Ep. 4 - Carol Erwin - Emerging Voices

In this episode of Emerging Voices, Bri and Matt chat with Dr. Carol Erwin, a dynamic leader in student success and academic advising at Colorado State University. From building writing centers and mentoring programs to reimagining the first-year experience, Carol shares her journey from faculty to advising administrator.

Hear how she uses strategic outreach, data-informed practices, and creative engagement strategies such as metaphor-based reflection to connect with students. Learn how she’s navigating higher ed challenges while reflecting on career pivots, leadership development through NACADA’s Emerging Leaders Program, and the importance of staying grounded.

This episode offers meaningful takeaways on building connection, cultivating belonging, and leading with purpose.

*Emerging Voices is a spinoff of the Adventures in Advising podcast!

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Transcript

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Matt Markin  
Hello and welcome to Emerging Voices, a series presented by NACADA, The Global Community for Academic Advising. My name is Matt Markin from Cal State, San Bernardino, and I get to host this episode alongside...

Bri Harvie  
I'm Bri Harvie from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Matt Markin  
And Bri and I have the privilege of interviewing today, and that is Dr. Carol Erwin. Dr. Erwin has over 20 years of experience with student success initiatives, assessment, data analysis and program development in her previous positions.Carol built a writing center and created standardized practices and assessment for all composition courses. She led the Languages and Literature Department in building supplemental instructors for composition courses, growing the English graduate program, revising the ESL and Spanish programs to include online offerings, piloting a mentorship program for part time faculty and piloting initiative to address resiliency financial obstacles and academic preparation for students provisionally admitted. She served on the university assessment committee when our institution significantly revised its university wide processes and reporting in her current position at Colorado State University, Dr Irwin has turned her energy to undergraduate advising and new student experiences in the College of Liberal Arts. Under her leadership, the college has increased advising support for new students by diversifying messaging, by using strategic caseload management to increase availability, and by implementing best practices for advising appointments and targeted outreach. She also serves on a newly developed Student Success committee. This committee has mapped out how the student experience overlaps with the implementation of the RCM budget model. She is currently working on a strategy and implementation timeline for new programming for the new student experience that will improve recruitment and retention of undergraduate students. Hi, Carol, how are you?

Carol Erwin  
Hi, I'm great. How are both of you doing? 

Matt Markin  
Very well. And I guess Bri and I want to ask you about the kind of decor you have in the background there.

Carol Erwin  
Yes, I have sea urchins on the back of my wall. I am actually in an Airbnb in Denver, Colorado. Today, we've got my stepson is graduating this afternoon, so we are hanging out. I'm in a basement in Colorado. We're not near notion oceans at all with sea urchins on the wall. So I'm feeling very hip and beachy.

Matt Markin  
Very awesome. And congrats on the graduation. Of course that we know you're multitasking today, helping us out with this interview, and then having the graduation later. But we heard from your bio, or wonder if you can expand upon that and kind of give us your origin story into higher ed?

Carol Erwin  
Yes. So I came into higher ed a little differently. I got my bachelor's degree in English a long time ago, in the early 90s, originally, I was going to be a marketing major, until I found out that you have to sell stuff. And I was like, Oh, that's a terrible fit for me. I don't want to sell things. I just want to be interested in why people want to buy things. So I changed to English, and I got my bachelor's degree in English, did some work for a while and in health care, and then started a family. 10 years later, I was in New Mexico and decided to go back and get my master's degree at a small regional university called eastern New Mexico University, got my Master's in English. They hired me as a full time instructor and the writing center coordinator, and then I thought for fun, I would also, while being a full time instructor, try to get my PhD in English as well. So I got that at Texas Tech, and I worked as faculty  for almost for 17-18, years, started as an instructor, moved into a tenure track position, eventually became chair of the Languages and Literature program, and then about Three years ago, made some changes and moved to Colorado, and kind of felt like I needed a change in jobs. I was beginning to feel a little burned out of teaching full time and some of that. And so, you know, a lot of the success initiatives that we ran at emu, it was a lots of first gen students. There lots of students who had struggle economically. It was a Hispanic serving institution. It gave me a real passion for helping students learn how to negotiate and succeed in college who don't always come in quite knowing. How to do that, and so I'm taking those experiences from that small university, and in working at a big r1 university, trying to help more of those students have an experience like they were able to have at a smaller institution.

