Using Disruption to Build the Workforce of the Future

Sophie White: Hello everyone and welcome to EDUCAUSE Shop Talk. I'm Sophie White. I am a Content Marketing and Program Manager with EDUCAUSE and I am a host for today's show.

Jenay Robert: Hi everybody, I'm Jenay Robert. I'm a Senior Researcher at EDUCAUSE and I'm your co-host.

Sophie White: Great, and we are really thrilled today to have a special guest with us on the show. We have with us today Dean Ozlem Kilic. She is the Vice Provost and Founding Dean of the University of Tennessee's College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies. We're really excited to talk to her today about a few different really innovative projects related to workforce development for students and supporting the modern workforce of the future. So I'll just give a brief intro to the dean and then we'll jump into it. So Dean Ozlem Kilic is the vice provost and founding Dean of the College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Prior to joining the provost office, Ozlem served as the associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at the Tickle College of Engineering at the university. She's led multiple initiatives designed to enhance student recruitment and retention, including the administrative operations across all colleges.

For the launch of the intercollegiate data science minor is this work that led to discussions on how to improve intercollegiate education on campus. Ultimately leading to the launch of CECS. Prior to coming to the university, Dean Kilic served in various leadership roles such as the department chair of electrical engineering and computer science, and as the associate dean of engineering at the Catholic University of America, she has also worked as an electronics engineer at the US Army Research Laboratory and as a program manager at Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, your bio is really impressive. Ozlem, you have quite a variety of things that you've done. So thanks for being with us today.

Ozlem Kilic: I'm excited to be here, Sophie.

Sophie White: Great. So let's jump into it. I'd love to hear a little bit about why this work excites you and what you're doing at the college. So can you just give us a brief overview of what's going on and why you're excited about doing this work?

Ozlem Kilic: Absolutely. This is my favorite topic to talk about anyway. So this college is an attempt by our university, which is a land grant university to define what the future modern land grants should look like. It's driven by what is emerging rather rapidly in technology that's really permeating in everything we do for work and for a living, and it's shaping the future careers. So as a higher education institution that is a land grant mission. We need to be mindful of how we are preparing the future workforce, especially for those students who come into a conventional four year degree knowing that within four years the job market may be significantly different than when they entered. It's our attempt as the land grand universal and the flagship universal of Tennessee to say higher ed needs to reinvent some of the things it does, how it does to address the growing skills gap that we need to fill in our state and in the nation.

So that was the main drive. I'm having a blessed building this college because of my own unconventional way of how I landed in higher education. As you read from my bio, I worked for government, I worked for industry before finding myself the right job, which was the academia for me not being in the hiring end of recent graduates and having an understanding of the model of operation and industry and the needs of also government has helped me think a bit out of the box. And with the support of our bold leadership in UT, we were able to launch this initiative, which is rather disruptive, but hopefully showing early success as well.

Jenay Robert: I really like that you're responding to the changing times and thinking about being a more agile institution. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. I feel like especially now more than ever, and we're going to actually have an episode on this in the coming months, institutional resilience is a really hot topic among the higher education community and I think part of that is doing exactly what you're doing saying things are changing, things are changing rapidly. We don't have to stay stuck in these same old patterns, we can do something completely new. Can you talk a little bit about that process of pivoting and maybe getting people on board and what was that like?

Ozlem Kilic: Yeah, absolutely. This is a very disruptive more on our campus and I don't think there's anything I've been looking into. Of course while we were launching the college, what similar models could exist and there was always an attempt in trying to be agile, flexible in all universities in one way or another, but the speed of how it needs to be done is contrary to the conventional ways of how higher it evolved because we were meant to be very cautious, developmentally very thorough. So things to launch would take minimum a year, probably two years, and that you would see not many new degrees launching at the pace. We are doing them in kcals of emerging ankle studies right now. So I think the speed is very important, but also the concept of these new emerging technology that really brings all conventional disciplines together. The emerging techs like AI, data science, cyber, they're applying to all degree programs and as a result they are in our minds a collusion is happening between these conventional structures and new possibilities are emerging that don't necessarily fit easily in these conventional structures.

