Dr. Maléka Ingram:

When we transitioned originally from the OPMs to internal, we did not necessarily prepare our internal teams for the transition and define what what we will be doing and what the expectations were. And so by taking those lessons, it allowed us to spell out exactly how will the student experience team work, how will the admissions team work? How will these different internal teams work focused on online students? This approach also allowed us to create an opportunity to better address our faculty. So enabling faculty training and creating the tools to provide a rich and blended online and hybrid experience. So this wasn’t just COVID re remote remote learning, and that was one of the cultural shifts that, that we’ve had to address is our on ground faculty who were not used to teaching online. They made it through the, the covid remote learning, and they were successful in it. But there’s a difference between that and, and true online learning, teaching and learning. And so we’ve had to address that. And the ways in which we’re doing that is we’re putting a targeted focus on faculty development and teaching faculty about our learning management system, which is Canvas teaching faculty about best practices in online teaching and learning how to engage students, how to provide the correct levels of feedback, enriching feedback to students, and how to create community in online spaces.

Joe Gottlieb:

That’s Maléka Ingram, an executive dean and longtime grassroots organizer that discovered early in her career that she wanted to work at the intersection of technology and social justice. This has made her a natural fit to lead online education programs most recently at Adler University, where she is writing the latest chapter in a 10 year journey that began in-House, shifted to rely upon two different OPMs and ultimately has come back in-House through a core competency that consolidates the best practices accumulated throughout Maléka. And I discussed the past, present, and future chapters of this journey, and how it is starting to help shape Adler University’s effort to reach more learners and create a more just society. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Joe Gottlieb:

Welcome to TRANSFORMED a higher digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s, and the new hows in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I am joined by Dr. Maléka Ingram, executive Dean of the online campus at Adler University. Maléka, welcome to TRANSFORMED.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Thanks, Joe. I’m happy to be here. So what do you wanna talk about today?

Joe Gottlieb:

I’m glad you asked. I wanna talk about how you’ve transitioned online education at Adler from an external OPM to an internal core competency. But first, let me hear a little bit about your personal journey and how it’s connected you to the work that you do in higher ed.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

So, my interest in technology started in the third grade and throughout my school programming, I’ve always been interested in the intersection of computer technology and society with marginalized groups. And so when I was in the third grade, we had a school program that if you finished your work on time, you could go to the computer lab. And I noticed over time that there were some students that didn’t get to go to the computer lab. As I matriculated through college and graduate school, I became more and more interested in how computer technology impacts society, who gets access to the computers, who gets to use it, how do people use and create content, who are consumers, who are creators, the digital divide, digital equity, and digital literacy. So, all of this led to my research and areas of focus, which eventually led to my career in online higher education. I wanted to be a part of a larger movement to help education, historic, to help educate historically marginalized communities. Online education represented the perfect vehicle to do this. So that’s what’s led me here today.

Joe Gottlieb:

Excellent. Well, we need more people like you, for sure. So to get into the context though, I wanna, I wanna set a little bit of a history. So we’re gonna spend a little time here even talking about what was going on at Adler before you were even there. So you’ve been gracious enough to share some of your notes that, of course, you, you had to get pulled together as you grappled with things on the ground when you arrived. But starting back from the very beginning, what led Adler to partner with an OPM company to deliver online education in the first place?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

So this is a 10 year in the making story here. So Ader started actually over 10 years now 10 years when I joined. But Adler started in online education in 2012, and it started internally in which the admissions team owned the process. So this was marketing, recruiting students to join the two programs, our master’s in industrial organizational psych and criminology. And so after the programs were started, ATLER needed some help in growing the enrollment within these programs. So engaged with an OPM in 2015 to help with these enrollments, this initial partnership in 2015, we relied on all of the functions for online programming, so marketing and missions enrollment programming, everything you can think of that goes into those life cycle, the student life cycle.

