Rod Danan: Welcome back to the Unpulled Lever. Today we have an amazing episode talking about the hottest topic in higher ed, experiential learning. So I went to the person that is leading the wave with their company, Podium Education, and that is Chris Parrish, who is the co-founder and president there. He started out in 2019 and has built this to be a juggernaut, building actual experience into the degree, which is what we should be doing across higher ed in general. We go into a bunch of different topics in terms of how to build experiential learning, some of the results he's seen, and even how ASU got a six to ten point bump in student retention from integrating some career into the curriculum. So this is an episode you don't want to miss. Watch the full thing and leave some comments below and let me know what you want to hear more of. Let's dive in. Chris, you know, to start off, you know, everyone in higher ed agrees career outcomes matter. Nobody's against students getting jobs. So what's actually stopping a school from acting on it? What's the real behavior incentive or fear underneath?
Chris Parrish: Yeah, that's a great question. I this is a complex one and obviously no university
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: is the same, but I can definitely speak to a couple of the key trends that that I've seen. So I started podium alongside my two co-founders in two thousand and nineteen. And you know, stretching back to two thousand and nineteen, at that point in time there was beginning to be some questions around this idea of a college ROI. Now Those questions are obviously at a fever pitch today. In your intro, you alluded to this. And I think most of your listeners are probably reading a lot of the same news stories that I'm reading, where every day somebody wants to throw a fireball at higher ed. And that particular question around a college ROI, by the way, by the way, was a really personal one for me. As you mentioned, I grew up in a rural community, was first one in my family to go to college. So being able to build career readiness and experiential learning into the degree program was the tack that I wanted to take with podium. So that more universities could deliver on this idea of an ROI. And what's been interesting is like since over the last couple of years, obviously the trust in higher education from a public standpoint has fallen off pretty significantly. Gallup, I think, does the best survey of this data where if you look at trust in higher education or folks that believe higher education is very important, it was over 80% when I graduated from college in 2010. And that same stat today is less than 30% of the US public has believes that higher education is very important. And I think for a lot of universities, they thought the best way to answer this ROI question is just to go out and you know require an internship for students so they get some real-world work experience. But the supply and demand of those experiences are way out of whack. I mean, this year there's around nine million students looking for an internship, there's only two million available. So I think for for higher education institutions, there's a realization right now that just asking students or even requiring students get an internship is the right answer when the supply and demand is so far out of whack. So we've got to think of other creative solutions to make sure that students are getting work experience throughout their time in college. And at podium is just our perspective that it's best done as a four credit course that's incorporated into the degree program. And that's what we're so thankful that we have a hundred of these universities now that are sharing our viewpoint that the best way to scale this and to make sure that it's done with access in mind is to build it into the degree program.
Rod Danan: I love that. And like I think what what you're talking about here is a lot of schools with like the censorship requirement, they have a dream. Why is it a dream? Because they don't have a plan on how to get there. And for every student to get this experience, you have to turn into a goal, you need a a plan to get there. So how does a school go about actually getting this and integrated into their curriculum? Is it You have to kind of work with like a podium or is it some stuff that they can do themselves? Like what's the levels of difficulty to stand something like this up?
Chris Parrish: Well, number one, I believe leadership and structure matter matters a whole heck of a lot. most institutions right now are focused on Impact practices are part of the strategic plan, the framework of the university, which is a great head start. I, for a long time in my career, to be candid, I was skeptical of the importance of strategic plans put out by universities, right? These are done every five years. They have a lot of glowy language and they're nice PDFs that you know get printed out and put on the desk of the president and provost. But I do think more universities, especially in a time of threat and crisis, which we're in right now, are paying much more time and attention to that. And I do think that resources are martial to some of the priorities that are put within the strategic plan. So that's like kind of step one in a lot of ways for a lot of universities. And then I also really believe like another trend to call out that alignment of career services with the academic side of the shop is really important. one of my one of my friends, Randy Bass at Georgetown University said this best at a conference I was at. recently where he said the universities that win the next decade are those where the academics and the experiential folks play nicely in the same sandbox. And as a dad of a six and a four year old, I know how difficult that can be sometimes, but it it really is the truth. So I'm also really big on this idea that career, in my opinion, should be reporting up through the provost line. That not to say that you can't be effective integrating career if that office reports up through student affairs at a university. I've seen plenty of examples of it. But I think when they're in the same room with the same reporting structure, it's it just allows you to move quicker in terms of alignment that there are some of these career-oriented experiences that can and should count for credit as part of the degree. So those are a few of the indicators I look for. and I suggest that universities think about. another one that I would say is like, just getting comfortable with the spectrum of high quality, high impact practices, experiential learning, however you'd like to frame it, there is quite a spectrum out there. we at Podium do a lot of work with the University of Cincinnati, which they would tell you they're the founding school of co-op. I think Drexel says the same thing and so does Northeastern. So we'll let them have that wrestling match amongst the three of
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: them. But the point is Cincy Drexel Northeastern, they are the 800-pound gorillas in the experiential learning arena. And they themselves would tell you if a university is trying to build in industry experience into the degree, a lot of times they say, We need to institute a co-op program. And the reality is, Northeastern, Direct Sil CINSE, they have built that over 150, 200 years. It's not something that you can just figure out in a matter of months or even years. It's it's a decades-long initiative. And I think what that means for a lot of universities, they need to think creatively about if it's not co-op, if it's not a traditional internship, how else can we get experience in the classroom? You definitely don't need to use podium to do that. We're obviously one option to do it and to do it at scale at high quality, but there's been plenty of other examples of universities figuring out how to do this, starting in their freshman year seminar, stretching all the way through to these capstone style experiences that students have. So I'm a big believer in more. More is better, the more the better for students, and to give them a menu of options so that there's lots of different ways that they can pick out these experiences during their time in college.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so so to kind of repeat back the lessons there, it's like one, you have to integrate the academic side and the career side together, which I am seeing a lot of universities come together and they have just a single advisor, not career or academic advisor. It's one one role because it is interconnected through the entire student journey. and then the second piece is yeah, for experiential learning, you can stand it up yourself, but you need to do heavy and b heavy investment over many, many years, like a Northeastern who I I discussed this on my last episode, they have 150 people working on just a co-op program
Chris Parrish: Right.
Rod Danan: when most universities might not put even, you know, ten people in their career center. So it's like, okay, we're something has to be done at the leadership level to make that a priority to actually get something like that built up. So
Chris Parrish: Yeah. Not not to mention the connections to industry. I mean, that's the other side of things. I was just talking to
Rod Danan: Yeah, relations.
Chris Parrish: an organization that is at the center of employers and universities. And the reality is like in this country, we're not like Canada, where the federal government puts an investment into making sure that employers are hiring internships and it's integrated with universities. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. So also figuring out how to be as a university, how to be a really good front porch. If you will, for industry partners, when they come to you and say, we want to work with your students, having a good answer there is another piece of advice that I would give because a lot of times universities will say, you're industry, you want to work with our students, let me hand you to the business school or let me hand you to career services. And if you don't have alignment on how industry can and should play in the curriculum for students, then you've wasted that opportunity when an industry partner comes to you. And I think being a really good front porch and knowing how to work with them is part of frankly the value that that podium provides is that we have since we run for credit as part of the act undergraduate education experience and it's open to all students, just allows us to plug in industry partners in a very pragmatic and practical way to get them in front of their university partner students. So being a good front porch is probably the last piece of advice I give on that side.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so so true about the relations, because like you can't build those over a day, you know, that has to happen
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: over many, many years. I think like community colleges do pretty good job with like working with local employers and getting their students into there. Do do you all work with community colleges or is it mostly for you universities? Like what's it what's the top kind of client for you, I guess, at podium?
Chris Parrish: Yes, so we have a hundred and seven university partners as of this morning. and they range quite a bit from large R1 publics like my alma mater, the University of Maryland. we work with University of Illinois, Oregon, Washington, to smaller privates. Rice Tufts, a few examples on that side. Right now we are focused on the four-year degree market. I'm very interested in community colleges. we just built a new experience called Career Discovery that is running as part of the freshman year at 15 universities. And I believe that experience, that product, which is much more about exposure as a means for inspiration, where students move through a series of 10 immersive projects that we've put together with industry. Where they get to sort of look inside an organization like L'Oreal or Crocs or Nike and then hold up a mirror to themselves and try to understand did that experience inside that organization did it give them energy? Did it drain energy? And it's a really unique way for students to stress test their own strengths and interests. And that product in particular, I think, is the right academic initiative to live at a community college as students are still trying to sort of navigate college a bit and figure out. what paths are best for them. you know, it's it this always surprises people, but the average college student comes into college with three jobs in mind, what their parents did, and then maybe what an influential aunt or uncle or coach has done. And obviously the world of work is incredibly diverse and unique. And I really believe that exposure is a key way that we can help students build their sense of purpose and understand why they're in college to begin with. and hopefully chart a path that Where they can declare a major with confidence and a career path with confidence.
Rod Danan: I love that because yeah, I'm thinking back to like when I was a student, I had no idea about all these different things I know about now. You know, I graduated, people are like, B2B, B2C, and like decks and all these kind of like code words and different roles. And you realize that there's thousands, maybe millions of different roles you can go into. And understanding the different paths and even like the small nuances within a specific field, that's where a lot of the value is. So with this career discovery. I know most of it what you're doing is is credit based. So is this like, hey, they have like a four credit course and this is something that they do every day, or how's that work?