So we also wanted to have a structural change that will enable these rapid developments bringing expertise from all across campus together because these topics will not only impact one discipline, they may have been driven by mostly stand technology engineering, but now a lot of creativity will result in the different domains that had originally nothing to do with the development of this technology. It has permeated everywhere that there are tremendous opportunities for social scientists, humanities, arts backgrounds to come and play a big role as this technology emerges. So it has been a journey. So I think the way to be so disruptive cannot rely on a great idea and a great need which we check the boxes for. It also requires bold, innovative leadership that I'm very grateful for our UT leadership with our president, with our chancellor, our provost and vice chancellor for research, all coming on board and saying, yes, change must be done, some risk must be taken.

We need to experiment with different models. And that was important. What was also very important is that will tie us to our volunteers at UT in Knoxville is that all other leaderships on campus had to have an open mind, had to come to the table saying with good intentions, let's look at this together because it's going to change how all other causes are also functioning when it comes to these topics. So I think stars aligned a bit for us at UT and we are still figuring things out because when something that disruptive happens, all the policies we have come to know are different for a structure that doesn't fit in the norm. So we are evaluating continuing to evaluate structures, processes, procedures to make this as seamless as possible. But we have always launched multiple degrees and I think the indications, I think the force is there to carry us forward it looks like, but certain things have to align.

Sophie White: Cool. It feels like you're taking these ideas that we have seemingly entrenched in higher ed of, oh, it has to be siloed and things have to move slowly and you're just smashing those, which is really encouraging to see. I am curious, so I'm thinking for folks who I've worked with before, one of the things that I manage at EDUCAUSE is the Showcase series and we collect different resources and for me there's always this tension and we run showcases usually annually about strategic planning too and trying to think about how you can plan long into the future while building in agility is such a tricky thing I think because you have to set up these well-planned structures, but they're obviously in service of agility. So I'm curious, how do you do that? How do you build agility and transformation and innovation into your process?

Ozlem Kilic: It is a bit intentionally chaotic in our operation. I have a mark that says called chaos leader. So I mean you have to embrace and have, find comfort in a bit chaos because you cannot say in the next five years, this is how it's going to look like. This is the best way to describe what we are doing with cakes is that it's a startup in higher ed and that's really what it is. It's going to continuously evolve and our name is emerging, not emerged. I always say because the moment we have successfully finished wanting, we take a moment to celebrate and then we continue looking forward because it is not stopping so therefore we cannot. So it has to be done in a fast pace and it takes the kind of mindset that enjoys, finds comfort in that. And my team is amazing. They have a small team, but with the right mindset that we embrace a little bit of chaos, we know that our roles and responsibilities will not be set for the next five years as a startup. We need to sometimes be jack of all trades. We need to be constantly listening to our stakeholders and we have many both on campus, both external to the campus. So it's a constant feedback loop and constant continuous improvement model that we embrace. And that's important to say we are going to, of course as we are building the plane while we fly, we're going to make some mistakes as long as it's not a big crash, it's okay.

Jenay Robert: I wonder if, oh, go ahead.

Sophie White: No, you looked like you were going to say something.

Jenay Robert: Yeah, that was the wheels turning in my mind. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about any of the resistance that you encountered and are maybe still encountering. I'm thinking about how people listening or watching this might want to engage in something similar but struggle with various types of resistance that we're all familiar with. So who were your naysayers in the beginning? You don't have to call them by name, but in general what kind of resistance did you and maybe are still encountering and how did you deal with that?

Ozlem Kilic: It is like with any major change, right? I mean you're going to and it's healthy. The naysaying is a healthy start because you need to understand where they are coming from. I think the mindset should be everybody's coming to the table with good intentions. One has to keep embracing that mindset. It's easy to get us versus them mold and this is not the case. We are serving the states as UT Knoxville and KX is serving our campus. So we always, even if there were nay-saying in all fronts, it was coming from valid points and some could be discussed and agreed upon that they weren't valid because it was a misunderstanding. Some remains valid and we are keeping them in mind, but I think one needs to keep the momentum going so you cannot stall if you agree that this is the right thing to do for the students and for the future workforce and on campus.

Even if we may not fully agreed on everything and how we did things, I think there was never a question that this is the right thing for the students and we held onto that and also our mission as a university that we are going to serve the state and its workforce needs. So those two aligned. I think the rest was the details that we had to figure out. So I think identifying the bigger goal where we all had to agree on principles and then having paid that the rest go forward place and keeping going, never stopping.

