Campus Technology Insider Podcast October 2022
Listen: Serving Adult Learners with Flexibility, Stackable Credentials, and Data
00:08
Rhea Kelly: Hello, and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
As a predominately online institution geared toward serving adult students, University of Massachusetts Global is rethinking traditional models of education to embrace the flexibility and career relevance that working learners need. That means getting granular: unbundling courses or curricula into smaller modules that can be more accessible to busy students but also stack into credentials that will be meaningful to employers. In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Dr. David Andrews, chancellor of University of Massachusetts Global, about developing a new credentialing ecosystem, listening to student and industry needs, and the data infrastructure that can really support student success. Here's our chat.
Dr. Andrews, welcome to the podcast.
01:11
David Andrews: Thank you for having me.
Rhea Kelly 01:14
So I'd like to start with the origin story for UMass Global coming out of the University of Massachusetts' acquisition of Brandman University. Tell me how that came about, and has UMass Global needed to do a lot to establish its new identity and strategic direction?
01:34
Andrews: Well that's two great questions. The first question of how this evolved, Brandman University had been a spinoff from Chapman University, which is an on-ground reputable institution in California. And Brandman was, was set up in order to serve working adult learners in a variety of ways, with a combination of face-to-face and online, and to expand the reach of Chapman University. It became an independent institution. And for the last 50 years or so, we have been serving adults in California with a strong brand recognition and the number, number two producer of teachers in the state of California. So the interest in both University of Massachusetts and Brandman was to be able to take the powerful brand of University of Massachusetts and combine it with Brandman's expertise in serving working adults, and to be able to reach broad, more broadly across California, but also across the United States and internationally. So the challenge was to take a well-known product and brand in California, and essentially go global with it. So UMass Global was, was the brand identity. It has been a challenge to change the identity, especially during a pandemic. So all of this transpired and was, was in the works prior to the pandemic. So the actual conversion to a new brand was at a time when people weren't getting together, weren't talking face-to-face, weren't actually talking about the kind of the identity. So we have had some, some challenges and some opportunities in rebranding Brandman University, some in the teacher prep area where there was some confusion about whether or not teachers who have been certified by the new UMass Global will be certified in California or Massachusetts. These are natural things that people might ask, but we had to address a number of those brand issues. And then expanding the brand in between what's an East Coast brand and a West Coast brand into all of those opportunities in the middle has been both an opportunity and challenge, but one that we are embracing wholeheartedly. And I would say finally is, you know, the notion that we're predominantly an online institution at this point, that our campus locations don't have the same kind of relevance as they did 10, 20 years ago. Now, that's a similar challenge by most institutions that have moved to a broader presence online, but we're embracing that with not only our marketing strategy, but the delivery model and the way we support students.