Chris Parrish: The term lengths at universities are a little different, as you know. So the two offering academic offerings we have is something called the Career Accelerator, which is what I would consider our minted offering. That's the one that's running at all 107 universities right now. And then Career Discovery is new for us. We just built it beginning in spring
Rod Danan: Okay.
Chris Parrish: of 26. So it's a couple, a couple months old at this point in time. The accelerator will run for three to six credits. That runs over a full semester. and then also like a 10-week summer term. And then career discovery is a bit more modularized. what I mean by that is what the first year seminar looks like at each institution is typically pretty unique, right? The first year that a student's on campus, most institutions wanna treat them with with key gloves in a lot of a lot of ways. You want to make sure that they're having a great experience. So that one is much more malleable, I would say, versus the accelerator where We've run career discovery over everything from an eight-week term to a full 16-week. It's you can sort of plug and pull out different industry experiences depending on the goal of the institution.
Rod Danan: Got it. Okay. So that that makes more sense. So then for some of these other experiential learning credit courses that you have, so then is it is ideal thing, okay, they do one sophomore year, one junior year, one senior year, or like how how would that shake out for the average student?
Chris Parrish: Yeah. a lot of universities are thinking about layering these experiences, which I think is wonderful. I know one of your recent guests was Michael Horn, and I think he said this about a
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: year ago that the goal for most students graduating from college should be to have somewhere in the range of two years of work experience, which I think is right on. And those experiences can take all different forms, right? Those can be a literal work experience where you're working to help pay for college. Those can be internships, those can be things like podium, those can be a Co-ops, they're all different types of opportunities for students. So I think stacking those from day one is really important. So the way that we think about it is career discovery is a high impact practice that should start in their freshman year, right? Their first or second semester. And then they might want to try something like we have a career rotation experience in the accelerator that allows them to rotate through a bunch of different industry partners. They might do something like that their sophomore year, their junior year, and then we have deeper dives within the accelerator as well, where they can focus in and just work on projects related to branding and advertising, or just projects related to data challenges, or just projects related to open AI challenges with open AI clients. So we're a big believer in interdisciplinary setup, open to all students. I think most universities that I assess do a pretty good job, especially at like the capstone level for students that are having a signature experience within their degree plan. But once again, one of the concepts that we love to play with at podium is this idea of like rivers versus roads careers. So just allow me to sort of explain this concept because I think it's an important one. a road career would be the major where literally the name of the major oftentimes matches the entry level job, right? So teaching majors become teachers, nursing majors become nurses, accounting majors usually become accountants, those road careers are actually Typically done pretty eloquently in terms of the integration of clinical high-impact practices. In a lot of ways, those majors were the first to do this. The challenge that we have is that the majority of students in four-year degree programs are in the rivers side of things, right? So they're in a major that doesn't match exactly that entry-level role. Perfect example here. Do you want to guess the most popular major across the country, the major with the most students in it?
Rod Danan: Would it be business or
Chris Parrish: Good guess. I think that's top three. The number one's psychology. So most students
Rod Danan: okay.
Chris Parrish: that major in psychology, of course, don't go on to practice clinical psychology. So how do we make sure that psych major knows what careers are a more likely destination for them and make sure that they're competitive, right? For that entry-level marketing role that they're likely competing with the advertising or the mar digital marketing major for, right? And that concept in the rivers is really where podium does our best work, where we can take those students. Who are still trying to figure out exactly what industry they want to go in or what functional area they might want to work in and expose them to lots of different varieties so they can have that. sort of career crystallization moment that we know is so important to boost their confidence and and set them on the right path. So we spent a lot of time with those Rivers majors. I think I just looked recently at the top five majors that do the accelerator at our university partners. Number one was psych, number two was computer science, number three was business, number four was biology, and number five was communications. So it's sort of all over the map as students are doing this to get some exposure of course and and figure out what they want to do.
Rod Danan: Su such an interesting concept, yeah. Cause rivers and roads. I don't know, I've never heard that before. I
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: like it. so then looking at the students that have gone through the program, do you have like a specific
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: story where where you can kind of map out all their experiences and then what was the outcome that led to at the end? Is there a student
Chris Parrish: Yes.
Rod Danan: that you have in mind?
Chris Parrish: Yes. we have we have quite a few. So I just saw a student that went through the accelerator and actually placed, we did this really fun competition with L'Oreal through something called Brandstorm that they run, where students that were moving through a podium experience were getting some exposure to advertising, branding, how to put together a UXUI style project. And the student that went through the podium experience placed in was part of the top team that won Brandstorm, which is a international global competition that L'Oreal runs every year. And that student is now a full-time employee at L'Oreal. I just saw it actually last night it came through, which was super exciting. and in the case of L'Oreal, like, you know, we work very closely with them. And just to put a finer point on the supply and demand mismatch that I mentioned at the outset. So L'Oreal has 168 total summer internship slots, and they get 50,000 applications for the 168. So the times of being able to do internships to kind of explore and figure out what you want to do. In a lot of senses, unfortunately, is like time since passed because these internships
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: now are so competitive that if you did the math on the 50K from 168, I think that's more competitive to get into than like Harvard undergrad. So figuring out ways to create opportunities for students to cut through the noise of those 50k applications is why somebody like L'Oreal partners with podium, right? They want to see student work so that they can identify talent so that they don't have to sort by What target universities do we want to recruit from and then target GPA bands and majors within those target universities, which is what they've historically had to do when you have 50,000 apps for 168. So that to me is really inspiring is giving students the opportunity to cut through that noise by putting their hands on real project work. I'd say the the other aspect of outcomes for us outside of just like placement based outcomes that I'm spending a lot of time on is the impact that experiences like this can have on graduation rates. So if you look across higher ed, the average six year grad rate is like 47%, meaning we lose more students than than we graduate. And that to me, there's lots of issues with that. And especially in the sort of the the wake of like the demographic cliff that a lot of folks are worried about related to admissions, I
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: think more attention is being paid to how do we keep the students that enroll on the front end, which I think is is is a worthwhile discussion. And to date, a lot of the retention-oriented initiatives at universities have been sort of outside the classroom, right? In in Georgia State's work, Was prescient on this 10 or 15 years ago. So ideas like we need we need to make sure that we have predictive analytics set up so we know which students are at risk. We need to have early intervention strategies, we need to do mentorship for students, right? Things sort of outside the classroom. And those led to material significant gains in retention for a lot of universities. But I believe the next wave of points are going to be picked up through things that happen in the classroom. namely high impact practices and helping students understand their sense of purpose so that they know why they're in college to begin with and what careers might that result in them. And you know, we're sort of at the center of that. I'm not sure when this episode will drop, but I'll just preview something. We have a new retention state study that's being published by our partners at Arizona State University where they went through a full IRB Pulled student data for students that have gone through the podium experience at ASU, which at this point is about 6,000 undergrads, so it's not a small N. And what ASU found is that the students that complete the podium experience are between six and 10 percentage points more likely to be retained at the institution the following year. And that's for, you know,
Rod Danan: Well.
Chris Parrish: sort of all levels of study that includes sophomores and juniors. Retention in this context is defined as. they were in school year one and then they're still in school or have graduated in year two, just to put it in a simple concept. So obviously I'm very excited about that because that's sort of directly tied to podium. But in general, I think what I hope this does is usher in more attention, support, and resources to build these sorts of opportunities in the classroom, whether that's with podium or without it, making sure
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: that high impact practices are at the core of your student success and retention strategy is sort of the the new wave that I feel like is in a lot of ways already grown but continues to get taller.
Rod Danan: Yeah, no, I I love that you mentioned retention. This is something I always talk about every school. It's like, okay, someone enrolls and they have this big idea of like where they're gonna end up from this degree program that they get into. But, you know, then time goes on, stuff gets hard, money gets tight, and you have to reinforce, like, yeah, here's how the career is gonna actually pan out over this journey and how we're investing alongside you in that journey. So yeah, whether it's experiential learning or, you know. When I'm doing sales for like for prendus as well, it's like, okay, you have to show them exactly this is the path, and here's how we get you there. so get you actually given the stats on ASU. Now now I got I got some ammo too. I really like that you got that. And
Chris Parrish: Yeah, us too. And you know, research in this space is there's been some interesting studies. Like SUNY had a pioneering study, a few times higher education, I think as well, but it's still nascent, I would say. I think a lot of universities
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: are are starting to look at this as a retention tool when in the past, you know, career was kind of on the sideline, right? That's something that you do later in your journey now, figuring out ways to do it earlier might unlock another couple percentage points of retention. I certainly believe it will.
Rod Danan: Yeah. And I think another piece there is, you know, yes, it's retaining revenue. And, you know, we're we're taught in kind of businesses, you know, we're both founders. It's like it's way cheaper to retain your current customers than to go out and get new ones because obviously there's marketing cost, customer acquisition. So investing in that actually makes the most sense, even when maybe a c a university is hurting financially. It's like, okay, you want to fix the leaky bucket. If you fix the retention piece by investing in careers, then That's actually gonna make you more money and help and help you expand your programs. So I think that's where we have I mean both of us, we have to educate kind of leadership to show them, hey, this this is what you have to put money into if you want to make more.