Sophie White: It's amazing what refocusing on the mission can do to inspire people. I love that. I'm curious thinking about this as maybe a startup within higher education startup culture is really wonderful for being innovative and exciting and it's also famous for burnout culture and just how stressful that type of constant change and uncertainty can be for employees. So I'm curious, how are you supporting your team and their mental health as your being a startup within higher ed? And I'm partly asking this, we released our teaching and learning workforce research recently at ed cause we have another workforce report coming out about cybersecurity and privacy in a bit and an IT leadership one, and Jenay, you can probably talk more to this, but we keep seeing burnout come up in these workforce reports at least within higher education staff. So this is a question based on the data that we're seeing

Ozlem Kilic: So one amazing thing that I got to do in my career was I haven't seen any dean have a college that every single person was handpicked from the start. So we had a completely blank slate. The college didn't exist on day minus one and day one there was a full college. So everything had to be built from scratch, which is a heavy lift, but it's also an amazing opportunity to attract the people who get the mission, who want to make an impact in hire. So the mindset of people joining was very important. We worked very hard. Every single hire we had the conversation one on one. This is a startup, so it's not for the fainthearted, but if it's the right mindset, this is the most fun I ever had in my career and I'm hoping to have my staff that feeling as well, how do we do that?

We will work hard, but we will also find our passion projects. The entire college is my passion project, but I'm hoping my team members are zooming in on what's exciting them and maybe giving a decent proportion of their time in establishing that everything is new. There's so much room for innovation, creativity is a bond in our corridor. So I think that is important to fit the right people for the right projects and roles. And since we are constantly evolving as a college, roles are evolving too. So people who were doing an administrative assistance role, maybe moving to finance which happened and there's a lot of opportunities to grow within the organization as well. So having right mindset, encouraging creativity, rewarding innovation and making sure people are matched as hard as I worked to this precious college, I'm very energized at the end of the day because of all the brainstorming that happens between the creative mind. So hard work can be energizing if you are so much bought into the mission and you are seeing on a regular basis its impact. So we are really leveraging that in kicks.

Jenay Robert: Yeah, I think it's again, comes back to that dedication to the mission and I really resonated with what you said about hoping that your staff find passion projects. I know for me at times, and I don't want to take away from the systemic causes of burnout, that's certainly something that needs to be addressed in higher ed. But in terms of what control for me, me as an individual that I've had in the past over my own sense of burnout, being able to connect with passion projects and things that I really feel strongly about, the story I like to tell is that when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a living, my grandfather told me, choose something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Which is not 100% true, we're still working here, but the spirit of that I think is true and you're doing such great work connecting people with things that they are really passionate about and that mission is so important. So I'm sure that they appreciate that.

Ozlem Kilic: I hope so. They are precious. My team is amazing. And again, a good idea can go so far without a dedicated team and that is our power actually how committed our every single team member is. Yes, for sure.

Sophie White: Yeah, this is inspiring me too. I work with our young professionals advisory committee at EDUCAUSE. So I'm hearing a lot from younger staff about challenges that they're having in higher ed and it's making me think now I'm going to reference another podcast, but we have an EDUCAUSE Rising Voices podcast and that's the voice of our young professionals at Ed Cause and we recorded one last year, Arantxa Fernandez and Adriel Mendoza were our guests and they're both early career professionals at various institutions. And something that they said stuck with me was that they wanted to be challenged but supported in their journey that they didn't want to just coast through and have it be easy, but at the same time, they didn't want to be completely left without support from their leadership. And it feels like that's what you're doing in order to energize folks and make sure that they have some space for creativity, but also the structure and leadership

Ozlem Kilic: That's absolutely what I'm aspiring to do. I'm hoping I'm successful and doing it to myself as well. Get out of the comfort zone, find the resources, but you cannot innovate. You cannot make change by being comfortable. So we are not always comfortable doing what we do in cakes, but we know it's necessary for our growth and for our impact on the future of higher ed. So yeah, that mindset is the right mindset. Absolutely.

Sophie White: And it seems like your hiring practices had to change from maybe a traditional practice in order to communicate that to folks and look for a different mindset. So that's interesting.

Jenay Robert: I wonder if we could talk a little bit about people who are watching or listening who want to do something innovative, maybe not as big as what you've accomplished or are accomplishing, but they have a smaller idea or maybe they don't have the position of power to execute a giant idea like this. What can people do to start small if they say, I want to revolutionize the way higher education works, but fill in the blank, what advice do you have for people maybe like frontline staff, for example, faculty, that kind of thing?

