In this special episode, the Fraternity provides an audio version of the recent Value of Fraternity webinar that was held on January 10, 2022. The presentation was delivered by higher education research and policy expert Dr. Dawn Wiese. Listen as she shared insights on the changing landscape of higher education and how fraternities and sororities demonstrate their value. Links to a video version of the webinar recording and PowerPoint slides are available in the show notes.
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The Gavel Podcast - Ep 14 - Value of Fraternity with Dr. Dawn Wiese
[Intro Music]
0:00:42.5 Adam Girtz: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of "The Gavel Podcast". I'm your host, Adam.
0:00:47.4 Christopher Brenton: And I'm Christopher.
0:00:47.5 Adam Girtz: "The Gavel Podcast", the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity. It's a show dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to the stories of our brotherhood.
0:00:57.0 Christopher Brenton: To find out more from the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at sigmanu.org. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, @sigmanuhq, or by searching for the Fraternity, Sigma Nu Fraternity, of course.
0:01:09.2 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Yes, and you can use your favorite search browser, any search browser that you want, whether it is the one that comes pre-installed on whatever technological device you're using, or one that you sought out yourself.
0:01:26.3 Christopher Brenton: [chuckle] Exactly.
0:01:26.4 Adam Girtz: What search browser do you use, Christopher?
0:01:29.0 Christopher Brenton: It depends on the device. For my laptop, it's Chrome, and then I have kept Safari on my iPhone.
0:01:38.0 Adam Girtz: iPhone guy.
0:01:40.7 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. [chuckle]
0:01:41.2 Adam Girtz: As am I now, actually.
0:01:42.3 Christopher Brenton: The staff issued phone.
0:01:43.8 Adam Girtz: [chuckle] Yeah, the staff issued phone. Well, whichever search engine you use, you can find us on it, probably. Christopher, how are you today?
0:01:55.7 Christopher Brenton: I'm doing really well. How about yourself?
0:01:57.7 Adam Girtz: I'm great, you know? I can't complain, and even if I could, I probably wouldn't. [chuckle] So, Christopher, I was told by you and also by myself, because you and I are the ones that you make this podcast that we have a special episode today, or a kind of special episode, maybe unconventional based on what people might expect from "The Gavel Podcast".
0:02:21.1 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, we're trying something new this week, or I guess, for this period, in which we're releasing the podcast episode. Yeah, normally our format is, we do kind of our bumpers or our kind of general conversation prior to an interview with a special guest, and then we kind of come back together to close it out. This week, we're actually... Why do I keep calling it this week, we release this monthly? [chuckle] This time...
0:02:48.1 Adam Girtz: Today, right now, this episode.
0:02:50.6 Christopher Brenton: Today, when you are listening to this, we're going to change up the format a little bit. So not too long ago, around the middle of January, we had the opportunity to host a webinar with a friend of Sigma Nu, Dr. Dawn Wiese, and we brought her in to provide us with information on what we're calling the Value of Fraternity. So, Dr. Wiese is a research consultant for the North American Interfraternity Conference. She looks very closely at higher education research as she also is the founder of Plaid, which is a consulting firm and is a higher education policy expert, and so, there is no one that we could think of better to lead this conversation around, “What does the research say?” “What are industry experts saying just about the landscape of higher education in general”, and what can we expect, not only from the Fraternity, but from the landscape in which we operate for the foreseeable future?
0:03:55.0 Christopher Brenton: And so, it was an incredibly, I think, riveting and fascinating webinar, and we felt like we could convert that into an audio format for our listeners, and so that's what we're doing. So, today's episode is going to be just quick, to the point, we're going to do a short introduction for Dawn, of course, and then we're going to play the webinar in full. Now, it is a webinar, and as webinars often are, there is a visual component. I believe ours was held over Zoom, and so of course, if you attended the live webinar, you had the opportunity to see Dr. Dawn Wiese deliver her presentation. There was also opportunities for Q&A. We have edited that webinar recording slightly just to make more sense for this podcast format, but we do have the original recording, which we're posting to YouTube, and then we're also going to provide transcripts for this episode, as well, and provide a PDF copy of the PowerPoint slides that she provided during her presentation. And all of that is going to be linked within the show notes.
0:05:06.3 Christopher Brenton: So, no matter what your fancy, whatever your preference is for viewing or listening to this conversation, I strongly recommend that you do it. Take advantage of your preference. We're going to make those resources available to you to really enjoy and to take away as much information from this conversation as you can, because we think it's a really important one.
0:05:29.6 Adam Girtz: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe if you're like me, I tend to listen to podcasts in the car or maybe when I'm doing other things, unloading the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, things of that nature. And so, to have just the audio format of such valuable information I think is good. But yeah, absolutely, if you get a chance to go watch it online, as well, on a visual platform, I think there's additional information there that would be useful. But having listened to it, I think definitely communicates all of the important information in the audio format. And I guess, to get into a little bit of what the topic is, you know, the Value of Fraternity, I think if you're listening to this podcast, I would hazard a guess that you value your fraternal experience, just given the nature of our podcast and our audience, right?
0:06:31.0 Adam Girtz: Or if you didn't have a fraternity experience, maybe you value the fraternity experience of somebody close to you. So, what I found so interesting about Dr. Wiese's presentation here was, it really puts the numbers and the hard facts behind what I think all of us feel already about our fraternity experience and gives us some of the words to use to describe that in a way that's tangible. So at least that's what I took from it. Christopher, any thoughts before we dive in?
0:07:11.6 Christopher Brenton: I think one of the biggest takeaways, and of course the listeners are going to get to hear this for themselves is Dawn's... I think the point that she makes that was really the biggest takeaway for me is that a lot of the research that's done around fraternities focuses on alcohol consumption, and while that is an important research topic, understanding how college-aged students are engaging with alcohol, we don't often hear about or the research into aspects where fraternities and sororities really excel. And so, what Dawn, as the research consultant for the NIC has done, is scoured the landscape looking for data relevant to our student population to better help us understand what are the statistically significant advantages that our members gain from their fraternal experience and making sure that that information is readily available. Because if you're only a consumer of the news articles or the news stories that are really focusing on maybe some of the issues that we, of course, have to contend with and that we're working towards addressing daily, there are also systemic issues, you know.