Chris Parrish: That's right. I mean, there's there's a bunch of examples of how this investment can be done in a way that is aligned with faculty, even if it's a liberal arts institution. I'll give you an example in a second, will likely help on retention and actually might draw you more attention on the front end too. So I think Brandeis is a huge example of this. So President Levine Within the last two years, has reimagined what a liberal arts education should look like. We're a very proud partner of Brandeis. We've been working with them for a little while now. And putting
Rod Danan: Mm.
Chris Parrish: career high-impact practices, experiential learning in the curriculum was one of the most important priorities for them. I just read that their application volume since sort of reimagining the liberal arts and being very outspoken about this, I believe it's up three X this admission cycle from the previous one. So We know students respond to this, right? I mean, just another stat I mean, Northeastern, which just 30 or 40 years ago was generally viewed as a commuter school, it's more selective to get into Northeastern this year than it was Cornell. So parents, students, they recognize that for most college graduates, they go on to work in a job and making sure that there are multiple pathways. to maximize that outcome for the student that's in college is really, really important. And I think I think it's great news that someone like Brandeis, which is known for a more traditional liberal arts education, is willing to reimagine what that actually means in the current context of higher education, is a sign that anybody can do it. Right. It it doesn't have to just be the large state schools or the historically co-op schools that whether you're small liberal arts or large R1, that you can still make investments that gain attention on the front end and then to your point, hopefully retain students throughout the journey as well.
Rod Danan: Yeah, and so I think people are trying to wake up to it. Obviously there's varying speeds that people look at it and to kinda implement it. Is there a way to speed up how how fast an organization works or is it just like, hey, you need a president that's willing to come in and rip everything up and do it from top down?
Chris Parrish: That's a good question. A lot of this comes down to structure. I mentioned a few of the pieces of advice
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: I'll give on that side. And then for better or worse, budget model matters a lot too. If you're in a highly decentralized environment, making sure that the deans and then the associate deans, who I believe are a really critical key player, because the associate dean is typically has a mandate that's specific to, in this case, undergraduate education and specific to undergraduate education student success. They the ones that make the decisions on where they want to invest dollars within their college. So if you're a decentralized environment, it can come from more of the bottom up, there's no doubt, but in a centralized structure where the money, the sort of where you're gonna make investments, the bets, if you will, are placed largely by the provost and CFO. A lot of times, in my opinion, this needs to start at the leadership level, or else it'll sort of just get lost along the chain of command. Obviously there's exceptions to that. I'm sure there's some institutions where they do a really good job of like groundsourcing all ideas, but in general, I think making sure that leadership is aligned to this, you've got a strategic plan in your back pocket that has these components in it. Oftentimes will usher in some of these ideas. Maybe one example here for your audience too. University of Idaho, I think has done a really nice job on this as well. They put set aside a couple million dollars of funding and had faculty and staff submit ideas to go faster on student success and experiential learning. They picked the best ones in a very open, transparent process and then funded it not just for a year, I think it's three year funding to make sure that you understand which ones get scale, which ones get traction. So there's all different ways that you can actually go about sourcing ideas from your constituents and stakeholders and then figuring out which ones are the best ones. But I think generally making sure that it's coordinated across your colleges, your departments is one of the ways that you can keep track of it and then really understand which ones move the needle and which ones don't. And it's good to know both of those answers.
Rod Danan: Yeah, I like I like that idea. and yeah, you have to invest in it and do it over a few years. So a question for you. Are you pro or against pilots?
Chris Parrish: Pro as long as everybody understands what are the outcomes we would want to see to scale it. We do pilots all the time at podium, but I never do a pilot with one of my hands tied behind my back. There are certain principles that I know I need to be successful. And that's where back to the founder side of things, where a lot of ed tech companies hurt themselves and founders hurt themselves, in my opinion, is that they agree to do pilots with a one hand tied behind their back so that when it eventually fails, they say something like, Well, I I didn't quite have, you know. All the s the core components I needed, but it it looks like a failure on the surface. So there were some things early on that were really important to me at podium. for instance, like the credit piece. So all 107 universities run for credit. That's true at Rice, that's true at Boston University, and that's true at UT San Antonio. And as you might imagine, when I was first building this, I had lots of universities say, Chris, this sounds really cool, but why don't we do a co-curricular? And that to me was one of the things that I Had to stick by my guns on because I knew that the rigor of this experience was such that it should live for credit. And also that students would be successful when they're getting credit for this because of all the work we were going to put them through. So just one example from my personal story that helped there. But in general, I'm pro pilot, as long as you have the ingredients in that pilot that you need for success.
Rod Danan: It's a point. Like you you know the product, you've seen this, these experiences, you know how it what it needs to succeed. I guess one thing I push is like, okay, with with a pilot though, so say you get all the buy-in of of the people you need, you get a certain certain amount of funding, you get the criteria. Is it often like this almost the same amount of work as just doing a full rollout? Yeah.
Chris Parrish: Yes, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, that's where you can get burned. Like if you're asking me, would I prefer a full rollout or a pilot? It's full rollout every time.
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: Right. and what's nice
Rod Danan: Okay.
Chris Parrish: is that as you, especially if you have a new model, the way that we did at podium, like we were trying to create something that didn't really exist before. So I felt like I had to give my provost and deans that believed in podium some grace to try this, earn the trust of faculty, and then move from there. So that was my perspective: is that institutions hadn't changed or done things like this before, especially for credit. So could I give the folks that believed in me the most grace to prove to their skeptical stakeholders that this is something that could be wonderful for students. And that is the heart of our pilots at podium. And you know, it's it's just been amazing to watch the evolution. As I mentioned early on, it was difficult to convince folks that this should run for credit as part of the curriculum. And now More universities have experiential learning graduation requirements. I mean, Rod, we got tagged to our very first general education core requirement at a university. I've never asked for that. And we had a really
Rod Danan: Wow, congrats.
Chris Parrish: thank you. Yeah, we had a really strong champion in the provost office that was like, no, this is good enough where it should count for this graduation requirement. So I think more universities, you know, I I get really protective of my university partners when I hear people say. Higher education, the curriculum hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's just not true. It's really not true. Now, is it moving as fast as I would want? Of course not. I'm an entrepreneur. I move extremely fast. But universities are waking up to the importance of integrating these experiences. And and you can, if you do your homework and your research, you'll see that both in core curriculum as well as degree program graduation requirements. They they're looking at more of these experiential learning options, which I think is wonderful news for students.
Rod Danan: Yeah. So quick question also from I guess like the founder perspective. You know, obviously
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: we're always trying to do innovative things with different university partners. On the other flip side, university partners and especially like as you get higher up, like VPs, provost, presidents, they're getting flooded with different pitches and it's hard to discern like what's what. So what do you what do you want to tell leadership? as kind of a guide on how to work with new vendors and evaluate them. Like any tips there for them?
Chris Parrish: That's a really good one. And you are correct that they get inundated. I asked one of my university partners recently how many emails they get a day and it was over two hundred from outside vendors, which makes cutting through the noise an almost impossible task. I think when I see universities do their best diligence, whether it's on podium or another university partner, they're talking to current clients of that of that partner and they're talking to a lot of them. So we at podium do a ton of references for our partners where when they're making the decision to try podium, I I'm always quick to recommend that. Even if they don't want to, like I really want them to talk to another similar institution. It can be similar in ethos, it can be similar in size, but several different institutions to know not just how the podium experience was going, but more than anything, like were there any unexpected bumps or hurdles along the way that they themselves should be prepared for? so that would be my biggest piece of advice is make sure that you do the reference checks on these providers and make sure that what they're telling you is exactly what you're hearing from their current university partners. And
Rod Danan: Mm.
Chris Parrish: with that in mind, like there's this there's this old sort of continuum that I go back to once in a while. It's it was born in the late 1990s called the technology adoption lifecycle. For listeners that haven't heard of it, you should Google it right now. It's a sort of a chart that looks like a almost like a bell curve. And I think you should know where you are personally on that chart and also where your institution is. And essentially what it says is that there's innovators up front. And then you move sort of to early adopters and the early majority, late majority, right? We've all heard this concept. And the reason why I think it's so important is there are always going to be innovators that partner with organizations or try new things up front because that's how they're wired. One of my very first partners was Arizona State University. They're kind of known for doing things early, right? They like to try it quickly. Not every institution has that ethos, which I think is totally fine, right? So if you're somebody that maybe is a little deeper into that curve and Find yourselves in the early adopters or early majority. What that means is that for that product, that initiative, that technology, at that point in time, that company should have case studies. They should have references. They should be solving a very specific problem for you at that point in time. You're not necessarily going to have that up front. So the universities that first took a chance on podium before I didn't have any university partners. They were doing it because they believed in the vision and they knew that came with risk, right? and not every institution is comfortable with that, which I think is totally fine. But as you sort of plot yourself and you're honest with yourself on where you are in that cycle, I think your expectations of what you can ask for from that potential partner is really different. My first five universities that signed on with podium when they asked me to speak with a current university partner, I didn't have any, right? So they had to get comfortable with the fact that they were going to be one of the first. Now, they also got to play a really critical role in like the molding of the experience, right? I was asking them for feedback early on in a way that I would never ask a new university now for feedback. So there's pros and cons of it, but you you do need to figure out where you are in that cycle and then make sure the feedback response and support that you're getting from a potential partner is commending. Mensor it with where you're plotted on that cycle.