Joe Gottlieb:

Oh, got it. So you got started on your own, wanted to get the growth rolling, went to an oe, OPM, leaned in heavily to really get the capabilities that you needed that the partner could provide. So how did that go? What were some of the, the pros and cons of that experience that you, that Adler had with that first OPM?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Okay. So with the first OPM, this allowed us to have the external support and management for the online campus that we couldn’t resource ourselves internally. So not only from a human resource per perspective, but this also helped us with establishing policies and procedures. So it helped us establish a department, it helped us develop our academic programs more quickly, and we basically just needed the external help. So we’re small institution, we didn’t have the procedures and policies in place. So the OPM was good for that. They provided all the support teams and functions like the registrar, the student support, academic advising. So when you’re a small institution that’s traditional on ground, moving to online, this was a, a perfect setup to help us get into this space of online learning. Now, on the flip side of that, when we think about what were some of the negatives of these partnerships with OPMs, one thing that stands out is the recruitment practices. Those, the recruitment practices did not reflect or Adler and our values and our mission and culture, and also didn’t target the right type of students. So for example, we were receiving students who did not have the adequate resources to connect online and fully engage online. So this was problematic. So you have all these students who’ve been recruited to participate in an online learning experience, but they don’t have the technology of the infrastructure to do that. So that was the main negative of using the open.

Joe Gottlieb:

Gotcha. So then you had this experience. You, you looked to the outside partner to get this thing rolling, leaned into the functions, we’re having a, a mixed result with some, but with some notable issues. So what ultimately led Adler to the side to move away from the OPM partnership?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Mm-Hmm. It was, so during the first couple of years, the partnership worked, right, as I mentioned, in the, in the positive outcomes. But then there, the negative outcomes though was the these, the enrollees were struggling to connect and they were struggling to have success. And so we disband this relationship in 2017 and engaged with another OPM to help us with marketing and communications per prospective students, because we thought, well, the prior relationship didn’t work because we were getting the wrong types of students. So let’s try this different OPM to see if we could get, attract the right type of students. But this actually reduced enrollment in one of our programs. So this was our military psych program, our master’s in military psych. So it turns out this OPM was actually marketing only to veterans and active duty personnel. They totally neglected to market a whole group of people who actually work and support military people and, and veterans. So I believe that if the OPM had partnered with us better, our missions counselors, our internal teams, they would’ve been able to identify our target audience more. So it could have been more of a partnership in this space, and then we would’ve been able to recruit the students on a larger scale, and enrollments would’ve increased rather than decrease in this space.

Joe Gottlieb:

So you disband the first one. You look to get help from a second one that might be better equipped to reach the candidates of interest to Adler. Things actually go in the wrong direction, at least in one of the two programs that you were, you were delivering online. And and so you, you got outta that one as well. So then now talk about what’s going on there. So we’re probably to what, in 2018 now? Yes. And you, you, you, what do you do now? You’ve, you’ve, you’ve been through two OPMs, you were able to get outta the contract, which is the great news, but now you’re, now you’re on your own. So tell me how Adler was grappling with that.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

So this is the time period in which the existing dean started focusing on the core in-house capability to run our online campus. And the, the dean at that time did an excellent job at looking at the lessons learned from 2012 when we had our internal structure of our admissions team basically handling all of the online campus items. Then she took the best practices of the OPMs, so their policies, procedures, the best practices in that space, and started creating an infrastructure for Adler internally around people, processes, and technology to support the online campus. So that Dean actually started building out the department of student experience in academic advising, the educational design and innovation groups. So our instructional designers and media developers, the people that build our courses, and then started, started developing and fostering those internal partnerships. So instead of having the OPMs do the marketing and the admissions piece, we relied on our internal marketing admissions and communications teams and our IT team to build this infrastructure that we saw the OPMs do for us.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

But now we’re doing it internally, putting the resources in place to grow the online campus. So that started happening in 2018. So from 2018 up into 2020, we all know what happened In 2020, covid came institution of higher ed public educational systems schools everything was disrupted and folks had to move things online. So at Adler, the progress that we were making was disrupted, and we had to now focus on remote work and remote teaching and learning for all of our campuses and all of our programs. So for those who are not familiar with Adler, we actually have two land-based campuses, one in Vancouver, Canada, and, and our main base is in Chicago. And so then we, and then we have the online campus. So Covid sort of paused progress that they were, we were making in that space, and our focus had to shift as with the rest of the world,