0:08:34.0 Christopher Brenton: These are not issues that are exclusive to fraternity and sorority but are also things that just impact college-aged populations in general. I think you can get a distorted picture of the value of fraternity, and so our efforts here are really to help our members understand their own experience, what they experience, what they took away from it, how valuable it was to them, but then also when they're getting questions from unaffiliated members, they're getting questions from their children or their grandchildren about their interest in going to fraternity and sorority, they can say confidently that there is value there. And I think that listeners, again, will take away some really, I think, just incredible takeaways from this webinar.
0:09:24.9 Adam Girtz: I'm excited, Christopher.
0:09:28.2 Christopher Brenton: I am, too.
0:09:29.4 Adam Girtz: You got me excited to listen to it again. Let's dive in. We'll see y'all on the back end.
0:09:35.2 Christopher Brenton: Absolutely. So here is Dawn Wiese, Dr. Dawn Wiese with "The Value of Fraternity".
[Transition Music]
0:10:01.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, thanks for coming. Recognizing that, talking about higher ed trends is probably not the top thing that you usually do on a Monday evening. I love to talk about higher ed trends, but more importantly, I want to talk about higher ed trends and how that affects fraternity and sorority life, and really why higher ed needs fraternity so much. And that's kind of how we'll move through the program. I know there's a really wide audience there. We know we have some students. We know we have long-time advisors. I think even one of my friends who's a Sigma Nu, he's the current Vice President of Student Affairs at the University of South Carolina Upstate, Britt Katz. He told me that he was going to be on. And in fact, when Britt visited me here one time, I lived in Lexington where the headquarters is, and when Britt came to visit me one time, he said, "We've got to go by the Rock." And so, we did, we drove by, he touched the Rock, we moved on. But anyway, people like Britt, I know are also on this call, and so if you have information to add that you think would be valuable, please, please do.
0:11:02.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: I certainly don't consider myself the only place for information, but I do like to think about this. I like higher ed and the intricacies of that, and I so fervently believe that fraternity makes a huge difference in student experiences. And so, the goal of this presentation is to show how all of those come together. So, with that I'm going to advance my screen... I think I probably did this. Oh yeah, so I'll go some specifics. We're going to talk about the higher ed demographic trends pre-COVID, because there was already a pretty good idea of where things were headed, and demographics, and there are probably some of you who work with that, pretty easy to figure out long-term trends because so much starts with birth rates, right? And so, we're able to look at, "Okay, how many babies are being born? Who's being born? Where are they being born? And then for higher ed, what does that mean in 20 years?" And so, we're going to talk about that pre-COVID, and then we're going to talk about it... I don't know if I'm allowed to say post-COVID or not, wherever it is that we are now, and what this means going forward, because COVID certainly changed the higher ed landscape, as well, as we all know.
0:12:16.6 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Let's see... Then we're going to look at higher ed and the cost pressures facing higher ed. They are significant. And let me add one additional thing to this. Not only have I worked in higher ed, I also have a daughter who is a senior in college, so I just paid my last tuition bill, which is awesome. But the cost pressures are real, whether private or public. So, we're going to talk a little bit about that. And then we're going to move into those into fraternal research and how the fraternal research dovetails so nicely into the needs of higher education. And then if we have time for Q&A, I would love to do that, and I'm happy to stay late and do Q&A, if you all have interest in doing that. Okay, so where were we in January 2020? The map that you see is just there for some color, so the Northeast and Midwest precipitous drop in terms of predicted students going to college. Now, and even more so in 20 years, I'm going to actually show you a chart later as we move through this. So, coming from the Northeast or the Midwest, those institutions really, really seeing a dive. The West stable to dropping. Even pre-COVID, California was already seeing declines in predicted enrollment, with the Mountain States experiencing some growth.
0:13:38.4 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And I've had some conversations about... Oh, oh, I'm not going to remember the name, but people had a name for Boise State because so many students at Boise State now are Californians. And schools like Nevada Reno, UNLV, lots and lots, Arizona schools, tons of Californians going to those schools because only so many students in California can get that flagship experience, that big-school experience. And so not only are we seeing those demographic declines, we're also seeing students, California students, moving and going to other states. The growth states, the Southeast and Texas. And I pull out Texas, my husband's a Texan, and he insists that it is not the South, it is not the Midwest, it is just Texas. So, I would just pull that out all by itself because that's apparently how Texans like it. So, there you go. Let's now we look at some specifics so the demographics in enrollment and migration different from immigration.
0:14:50.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And you've heard about this on the news, decades long pattern of immigration, fertility, all of those things nudging toward a Hispanic Southwest. And we know we have a high aid, high tuition model, that's already problematic. I already alluded to that, but we have not seen cost savings for students in higher ed. We hear conversations about free college. We hear conversations about loans. We don't often hear about reduction in tuition.
0:15:22.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: The Northeast and the Midwest, which have been the traditional higher ed strongholds, are anticipating a loss of 5% between now and just a few years from now, so that's pretty big. A 5% drop is pretty significant when you're looking at large numbers. The great recession, so 2007-2008, further plummeting birth rates, so an additional decrease of 12%, so coming along with a decline on birth rates, and then yet another greater drop in birth rates around 2007. By 2026, the concept of the new birth dearth reaches college campuses dropping enrollment by an additional 15% from right around the start of the pandemic. So that's a pretty significant drop, but I'm going to show you a graph. If you remember nothing else, I want you to get this graph. You'll see it. Okay, this is from 2016-2017, because I wanted you to see where migration was at that time, and so I'll let you just look at that and I can't see you, so if you want to get in really close to the screen, don't worry, nobody's going to see your nose really close up. But you can see those drops in the Northeast. In the Midwest, you can see growth.
0:16:44.9 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Look at Idaho. That's a huge jump, right? But when you don't have that many people and then you have people, you're going to get a big swing like that. Florida, pretty big growth, and I'll talk a little bit more about post-COVID in Florida. The one I just really think when I first looked at this map, I thought was fascinating was South Carolina, because you hear about growth in the South, but then you look at South Carolina, it kind of jumps out. And so, I dug a little deeper into that, and that growth is primarily just south of Charlotte, so folks in North Carolina and South Carolina, know that Charlotte sits right on that line, but also pretty significant growth in Greenville, Spartanburg. And so, South Carolina's seeing greater growth than some of the other parts of the South. Again, this is pre-COVID. If anybody has any specific thoughts related to this, I'll let you put those in the chat. And David, if you can be looking at that chat, just in case anybody has any specific thoughts seeing this before I move on.