Rod Danan: Yeah. No, obviously I think yeah, talking to current customers, understand that doing your due diligence, but like to build that confidence in the product is key. Nowadays, with how fast everything is moving, you know, to get the case studies and the customers, you know, maybe there's a product that launches and you don't have the proof of it working for until two years later. And by a time it's like, okay, yeah, you should have implemented this years ago. So do you think that in general just universities just have to bite the bullet and be more innovative and take more chances, or is there something else that they should be doing?
Chris Parrish: I don't think there's much of a choice in that regard. I think
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: this the sector as a whole needs to take more chances and then be honest with themselves and each other on when those chances panned out and when they didn't. there's an old concept that was taught to me early on as a founder, where usually if you find yourself in a leadership position at a company or hydrate higher education institution, you're probably a pretty good problem solver. And the weakness of problem solvers is just that we like to solve problems. And one of the things that entreprene should do and higher education leaders should do is be really honest with what are the things that are working and what are the things that are not. Don't try to fix the things that are not working and instead invest more energy and time into going faster on the things that are working. And that is like a rewiring of your brain, you have to do that I still
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: have to work on myself to make sure that I'm spending the majority of my time. On the things that are helping podium go faster and working really well, not trying to solve every problem. And I think a lot of that comes down to like risk tolerance too, that you gotta be willing to to take some risk that every single problem that needs to be fixed isn't necessarily the death knell that you might think it is in the back of your mind. and instead like be really focused on what you can what things that are working and how to go faster in that regard.
Rod Danan: Yeah. You have to let certain fires just keep burning. So that
Chris Parrish: That's right.
Rod Danan: yeah. So w in the journey, I I know one thing I've talked about with with a lot of ed tech founders is, you know, the the pace of change and like, you know, the cycles with budgets and sh and shifts and everything higher ed is is long. So lots of people get like down in the early days. So is is there like a low point in the in the founder journey? with, you know, just trying to sell into ed tech. And then how'd you kind of grow out of that?
Chris Parrish: my gosh. There are so many. early on when we were first starting out at podium, every university partner was crucial to not just the success of the company, but I you know, I I'm Our president, I was always running sort of our partnerships outside of the organization. So I felt a real personal responsibility to the employees that we were paying to make sure that we, you know, had a sustainable future, keeping the lights on, that sort of thing. And I remember this would have been 2021. So about a year and a half into the journey. We had some initial pilot partners, but 2021 was really when we started to take off. And for a lot of our universities, they get started with us in the summer. So there are a number of universities. That we had put a lot of work into in terms of onboarding. Two that come to mind, I probably shouldn't name them, but one, a prestigious private that I couldn't believe was getting ready to sign on with us. And then another one, a large public that would have basically doubled the size of podium overnight. Both of those I thought were essentially done deals. And because of leadership changes at each institution, basically pulled the chair on us the second week of May when we were expecting. to launch with their students and generate a significant amount of enrollment therefore revenue just a couple weeks later. And having to face our employees and make some really tough decisions around who to keep on and who not to was something that I don't wish on anybody. anybody that tells you that it gets easy to eliminate roles when things don't go well at a company or a university. over like anybody that says that it gets a lot easier over time is cum I I think is full of it. It's brutal every time I have to do it. And that particular moment was a dark one because I felt like it was my responsibility and I let down my employees. So luckily we've grown, matured, have better ways to assess who's actually going to launch in what seems like a couple weeks. we don't make those mistakes as much anymore. And we're much more stable because of it. But I remember that week in mid May of twenty twenty one, like it was yesterday.
Rod Danan: Yeah. You give me trauma flashbacks too, 'cause like there's there's always always moments and it's just like, yeah, you think you're there and then it just disappears. So so that's why I always tell my team my
Chris Parrish: And it's like
Rod Danan: team also it's like we don't celebrate until it's launched, you know? Yeah.
Chris Parrish: I totally agree with you. And also the tough thing, and I think this is good for your university listeners to hear too, like to put yourself in RC. The difficult thing about being a founder of a growing company, especially one that I mean, I'll we double, triple, depending on the year, year over year. So like that growth rate, if you haven't lived it before, feels like, you know, you're going 150 miles an hour on a slippery highway. And what that means for us is that if I have a large university launching with podium a month from now, it you know, it takes me two and a half, three weeks to hire a student success person, maybe at the fastest, maybe six weeks at the slowest. So I gotta hire up front. So I'm making offer letters, I'm bringing people on board before a dollar revenue comes in for months. And that's just probably A fundamental misalignment. It's not a bad thing, but it just probably takes some understanding of both parties that I need to hire people. So if you're saying you want to do this and we're all committed and we're working on the contract together, it's important to me that it goes through because I got people's lives at stake on this side, right? And I I'm not sure if many
Rod Danan: Yeah. It's a lot of responsibility.
Chris Parrish: universities operate in that in that sort of same pace that we do.
Rod Danan: Yeah, no, it's it's completely like foreign. So yeah, I think it's good for for listeners to hear about what is like on the other side and trying to work with them. Like I think at the end of the day, like if if a founder is working in this industry, you really care about the people. I know like you care about a lot about the rural communities that you had grown up with. so that's probably one reason you stick with it even even through the dark days. now that we're kind of further along, is there is there stuff you're doing to work with rural communities? to g kinda give back.
Chris Parrish: It's a great one. I am very proud that of the we'll have about twenty-five thousand students go through a podium experience this year. And of those 25,000 undergraduates, about 40% of them are PEL, and over half are first generation college students. So those are the markers that we track to make sure that this model is reaching a lot of the students that we had hoped to when we first built it. Obviously, I shared some of my background up front, and I'm a huge believer that these students, if given the opportunity to show what they can do, can Put themselves in positions that they otherwise did not think was possible. Personally, I always go back to a story that changed my trajectory where I had a really influential uncle, my uncle Bill, who was able to introduce me to some folks that ultimately landed me an interview that helped me land a job at what I thought was going to be Merrill Lynch, but turned into Bank of America in New York City in the summer of 2009. I walked into that analyst class and I was the only student from a state school. Everybody else was Ivy League or, you know, just a step down from Ivy League, so to speak, Georgetowns of the of the world. And I knew in that moment that my Uncle Bill and his agency was one of the reasons why I was there, right? That's social capital working for you. So a motivation for me is to try and design podiums so that everybody has an Uncle Bill, even if they don't have one. And that's, you know, awfully motivating for me and and helps get me up every day, even when when it's tough.
Rod Danan: Yeah, and I know we talked about in a previous chat, but like I was talking about Uncle Bob. So yeah, Uncle Bill.
Chris Parrish: You don't go bob
Rod Danan: Yeah, exactly. It's like you have that connection, social capital, that person that shows you how to actually get the job, not just the skills, that is just infinitely valuable. So as much as we can give all of America that opportunity, that access, that's how we bring the whole nation forward.
Chris Parrish: I totally agree with you. Well said.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so obviously we're getting close to time, so I'm gonna do some quick fires to to get us out of here and
Chris Parrish: Let's do it.
Rod Danan: and that way we can go to your presentations. so first, what's an opinion you hold about higher ed that will get you dirty looks at a conference?
Chris Parrish: Skills based hiring is overrated.
Rod Danan: Full agree. I talked about that in a previous episode. who's your favorite source for careers in higher ed?
Chris Parrish: Jeff Solingo.
Rod Danan: Good choice. what advice would you give an eighteen year old considering college today?
Chris Parrish: My advice would be to consider the universities that are investing in direct connections to industry. Co-op is probably the hottest of those, but there are universities that do a wonderful job of this that aren't necessarily a co-op school. I mentioned Brandeis before. I'll actually shout out their homies in Boston as well. Bentley University does an amazing job of this. Elon is known for it. University of Denver is doing a lot more in this regard. So pay attention to not just what they say about alumni connections, but what can actually happen in the classroom. What will you get to do as a student at that university?
Rod Danan: Great point. Some something they could feed into their AI when they research. five years from now, what do you think will be the biggest change in higher ed?
Chris Parrish: The optimistic part of me believes that we'll move the overall retention rate by five to seven percent, or percentage points I should say, up across over fifty. The pessimistic point of view would be some significant amount of closures given the given the sort of impending demographic cliff that I'm sure some of your guests have covered already in depth. So I'm gonna take the optimistic point of view because I feel the momentum from our university partners that wanna fix these issues.
Rod Danan: Yeah, I love the cup cut pat full approach. so then last question. If you're prescribing a you know, pres prescription for a school on what to do in the next year to align their institution with careers, what would you tell them to do?
Chris Parrish: Number one, make sure you have front porch. test yourself. If an industry partner comes to you and says, We want to work in the classroom with your students, what are you gonna do? if you have sort of a a step up. A process that makes sense to get it, that industry partner at scale into the curriculum in a way that is really impactful, not just for 15 students in one specific major, but for everybody, you're probably doing a pretty good job of it. and if you feel like you have a way to do that for credit as part of the curriculum, then you're way ahead of some of your peers because you've figured out how to. meld the career folks with the academic folks and it looks like they're playing nicely in the sandbox, which as Randy Bass said from Georgetown, that's gonna be the key ingredient to the universities that win the next decade.
Rod Danan: Sounds good. All right. well, thank you so much, Chris, for today. where should people follow your work or and or anything you want to plug to read, watch, or follow?
Chris Parrish: Yes, so podiumeducation.com is where you can find us. We also have a very active LinkedIn as well, which I recommend you look at. That traces all of our newest industry partners. we have some upcoming, really exciting experiences where we're launching new projects with the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. Crocs is a new partner of ours, Rivian Epic Games. So we're gonna continue to build industry into the experience, and you'll see some of the latest and greatest on LinkedIn and podiumeducation.com.