Joe Gottlieb:

Right? Yeah. You weren’t alone there, but okay. So, so Adler gets through Covid probably learns a fair amount more even about its own internal capabilities to deliver teaching and learning in an online environment, right? So that, like if, if you’re, if Adler’s like many others, there was some forced muscle development that was painful, but actually had some useful implications over time. So now, as Adler was emerging from, from Covid, I take it, it wanted to resume its effort on online programs, and that led to a search for a permanent dean who as I recall from a prior conversation with you, was no longer with Adler. And, and so tell me about that process that you became part of and ultimately secured that position with Adler.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Yes. So Adler had an interim dean for a couple years and started searching for a permanent person in 2022 timeframe. And so they were interested in hiring someone that could resurrect and sustain the progress that had been disrupted during c They Adler was looking for a dean who could come in and reinforce and establish those standards and the outcomes through a more centralized process. So basically taking a university-wide approach, and not just focusing siloed in on the online campus, but looking across at Vancouver and the Chicago, the two physical campuses and either creating their hybrid programs or transitioning some of their programs to fully online, online programming, basically looking for someone to, with experience and online programs to take the campus to the next level. As I mentioned, the dean in 2018 made a lot of great progress and building the infrastructure for the online campus and no more relying on the OPMs.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

And so this was an opportunity for Adler to now let’s take the infrastructure that was built, the lessons learned, and go to the next level. And, and that’s how I came, came to, to be. And what really attracted me to Adler was this deep historical commitment to social justice. And so when I saw the job profile that the recruiter sent, I said, this is the perfect place to me because it has the social justice values and principles that I embodied in my own personal, personal life. So I’ve been a grassroots organizer for over 20 years of the LGBTQI Plus community. And so I thought this is the perfect fit for me. I have my passion and career goals and interest in online education and making sure that people that are not traditionally represented in higher education spaces have the access to the education. And also represented my personal life goals around grassroots community organiz organizing for the L-G-B-T-Q-I community. So it was a, it was a perfect marriage.

Joe Gottlieb:

Okay. So you get on board, you get to apply your skills and experience which I know you’d been in this rodeo before back at Walden, right? Yes. And, and, and so this wasn’t new to you. This was an opportunity to really come in and, and pick up what had been started, and there were good work that had been established, but now it’s time to get to the next level. So now you’ve been at it for a little while. How would you describe the process of managing the effort to sort of, to grow into this new core competency? So now we’re doing it all on the inside, and that’s, I’m sure, been a process for how that’s, that’s evolved. Tell me about that.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

So, yes. Just to more, more background, I spent about 13 years at Walden University, which is one of, was one of the premier online institutions. So those, that experience helped in coming to Adler and picking up the pieces and, and, and growing on the online campus. And so the, how we’ve been growing into this is taking all of those lessons and that infrastructure that was put in place is it’s allowed us to devise a more centralized and collaborative approach to the online campus. And what I mean by this is when we transitioned originally from the OPMs to internal, we did not necessarily prepare our internal teams for the transition and define what what we will be doing and what the expectations were. And so by taking those lessons, it allowed us to spell out exactly how will the student experience team work, how will the admissions team work?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

How will these different internal teams work focused on online students? This approach also allowed us to create an opportunity to better address our faculty. So enabling faculty training and creating the tools to provide a rich and blended online and hybrid experience. So this wasn’t just covid re remote remote learning, and that was one of the cultural shifts that, that we’ve had to address is our on ground faculty who were not used to teaching online. They made it through the, the covid remote learning, and they were successful in it, but there’s a difference between that and, and true online learning, teaching and learning. And so we’ve had to address that. And the ways in which we’re doing that is we’re putting a targeted focus on faculty development and teaching faculty about our learning management system, which is Canvas teaching faculty about best practices in online teaching and learning how to engage students, how to provide the correct levels of feedback, enriching feedback to students and how to create community in online spaces. Another way in which we’ve been managing this growth is making sure that our, that our own online experiences reflect our mission of graduating socially responsible practitioners that engage in communities and, and advance social justice. And so it’s not just we have this mission of social justice and at lium principles out there, but it’s embedded and it’s reflected in the way we design our student-centered learning environment.