Bri Harvie  
That's awesome. And I love the mid life career changes. I feel like those are always fun ones, but looking at how your career is progressed. I mean, you started in not marketing and moving into English and instruction and Writing Center and Student Support, and now more on to the student experience side of things. What's that? What do you feel like is that common thread throughout your whole career in higher education?

Carol Erwin  
You know, I think the common thread is relationships. So one of the things I loved about being English faculty teaching composition is smaller class sizes, and by the very nature of trying to get students to be interested, to write papers, to take a class that you know, like 80% of the students are not excited that they have to take composition and being able to build a relationship and get them excited about something and figuring out how to get them to engage that really, that passion very much translates into advising where I'm getting to be behind the scenes in the things outside of the classroom, but that still impact excitement and engagement and success. So I'm really enjoying getting to see what oftentimes faculty don't get to see, which is all the stuff that's impacting how the student ends up engaging in the classroom.

Matt Markin  
Absolutely. And you know, I guess, kind of connected to that. You know, as mentioned in your bio, about diversifying messaging and strategic caseload management and advising, can you talk about kind of what that looks like in in practice, and kind of how maybe that's been received by staff and students?

Carol Erwin  
Yeah, and it depends a little bit. So in the college of liberal art, College of Liberal Arts, you know, we've got 19 majors, and in the students are very different and unique. How they respond, what they want from advising is very different and unique. But at the same time, we have to have some standardized practices, right? So one of the things about strategic caseload management is identifying the places where we have common ground, even though we're really, really different. So one of our initiatives has really been focused on we did some data analysis on GPA and advisors who meet with their students, who meet with their advisors two times or more. And not surprisingly, it's correlative. But not surprisingly, students who meet with advisors have higher GPAs. And so then, whenever we looked at our retention across campus, we saw that that first year, I mean, not surprisingly, that first year, that first semester, is critical. So what we really started doing was trying to be really strategic with that outreach with our first semester students, whether they're first years or transfer students. How can we make sure those students get in contact and get a really good experience with their advisors so they have a strong relationship, which means they're going to do better in class. They're going to have a higher GPA. Their chances of succeeding in college are better. So we did a variety of things. One thing we did was at orientation, we started showing them the data. We were like, Hey, you want to have a higher GPA? It actually looks like if you visit, visit us, you actually do so maybe come and see us, and we did that with the parents. So the parents knew that this was something they should be doing. We use a software program that has texting campaigns. We find that some people respond really well with texting campaigns, and then those who aren't responding to our email or texting campaigns, we then do some phone call messaging. Oftentimes it's really dependent on the major, so there's some majors that respond really well to phone calls other majors in like our music department advisors, just hunt them down because they're all in the same building anyway. So we found drop ins actually work better with that group because they're in the building. So it really was a place of getting a standardized approach, of we want to increase our first active term, our students in their first semester. We want to really make sure that they're meeting with us more, and then coming up with a wide variety of ways to get them to see that they want to do it and in contact with us, and we've had really great results. We now have 98% of our students who are first, first semester students, who are actually meeting with us at least one time or more.

Bri Harvie  
That's awesome, and I love it when you start with the data, especially with with parents and. We all know that parents are kind of our I don't want to say unwilling. They're very willing. Sometimes the students don't want them to be thinking about showing that data up front. I would love to hear more about how you're assessing the impacts ongoing, and how do you make sure that assessment is a meaningful exercise and not just a compliance exercise.

Carol Erwin  
Yeah, and that's, that's the challenge, and I will say upfront I am still negotiating that right? Because one of the things that's really unique about advising is that we influence lot of things, but we're not necessarily the direct cause of many things, right? So most of the data that we're running is correlative. We're doing things because we know high impact practices for students, and we are advisors are influencing and helping students engage in those high impact practices that we know will ultimately lead to retention. So, you know, one of our new initiatives will be trying to get them involved in clubs more. It's correlative for us, but we know that's a high impact practice in terms of kind of how I am tracking and assessing that I use appointment data that I can pull. We use EAB, and I pull the appointment data with the tag of the first semester, and then I desegregate it in a few ways. One is I desegregated according to the number of appointments they have. We can also do it based on certain types of categories, like first gen, limited income, double majors, those kinds of things, and what we're what we're doing there, and I haven't got enough of it yet, is looking for some trends and patterns within that I know a lot of the national data will show that a appointment or resources or connecting with faculty, different groups of people respond to that in different ways. So what we're trying to do now is to track some of those desegregated populations to see what moves the needle more there, and then we also connect it with staying, staying within the major and also retention. So I'm taking the appointment data and I am intersecting it with GPA, and I'm intersecting it with retention.