0:17:49.8 David Mainella: I don't see anything yet. If anything pops up, I will let you know.
0:17:52.5 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Okay, that's fine. Thanks so much. So, I'm going to keep moving. So now we're going to talk about fertility rates. So, fertility rates for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black women over the past 25 years has exceeded the national average of overall births. However, now, non-Hispanic Black women are within the mean and non-Hispanic White women fall 5% to 10% below the national average. So again, when we talk about the growth of the Hispanic population in the US, this is what we're talking about. So, the total fertility rate of Hispanic women is 25% higher than that for non-Hispanic White women. So non-Hispanic White students for public schools, steady decline, right? Based on that. That has been the current largest source of college students. This is not a political commentary by any point. It's just the factual reality that non-Hispanic White students have been the current largest source, and that source is dropping, with 265,000 fewer graduates from this sub-group predicted by 2026. So...
0:19:12.9 David Mainella: Dawn, there was a...
0:19:13.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Yes.
0:19:14.0 David Mainella: There was a question, I think back a couple of slides...
0:19:18.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Yeah.
0:19:19.5 David Mainella: Ian had mentioned, was that within the mean? Do you mean within one standard deviation of the mean?
0:19:26.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Yes, thank you.
0:19:27.7 David Mainella: Okay.
0:19:28.4 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Yeah, there's somebody who knows their stats. Awesome, thank you.
0:19:30.8 David Mainella: Okay.
0:19:33.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Alright, so now I want to talk about higher education index demand. If you work in admissions in higher education, this is something that you know that you probably work with, and it allows colleges and universities to predict who is most likely to attend their institutions. So, the index was created from a longitudinal study and estimates college-going based on demographic variables. So future demand dependent upon type of institution and locations, so it's able to think about that college-going, and then look at that for type of institution and location. And this is what it looks at. Looks at sex, so male, female, race and ethnicity, parental education, geographic location, family income, family composition and nativity. You know, are you domestic to the United States or coming into the United States?
0:20:33.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, even within a state or region, children of different backgrounds do not enter the demand equation equally. Now, of course, public policy changes could affect that, but the example that I like to give to understand this statement. So, I think of myself as being from an immigrant family, but I'm from an immigrant family that came to the United States in the early 1900s. So, my family crawled its way out of Italy, coming out from under, I don't know what, but man, they were eager to get to the United States. And it took until my mom's generation to go to college. And so, her great-grandmother or her grandmother did not finish high school. My mom's parents did finish high school. My mom went to college and actually got a graduate degree. And then I went on for multiple graduate degrees. So that's that example of even within a state or a region, children of different backgrounds do not enter into the demand equation equally.
0:21:34.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: It took four generations within my family, actually three, because my mom went to college, but it took those generations to establish in the US and start going to school. It doesn't mean that... I mean, we look at the dreamers, right? We know that there are students who arrive in the US and go to college, but for most students it takes some time, and that's assuming there are not major changes in public policy. So, the phraseology I like, it's not about college-aged children necessarily, it's about college-bound children based on that higher education demand index. And then, as I talked about with the higher education demand index, it's two-year, four-year, and four-year by institutional types, so we'll look a little bit about that. The greatest predictors for college attendance are family income, race ethnicity, and parental education. That's been standard and it's been standard for many, many years.
0:22:36.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Alrighty, so looking at what we know, geographic birth rate, race ethnicity, trends suggests that there will be fewer college students in the future based on HEDI. Rising parental education, however, suggests the opposite. We know that we have more college educated adults in the US than any other time, however, the positive effects of parental education are overwhelmed by the birth dearth, immigration, and migration patterns. And so that's what leads to the college-going versus college age. And this, it's not a beautiful graph, but this is the graph that I want you to imprint in your mind, and again, feel free to get really close, because I can't see you do it. But you can see the top has college-age students, and this is in the millions. And the bottom, college-going students, and you can see where that drop is. You can also see if you've been around fraternity for a while, we know that we were experiencing some really great boom times, and you can see that, you can see that reflected, right? More students. And you can actually see that I think in this graph, as well. And then there's the drop.
0:23:51.4 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Now this particular graph does not account for COVID. This was based on the prediction pre-COVID. I'm going to leave that up there just for a second, because it's so important with that bottom graph being so frightening when we think about college and college attendance. Okay, so where were we January 2020? We're going to look at the flagship elites, what I call the almost flagships, the regionals and community college. So, what do I mean by that? Now, I'm going to use Virginia as an example because that's where I am. The flagship, University of Virginia, right? That's the long-standing flagship of Virginia. The almost-flagships are schools like Virginia Tech, William and Mary, and this one's kind of come out, for me, come out of nowhere, somebody just lived in Virginia for a long time, but George Mason University, it has become more and more competitive, certainly different from what it was when I was in school.
0:24:54.9 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And then you have more of the regionals. Regionals, again, using Virginia and I'm going to use publics, are like Christopher Brenton Newport, Radford University, University of Mary Washington, Virginia Commonwealth. Those are examples of regionals and then we know community colleges. So, think about that in your own states as I'm moving through, looking at institutional type. So, we're also going to talk about the pandemic. This is a great article, and I would encourage you to pull this up if you're interested, but it looked at what's happened with migration with the pandemic, and we've heard about this on the news. I thought it was so funny because this article was written and then it was like, not until fall when you started hearing on the news about where people were moving. So where did they find people who were moving? So, I'm not going to read this in detail, but you can as I'm scrolling through. They looked at over 300,000 residential moves and the shift, smaller cities, lower cost of living, locations with fewer restrictions, higher income households moving out of more populous cities and then moving more for lifestyle than for work.
0:26:21.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Now, this is interesting as you think about, particularly those latter two, the higher income households and moving more for lifestyle and not as much work-related, because that indicates some similarities to who are college-going. And so, when we look at states, so we know where there's been crazy growth, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, those are the ones that I keep hearing about, and I know there are others. That likely has changed some of those early predictions about growth in those states in terms of college enrollment. We're going to still continue to see this play out, but if you're interested in this, I would recommend this article because I think it's really interesting.