Ozlem Kilic: Yeah, first I would say definitely keep that passion. We need that kind of thought. Definitely hang into that feeling and starting small is actually the right way. The way that led to the establishment of cakes was actually with a minor in data science on our campus. So that helps exemplify the need a potential solution and that introduces you to the right-minded people who agree with you that something has to be done and who want to join you to do something. So you already, by that small initiative, established the launch group and that's actually how cakes happened because we were having conversations five years ago on campus about the need for the growing job market in data science and how we were struggling with belonged. Well the obvious answer in hindsight was it didn't belong anywhere because it touches everyone and it belongs its own. So we launched the first inter college minor five years ago on data science.

Was it successful? I don't think so because what happened is the launch was great. We've came up with nine colleges working together, having four courses required and many electives. Wonderful, beautiful concept when it comes to fitting it with the existing structures. It was a nightmare. Who owned it, who's responsible teaching it, who's scheduling the courses and who's looking, who is teaching and who's teaching law does it count for? There was no ownership and that was a learning moment for us as an account is to say, how are we going to deal with this because students are flocking and we know industry had the needs, so we have had this program, it's the right thing to do, we just don't know where to fit it. So it's how we started a minor that we fit under one college at the time and then within two years we realized as a campus also that it's not just data science. The emerging tech is coming at a faster speed at us and if you want to replicate this, we cannot rely on this ad hoc method all doing things. So we need this new structure and how do we brainstorm about it is obvious out of the people were from those initially we'll launch the data science so small is the necessary step. It will help you exemplify the need, it'll help you connect with the right people, it'll help you understand the message you need to convey so you can get onto the next level.

Sophie White: Jenay and I are laughing I think because we keep having these wonderful Shop Talk discussions this year and it comes back to starting small and then building upon them. We were talking about in relation to climate, the environment and higher ed, and it also keeps coming back to governance too, making sure that we have the great governance models in place. So that's really helpful and I love that you, it sounds like exemplified this fail fast model of we're going to try some things and then fail at some of them and learn from it and make sure that we iterate on that to build something stronger in the future.

Jenay Robert: Yeah, I heard the same thing and I even looked over at Sophie's little box on the screen and was like, yeah, she's laughing at the same time I am. It's becoming such a theme. I feel like it could be like a subtitle of shop talks now. It's like the importance of small action. But that's so great and to me gives me a sense of optimism because it is so frustrating when the world is changing so fast and so many things are outside of our sphere of control and even outside of our sphere of influence that really focusing in on what is under my control, what can I execute that does feel optimistic and hopeful to me.

Sophie White: I think so too. One question I had that I've just been reflecting on is I think we've been hearing a lot that higher ed needs to at least in order, it depends at what you look at the goal of higher ed as, but one of them may be to prepare students for the future workforce and we're feeling a disconnect between what the pedagogical approaches are and what students are learning in the classroom versus what the industry needs.

I'm curious, how are you collaborating with industry to make sure that you understand what those current and it sounds like the future state of the workforce needs are and how are you iterating on that once you learn new information?

Ozlem Kilic: So that was our major stakeholder at launch and that was the first engagement event we did was actually we call it career catalyst now. We launched cakes with a big event where at that time I think 50 companies joined us to say this is the concept, how do we do this? It's been a signature event now. We just held our third year and the attendance is more than doubled and it's growing. So coming from engineering and having worked as an engineer, I have seen different ways of how industry has been engaging with higher ed and it's the cookie cutter approach. No matter how much investment is food and such programs, often it's like industry comes hires a few students for internships, it's localized. They may sponsor a capstone project, very local impact, great impact, but I needed kicks to go way beyond that if it's going to be the bold disruptive force.

So we have actually been working with them to help develop curriculum in real time. I think that's what we need. You cannot say a few projects that students are exposed will be good enough to prepare the future workforce. It will prepare a handful of them. So we are launching some really innovative certificates and programs. One is called Pat. This is a certificate, and our college is based on all customizability based on the future demographics of the students and learners. So this certificate is all about industry coming and giving us little examples, almost think of them as large scale homework problems that they are experiencing in their business. We have the certificate that start with small examples that come directly from them to full scope projects that students can do with them. And we start in the freshman year exposing our students. So we want our students, which means all UT students to think about careers from day one.