Matt Markin  
Let's say, like a student is in one of the majors that that you're overseeing, but maybe that student is interested in a different major and another department is there, like a handoff with that, or how would, how would your advisors go about that with working with students?

Carol Erwin  
In our own college, we have 17 advisors on my team. We are really good with the warm hand off, I would say at the university level, that is one of our pain points. Change of majors, getting students really nicely connected to other advisors. Some of our colleges have different processes for change of major. We really try to our college really tries to be hands on, one on one. We want to get you in when you want to talk as soon as possible. And we will literally, like, you know, do an email where we're handing off and saying, Hey, I know you're changing to anthropology. I've included Carrie in this email. Carrie is really great. You're going to love Carrie. And so we really try to, you know, talk up the new advisor that they're transferring to.

Bri Harvie  
That's great. I mean, we know that that warm handoff is key in making those referrals, and especially when students are navigating university policies and processes and a whole new language. And it's, it's, it's its own beast, as far as university lingo, and so that warm handoff is so important. I'd love to hear your thoughts on so looking at the students, and you talked about the work that you do with those first semester students, and really getting them engaged right from the get go, at orientation, looking at your different populations, so students who are first generation or come from university educated families, what do you think that the most important piece in that first semester experience is to help them be successful moving forward?

Carol Erwin  
You know, I've done, I've been reading on research on the first year experience, and the popular buzzword right now, sense of belonging, feeling connected, feeling meaningful experiences. But I think underneath that is engagement, because it is hard to be connected or feel like things are meaningful if you don't know how to engage. And so you know some of what we're doing, I Matt talked about some of what I'm doing with a new Student Experience Program. I'm beginning to build a new program for our college where. One of the things that we're going to do with some groups of students that we know struggle more is we're creating a Pathways program that is, if they complete it, they get a scholarship. And one of the things we're doing is using pictures and metaphors as a way to help them self reflect about the way they perceive college, the way they see learning, the way that they perceive how they're doing, and it's that act of you start by giving them a picture that isn't a direct it's not explicit, it's not literal. You know, what does learning represent to you? And they might pick a picture of a house on fire. They might pick a picture of, you know, lots of books. They might pick a picture of shredded paper everywhere on some students have picked pictures of cracked Earth. And then you ask them, Well, what does that mean? And that that is the moment where you get, you get them to begin to process how they're perceiving education, the classroom, their experiences and self reflection, and that self reflection, to me, is the key opener to engagement. So that's some of the stuff we're going to start trying to do this upcoming fall to get that engagement, which I think is at the core of everything.

Matt Markin  
I love that. I might try to steal that from you. 

Carol Erwin  
Yes, please. That's one of the things I love about NACADA for just a moment, is the level of collaboration. People share things and are like, Oh my gosh, that's a fabulous idea. I want to use it. I love that about NACADA. So I listen to people all the time, and I'm like, wow, that's a great idea. So yes please, and then tell me your great ideas so that I can also use them.

Matt Markin  
Yeah? Well, I'll share that. That's yeah, and that's what I love about NACADA as well, and going to conferences. And so you know, you're talking about some of these things that you're implementing, being part of the new Student Success committee, but also from the bio, is kind of mentioned that this committee maps out that student experience, but with the implementation of an RCM budget model. So I have no idea what an RCM budget model is. Could you help explain that?