Rod Danan: Great, great. All right. Well, Chris, thank you for joining me. If your school has not pulled the lever yet, share this with the person that can and should pull it. Until next time on the unpulled lever. Thanks.
Chris Parrish: Yeah, that's a great question. I this is a complex one and obviously no university
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: is the same, but I can definitely speak to a couple of the key trends that that I've seen. So I started podium alongside my two co-founders in two thousand and nineteen. And you know, stretching back to two thousand and nineteen, at that point in time there was beginning to be some questions around this idea of a college ROI. Now Those questions are obviously at a fever pitch today. In your intro, you alluded to this. And I think most of your listeners are probably reading a lot of the same news stories that I'm reading, where every day somebody wants to throw a fireball at higher ed. And that particular question around a college ROI, by the way, by the way, was a really personal one for me. As you mentioned, I grew up in a rural community, was first one in my family to go to college. So being able to build career readiness and experiential learning into the degree program was the tack that I wanted to take with podium. So that more universities could deliver on this idea of an ROI. And what's been interesting is like since over the last couple of years, obviously the trust in higher education from a public standpoint has fallen off pretty significantly. Gallup, I think, does the best survey of this data where if you look at trust in higher education or folks that believe higher education is very important, it was over 80% when I graduated from college in 2010. And that same stat today is less than 30% of the US public has believes that higher education is very important. And I think for a lot of universities, they thought the best way to answer this ROI question is just to go out and you know require an internship for students so they get some real-world work experience. But the supply and demand of those experiences are way out of whack. I mean, this year there's around nine million students looking for an internship, there's only two million available. So I think for for higher education institutions, there's a realization right now that just asking students or even requiring students get an internship is the right answer when the supply and demand is so far out of whack. So we've got to think of other creative solutions to make sure that students are getting work experience throughout their time in college. And at podium is just our perspective that it's best done as a four credit course that's incorporated into the degree program. And that's what we're so thankful that we have a hundred of these universities now that are sharing our viewpoint that the best way to scale this and to make sure that it's done with access in mind is to build it into the degree program.
Rod Danan: I love that. And like I think what what you're talking about here is a lot of schools with like the censorship requirement, they have a dream. Why is it a dream? Because they don't have a plan on how to get there. And for every student to get this experience, you have to turn into a goal, you need a a plan to get there. So how does a school go about actually getting this and integrated into their curriculum? Is it You have to kind of work with like a podium or is it some stuff that they can do themselves? Like what's the levels of difficulty to stand something like this up?
Chris Parrish: Well, number one, I believe leadership and structure matter matters a whole heck of a lot. most institutions right now are focused on Impact practices are part of the strategic plan, the framework of the university, which is a great head start. I, for a long time in my career, to be candid, I was skeptical of the importance of strategic plans put out by universities, right? These are done every five years. They have a lot of glowy language and they're nice PDFs that you know get printed out and put on the desk of the president and provost. But I do think more universities, especially in a time of threat and crisis, which we're in right now, are paying much more time and attention to that. And I do think that resources are martial to some of the priorities that are put within the strategic plan. So that's like kind of step one in a lot of ways for a lot of universities. And then I also really believe like another trend to call out that alignment of career services with the academic side of the shop is really important. one of my one of my friends, Randy Bass at Georgetown University said this best at a conference I was at. recently where he said the universities that win the next decade are those where the academics and the experiential folks play nicely in the same sandbox. And as a dad of a six and a four year old, I know how difficult that can be sometimes, but it it really is the truth. So I'm also really big on this idea that career, in my opinion, should be reporting up through the provost line. That not to say that you can't be effective integrating career if that office reports up through student affairs at a university. I've seen plenty of examples of it. But I think when they're in the same room with the same reporting structure, it's it just allows you to move quicker in terms of alignment that there are some of these career-oriented experiences that can and should count for credit as part of the degree. So those are a few of the indicators I look for. and I suggest that universities think about. another one that I would say is like, just getting comfortable with the spectrum of high quality, high impact practices, experiential learning, however you'd like to frame it, there is quite a spectrum out there. we at Podium do a lot of work with the University of Cincinnati, which they would tell you they're the founding school of co-op. I think Drexel says the same thing and so does Northeastern. So we'll let them have that wrestling match amongst the three of
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: them. But the point is Cincy Drexel Northeastern, they are the 800-pound gorillas in the experiential learning arena. And they themselves would tell you if a university is trying to build in industry experience into the degree, a lot of times they say, We need to institute a co-op program. And the reality is, Northeastern, Direct Sil CINSE, they have built that over 150, 200 years. It's not something that you can just figure out in a matter of months or even years. It's it's a decades-long initiative. And I think what that means for a lot of universities, they need to think creatively about if it's not co-op, if it's not a traditional internship, how else can we get experience in the classroom? You definitely don't need to use podium to do that. We're obviously one option to do it and to do it at scale at high quality, but there's been plenty of other examples of universities figuring out how to do this, starting in their freshman year seminar, stretching all the way through to these capstone style experiences that students have. So I'm a big believer in more. More is better, the more the better for students, and to give them a menu of options so that there's lots of different ways that they can pick out these experiences during their time in college.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so so to kind of repeat back the lessons there, it's like one, you have to integrate the academic side and the career side together, which I am seeing a lot of universities come together and they have just a single advisor, not career or academic advisor. It's one one role because it is interconnected through the entire student journey. and then the second piece is yeah, for experiential learning, you can stand it up yourself, but you need to do heavy and b heavy investment over many, many years, like a Northeastern who I I discussed this on my last episode, they have 150 people working on just a co-op program
Chris Parrish: Right.
Rod Danan: when most universities might not put even, you know, ten people in their career center. So it's like, okay, we're something has to be done at the leadership level to make that a priority to actually get something like that built up. So
Chris Parrish: Yeah. Not not to mention the connections to industry. I mean, that's the other side of things. I was just talking to
Rod Danan: Yeah, relations.
Chris Parrish: an organization that is at the center of employers and universities. And the reality is like in this country, we're not like Canada, where the federal government puts an investment into making sure that employers are hiring internships and it's integrated with universities. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. So also figuring out how to be as a university, how to be a really good front porch. If you will, for industry partners, when they come to you and say, we want to work with your students, having a good answer there is another piece of advice that I would give because a lot of times universities will say, you're industry, you want to work with our students, let me hand you to the business school or let me hand you to career services. And if you don't have alignment on how industry can and should play in the curriculum for students, then you've wasted that opportunity when an industry partner comes to you. And I think being a really good front porch and knowing how to work with them is part of frankly the value that that podium provides is that we have since we run for credit as part of the act undergraduate education experience and it's open to all students, just allows us to plug in industry partners in a very pragmatic and practical way to get them in front of their university partner students. So being a good front porch is probably the last piece of advice I give on that side.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so so true about the relations, because like you can't build those over a day, you know, that has to happen
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: over many, many years. I think like community colleges do pretty good job with like working with local employers and getting their students into there. Do do you all work with community colleges or is it mostly for you universities? Like what's it what's the top kind of client for you, I guess, at podium?
Chris Parrish: Yes, so we have a hundred and seven university partners as of this morning. and they range quite a bit from large R1 publics like my alma mater, the University of Maryland. we work with University of Illinois, Oregon, Washington, to smaller privates. Rice Tufts, a few examples on that side. Right now we are focused on the four-year degree market. I'm very interested in community colleges. we just built a new experience called Career Discovery that is running as part of the freshman year at 15 universities. And I believe that experience, that product, which is much more about exposure as a means for inspiration, where students move through a series of 10 immersive projects that we've put together with industry. Where they get to sort of look inside an organization like L'Oreal or Crocs or Nike and then hold up a mirror to themselves and try to understand did that experience inside that organization did it give them energy? Did it drain energy? And it's a really unique way for students to stress test their own strengths and interests. And that product in particular, I think, is the right academic initiative to live at a community college as students are still trying to sort of navigate college a bit and figure out. what paths are best for them. you know, it's it this always surprises people, but the average college student comes into college with three jobs in mind, what their parents did, and then maybe what an influential aunt or uncle or coach has done. And obviously the world of work is incredibly diverse and unique. And I really believe that exposure is a key way that we can help students build their sense of purpose and understand why they're in college to begin with. and hopefully chart a path that Where they can declare a major with confidence and a career path with confidence.
Rod Danan: I love that because yeah, I'm thinking back to like when I was a student, I had no idea about all these different things I know about now. You know, I graduated, people are like, B2B, B2C, and like decks and all these kind of like code words and different roles. And you realize that there's thousands, maybe millions of different roles you can go into. And understanding the different paths and even like the small nuances within a specific field, that's where a lot of the value is. So with this career discovery. I know most of it what you're doing is is credit based. So is this like, hey, they have like a four credit course and this is something that they do every day, or how's that work?
Chris Parrish: The term lengths at universities are a little different, as you know. So the two offering academic offerings we have is something called the Career Accelerator, which is what I would consider our minted offering. That's the one that's running at all 107 universities right now. And then Career Discovery is new for us. We just built it beginning in spring
Rod Danan: Okay.
