really good question. And I certainly had a very interesting path to where I am today. I, um, did my undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Montana and kind of the early to mid nineties. And at the time there wasn't a public relations track I knew all along I didn't really wanna work in, uh, for a newspaper or broadcast or anything like that. It wasn't completely sure how I was gonna get to where I wanted to go. But I ended up meetings of people along the way, and I actually started out and, um, public relations in intercollegiate athletics. So I didn't communications for the University of Minnesota for a number of years and different positions and kind of bounced around, um, in the athletic world. And then I had the opportunity to get out of athletics, and I was in the renewable fuels industry, particularly ethanol. And that's what brought me from University of Minnesota, Thio, South Dakota, and work for privately traded company in that space for a while, um, less than a year and realized opportunities that existed with a publicly traded company in the ethanol industry. So, um, really had a interesting time with them doing corporate communications. And if you kind of ask about you know what incidences and experienced shaped our career path, I think my strength has always kind of been in the strategic communications realm. The marketing piece has always sort of come with that. I was involved in a lot of issues. Management, crisis management, Uh, in particularly when I was in the ethanol industry, we did one of the largest mergers or the largest merger at the time in the ethanol industry. But then a year later, our company went through bankruptcy. So when from this extreme high to this extreme low and saw how that impacts ah, company and then after the bankruptcy, Um, that's how I ended up at South Dakota State University in my current role of marketing and communications because they moved corporate functions to Texas. Um, really didn't even explore that as an opportunity and not sure if there was an opportunity there. So that's right. I came to STS you

Yeah, So I have an office of about. I think there's 16 full time people in here. So the responsibilities and decisions that I make really are impactful of of the marketing communications effort of the university. So were the Central Office at South Dakota State University. And so we have different areas were responsible for the majority of our external website. Social media news releases unpaid media opportunities. We help with our alumni magazine. Another publication pieces for different colleges. Um, we do all of our digital communications. Um, photography. Graphic design is another one. And then also our trademark and licensing program, all the approvals and the brand of management that comes out of the office. So there is a lot of decisions that go into what we do on a on a daily basis, I think are are three top priorities. One is thio. Maintain institutional brand and brand awareness. So we are the protectors of our brand. Uh, certainly, um, recruitment of students or marketing to prospective students and also, retention of our, um, current student base is very important, and we work very closely with our admissions office. They obviously do the recruitment piece of it, We do the marketing piece of it, and then I would think the other thing. The other Cree area then is, you know, public positioning of the university. How are we looked at from the outside, and particularly a number of key stakeholders? Whether that state legislators are regions, alumni, our foundation board. I think we have a very important part in that as well. You know, weekly. You know, what are the hours like? You know, the one thing about communications and marketing is you're kind of on call 24 7. if God forbid, a building blew up or something like that, a good portion of my team would be responding to that. If we have something that occurs on the weekend and we need to put on social media, we do that as well, too. But in this world, you're able to manage your hours and, um, balance your life out, you know, certainly way talk a lot about We're not here to count our hours as long as we get our work done. So I've got very responsible people in this office that just do what they need to do but are available when we need them. Yeah, well, so if you get into what we call that recruitment funnel, you know, there's different activities that we I need you to do. So obviously, what does apply to the university, uh, to you would have maybe a financial aid require our financial aid form to fill out or scholarship forms housing visits, all those types of things. So that direct one on one contact that we have from the university say, if you are are prospective student would come through our admissions office and how things work within that funnel. What we do with it is provide that umbrella about university. It's brand. It's experiences what it's like to be, ah, student here and then try to help supplement. You know what admissions is doing by providing more of that? That visual awareness, uh, to what life in South Dakota State University is like

eso you know, some of the major challenges? Um, I think and I mean, we're all kind of in that same boat in higher education. And that way we depend on decisions that 18 1920 year old young adults are are making, and you want them to come to your institution. So enrollment is always a challenge. Um, you know, pain points. And this is really where you kind of get into the fundamentals of marketing and communications eyes, people understanding that in particularly communications exists at all levels of an organization. And there's ah, fundamental responsibility of all those levels to have the ability to communicate a lot of times as communicators. It's sort of left upon us to say, Oh, we need to communicate this. Now go get the communications team and the team may not always know what exactly we're trying to accomplish, So communications needs toe be in concert with whatever initiative, project. Whatever company you're working for, you need to have a communicator at a table. And because of the complexity of a university, that sometimes is a little bit more difficult because you're dealing with multiple colleges. They're dealing with multiple audiences. You got administration on one side, you've got a foundation on the other side of campus, so it's kind of it's difficult to rain all that in it at one time. How are approaches are effective and overcoming them. You know, you spend a lot of time trying to knock down some of those silos that may exist so that you could have a collaborative nation nature on your campus and we're doing a couple of different things. You know, a lot of campuses have marketing communications committees or things like that. We really took a hard look at marketing communications on our campus and beginning to sort of launch. A more systematic approach to being able to address some of the gaps that we've seen doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna fund a lot of new things. But how can we close up some of the gaps that may exist on our campus in the areas of marketing, communications and putting the right people together? I do think in saying that the pandemic has has changed some things for us because it has sort of knocked down maybe some of those silos that exist because for the past 78 months, it's really been a all hands on deck. We need to support everybody and each other during this. So I think that's changed the culture already. Now we just have toe be able to capitalize on this. Um, examples were Well, help students learn better. Um, if you're interested in this profession or if this is something you're looking to do, every university has, ah, marketing and communications office, if not several of them. You learn by doing, and we hire a lot of students in our office and this may be a little bit different direction that you're hoping I could go with this answer. But we hire a lot of different students in our office, and we really try to give us much hand on experience as we can. Doesn't mean as they come in as a freshman, they're gonna have free reigns to do everything they may want to do. But if they come in in that first year and keep working by the time they leave here, they've got a lot of responsibility in our office and a really good portfolio resume to take with him. Um, the other thing is, there's, you know, sometimes you know in particular pandemic like this. There's no playbook for this, and so you spend a lot of time and especially in a crisis situation. You hate to say that, but in a crisis situation, you spend a lot of time watching how others respond to certain things, or maybe some examples of things that have been done well and learn from those as well, too. So I probably stop there, and I'm sure there's plenty of more, but that's probably the big ones for May.