a good job, they're keeping them

John O'Brien: Well. I was just going to go there, but I was going to ask a little different question, which is does the university hire them? I mean, is the work you're doing to engage students in IT, governance and all of that? Is that a pipeline to the next future employees in IT at the university?

Vanessa Kenon: You bet. And I see more and more universities doing that because it is hard to get people and not just universities. We also work with our task group, which is our state group. And I know you know about task, it's a kind of rare group and organization here in Texas. I think more and more states are doing it very similar to Edge cause, but it's a state version and it's all of our state universities, the Texas state system, Texas a and m system, any of our public community colleges, they all are involved with that. But it's not just higher ed, it's also our agencies. So you'd have Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Department of Agriculture, all of these groups are a part of this organization. Those students support that agency, which is fantastic. The LinkedIn site for that agency, they support all of that. I mean, the social media was really, really quiet. The students came in, our students came in, took that over and really, really did a fantastic marketing plan for that group. And now their stuff is going out through LinkedIn as well on the work that they're doing and supporting these agencies. So it's not just the universities, but also all of those state agencies that are also struggling to keep good IT or find good IT people.

John O'Brien: While you were talking, I was thinking of our YEC group, a young professionals advisory committee at EDUCAUSE. And when that group, that group was founded because of a desire to listen to a group that wasn't, I didn't think, listened to directly and to elevate their influence and voice in the community. Sounds a lot like what you're doing. And at some point, I was just meeting with the leadership team today and I was just realized the best thing about it is that it doesn't need me anymore. That it's become, I mean, they're off on their own. They're changing their world and they're creating a mark on Ed cause And has your work with students become, what do they say inevitable?

Vanessa Kenon: Oh, I love that because think about all the things my job encompasses. It's a lot. In fact, I have a new staff member. They're putting a new staff member in my area because we've grown so much. But here's the

John O'Brien: Well, compliance.

Vanessa Kenon: Especially compliance. Exactly, exactly. Even more so now. And so I have to laugh because basically we have two tech specialists that are students that run that program. We have an alumni who's a coordinator of that program, but the students really helped to run the program. I think though on that question you just said, one of the best things I saw is when I first started working with the healthcare group and we talked a little bit about that group on the publications, I was like, how am I going to get these students work published? So there were a couple of things that I was working on. I would write the introductions for them, I would write the conclusions on 'em, and since I'm well published, of course publishers are going to look at my work and get that out there and publish with these students. So it got to a point where when the program got larger and larger, it's like, I don't have time to write this anymore.

Vanessa Kenon: The students are going to have to do this on their own. So now those students are getting their work published without me. So now we work with them, but we submit those things for publications to different publishing companies and they're on their own, with the exception of the one book we have coming out. We do have a global handbook coming out, but students work is going in with scholars from around the world. So we're really excited about that. We accepted one of our papers from that because we wanted more scholarly work from around the world. But other than that, now they're doing it on their own. My name's not on that. Work with that. That's marvelous.

John O'Brien: Yeah, it really is. That's when you know you've really succeeded.

Vanessa Kenon: Yes.

John O'Brien: Right. Well, how do you know when you've succeeded? This kind of work can be nebulous and like peeling an onion and you remove one layer and you just find another layer of challenges and things like that. When do you declare success?

Vanessa Kenon: That's such a great question and I absolutely love it because I was doing a presentation, I'm going to say it was two years ago with a group out of this group because we try to take them to edge cause as well to present. I can't tell you how many different places we take the students to our state group. We've taken some of the to present and that question came up, somebody said, well, how do you know this program is being successful? And we started this, if I didn't say that in 2020 during Covid, because of the fact that we could no longer send students out to internships, so they had to do things remote. Most of these internships, 90 something percent or online? Fully online. So the interesting thing is that question came up and I was like, oh my goodness gracious. That's a great question.

Vanessa Kenon: We've got all the things. We see what the students are doing. This is when we turn to LinkedIn and I didn't mention LinkedIn. It's a phenomenal partner in what it is that we do. I told my students, they all have a requirement first of all, and this requirement was actually put in instituted, this is when you talk about students taking the lead on things by a student. We had a student who was graduating out of our program and she said, this is one of the things I think we need to do. There's some LinkedIn learning opportunities that the first week of these internships, there's three courses all of our students should be required to take. This is coming from a student now it goes back to what I said about the students knowing. So we still have that as a requirement. School started last week.

Vanessa Kenon: We have 40 something interns in our program this semester. They all don't report to me. I have quite a few reporting to me, but most of 'em are reporting out all over the place. And so they started that. So I told my team, I said, here's how we can gauge and find out. LinkedIn keeps amazing data on what's going on with all of us. Actually if you've got a LinkedIn account, they can run reports for you. I found this out by visiting the LinkedIn booth at intercos. So we actually set up a LinkedIn account for our UTS Bold Careers Interns and Ambassadors program and anybody who will see this, you can go out there and look at it, follow it, look at what's going on and you'll see the students are there. We started that about a year ago. It helped us to see what's going on with the students.

Vanessa Kenon: We hit what's happening with their lives. We can always go back and see where are they working now and pull that data once they leave the program. But one of the things I think is the best is the testimonials coming from the students. We are now posting all of those testimonials. When they finish, they'll give together a testimonial of what the program, they basically will take a survey on the program, but they also give us some amazing testimonials. So you'll see professional photos of them. Most of them have never taken a professional headshot. That's a requirement too. They must have a LinkedIn page. I tell, I said when I'm hiring people, that's one of the first things I do. When I get down to my final candidates, I'm going out to the LinkedIn page to see what's out there. They're going to be trading our people, so I'm doing the same thing. That's how we can tell. And then they say wonderful things about us and our programs out there on LinkedIn as well when you're getting new jobs and new careers. So just that's one of the ways we gauge the success of our students. That data is amazing coming in from LinkedIn.