College experience in many ways is emotional growth. I know maturity, all of that. But I feel responsible, especially in a land grant institution that our students are employable upon graduation. That's the responsibility I feel every day. So how do we do that? We start the discussion from day one. So our first course that they will take is actually design your career, design your degree in this course. They learn design principles, which I believe is a must for future. I think everybody should have some literacy on principles of design. As things change so rapidly, you need to know how to design your own life, how you'll fit in. So that's a very important skill. But their project in the end of the semester is their degree program. So we assess them, we do aptitude tests based on their interests. We introduce them to industry partners, they get to see how jobs will look like in that domain.

We are also very mindful that the kind of jobs are changing. So for instance, if you are going to focus on AI because this technology is enticing to you and we want to make sure that our policies are keeping up, that student will have a completely different experience in cakes with the kind of industry partners they'll deal with versus another student who wants to do AI because they want very fast computing to enable real time calculations. That student will probably have a lot of IT exposure. So they will forge their own paths even under the same common theme, which is AI by making sure they are connected to the right industry partners early on from day one. So it's really a very unique concept in how we weave in potential for employment as early as the first class they take. And we build up from that class on three more classes where in the last class, but our hope is that they have a big network of industry mentors that they've interacted and there's kind of a matches already been made by the end of their fourth year. So industry is a key partner and a very, very strong local partner in our curriculum development.

Jenay Robert: And I really love that you talk about it as not an either or. It's not that higher ed is either about workforce prep or about creating informed citizens, et cetera, et cetera. But we can really take a holistic approach to supporting our students. And I personally really appreciate that because I know when people strongly resist the idea of workforce preparation for students, that frustrates me on a personal level because I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't have workforce preparation. I am a first generation student. There was not going to be any improvement in my life circumstances unless I had workforce preparation in college. So it's an element of higher ed that I feel very strongly about, but also I don't think that it has to replace any of the liberal arts ideals or any of the other things. I think that we can do all of those things.

Sophie White: Yes, I really appreciate that. And if you could tell I had a hard time asking that question because I studied the humanities and I love this emotional and maturity element of higher ed and I think my idealist said that's what higher ed should do. And then the realist would be says, higher ed also has a huge price tag. It's very expensive to send students to college now. And I think that we owe students the ability to make sure they're employable afterwards. So I love this combination of like you said, Jenay, that it doesn't have to be either or, but it can be both and we can work within the systems that are in place, but also disrupt them a bit too. This is making me think about faculty development a bit because that's been coming up too. Jenay when we've been thinking about ai especially I think has been the topic that we've been talking about related to faculty development. So how are you teaching faculty to teach students how to use AI within the governance structures that an institution has put in place? So I'm curious what your faculty development process looks like. How are you teaching the teachers for the students?

Ozlem Kilic: That's a great entry to a major topic associates on our mind. So as you mentioned, I wear a dual hat and the university one is vice provost, one is the founding dean, and they emerge in my mind because it's all about academic innovation. So we are very mindful that AI literacy is extremely important and as these tools are emerging, we need to embrace good use of these tools. So we need to have an honest look at how we are educating students and making sure that exposure doesn't only have to happen in STEM related courses. So as a university initiative, we launched this new program where we offer fellowships to faculty from all different disciplines to weave in this content into their existing courses. We don't need to create a new course because this is permeating everywhere, so it might as well permit in all our courses.

So we picked this year's seven teams across the university who will work together with us in the summer. And this was a true collaboration between faculty, our Office of innovative technology or our teaching and learning innovation group. And my role as vice provost bringing all the experts together. So we will provide resources for technology and teaching pedagogies to these faculty teams. They will weave in these concepts to their courses, which are often we pick those courses. I said we have maximum enrollment. These are entry level courses, most of them. So whether it's English philosophy, we will have a team of faculty who will work this summer to weave AI content into these courses. But we are hoping to achieve is that now we have a team of advocates of this technology who has actually learned how to do this in courses from all different topics.

And so we want to exponentially grow the population on our campus who is able to do such initiatives. So that's one initiative we are doing centrally on campus that I'm really excited about. The other part comes through KX, what we do, how we create curriculum is also very unique since these topics such as AI, cybersecurity, data science, are all cross-cutting. We had to have a fresh look in how we develop curriculum. Typically curriculum development resides in silos. It starts within a department and it gets approved within the college. But that's the extent. Typically what we wanted to do was a shared governance all across campus. So we have faculty representation from all colleges in every degree we launch because we want to understand perspectives on AI from all disciplines. So that's a very new approach and that has been really gaining great traction so far.