Chris Parrish: of 26. So it's a couple, a couple months old at this point in time. The accelerator will run for three to six credits. That runs over a full semester. and then also like a 10-week summer term. And then career discovery is a bit more modularized. what I mean by that is what the first year seminar looks like at each institution is typically pretty unique, right? The first year that a student's on campus, most institutions wanna treat them with with key gloves in a lot of a lot of ways. You want to make sure that they're having a great experience. So that one is much more malleable, I would say, versus the accelerator where We've run career discovery over everything from an eight-week term to a full 16-week. It's you can sort of plug and pull out different industry experiences depending on the goal of the institution.
Rod Danan: Got it. Okay. So that that makes more sense. So then for some of these other experiential learning credit courses that you have, so then is it is ideal thing, okay, they do one sophomore year, one junior year, one senior year, or like how how would that shake out for the average student?
Chris Parrish: Yeah. a lot of universities are thinking about layering these experiences, which I think is wonderful. I know one of your recent guests was Michael Horn, and I think he said this about a
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: year ago that the goal for most students graduating from college should be to have somewhere in the range of two years of work experience, which I think is right on. And those experiences can take all different forms, right? Those can be a literal work experience where you're working to help pay for college. Those can be internships, those can be things like podium, those can be a Co-ops, they're all different types of opportunities for students. So I think stacking those from day one is really important. So the way that we think about it is career discovery is a high impact practice that should start in their freshman year, right? Their first or second semester. And then they might want to try something like we have a career rotation experience in the accelerator that allows them to rotate through a bunch of different industry partners. They might do something like that their sophomore year, their junior year, and then we have deeper dives within the accelerator as well, where they can focus in and just work on projects related to branding and advertising, or just projects related to data challenges, or just projects related to open AI challenges with open AI clients. So we're a big believer in interdisciplinary setup, open to all students. I think most universities that I assess do a pretty good job, especially at like the capstone level for students that are having a signature experience within their degree plan. But once again, one of the concepts that we love to play with at podium is this idea of like rivers versus roads careers. So just allow me to sort of explain this concept because I think it's an important one. a road career would be the major where literally the name of the major oftentimes matches the entry level job, right? So teaching majors become teachers, nursing majors become nurses, accounting majors usually become accountants, those road careers are actually Typically done pretty eloquently in terms of the integration of clinical high-impact practices. In a lot of ways, those majors were the first to do this. The challenge that we have is that the majority of students in four-year degree programs are in the rivers side of things, right? So they're in a major that doesn't match exactly that entry-level role. Perfect example here. Do you want to guess the most popular major across the country, the major with the most students in it?
Rod Danan: Would it be business or
Chris Parrish: Good guess. I think that's top three. The number one's psychology. So most students
Rod Danan: okay.
Chris Parrish: that major in psychology, of course, don't go on to practice clinical psychology. So how do we make sure that psych major knows what careers are a more likely destination for them and make sure that they're competitive, right? For that entry-level marketing role that they're likely competing with the advertising or the mar digital marketing major for, right? And that concept in the rivers is really where podium does our best work, where we can take those students. Who are still trying to figure out exactly what industry they want to go in or what functional area they might want to work in and expose them to lots of different varieties so they can have that. sort of career crystallization moment that we know is so important to boost their confidence and and set them on the right path. So we spent a lot of time with those Rivers majors. I think I just looked recently at the top five majors that do the accelerator at our university partners. Number one was psych, number two was computer science, number three was business, number four was biology, and number five was communications. So it's sort of all over the map as students are doing this to get some exposure of course and and figure out what they want to do.
Rod Danan: Su such an interesting concept, yeah. Cause rivers and roads. I don't know, I've never heard that before. I
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: like it. so then looking at the students that have gone through the program, do you have like a specific
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: story where where you can kind of map out all their experiences and then what was the outcome that led to at the end? Is there a student
Chris Parrish: Yes.
Rod Danan: that you have in mind?
Chris Parrish: Yes. we have we have quite a few. So I just saw a student that went through the accelerator and actually placed, we did this really fun competition with L'Oreal through something called Brandstorm that they run, where students that were moving through a podium experience were getting some exposure to advertising, branding, how to put together a UXUI style project. And the student that went through the podium experience placed in was part of the top team that won Brandstorm, which is a international global competition that L'Oreal runs every year. And that student is now a full-time employee at L'Oreal. I just saw it actually last night it came through, which was super exciting. and in the case of L'Oreal, like, you know, we work very closely with them. And just to put a finer point on the supply and demand mismatch that I mentioned at the outset. So L'Oreal has 168 total summer internship slots, and they get 50,000 applications for the 168. So the times of being able to do internships to kind of explore and figure out what you want to do. In a lot of senses, unfortunately, is like time since passed because these internships
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: now are so competitive that if you did the math on the 50K from 168, I think that's more competitive to get into than like Harvard undergrad. So figuring out ways to create opportunities for students to cut through the noise of those 50k applications is why somebody like L'Oreal partners with podium, right? They want to see student work so that they can identify talent so that they don't have to sort by What target universities do we want to recruit from and then target GPA bands and majors within those target universities, which is what they've historically had to do when you have 50,000 apps for 168. So that to me is really inspiring is giving students the opportunity to cut through that noise by putting their hands on real project work. I'd say the the other aspect of outcomes for us outside of just like placement based outcomes that I'm spending a lot of time on is the impact that experiences like this can have on graduation rates. So if you look across higher ed, the average six year grad rate is like 47%, meaning we lose more students than than we graduate. And that to me, there's lots of issues with that. And especially in the sort of the the wake of like the demographic cliff that a lot of folks are worried about related to admissions, I
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: think more attention is being paid to how do we keep the students that enroll on the front end, which I think is is is a worthwhile discussion. And to date, a lot of the retention-oriented initiatives at universities have been sort of outside the classroom, right? In in Georgia State's work, Was prescient on this 10 or 15 years ago. So ideas like we need we need to make sure that we have predictive analytics set up so we know which students are at risk. We need to have early intervention strategies, we need to do mentorship for students, right? Things sort of outside the classroom. And those led to material significant gains in retention for a lot of universities. But I believe the next wave of points are going to be picked up through things that happen in the classroom. namely high impact practices and helping students understand their sense of purpose so that they know why they're in college to begin with and what careers might that result in them. And you know, we're sort of at the center of that. I'm not sure when this episode will drop, but I'll just preview something. We have a new retention state study that's being published by our partners at Arizona State University where they went through a full IRB Pulled student data for students that have gone through the podium experience at ASU, which at this point is about 6,000 undergrads, so it's not a small N. And what ASU found is that the students that complete the podium experience are between six and 10 percentage points more likely to be retained at the institution the following year. And that's for, you know,
Rod Danan: Well.
Chris Parrish: sort of all levels of study that includes sophomores and juniors. Retention in this context is defined as. they were in school year one and then they're still in school or have graduated in year two, just to put it in a simple concept. So obviously I'm very excited about that because that's sort of directly tied to podium. But in general, I think what I hope this does is usher in more attention, support, and resources to build these sorts of opportunities in the classroom, whether that's with podium or without it, making sure
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: that high impact practices are at the core of your student success and retention strategy is sort of the the new wave that I feel like is in a lot of ways already grown but continues to get taller.
Rod Danan: Yeah, no, I I love that you mentioned retention. This is something I always talk about every school. It's like, okay, someone enrolls and they have this big idea of like where they're gonna end up from this degree program that they get into. But, you know, then time goes on, stuff gets hard, money gets tight, and you have to reinforce, like, yeah, here's how the career is gonna actually pan out over this journey and how we're investing alongside you in that journey. So yeah, whether it's experiential learning or, you know. When I'm doing sales for like for prendus as well, it's like, okay, you have to show them exactly this is the path, and here's how we get you there. so get you actually given the stats on ASU. Now now I got I got some ammo too. I really like that you got that. And
Chris Parrish: Yeah, us too. And you know, research in this space is there's been some interesting studies. Like SUNY had a pioneering study, a few times higher education, I think as well, but it's still nascent, I would say. I think a lot of universities
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: are are starting to look at this as a retention tool when in the past, you know, career was kind of on the sideline, right? That's something that you do later in your journey now, figuring out ways to do it earlier might unlock another couple percentage points of retention. I certainly believe it will.
Rod Danan: Yeah. And I think another piece there is, you know, yes, it's retaining revenue. And, you know, we're we're taught in kind of businesses, you know, we're both founders. It's like it's way cheaper to retain your current customers than to go out and get new ones because obviously there's marketing cost, customer acquisition. So investing in that actually makes the most sense, even when maybe a c a university is hurting financially. It's like, okay, you want to fix the leaky bucket. If you fix the retention piece by investing in careers, then That's actually gonna make you more money and help and help you expand your programs. So I think that's where we have I mean both of us, we have to educate kind of leadership to show them, hey, this this is what you have to put money into if you want to make more.
Chris Parrish: That's right. I mean, there's there's a bunch of examples of how this investment can be done in a way that is aligned with faculty, even if it's a liberal arts institution. I'll give you an example in a second, will likely help on retention and actually might draw you more attention on the front end too. So I think Brandeis is a huge example of this. So President Levine Within the last two years, has reimagined what a liberal arts education should look like. We're a very proud partner of Brandeis. We've been working with them for a little while now. And putting
Rod Danan: Mm.