John O'Brien: Well, I could keep talking for hours. I have one last question and then I'll ask you if there's anything that you want to speak more about. But I'm just excited to be in a conversation and almost be at the end of it. And we haven't talked about ai. That feels like a win for me. But in seriousness, I do think that the voices of students around AI are going to be, are already really important. And yes, I'm thinking about academic integrity only a little bit. I'm really thinking more about curriculum change and I mean, do you see a role for students? Do you see somebody saying, Hey, I know where we could find out some student perspectives about AI and picking up the phone and talking to you?

Vanessa Kenon: I really do. And so we have at least, I think we have three students this semester. We've had up to four of them at one time working with the Department of Defense contractor on artificial intelligence. And I talked a little bit about that. The funny part is this fun having students who report to you and you have no idea what they do. I know what they're working on, but because it's the formative defense stuff, I don't get a chance to see that. What I thought was just amazing is at the end of one of the semesters, I got invited to I guess sort of like a, I don't even know what you want to call it, where the students themselves came up with ideas and they put them out there. So I was like, okay, you mean I can actually sit on this one? So I go in there and there's retired generals in this looking at what the students are proposing and we have, our students are in there with students from Berkeley and other schools that are actually in this program doing this.

Vanessa Kenon: And I'm just blown away on what these students come up with. Some of the things that they do. Also, remember I mentioned that our relationship we have with Rackspace that they come on campus. So they come on campus and they do presentations on their fair project, which that's their new artificial intelligence stuff. They gave us access to some of their logos and some of their things. We are looking at doing some future work with them as well because they're here local in San Antonio. The nice thing about that, we had one of our professors who was working in that area starting new curriculum, he came to that event and now they're working directly with them. So our students are getting to leave campus, go over to their amazing new site here in San Antonio and see and think about it. Rackspace is a global operation.

Vanessa Kenon: So having that opportunity for the students and being able to open those doors, I was really, really excited to see all the photos. I was like, oh my goodness, this came because we brought students in, we brought faculty in, we brought staff in to see what's going on with this at a lunch and learn. And we want to continue to do those as we talk about you and I, and we've talked about this also at ed cost. What are some of the things we can do better with our vendor partners and get them more engaged? Those are the type of things they're willing to come on campus, do a lunch and learn people like to eat and they learn during that time more and more of what's going on and how can we partner to make things better. And we're doing the same thing with joint based San Antonio here in San Antonio. So our students are getting a chance to see not just with that one Department of Defense contractor, but many, many others, what are some of the things that are going on and how our professors as well can help with the future.

John O'Brien: Well, it sounds like your superpower is ED'S superpower, bringing people together and being that convener. And when you do that with sort of authenticity and actually want to hear what people say, it opens doors and creates opportunities and is really exciting. Well, before I say goodbye, is there anything you were desperate to talk about that we were all over the place and I loved it?

Vanessa Kenon: I just think the collaboration and the community engagement is so important. We also, we didn't talk about is what we're doing with the school districts. That's a big, big one. We work with about four school districts, so it's not just our students here on campus. We have relationships where students come in, we had students and it's on our LinkedIn page. You guys can go and have a chance to see that to come in and go into our cyber range. Can you imagine being a high school student? And we're one of the top cybersecurity schools in the country. So having those students to be able to come in and look at what we're doing, and one of the things I thought was just absolutely amazing is the guy who was running in, who runs that cyber range, it's a lab where they go in and they go through this whole cyber operation.

Vanessa Kenon: He was able to pinpoint these are students that are going to be amazing cyber cops in the future, people who are going to be amazing cyber ops. Not just students but people here for us in this country to be able to do that. So we do those types of things as well. The eSports facility, people always want to see that over at Six Flags. That is just absolutely amazing. It's one of the first at an amusement park in the world. So that is our home base for our Roadrunner gaming group. So that's one of the things in all of this, the IT governance part of it, I think you hit it on the nose. It's so important. You've got to have students involved. And I believe somebody quoted me and this funny, I see it come up all the time. I was doing a presentation for edco, and this is the funniest story.

Vanessa Kenon: I go in and it's on vr. We had just launched this huge thing with Lenovo and Lobster. And so lobster was there. They'd come over from wherever they're from in Europe and we had a futurist was there. I walk in and there was, I mean the room was packed every seat and I mean we're talking about one of those huge drums, people standing. I remember my new vice president was coming on board. I could see her way in the back of the room smiling from the ear to ear. I was like, I know all of these people didn't come here to see me. So sure enough, it was a futurist. You guys had that amazing futurist and I've got a chance to work with him through our state agency again. But of all the things they quoted, one of the magazines that was there and is always press.

Vanessa Kenon: I always tell my students when I'm working with them, be careful because Ed Calls always says lots of reporters in the thing. And sure enough, we always wind up with a story written on us and our programs. So one of the things, out of all the things they didn't quote the futurist, they quoted me. And one of the things I said is with students, we have to go out where they are. We can't just put ourselves in a silo and think we're making these kinds of decisions. We have to go where the students are in order to really, really run our programs, our IT programs. Well, and that was one of the quotes that came out of that.

John O'Brien: Well, and where are our students? It's technology all the way. Vanessa, thank you for being here. Your enthusiasm is contagious and I think others have caught the bug. I'd encourage you to contact Vanessa if you have questions. Look at what they're doing and if you're doing work along these lines, let the next edge cause review article, be you talking about your version of this really important and exciting work. So Vanessa, thank you so much.

Vanessa Kenon: You bet.