Carol Erwin  
Oh, oh, really do people want to know, like the nightmare of higher ed right now is budget right? This is the new trend for a lot of universities where you know in terms of budgets, some universities, upper administration identifies and disperses all the money. So during summer orientation you have classes that are at full capacity. You need to open a new section of a key math class. You have to go ask upper men to give you the money so that you can open a section so you can pay faculty. The RCM budget model takes that decision making and it moves it to the colleges, to the different academic units. So instead of CSU as an organization deciding how many sections of comp they're going to run, it now becomes our college's job to manage all that money ourselves. The purpose of that is supposed to be that it opens doors to be more innovative and more efficient, so that if you as a college are having to pay for all of those things, you're going to be strategic about where you're spending your money, so that you're not wasting it on things that actually are not connected to undergraduate enrollment, which is really what pays the bills for university. It's undergraduate enrollment that pays the bills for universities. It really depends on the university and how they set that up, whether it's successful and or not. Our dean right now, I am so grateful to be working for our dean. She is very, very, very smart, and what she says about the RCM budget model is that it allows you to make adjustments so you can invest in the places that you need to invest in. So even in a time when budget cuts are happening because of the way she's managing budget, she's taking time to actually set aside money for scholarships for students who are low income first gen because that's a strategy, because if we increase that retention, we actually make money off of it, even though we're spending a little bit of money. So it's kind of taking a little bit of business and bringing it into college, if that makes any sense.

Bri Harvie  
It does, and I think it's it's interesting to hear, as a Canadian, how this works, because I feel like most of ours are set up very similarly, where you make the decision at a school level or college level, rather than at an institutional level, where the oversight is there, but the understanding of niche requirements isn't necessarily so that's interesting to hear. I want to 180 a little bit and go back to NACADA. I mean, we're here doing a podcast for NACADA. I would love to hear about how, as you transitioned careers from the academic to the more student services side of things, how you learned about and got involved in NACADA?

Carol Erwin  
Yeah, so, because, so, because it was faculty, I knew the importance of networking with a nationally recognized organization. So as soon as I changed into the advising career pathway, I immediately became a member of NACADA, knowing that I needed to grow my knowledge, grow, grow my networking, understanding what the principles and research is in a unit that I didn't, didn't have as much experience, even though I was a faculty advisor at unmu. So initially I did that. Went to I went to the NACADA administrators Institute, and was just awed by some of the structure and some of the things that I learned there, and that really wet my whistle for being more involved in Nakata. So then, when I saw the ELP program announcement, I really felt like it was the perfect pathway for me to fill in the gaps. I've got a lot of experience in higher ed, but it's it's in such a different type of communities, and the ways of thinking, the research, it's really different, and I really felt like I needed a place to kind of fill in the gaps of knowledge that I have missing because I didn't start out in advising in student affairs pathways, and it's been wonderful to help me in that area.

Matt Markin  
You know, we're kind of finishing up the first year by recording this kind of finish up the first year of this two year cohort. So you're talking about, it's been a wonderful experience. Is there anything that you've learned about yourself since being in the program?

Carol Erwin  
Well, I mean, I already knew this about myself. I'm in my 50s, so I know lots of things about myself, and one of them is that I like to know things, um, but I'm getting a lot more comfortable with not knowing and to breeze comment about switching careers, you know, midlife career change. There is nothing like changing your career path to make you kind of go, Wow. I don't know as much as I thought I did, so I will say that I talking with other people. Even though I have a lot of years in higher ed listening to other people in NACADA talk, I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's so much stuff I do not know. I need to be a learner again and not come in saying, I know I know this. I know this. No, I get to, I get to, kind of go back down and be a learner again. So, you know, it's a little it's so good for me, personally, to have to do that. I I philosophically believe that the best way we remain flexible, compassionate, good people, is to put ourselves in places where we have to learn and grow. But it's a little uncomfortable to say, Yeah, I don't know that answer.

Bri Harvie  
Absolutely and I feel like with NACADA specifically, and with advising professionals, I feel like for for young professionals coming in, it can often feel quite overwhelming. And I know Matt and I have talked about this before, but the people that get into student affairs are often people that want to share, want to learn, want to talk about it, want to network like we just want everybody to know all the things we know. And we want to like, suck into our brains everything that you know, and I know, when I first joined the cutter, 10 plus years ago, it was very intimidating. So somebody coming in with maybe a little bit more of that confidence of being finely tuned professional. What advice would you give to younger professionals coming into what can be a bit of an overwhelming learning opportunity with with going to conferences or institutes?