Joe Gottlieb:

Excellent. And so that feels not just so I hear both the mechanical process discipline, including the collaborative approach, but then it bleeds into this cultural shift, right? Where it’s, it’s not only a, a very people-centric thing, but now it’s people-centric and mission rooted or, or, you know, ad Larry and with psychology principle related love the way that that blending, blending happens. Okay. So, so from here, how do you see this transformation even starting to shape the future of Adler? I mean, how, how does this become not just a capability, but a, a featured muscle that you can leverage?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Mm, yes. I see the online campus, the stabilization of the online campus helping our existing campuses, the Vancouver and Chicago campus become more efficient and effective with hybrid teaching, teaching and learning. And also in looking at their programs and how can we have elements of their programming or exercises or activities in the learning management system, and having that more blended approach to learning for students, because students now are expecting to engage with technology in some type of way, regardless if they’re on the ground or if they’re learning remotely or virtually. So that’s one area. Another area I see that this transformation can help shape the future of Adler is given the historical time period that we’re in, in which we have the societal challenges and issues very in our face and pervasive around the world, not just here in the United States, that this helps Adler capture a substantial larger market with its, with our high value and well-branded programs that are rooted in Adler and psychology principles in the social justice theme. So people are hungry and curious for how can I make change during this historical time period? How can I help during this historical time period? And when you have an institution like, like Adler, you combine those principles with your educational experience and your journey, and then you come out as a better person who can actually apply these principles in the real world. So I believe this is a huge opportunity for Adler to be able to have and grow our online offerings so that we can reach more people to help during this historical time period.

Joe Gottlieb:

How about new programs? Any any new programs that you have in mind for where you might might reach out next?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So one of our immediate, immediate new programs is we are actually doing a pilot of our PhD in art therapy and moving it from on ground to a fully online program. This program currently is housed out of our Chicago campus, so we’re extremely excited about this. We believe that this is a very strong program to be, to have an online offering of it. And so that’s our, that’s our immediate one. Some other ideas that we are entertaining are certificates, online certificates, and one in particular is a data science certificate with a social justice lens. So again, this is an opportunity for us to go into these new spaces or have our program offerings reach a broader audience because I believe people are hungry for the substance that a institution or university like Adler can provide in our programs because we’re rooted in Alerian psychology and the social justice principles.

Joe Gottlieb:

Great example. Love that, that blending Actually, I, I had a similar conversation with the provost at, at Howard University. Looking at that same concept of data science with a social justice lens is a great example of how the need, which I agree with you by the way. The need on the planet right now is massive given the, what we’re facing as a society. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> and the power of technology potentially to enable a greater transparency, a greater awareness, a greater appreciation for social justice and you know, how to, how to help people adopt those, those disciplines and capabilities to be able to, to advance to some great outcomes. Alright, let’s, let’s bring this to a close. What are, what are three takeaways you would offer our listeners on this topic of a, a, a difficult but, but ultimately fruitful shift from an OPM that you’ve relied upon to an internal core competency for online education?

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

So I would say number one, to define the strategic plan for the transition and make sure this plan is directly tied to the overall business and financial goals of the institution. This will show up your support and commitment so that this is a, it has, it has roots Number two, I would ensure that you socialize and get clear on the new roles, responsibilities, and expectations of your internal teams. And then lastly, I would say build on the strengths of your institution’s mission and values and your online programming decisions. So what types of programs you’ll offer. And also use that institutional strength for your admissions and marketing practices.

Joe Gottlieb:

Great stuff. Maléka, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Maléka Ingram:

Thanks for having me.

Joe Gottlieb:

And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. Hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED. Yo, Stop the music. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.