0:26:53.5 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Alright, this is my worst map I will show you of the night, but I wanted... I did this. You can check out my coloring skills. I couldn't capture these images and so I thought, well, fine, I'll just do it myself and my daughter laughed at me, and she did critique my coloring. But you'll see change in departure from states and then change in arrivals based on COVID. So, I'm going to just let you look at that for a minute. I'm going to scoot around my own, and you could see, for example, I talked about how South Carolina was a growth state before, continued as a growth state. Florida continuing as a growth state. Texas, so massive, some change, but not as significant. Those Mountain States, again, you can see a lot of growth. So again, not the most beautiful map, but I hope it helps in terms of seeing how those migration patterns were happening, and you can see again, some draining of population out of the Northeast and out of the Northern Midwest in particular.
0:28:04.8 David Mainella: Dawn, there was one question, when you were showing those different categories of colleges and universities, there was a question about where VCU would land in there and where W&L would land in those categories.
0:28:21.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Great question. And so, I would argue VCU, it would more likely be called a regional, based on where it is in terms of its academic admittance. It's not at that same level as William and Mary or Virginia Tech. Washington and Lee is in a different category because it's private, and so this... And when I was talking about those, I wasn't addressing the privates as much, but I am going to talk about the privates. Let me talk just a little bit about Washington and Lee, because there's some important information about schools like W&L, and another one in University of Richmond. I think it was in 2017, there were 30 institutions identified nationally as the richest universities in the country based on overall endowment to student body population, and this was during the Trump administration. Congress moved to taxing the endowment of those 30 institutions nationally. Now they wouldn't be taxed if they reallocated and gave a certain amount of aid, but you look at W&L, for example, here in Lexington, and in endowment, well over a billion and 2200 students, right? So that's a very wealthy institution, but interestingly, for the purpose of this, two of those 30 are in Virginia, the University of Richmond and Washington and Lee.
0:30:01.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Yeah, so not falling in that category that I listed earlier, the publics, but what I call them when we talk about privates are the haves and the have-nots, super, super, super wealthy private institutions and those that are going to struggle. And I'll talk more about those. That might be more information than you wanted.
0:30:24.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Okay, so April 2021, what we were seeing the growth areas were the Southeast, other than Georgia... Sorry, David. But Georgia saw a pretty significant population decrease and it was mostly out of Atlanta. And so, because Atlanta is so huge that caused an overall population decrease in Georgia. The other big growth, Texas, Utah, Idaho, Montana. Why is this important? And Florida? I don't know why I didn't list Florida there. Why is this important? Because that means we have more potential students in those states. Oh yeah, and I put those other points. This is a good time to think about Sigma Nu. Where is your organization in those states, for example? And then what does that mean for infrastructure? And we'll talk more about that, housing, and such you have available for students. Okay, now let's talk a little bit about the online experience, and again, we've seen several institutions that have started this semester online, and what are we seeing? Do I think it's going to stay? Yes, no. And yeah, I think it's going to be a hybrid. I don't think we will ever fully return to, even in those traditional universities, I think we will forever now integrate this somewhat online experience in higher education. And that seems to be the dominant thought coming out of those who study higher ed.
0:31:52.6 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, what we've heard from students is that most students do want to return to in-person instruction, and 79% of students will want lectures to be available online. Now, we've looked at how there's going to be greater competition for students because there are fewer students, and so when you have 79% of students saying they want their lectures to be available online, I think we're going to see that more and more. I'm going to give a couple of examples of that. I don't know if anybody from Stephen F. Austin is here, but something that's super interesting happened there in the summer, and the president announced SFA Online. And Steven F. Austin, if you're unfamiliar, is sort of in eastern Texas, north of Houston. So, the president announced in the summer that they would be moving to both eight-week and 16-week calendars. So, a student could still attend... I think it's in Nacogdoches, Texas, could still attend for 16 weeks in Nacogdoches, or could do eight weeks on campus and then go home, say, to Houston for eight weeks and work so that he or she can better afford the overall academic experience.
0:33:07.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, I thought, gosh, that is a really, really interesting way of doing it. There's both that online as well as in person, so you have that bifurcated experience. This is a line that they used for marketing this. Now, from a higher ed perspective, what was really interesting that came out... because I'm thinking, "This is a really cool example. Very, very cutting edge." The president did not get buy-in from the faculty on this, and they were suddenly a vote of no confidence in the president. I don't know where it is now, but I keep checking back in on Stephen F. Austin because clearly a great idea, but those within faculty governance are like, "Wait, hold on, cowboy." And so, it remains to be seen whether or not Stephen F. Austin can pull this off, and/or other colleges and universities try to do this. University of Arizona, a lot of us have heard about this, that University of Arizona has a whole complement of online degrees that are available in a wide array.
0:34:13.4 Dr. Dawn Wiese: No, it was Arizona State. I was trying to think when Kyle Rittenhouse had said that, but it was Arizona State, which also has this. When he said, "Oh, I'm a student at Arizona State," it was through that online program. Although he hadn't... Well, different story, he wasn't actually admitted. He was doing it as a special student, which means you're non-degree seeking. But anyway, different story. But an example of how you can live in Wisconsin and be a student in Arizona. Okay, so January 2020, we knew we were dealing with out-of-control costs, a lot of questions regarding the value of degree, and seeing continued cuts in public higher education. And I talked a little bit already about how private higher education is divided between the haves and the have-nots, those who have tons of money and those that are just holding on. And I've actually had the opportunity to work at both, drastically different experiences, both for the students as well as on the working side. Tuition discounting to attract students, that has been the model. And what that means is there's the sticker price for what a college degree costs, and then there's what students actually paid. And so, colleges were using that to attract students, but then drawing out of the endowment to do so.
0:35:35.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, they're hedging their bets that they could attract students, and then that would attract more students. And we've kind of run out of time on that with the declining population. 27% of CFOs expressed strong confidence in their institution's financial model over the next five years, with it dropping to 13% of CFOs in higher education expressing confidence when asked to look out over a 10-year horizon. CFOs within higher education know that it is a model that will financially struggle. Moody's Investor Service gave a negative outlook on the entire higher education sector. It's kind of flip-flopped back and forth, back and forth, and now it's back to a negative outlook because the net tuition revenue, the cash colleges have left after giving out financial aid, is flat or declining on too many campuses.