Carol Erwin  
I think, I think advising is like jumping into the deep end of a pool and not quite knowing if you really know how to swim or not, you know, and there is no better way to learn it or or, if I use another metaphor, it's it's like coming into a room with a lot of little knickknacks or tchotchkes. You have to have a cupboard to know where to put them, but you're not going to know where to put them until you're actually in the act of trying to start putting things in there, so you have to jump in the middle, and you're not going to know, but it's that act of not knowing and kind of having to go and learn and learn from mistakes and go, Oh my gosh, that was a mistake. That's actually the best way to learn. And so. So you know, my advice would be, you don't have to know everything in the beginning. In fact, it's better not to, because that act of learning where to sort things, that act of going, Oh, this feels overwhelming, and there's a lot of stuff, and I don't quite know what to do with all of it, the way that you organize and process and begin to learn all of that is what will make you a really good advisor.

Matt Markin  
That reminds me, I don't know who had said it. I'll probably remember right after we record this, but it was more along the lines of, like, always go into any conversation, any type of workshop, wherever you're going, from a standpoint that you don't know, even if you have years of experience in it, because coming from that standpoint that you don't know, it's going to force you to ask more questions, maybe more open ended questions, clarifying questions, and you'll probably come out and learning something new. So I love how that also kind of connects with everything that you've been saying. And with ELP, you know, you have those that are maybe interested in the program. You'll have goals that you create for the for the years. What have been your goals for your first year in ELP? And how's that gone so far?

Carol Erwin  
One of my goals that is going very well as I really wanted my team to get more involved with Nakata. You know, we have a challenge in that we're really big team, but our budget is really small, so I don't have a lot of money to send a lot of our advisors to regional or national, but we've been trying to so I make sure that membership is paid through our budget. We've been trying to be a little more creative with using webinars or some of the courses. I will pay for a course for one of my advisors to take, and then they'll present to the rest of the team. And so we have definitely seen an increase in advisor engagement with NACADA, so I feel like I'm on track with that goal. Another one of my goals was about publication. So because it was an English faculty, I've got publications, but it's in literature, and publishing and advising is really different, and so I'm trying to figure out the format and structure for how you publish in advising, but what I did is try to create it in a sequenced way to where maybe I'm writing for a newsletter which is a little easy, a little more narrative fits my experiences, or write as a writer a little more easily. Knock one of those out, and then I'll move into trying to publish a little bit more of an article that that, for me is slightly different, because it's more of a social science format, and so I'm having to learn that format a little bit as I begin to try to publish in NACADA. And then my other long term goals are related to, I mean, obviously presenting at some conferences, but kind of figuring out where I might want to fit, because I had such a positive experience with the nacotta administrators Institute, that's a place where I might want to be involved. And then one of my other goals, and it's something, NACADA is a big organization. It can kind of be if you're new, it can kind of be hard to figure out how to start using it effectively, and those advising communities are really important way of doing that. So I'm currently being involved in the steering committee of the LGBTQ plus community, and I engage with the administrators community a lot, and I find that those smaller conversations are helping me kind of learn how to use Nakata well. So that was another one of my goals, too, is to get more involved in it, in an AC community.

Bri Harvie  
I love that. I mean, it sounds like you're you've got a bunch of goals that kind of span the entire organization. I know a comment that's often made is, if you don't have budget to go to conferences, what is the point of NACADA? And I feel like those of us here, and hopefully most people in ELP would agree that there are lots of perks to being an Academy member outside of going to conferences. And you talked about some of your webinars and the classes and the institutes and things like that. What has been your favorite low cost NACADA thing so far? Not a conference.

Carol Erwin  
You know, one of my advisors did the course on peer mentoring, which we are really trying to figure out how to beef up and and he came back saying that he learned a lot from that. So it's probably something we're going to try to explore a little more for the upcoming year. I also think we did the 21 day adventure read on diversity and equity last year, and I we had some advisors be a part of a book club from some of the webinars that are published that was about. On the anxious generation, which is really valuable read for us as advisors right now, I think.