Chris Parrish: career high-impact practices, experiential learning in the curriculum was one of the most important priorities for them. I just read that their application volume since sort of reimagining the liberal arts and being very outspoken about this, I believe it's up three X this admission cycle from the previous one. So We know students respond to this, right? I mean, just another stat I mean, Northeastern, which just 30 or 40 years ago was generally viewed as a commuter school, it's more selective to get into Northeastern this year than it was Cornell. So parents, students, they recognize that for most college graduates, they go on to work in a job and making sure that there are multiple pathways. to maximize that outcome for the student that's in college is really, really important. And I think I think it's great news that someone like Brandeis, which is known for a more traditional liberal arts education, is willing to reimagine what that actually means in the current context of higher education, is a sign that anybody can do it. Right. It it doesn't have to just be the large state schools or the historically co-op schools that whether you're small liberal arts or large R1, that you can still make investments that gain attention on the front end and then to your point, hopefully retain students throughout the journey as well.
Rod Danan: Yeah, and so I think people are trying to wake up to it. Obviously there's varying speeds that people look at it and to kinda implement it. Is there a way to speed up how how fast an organization works or is it just like, hey, you need a president that's willing to come in and rip everything up and do it from top down?
Chris Parrish: That's a good question. A lot of this comes down to structure. I mentioned a few of the pieces of advice
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: I'll give on that side. And then for better or worse, budget model matters a lot too. If you're in a highly decentralized environment, making sure that the deans and then the associate deans, who I believe are a really critical key player, because the associate dean is typically has a mandate that's specific to, in this case, undergraduate education and specific to undergraduate education student success. They the ones that make the decisions on where they want to invest dollars within their college. So if you're a decentralized environment, it can come from more of the bottom up, there's no doubt, but in a centralized structure where the money, the sort of where you're gonna make investments, the bets, if you will, are placed largely by the provost and CFO. A lot of times, in my opinion, this needs to start at the leadership level, or else it'll sort of just get lost along the chain of command. Obviously there's exceptions to that. I'm sure there's some institutions where they do a really good job of like groundsourcing all ideas, but in general, I think making sure that leadership is aligned to this, you've got a strategic plan in your back pocket that has these components in it. Oftentimes will usher in some of these ideas. Maybe one example here for your audience too. University of Idaho, I think has done a really nice job on this as well. They put set aside a couple million dollars of funding and had faculty and staff submit ideas to go faster on student success and experiential learning. They picked the best ones in a very open, transparent process and then funded it not just for a year, I think it's three year funding to make sure that you understand which ones get scale, which ones get traction. So there's all different ways that you can actually go about sourcing ideas from your constituents and stakeholders and then figuring out which ones are the best ones. But I think generally making sure that it's coordinated across your colleges, your departments is one of the ways that you can keep track of it and then really understand which ones move the needle and which ones don't. And it's good to know both of those answers.
Rod Danan: Yeah, I like I like that idea. and yeah, you have to invest in it and do it over a few years. So a question for you. Are you pro or against pilots?
Chris Parrish: Pro as long as everybody understands what are the outcomes we would want to see to scale it. We do pilots all the time at podium, but I never do a pilot with one of my hands tied behind my back. There are certain principles that I know I need to be successful. And that's where back to the founder side of things, where a lot of ed tech companies hurt themselves and founders hurt themselves, in my opinion, is that they agree to do pilots with a one hand tied behind their back so that when it eventually fails, they say something like, Well, I I didn't quite have, you know. All the s the core components I needed, but it it looks like a failure on the surface. So there were some things early on that were really important to me at podium. for instance, like the credit piece. So all 107 universities run for credit. That's true at Rice, that's true at Boston University, and that's true at UT San Antonio. And as you might imagine, when I was first building this, I had lots of universities say, Chris, this sounds really cool, but why don't we do a co-curricular? And that to me was one of the things that I Had to stick by my guns on because I knew that the rigor of this experience was such that it should live for credit. And also that students would be successful when they're getting credit for this because of all the work we were going to put them through. So just one example from my personal story that helped there. But in general, I'm pro pilot, as long as you have the ingredients in that pilot that you need for success.
Rod Danan: It's a point. Like you you know the product, you've seen this, these experiences, you know how it what it needs to succeed. I guess one thing I push is like, okay, with with a pilot though, so say you get all the buy-in of of the people you need, you get a certain certain amount of funding, you get the criteria. Is it often like this almost the same amount of work as just doing a full rollout? Yeah.
Chris Parrish: Yes, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, that's where you can get burned. Like if you're asking me, would I prefer a full rollout or a pilot? It's full rollout every time.
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: Right. and what's nice
Rod Danan: Okay.
Chris Parrish: is that as you, especially if you have a new model, the way that we did at podium, like we were trying to create something that didn't really exist before. So I felt like I had to give my provost and deans that believed in podium some grace to try this, earn the trust of faculty, and then move from there. So that was my perspective: is that institutions hadn't changed or done things like this before, especially for credit. So could I give the folks that believed in me the most grace to prove to their skeptical stakeholders that this is something that could be wonderful for students. And that is the heart of our pilots at podium. And you know, it's it's just been amazing to watch the evolution. As I mentioned early on, it was difficult to convince folks that this should run for credit as part of the curriculum. And now More universities have experiential learning graduation requirements. I mean, Rod, we got tagged to our very first general education core requirement at a university. I've never asked for that. And we had a really
Rod Danan: Wow, congrats.
Chris Parrish: thank you. Yeah, we had a really strong champion in the provost office that was like, no, this is good enough where it should count for this graduation requirement. So I think more universities, you know, I I get really protective of my university partners when I hear people say. Higher education, the curriculum hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's just not true. It's really not true. Now, is it moving as fast as I would want? Of course not. I'm an entrepreneur. I move extremely fast. But universities are waking up to the importance of integrating these experiences. And and you can, if you do your homework and your research, you'll see that both in core curriculum as well as degree program graduation requirements. They they're looking at more of these experiential learning options, which I think is wonderful news for students.
Rod Danan: Yeah. So quick question also from I guess like the founder perspective. You know, obviously
Chris Parrish: Mm-hmm.
Rod Danan: we're always trying to do innovative things with different university partners. On the other flip side, university partners and especially like as you get higher up, like VPs, provost, presidents, they're getting flooded with different pitches and it's hard to discern like what's what. So what do you what do you want to tell leadership? as kind of a guide on how to work with new vendors and evaluate them. Like any tips there for them?
Chris Parrish: That's a really good one. And you are correct that they get inundated. I asked one of my university partners recently how many emails they get a day and it was over two hundred from outside vendors, which makes cutting through the noise an almost impossible task. I think when I see universities do their best diligence, whether it's on podium or another university partner, they're talking to current clients of that of that partner and they're talking to a lot of them. So we at podium do a ton of references for our partners where when they're making the decision to try podium, I I'm always quick to recommend that. Even if they don't want to, like I really want them to talk to another similar institution. It can be similar in ethos, it can be similar in size, but several different institutions to know not just how the podium experience was going, but more than anything, like were there any unexpected bumps or hurdles along the way that they themselves should be prepared for? so that would be my biggest piece of advice is make sure that you do the reference checks on these providers and make sure that what they're telling you is exactly what you're hearing from their current university partners. And
Rod Danan: Mm.
Chris Parrish: with that in mind, like there's this there's this old sort of continuum that I go back to once in a while. It's it was born in the late 1990s called the technology adoption lifecycle. For listeners that haven't heard of it, you should Google it right now. It's a sort of a chart that looks like a almost like a bell curve. And I think you should know where you are personally on that chart and also where your institution is. And essentially what it says is that there's innovators up front. And then you move sort of to early adopters and the early majority, late majority, right? We've all heard this concept. And the reason why I think it's so important is there are always going to be innovators that partner with organizations or try new things up front because that's how they're wired. One of my very first partners was Arizona State University. They're kind of known for doing things early, right? They like to try it quickly. Not every institution has that ethos, which I think is totally fine, right? So if you're somebody that maybe is a little deeper into that curve and Find yourselves in the early adopters or early majority. What that means is that for that product, that initiative, that technology, at that point in time, that company should have case studies. They should have references. They should be solving a very specific problem for you at that point in time. You're not necessarily going to have that up front. So the universities that first took a chance on podium before I didn't have any university partners. They were doing it because they believed in the vision and they knew that came with risk, right? and not every institution is comfortable with that, which I think is totally fine. But as you sort of plot yourself and you're honest with yourself on where you are in that cycle, I think your expectations of what you can ask for from that potential partner is really different. My first five universities that signed on with podium when they asked me to speak with a current university partner, I didn't have any, right? So they had to get comfortable with the fact that they were going to be one of the first. Now, they also got to play a really critical role in like the molding of the experience, right? I was asking them for feedback early on in a way that I would never ask a new university now for feedback. So there's pros and cons of it, but you you do need to figure out where you are in that cycle and then make sure the feedback response and support that you're getting from a potential partner is commending. Mensor it with where you're plotted on that cycle.
Rod Danan: Yeah. No, obviously I think yeah, talking to current customers, understand that doing your due diligence, but like to build that confidence in the product is key. Nowadays, with how fast everything is moving, you know, to get the case studies and the customers, you know, maybe there's a product that launches and you don't have the proof of it working for until two years later. And by a time it's like, okay, yeah, you should have implemented this years ago. So do you think that in general just universities just have to bite the bullet and be more innovative and take more chances, or is there something else that they should be doing?
Chris Parrish: I don't think there's much of a choice in that regard. I think
Rod Danan: Yeah.