0:36:29.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, for publics, state appropriations have not kept up with inflation. State spending per student is at its lowest since 1980. Ten years ago, students paid about a third of the cost of their education. Today in nearly half, students pay for most of their education. Colorado is expected to be the first state where aid to higher education is anticipated to reach zero. And by 2050, 15 other states are expected to be there, including South Carolina, Massachusetts, and Virginia. So, this is just looking at that continuing dwindling down of state appropriations for public institutions. And then this is something interesting to watch, and if you just write this down and you type this into a browser, this site is keeping track of closures. Not COVID closures, but closures of institutions since 2016. And you can begin to see like Georgia, where David lives, went through a significant change, and saw a lot of mergers, and that's an example of how some schools are closing.
0:37:36.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: My favorite merger happened, I think it was in Vermont, where there was... Let me get this right. Oh, shoot, I'm not going to get it right. Oh, I know, there was Lyndon State University and Johnson State University, and they merged, which I thought was kind of funny in Vermont because it could be Lyndon Johnson State University. That's not what they did, I just thought it was funny. But anyway, you can follow college and university closures by putting this in the browser. We also have corporate degrees, lower-cost online programs, and then changes within states like those Georgia changes, and then the possibility of free community college. Google now treats their tech certificates as equivalent to college degrees. Huge, right? Because it means you don't have to go to college to get a very well, very-high paying job in the technology sector.
0:38:28.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And in 130 other companies, maybe more by now, because I pull this number down two months ago, 130 other companies are recognizing Google certifications as equivalent to college degrees. 250,000 people have taken at least one of the certification programs, and 57% of these individuals did not have a college degree, so these are students who are looking at professional high-paying positions and not pursuing college. So, employers investing in this as an education as a benefit, almost exclusively non-traditional or fully online program, so great accessibility for students, weakening that market for the residential four-year college. So that's an important one.
0:39:10.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Now, this is a really interesting state program that's happened, and for those of you in North Carolina, you probably followed this. I thought this was fascinating, so involving three state institutions, Elizabeth City, Western Carolina, and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, they created what was called the North Carolina Promise, so three schools reduced tuition at these three institutions to $500 per semester, not $500 per credit hour, not $500 per class. Tuition is $500 per semester, and the idea is to increase educational access, but the other idea behind this is how would that force the other... because these are regionals, right? How would it force the other regionals to consider lowering their cost to compete with these institutions, and that's reducing student debt, blah, blah, blah. So here, I'm going to give you, here are two other regionals in North Carolina, and you can see their enrollment dropping, now 2020 is a little hard because of COVID, but you can see those decreases.
0:40:19.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Now, let's look at the three with the North Carolina Promise Program. Even in COVID, you can see that growth. And so that's another interesting state to watch in terms of what colleges and universities are doing to deal with the high cost of college education and getting students through the door. Community colleges. So, April 2021, we were hearing about free college, and now January 2022 that see is for The Chronicle of Higher Education, we are seeing that community colleges are among the most hit by COVID.
0:41:04.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Okay, so where is the strength? The elites, and when asking about somewhere like Washington and Lee, that's going to fall into an elite, all the Ivy's elites, the real strength in higher ed remains in the elites, the flagships and those almost-flagships, because students, very predictably, continue to try to go to the best college they can get into it. And I'm talking about traditional college students at this point, those who are in that pipeline, so that's where the real strength is. Our students going into those types of institutions. So that's the background, and I hope that that was enjoyable. For me it's great fun. But I wanted to talk about that because it gives that picture of where higher ed is and the fact that higher ed needs programs that do good things for students, and that's what we're going to talk about with the fraternal research.
0:42:02.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And so, before that, I'm going to ask another question for you to put in the chat, and David, I'm going to ask you at some point to give us what you see as the trends from that. Other than brotherhood, other than I made great friends, what are some of the things that you think you specifically got out of or are getting out of, as a current student, your fraternal experience? So, if you could type that into the chat, and I'm going to start moving into the fraternal research.
0:42:33.7 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, let me give you a little bit of background on the fraternal research. Historically, 2%-3% of higher education research is going to fraternity and sorority, so just this little bit, with almost all of it focusing on alcohol and hazing. And why is that? Because researchers decide what they want to study, and when you hear about pressing problems on campuses, you hear about alcohol and hazing, and so that's most of that 2%-3%. Therefore, good news about higher ed, the great things that fraternity is doing are not necessarily studied and certainly not promoted, and so there is now a real effort to balance this equation, and this is...
0:43:21.9 Dr. Dawn Wiese: David talked about this in my introduction, that I've been working with the North-American Interfraternity Conference to look at research that they can fund. So, what does that mean? That doesn't mean that they're buying researchers who will give them the results they want. It means they're asking tough questions about the fraternal experience by higher education researchers, well-known higher education researchers, and getting some pretty amazing findings. And your CEO, Brad, is one of the four CEOs on the NIC research committee, so I get to see him on a pretty regular basis as we think about what should be studied to talk about within that fraternal experience. And so, as you add in your comments about what's great about your fraternal experience, those are the kinds of things that the research committee is very interested in. So mostly we're looking at academic, personal, and social development. That's the in-class and out-of-class experience. This is a quote that I just like, I'm not going to spend much time on this, but it's back from 2003, and I just thought it was a great quote about, what is fraternity and sorority supposed to be about on a college campus? And so, I just really like that quote.
0:44:37.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Okay, so what are we seeing? I'm going to first give you some older studies because I want you to look... And so, 2011 being an older study, I want you to look at how those studies... We're seeing some very similar things in the 2019-2020 which indicates... For any of you all, I know there's at least one person who's interested in stats who's listening, if we can get studies to replicate from the early 2000s, 2010 to 2020. That's great data because it's true over time. So, these two researchers studied fraternity and sorority membership in academic performance, 17 schools, 45,000 students, and found that students who joined fraternities and sororities carried more credit hours, had higher GPAs. Rejecting the notion that fraternity and sorority affiliated first-year students, because they sectioned out for that, attained lower GPAs than non-affiliated students. So, whenever you hear about deferred recruitment and how it hurts freshman academic performance, this 2011 study said, "No, no, it doesn't. We've got the data to show it." With a pretty significant sample size.