We have more than one hundred faculty working with us meeting monthly to develop content in all these new degree programs. They come from all colleges. So actually cakes has launched three degrees. We are launching three more. We have eight certificates. We're going to launch 15 more. We only have five faculty full time. What we do is work with the expertise that already exist on our campus and pull them in. They are already eager to do something fresh like those we discussed, they want to make some change. Here's a small change, come join the committee. Let us describe what AI 101 should look like for the entire campus. So they are working together in designing courses like AI 101, introduction to the world of AI, where we cover ethics, potential fall, loss of AI, how to program, how maybe coding will change with AI, all these different perspectives. So they are developed by multiple disciplines from faculty and offer to students from multiple disciplines in the same class. So it's quite an undertaking, but again, the right-minded faculty are flocking to this concept and you're not having a shortage of people needing monthly to design all these new degree programs.

Jenay Robert: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what students are saying about these programs. We've talked a lot about all the people who have created the college, all the things around that, but I would probably put some money on the fact that your students are having some opinions as well.

Ozlem Kilic: Absolutely. And that's what is encouraging. Actually, Jenay, because, so the college was official as of last fall, but we didn't launch in time to directly admit any students. It was launched way later than all the students had chosen their colleges. We had close to 800 enrollments in our classes for a college that had no admission. So this is the first fall. The coming fall is where students know they can directly apply to our degree programs and enrollment numbers are double trending more than double right now. And we really didn't have much time to publicize. We were really flying the plane and adding the wings and all that. So indications are very strong and very encouraging. And one of the emissions we have is that the courses like AI 101, we want these courses to be accessible to all on campus, not just people who want to do technology in their jobs. And our mission is to make sure enrollment numbers will increase because they're going to serve students not necessarily wanting an AI degree, but wanting literacy. So my expectation is that I think that interest will keep growing early indications are definitely showing that

Sophie White: It sounds like word of mouth is working. And just so I understand the timeline, it was fall of 2024 was the first semester that you were enrolling students but without a lot of,

Ozlem Kilic: Yes, we were an official college last fall and the year before the college launched, but it was literally one faculty and a handful of staff we were at that first year was building the degree programs.

Sophie White: Got it. Great. Well, I'm so glad that it's going well. I think far so far, and it sounds like you're still driving the plane and adding to it as well.

Ozlem Kilic: Right. And it's also new ideas are coming, new ways of how we could serve our university and state is happening. For instance, interesting enough is we were thinking we are going to understand industry's needs so we can rapidly align with them. We found out that industry is also looking to us saying, what do we do with ai? We know it's here. So it became a two-way conversation. So Kroll is also morphing because now, okay, we understand actually there is needs to upskill current workforce. So we are now getting into that domain, working with our industry partners and moving to either going to their place in person or offering online for their own workforce, upskilling, credentialing. So it's not something we immediately envision, but they are finding out there's need that they could fulfill.

Sophie White: That's really encouraging that it's going both ways that institutions can be given guidance to industry too, and that you can work together that way. So thanks for sharing that.

This has been a great conversation. I think to leave our listeners and viewers today. I know I have a lot of food for thought, but just curious if there's one thing that you hope that the audience would take away from this conversation. Could you share what that is?

Ozlem Kilic: I would love to see that the audience would embrace the coming change, which is going to happen at a rapid pace and have faith in higher education that we are paying attention. We are looking into our ways of doing things, and we are willing to change and adapt to serve the next generation of workforce. So don't give up on us. Help us connect with us. Let's share with us what your thoughts are because there's an entity listening and acting fast on what we hear.

Sophie White: That's beautiful. I feel like I want to take that quote and clip it and watch it. If I'm ever feeling down about higher ed, I'm so inspired, Jenay. It's reminding me a little bit about, we had a conversation with Paula LeBlanc last year about AI and higher education's role and what they were doing at Southern New Hampshire University. But I just love hearing these really creative approaches for how higher ed can push the boundaries of our structures a little bit and be such a valuable force for the world. So thank you so much Oslan, for all the work that you're doing and for chatting with us today.