Chris Parrish: this the sector as a whole needs to take more chances and then be honest with themselves and each other on when those chances panned out and when they didn't. there's an old concept that was taught to me early on as a founder, where usually if you find yourself in a leadership position at a company or hydrate higher education institution, you're probably a pretty good problem solver. And the weakness of problem solvers is just that we like to solve problems. And one of the things that entreprene should do and higher education leaders should do is be really honest with what are the things that are working and what are the things that are not. Don't try to fix the things that are not working and instead invest more energy and time into going faster on the things that are working. And that is like a rewiring of your brain, you have to do that I still
Rod Danan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Parrish: have to work on myself to make sure that I'm spending the majority of my time. On the things that are helping podium go faster and working really well, not trying to solve every problem. And I think a lot of that comes down to like risk tolerance too, that you gotta be willing to to take some risk that every single problem that needs to be fixed isn't necessarily the death knell that you might think it is in the back of your mind. and instead like be really focused on what you can what things that are working and how to go faster in that regard.
Rod Danan: Yeah. You have to let certain fires just keep burning. So that
Chris Parrish: That's right.
Rod Danan: yeah. So w in the journey, I I know one thing I've talked about with with a lot of ed tech founders is, you know, the the pace of change and like, you know, the cycles with budgets and sh and shifts and everything higher ed is is long. So lots of people get like down in the early days. So is is there like a low point in the in the founder journey? with, you know, just trying to sell into ed tech. And then how'd you kind of grow out of that?
Chris Parrish: my gosh. There are so many. early on when we were first starting out at podium, every university partner was crucial to not just the success of the company, but I you know, I I'm Our president, I was always running sort of our partnerships outside of the organization. So I felt a real personal responsibility to the employees that we were paying to make sure that we, you know, had a sustainable future, keeping the lights on, that sort of thing. And I remember this would have been 2021. So about a year and a half into the journey. We had some initial pilot partners, but 2021 was really when we started to take off. And for a lot of our universities, they get started with us in the summer. So there are a number of universities. That we had put a lot of work into in terms of onboarding. Two that come to mind, I probably shouldn't name them, but one, a prestigious private that I couldn't believe was getting ready to sign on with us. And then another one, a large public that would have basically doubled the size of podium overnight. Both of those I thought were essentially done deals. And because of leadership changes at each institution, basically pulled the chair on us the second week of May when we were expecting. to launch with their students and generate a significant amount of enrollment therefore revenue just a couple weeks later. And having to face our employees and make some really tough decisions around who to keep on and who not to was something that I don't wish on anybody. anybody that tells you that it gets easy to eliminate roles when things don't go well at a company or a university. over like anybody that says that it gets a lot easier over time is cum I I think is full of it. It's brutal every time I have to do it. And that particular moment was a dark one because I felt like it was my responsibility and I let down my employees. So luckily we've grown, matured, have better ways to assess who's actually going to launch in what seems like a couple weeks. we don't make those mistakes as much anymore. And we're much more stable because of it. But I remember that week in mid May of twenty twenty one, like it was yesterday.
Rod Danan: Yeah. You give me trauma flashbacks too, 'cause like there's there's always always moments and it's just like, yeah, you think you're there and then it just disappears. So so that's why I always tell my team my
Chris Parrish: And it's like
Rod Danan: team also it's like we don't celebrate until it's launched, you know? Yeah.
Chris Parrish: I totally agree with you. And also the tough thing, and I think this is good for your university listeners to hear too, like to put yourself in RC. The difficult thing about being a founder of a growing company, especially one that I mean, I'll we double, triple, depending on the year, year over year. So like that growth rate, if you haven't lived it before, feels like, you know, you're going 150 miles an hour on a slippery highway. And what that means for us is that if I have a large university launching with podium a month from now, it you know, it takes me two and a half, three weeks to hire a student success person, maybe at the fastest, maybe six weeks at the slowest. So I gotta hire up front. So I'm making offer letters, I'm bringing people on board before a dollar revenue comes in for months. And that's just probably A fundamental misalignment. It's not a bad thing, but it just probably takes some understanding of both parties that I need to hire people. So if you're saying you want to do this and we're all committed and we're working on the contract together, it's important to me that it goes through because I got people's lives at stake on this side, right? And I I'm not sure if many
Rod Danan: Yeah. It's a lot of responsibility.
Chris Parrish: universities operate in that in that sort of same pace that we do.
Rod Danan: Yeah, no, it's it's completely like foreign. So yeah, I think it's good for for listeners to hear about what is like on the other side and trying to work with them. Like I think at the end of the day, like if if a founder is working in this industry, you really care about the people. I know like you care about a lot about the rural communities that you had grown up with. so that's probably one reason you stick with it even even through the dark days. now that we're kind of further along, is there is there stuff you're doing to work with rural communities? to g kinda give back.
Chris Parrish: It's a great one. I am very proud that of the we'll have about twenty-five thousand students go through a podium experience this year. And of those 25,000 undergraduates, about 40% of them are PEL, and over half are first generation college students. So those are the markers that we track to make sure that this model is reaching a lot of the students that we had hoped to when we first built it. Obviously, I shared some of my background up front, and I'm a huge believer that these students, if given the opportunity to show what they can do, can Put themselves in positions that they otherwise did not think was possible. Personally, I always go back to a story that changed my trajectory where I had a really influential uncle, my uncle Bill, who was able to introduce me to some folks that ultimately landed me an interview that helped me land a job at what I thought was going to be Merrill Lynch, but turned into Bank of America in New York City in the summer of 2009. I walked into that analyst class and I was the only student from a state school. Everybody else was Ivy League or, you know, just a step down from Ivy League, so to speak, Georgetowns of the of the world. And I knew in that moment that my Uncle Bill and his agency was one of the reasons why I was there, right? That's social capital working for you. So a motivation for me is to try and design podiums so that everybody has an Uncle Bill, even if they don't have one. And that's, you know, awfully motivating for me and and helps get me up every day, even when when it's tough.
Rod Danan: Yeah, and I know we talked about in a previous chat, but like I was talking about Uncle Bob. So yeah, Uncle Bill.
Chris Parrish: You don't go bob
Rod Danan: Yeah, exactly. It's like you have that connection, social capital, that person that shows you how to actually get the job, not just the skills, that is just infinitely valuable. So as much as we can give all of America that opportunity, that access, that's how we bring the whole nation forward.
Chris Parrish: I totally agree with you. Well said.
Rod Danan: Yeah, so obviously we're getting close to time, so I'm gonna do some quick fires to to get us out of here and
Chris Parrish: Let's do it.
Rod Danan: and that way we can go to your presentations. so first, what's an opinion you hold about higher ed that will get you dirty looks at a conference?
Chris Parrish: Skills based hiring is overrated.
Rod Danan: Full agree. I talked about that in a previous episode. who's your favorite source for careers in higher ed?
Chris Parrish: Jeff Solingo.
Rod Danan: Good choice. what advice would you give an eighteen year old considering college today?
Chris Parrish: My advice would be to consider the universities that are investing in direct connections to industry. Co-op is probably the hottest of those, but there are universities that do a wonderful job of this that aren't necessarily a co-op school. I mentioned Brandeis before. I'll actually shout out their homies in Boston as well. Bentley University does an amazing job of this. Elon is known for it. University of Denver is doing a lot more in this regard. So pay attention to not just what they say about alumni connections, but what can actually happen in the classroom. What will you get to do as a student at that university?
Rod Danan: Great point. Some something they could feed into their AI when they research. five years from now, what do you think will be the biggest change in higher ed?
Chris Parrish: The optimistic part of me believes that we'll move the overall retention rate by five to seven percent, or percentage points I should say, up across over fifty. The pessimistic point of view would be some significant amount of closures given the given the sort of impending demographic cliff that I'm sure some of your guests have covered already in depth. So I'm gonna take the optimistic point of view because I feel the momentum from our university partners that wanna fix these issues.
Rod Danan: Yeah, I love the cup cut pat full approach. so then last question. If you're prescribing a you know, pres prescription for a school on what to do in the next year to align their institution with careers, what would you tell them to do?
Chris Parrish: Number one, make sure you have front porch. test yourself. If an industry partner comes to you and says, We want to work in the classroom with your students, what are you gonna do? if you have sort of a a step up. A process that makes sense to get it, that industry partner at scale into the curriculum in a way that is really impactful, not just for 15 students in one specific major, but for everybody, you're probably doing a pretty good job of it. and if you feel like you have a way to do that for credit as part of the curriculum, then you're way ahead of some of your peers because you've figured out how to. meld the career folks with the academic folks and it looks like they're playing nicely in the sandbox, which as Randy Bass said from Georgetown, that's gonna be the key ingredient to the universities that win the next decade.
Rod Danan: Sounds good. All right. well, thank you so much, Chris, for today. where should people follow your work or and or anything you want to plug to read, watch, or follow?
Chris Parrish: Yes, so podiumeducation.com is where you can find us. We also have a very active LinkedIn as well, which I recommend you look at. That traces all of our newest industry partners. we have some upcoming, really exciting experiences where we're launching new projects with the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. Crocs is a new partner of ours, Rivian Epic Games. So we're gonna continue to build industry into the experience, and you'll see some of the latest and greatest on LinkedIn and podiumeducation.com.
Rod Danan: Great, great. All right. Well, Chris, thank you for joining me. If your school has not pulled the lever yet, share this with the person that can and should pull it. Until next time on the unpulled lever. Thanks.