0:45:50.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So HIAC, that 2002 study suggested that fraternity and sorority students reported higher communication and critical thinking abilities. I want you to remember this because you're going to see this show up again. This researcher found that membership in a fraternity or sorority is associated with an increased community engagement and in community service. So again, an older study in 2009. Alcohol and other drugs. This is the area where the research that is out there is pretty consistent. Most studies find members of fraternities and sororities are more likely to consume alcohol. That we know. And as I think about this... And when David said in my introduction, I was the Vice President of Student Affairs, that was at Washington and Lee University. And that is certainly one of the things that we talked about at W&L. We had students who like to drink. And were those fraternities to go away, does that mean those students would stop drinking? Probably not. Because students are attracted... I would argue that it's not the fraternity that makes them drink, but the student disposition. And all we have to do is look at an institution like Harvard and Yale, which don't have... Well, they don't have recognized fraternity systems at all, but they do have eating clubs, and so it's not the fraternity or sorority, it's who's going to the institutions.
0:47:27.7 Dr. Dawn Wiese: However, I thought this is really fascinating, this study, it implemented an incentive reward program for students with cash prizes to combat excessive drinking, and found that students in fraternities and sororities, particularly, would cut in half the number of students who are legally intoxicated. Which you could argue shows that it's not problematic drinking and when financially incentivized, there's a pretty big drop off. I just thought that was kind of funny, too. Okay, so now I'm going to look at Gallup. So, there've been two big Gallup studies, one in 2014 and one in 2021 interviewing graduates. So, if you hear me slip into saying students, correct me. These are studies about graduates of the fraternal experience versus non-Greek students. So, Gallup, a little bit 30 years on research looking mostly an employee work group performance and Gallup talks about well-being. And those are those five areas of well-being that Gallup looks at.
0:48:36.7 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, let me see what else I want to say... Oh, 29% of people in the US are not thriving in any of the five elements of well-being, which is obviously not great. The other thing about what Gallup found is it didn't matter where students went to college, very interesting, for these five elements of well-being. Whether public or private, large, or small, selective, not selective, hardly mattered when looking at well-being and work lives coming out of that college experience. And this was consistent in 2014, as well as 2021, fraternity and sorority members are more likely than all other college graduates to thrive in each of those five elements of well-being, purpose, social, financial, community, and physical. So, purpose, these numbers look... As I look at these numbers, I don't go, "Oh, my gosh." But it's still there. So, we've got 59% on purpose versus 54% for the non-members, so we've got that as consistent. Social, no surprise, more than half of fraternity and sorority members talk about having strong relationships with family and friends, so that area of social well-being as compared with 48% of other college graduates. Thriving in the financial area, 46% to 42%. Thriving in community, 52% to 46%. And then physical, 37% to 34%. So probably the least, but still thriving at a higher rate.
0:50:20.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: More fraternity and sorority members strongly agreed that they had professors who cared about them. But still, you talk about... This number made me a little bit sad, that we're still only at 16% versus 13% of fraternity and sorority graduates, saying that they had professors who cared about them. And then having at least one professor who encouraged them in their learning and had a mentor who encouraged their goals. So, 66% to 63%, 25% to 21%, strongly agree that they had a long-term project, an internship, extremely involved in extracurriculars, 11% to 5%. So again, still really low numbers overall, but better for those students who participated in fraternities and sororities. Alumni who were members of a fraternity or sorority exhibit a higher emotional attachment to their institution, and I'm going to talk about that in terms of numbers in just a couple of slides, but one of the things that's important from a higher ed perspective is, there's something in higher ed that they call net promoters, and those are individuals who will promote the institution to others.
0:51:08.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So, when you're looking at a declining student population, net promoter is a big deal, right? These graduates are saying, "Please, go to my school. It's awesome." And anybody who's been in the business world knows that having somebody who's selling your product for you is a whole lot easier than having to sell it yourself. 22% of fraternity and sorority members report that they are emotionally attached to their alma mater as compared to 17% of all other college graduates. And just a little bit more on the business side, more fraternity and sorority members report having started a business than other college graduates and believe that their institution prepared them for life after college, a bigger margin, 37% to 27%.
0:52:33.8 Dr. Dawn Wiese: This is probably the most important thing coming out of Gallup, because when you start promoting some of the research on campuses, they'll say yes, but is that because... I'll use my daughter, who's a senior in college... I'll use her language, is that because they're coming from a place of privilege? I hear a lot about privilege now from my daughter. And the great thing that they found in this study is that the differences between fraternity and sorority members and all other college graduates... This was controlled for key demographic characteristics, including gender, race ethnicity, socio-economic status, and first-generation education status. And so, this is not true just for those who are coming from places of privilege.
0:53:23.6 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Alright, another study, I'm going to talk about Gary Pike. Gary Pike is a long-time researcher at a couple of different institutions, but ultimately out of Indiana University, which has one of the largest higher ed research programs in the country. His study is called The Greek Experience Revisited, and it's revisited because he asked the same questions in this study as he did in some studies in the early 2000s, but he did it with an even broader pool of students. The results were significant for fraternity and sorority members: More engaged... Remember, I talked about engagement early on. Greater gains and learning, and more satisfied with their college experiences. So, this I'm not going to read to you, but you'll see that it's coming out... He used the National Survey on Student Engagement as his data source, which meant that he had over 200,000 students from 541 institutions that were a part of that study. This I'm going to let you read if you're interested, but it talks about how he found this, because these are some great findings with a really, really impressive sample size.
0:54:36.4 David Mainella: Dawn, one question just came up about Greek alumni and giving. Are Greek alumni... Do they have a tendency to support their institution at a higher level than independent alumni?
0:54:48.7 Dr. Dawn Wiese: You bet they do, and I'm going to show you how much more likely in just a couple slides. Thanks for that question.
0:54:53.3 David Mainella: Okay, yup.
0:54:55.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: You'll see I have this one in boldface: A separate analyses for first-year males, senior males, first-year females, and senior females. And specifically, he looked at those high-impact practices, those are things like internships, extracurricular activities, student faculty interaction, collaborative learning, supportive campus environment, and then what he added to this 2020 study that was not in the early 2000s is discussion with diverse others. And what that means is, how are fraternity and sorority members in terms of engaging with people different from self, because that's often also a critique for those in the fraternal experience. So, what did he find? Greater learning gains, more satisfied with the college experience, improved learning gains, and despite being less diverse than students in general, fraternity and sorority members reported higher levels of interaction with people different from themselves than did non-affiliated, non-Greek students. Huge finding, huge finding, and one that really flies in the face of a lot of critiques of the fraternal experience.