Matt Markin  
And for those that may not know this cohort that we're in right now, was kind of the revamp of the Emerging Leaders Program, of how they've conducted orientation, the new pod model that they have. What's been your experience so far with kind of how ELP has gone for this cohort, for you?

Carol Erwin  
I think there's some real thought and strategy in the way it's been developed. So one of the benefits to the way the ELP program is structured is that we started out meeting on Zoom and got some basic introductions, basic outline of what the program was going to do. But then we all met at natural annual conference in the fall, and that really allowed us to start building that networking. We got to hang out with each other. We ate breakfast every morning with each other, and really got to know each other as people. Then they broke us into smaller pods, and that has also been really, really valuable. For example, Bri is in my pod right now with another person who has a lot of administrative experience, and so in those smaller pods, we're beginning to have good discussions that might be specifically related to the reason why we got in the pod in the first place. But because we have those connections through annual conference, we're also getting to reach out for a variety of things. So, you know, there was a whatsapp comment going, Hey, who's going to reach in three conference? Hey, I'm looking for a job. Does anybody have anything in their region? And it's way to start having some really great conversations, both really directed, but also more broad and even just like a sense of social connection and support. So, you know, like, one of the El peers had a baby, and we're like, woo hoo. Let's celebrate, because I don't want to ever undervalue why? While I did this organization for its professional benefit, I think we're better advisors when we are connected in informal ways, too. And I really love that about this program as well, is that sometimes we're just people being people. And it's not always about work.

Bri Harvie  
I love that. I love the people being people comment, and I feel like so much of what we do is emotionally taxing, and it's so important to have those people that you can have that connection with. And I mean, like Matt and I are a perfect example. We became friends because we knew we had a common friend over here that we happen to both know, and we were all hanging out one day, and now we're in ELP together, and it is about that connection, and you have to have it, especially in such an empathetic role as ours, right? That secondary trauma piece is huge when we're dealing with students at their most vulnerable. I feel like the first year of ELP has been, I mean, so far, really six months in, but has been really about building that, that sense of relationship and connection. What do you see as being kind of next for you in ELP? What are your goals for? I know you talked a little bit about some of the writing and stuff that you want to do, but what are you hoping to get out of your second year in the program?

Carol Erwin  
Yeah, I think that. I think that the second year of the program is going to be a lot more focused in, how do I begin to work on publication and building, building stronger places where maybe I can begin to do some leadership in Nakata as well, whether it be through the administrators Institute, through publication presentations at conference, but also, just like being able to get cohorts of people together to brainstorm, you know, to go back to some of the very first comments, what? What does my career arc mean? Well, one of the things that I highly value, because I started out in English, is the act of brainstorming. I think talking through ideas without rules is where the best ideas come from. And I want to try to figure out how to take all of these experiences that I have and make them something that's valuable to other people too.

Matt Markin  
And as we kind of wind down with this interview, you know, you're in a role at your institution. You oversee a lot, you're part of a lot of committees, lot of things that you're implementing, creating you're in NACADA Emerging Leaders Program. What do you do for your wellness?

Carol Erwin  
Ah, that is such a good question. Well, you know, it's, it's May, so one of the things I do is go and dig in dirt. Dirt makes me exceptionally happy. So I planted some vegetables and got sun and mowed the grass. I live in Colorado, so hiking is. Is, being in nature is kind of the way I ground myself. But if I'm not in nature, I'm reading detective novels. They're like my candy. I love detective novels. I don't it's a way for me to stop thinking, because I put all my energy into trying to figure out who killed who, and so I don't think about anything else. So I do that. And then in the winter in Colorado, so we go skiing, which is really, really fun, and as long as I don't, you know, like, break a leg. So here's hoping.

Bri Harvie  
And of course, you have to dig for the sea urchins. That's the most important, right?

Carol Erwin  
Yes, in Colorado. And now something new that I'm going to do is redecorate my whole house in sea urchin theme. What you can't see here is that, like they stick out of the wall about this much so, like they're really it's the bizarre thing. I don't know. Maybe I will do sea urchins. Maybe I won't. I have to think about it.

Matt Markin  
I love that Bri was able to bring and tie that all back at the very end. Yes, well, Carol, thank you so much for sharing your story and joining Bri and I today.

Carol Erwin  
Oh, it was such a delight.