0:56:09.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: So he did find in this study, so this is different from that Debard finding I shared with you in 2011, that he was seeing lower grades, but as he looked at it, he said he wasn't even sure that that was true, that that could have been generated from other things, that I don't understand in how he did it, but I was happy to say, uh, it could be something else. Okay. The other thing he said, and these are his words, not mine, that the findings of this study indicate that fraternities and sororities are not antithetical to the values of American higher education, as some have suggested. To the contrary, and again, these are his words, membership in a fraternity or sorority is associated with greater involvement in curricular and co-curricular activities, promote student learning and development, promote satisfaction with the college experience, and furthermore, the largest positive effects were found for first-year students arguing against the concept of deferred recruitment. In other words, all of his data, with this over 200,000 students, showed that that fraternal experience was good for first-year students in that first semester.
0:57:21.0 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And every time I hear about deferred recruitment, I'm like, "Well, where's your data that suggests?" And it's like, "Well, it's just, we know this." Here's the data. And if an institution is not nearing mirroring the data of 200,000 students at 541 institutions, then I think the question is, what's wrong with your school? Anyway, so let's talk a bit about mental health. Fraternity and sorority-affiliated students report lower mean scores related to depression and anxiety. For depression, this was consistent for male and female students in comparison with unaffiliated. Significant differences were not observed for mean anxiety scores when considering affiliation and gender.
0:58:01.3 Dr. Dawn Wiese: Lower lifetime diagnosis of depression by a medical professional, but higher lifetime diagnosis of anxiety, which I thought was kind of interesting in turn... Is it that drive to compete? I'm not sure. Fraternity and sorority affiliated students have higher rates of lifetime use of therapy or counseling, but lower rates of current use. What that means is, before coming to college, more likely to have engaged in counseling, but not so much during those college years. Although, a higher positive rating of campus support systems. The overall idea, is counseling a good thing? Yes. But lower knowledge, if we're to access it, if trying to access those services when on campus.
0:58:46.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: This study was from The Post-Secondary Education Research Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the data comes from the Healthy Minds Study, so that's that data set. And you can see there were 78 participating institutions, 41,000 students, and from 2018-2019, so not data during COVID. And then the last finding, these findings were not consistent for affiliated non-binary students, so all of those things were true, except for those students who identify as non-binary. Some key takeaways, fraternity and sorority members tend to be happier, are more involved, and have better educational experiences than non-affiliated students. Fraternity and sorority students are more likely to be retained and to graduate. There is not support for a deferred recruitment. Alumni of the fraternal experience demonstrate increased life satisfaction than students who did not participate in fraternities and sororities as undergraduates. And alumni also feel more connected to their alma maters. And fraternity and sorority members experience better overall mental health than non-affiliated students.
0:59:58.9 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And here are these, the... How much more likely? Three times more likely to obtain an internship while in college. Twice as likely to encourage others to attend their alma mater, that's that net promoter, very important to colleges. Five times more likely to give back financially to their alma mater, and twice as likely to have a job waiting for them when they graduate. Some really, really strong takeaways for Greek life. Oop. Forgot about this, almost five times as likely be overall satisfied with their lives as alums. And again, control for demographic variables. The key takeaways for higher ed, so this is where I want to look at how great this is. Awesome, awesome, awesome for these students, and what these students are for that college experience. And what do we know about higher ed? Significantly fewer students, so greater competition. Regional public colleges and universities are in danger because students are going to tend toward the highest level of institution that they believe they can get into. Struggling privates are in that critical danger area. They're competing for fewer resources, resources being the students. Those institutions in the Northeast and Midwest, are in the most danger. There is little indication that college costs are decreasing.
1:01:15.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: We see the North Carolina Promise, for example, but we don't know if that's indeed going to force other schools to lower their cost, not seeing it yet. This is where services that you can provide from the Fraternity, are an absolute advantage. I would also recommend, as you think about your own footprint, Sigma Nu's footprint, are where are you looking at growth? Elite, national, regional, et cetera. Because that's really going to be a predictor of where the students are most likely to be going to school in the future. Focusing on elites and those nationals across the nation, that's your safest bet, because students are going to continue to track towards those. I also recommend, and this is more for looking at private colleges as a way to understand where their finances are, track endowments, ask questions about tuition discounting, look at enrollments over time, and look for rapid tuition increases. Those are your predictors for schools that are struggling in that private college area. Overall, college students, like all people, are sometimes subject to poor decision-making, and fraternity and sorority members are a subset of that. However, and there I'm referring to those alcohol numbers, we know that those are higher. However, the data overwhelmingly support the fraternal experience. This doesn't mean that concerns like sexual misconduct, alcohol, and other drugs, hazing, shouldn't be a part of the educational mission.
1:02:47.1 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And in fact, I know Sigma Nu does some amazing programs in this area, but what we would advocate for is explaining to colleges and universities, that the fraternal experience adds to that overall student experience. For those institutions that take a hard stance, that's where you have to push back and advocate. For Sigma Nu, think about your campus footprint. Are you adjusting to the demographic migration patterns? Are you thinking about your footprint? What's happening on the campus? Are you thinking about support for chapters and expansion based on your current footprint? And are you marketing both at the national, as well as that local level, the value add that fraternity offers? I'm going to tell you a really quick story. There may even be somebody from Rutgers on this, but I was talking with some alums from a sorority about some of these same things, and then she sent me a note, and she said, "Dawn, can you send me blah, blah, blah." And the question was asked about having this... You can have these slides, that's absolutely fine, you can use them for whatever you need. But she said, "Can you send me something and help me understand this? Because I have a meeting with the president, and I want to talk to her about how great Greek life is." And I'm like, "Absolutely."
1:04:07.2 Dr. Dawn Wiese: And I guess they were talking about doing some pretty drastic changes. And she went in armed with this data as an alum who had some influence with that college president, and very rapidly, some of the changes that had been discussed went away. So, you have the power to use this kind of information and I hope that you will. And I know that Sigma Nu wants to be able to help you all if you're hearing about colleges and universities that are not valuing this fraternal experience. It's a great experience. We know it, you all know it, and I hope this is where we can share some of the great things that you got out of it. The other thing I think fraternities and sororities can do is always think about networking, career, internships, how you can use technology for undergraduates to reach alumni. This is a really big deal that you all offer, and we see that bear out the numbers.
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1:05:37.4 Adam Girtz: Awesome. Welcome back, everyone. That was great. Again, just a very cool presentation. I'm glad we were able to have Dr. Wiese present with us. Christopher, just to reiterate, where can we find some of that visual information? Because I know she references a couple of things that are up on the slides that people might want to look at.
1:06:02.4 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. So just as a reminder, this is an imperfect translation from what was intended to be a visual webinar that folks could attend if they were interested. Now we're transitioning it into a podcast medium, so there is going to be some things that don't translate as well. For example, during the presentation, Dr. Wiese made a lot of references to a slide presentation that she had throughout her presentation. All of that is available. So, we're going to make these slides available in the podcast show notes. So, you can look in your app, there should be additional information that's provided that will give you access to the show notes. So, you're going to be able to access the PowerPoint slides there. We're also going to make this available in its full version, so the full video version. It's going to be uploaded to YouTube and so we'll have a YouTube link there. So, if you'd like to watch it all the way through with the slides, you can do so there, as well. And then, of course, we do transcripts for all of our episodes and so if you'd prefer to read it, you can do that, as well. So, all of that's going to be linked in the show notes and then we'll also make sure that we're referencing some of the data that she's pulling from, the NIC and now on Sigma Nu's website we have actually helpful links that go directly to some of the data that was quoted and so we can share that with you as well as the citations to the research papers that the information is based on.
1:07:35.3 Christopher Brenton: So, if you want to continue your deep dive into this information beyond what Dawn has shared or you're just one of those people who just likes to kind of follow up and do a little bit of research on your own, we're going to make that available to you, as well. So hopefully if this is a topic that really intrigued you, we're going to continue providing you with more information that you can use and learn again just about how valuable I think our Fraternity experience is.
1:08:09.1 Adam Girtz: Bonus material and transcripts. Christopher Brenton, we truly are a top-tier podcast.
1:08:16.2 Christopher Brenton: [chuckle] Or at least appealing to the nerds out there like myself who love this kind of stuff.
1:08:21.4 Adam Girtz: As do I. So normally when we do interviews, you and I live with someone, we get to thank them at the end and toss some appreciation their way for spending time with us and for giving their time to us as well as the research and expertise that goes into presenting a topic like this. Obviously, we didn't get that opportunity this time, but I did just want to toss out some appreciation to Dr. Wiese as well as Dave Mainella and the Sigma Nu Educational Foundation for putting together this webinar. Dave puts together webinars pretty regularly. And they can find more information about upcoming webinars usually through email. What's the other best place for that, Christopher?
1:09:09.1 Christopher Brenton: Actually, I think we have a web link to our most recent webinars. The registration weblink I believe is sigmanu.org/webinars, so if you go to that link, that is where you will register for the upcoming... So, the closest in occurrence webinar that's available. So, depending on when you were listening to this, it will likely have changed, so we won't necessarily call it specific webinars, but sigmanu.org/webinars. And of course, as Adam Girtz referenced, usually by email and social media is where we publicize those.
1:09:49.1 Adam Girtz: I'm confirming that you're correct and you are. It is sigmanu.org/webinars. And the next upcoming webinar is [blank]. [chuckle] It's there, but you'll just have to go to the website to find out because when you listen to this at some point in the future, wherever that may be, whether you are a Friday at 3:00 PM as soon as you get the notification listener, we appreciate you. If you are a listener in 2030 and going back in the archives of these things called podcasts and you somehow stumbled upon "The Gavel Podcast" and you're listening to all of the episodes in a row, we also appreciate you and there's still probably webinars. So anyway, Christopher, any other plugs? Anything else we want to mention before we sign off here?
1:10:44.4 Christopher Brenton: Well, just to finish the point you were making, so definitely thank you to the Foundation for organizing all of this and then also to Dr. Wiese, as well.
1:10:55.3 Adam Girtz: Absolutely. Yeah.
1:10:56.4 Christopher Brenton: Can't thank her enough for the time that she took out of her day to share this information with us. And just her friendship, I think, to the Fraternity in general that Dr. Wiese, who lives in Lexington. She is married to the Executive Director of Kappa Alpha Order, Larry Wiese. Our organization has been long-time friends with Dr. Wiese and so we are really excited to be able to bring her expertise onto our episode and to share that information with all of you. So, thank you to Dr. Wiese.
1:11:34.4 Adam Girtz: Absolutely. Agreed.
1:11:36.4 Christopher Brenton: But to your point, the only time-sensitive thing that we do want to plug... Last episode, if you're kind of a consistent listener, you heard us talk about our upcoming staff hiring periods, so we are of course looking for good staff to join our consultant team for the 2022-2023 calendar year. And so, we are encouraging all alumni and collegiate members regardless of how you were listening to this episode, if you know of someone who is going to be a graduating senior or maybe a recent graduate who would be interested in working for the fraternity and perpetuating the good work that you just heard about during this presentation, please encourage them, or encourage yourself to... Or be encouraged, I guess...
1:12:28.4 Adam Girtz: Feel empowered.
1:12:28.9 Christopher Brenton: To apply by the March 1st deadline. So, if you go to sigmanu.org/employment, you can find all of the information about working for the Fraternity, being a consultant, and you can find testimonials, you can find the application. It's a one-stop site for you to go and get all the information you need. But once again, March 1st is the decision deadline, so we want to make sure that we get all of the applications in as possible so we can hire the next extraordinary consultant team to go out and do good work for our Fraternity.
1:13:03.4 Adam Girtz: Absolutely. And if you're listening to this in the future, our standard deadlines that take place every year, application deadlines are going to be October 15th and March 1st for our staff hiring. So, if you're listening to this down the road and have passed one of those deadlines, the next one's coming up. So absolutely excellent experience. I would encourage all of you to apply or to recommend if you know someone who would be a good fit for the staff team. Alright. I think that's it, Christopher. Anything else?
1:13:40.3 Christopher Brenton: I think that's it for me, as well.
1:13:42.9 Adam Girtz: Alright. Well, thank you all for listening to this episode of "The Gavel Podcast" and we will see you soon.
1:13:49.9 Christopher Brenton: Alright. Take care.
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