Robert Love
Welcome. I'm Robert love, Chairman of Yuan ranks. Today's session is on the connected campus. I also have a co-panellist with me today, her name is Kris Lensmeyer. That's going to be guiding us to some different questions as we continue to talk about the connected campus. Kris, can you share a little bit about yourself, please?

Kris Lensmeyer
Sure, thanks. I'm Kris Lensmeyer. I'm the chair of the Missouri College’s fund. It's a fund that raises money and resources for the independent colleges and universities in the state of Missouri. Such an important time because higher education needs support more than ever right now. And I've also worked in higher education in several different, different ways. And so this topic is of utmost importance for me, as well as the colleges that we serve. And I think higher education in general. So thank you for talking about this. I think that we'd start today, by having you give kind of an overview of your thoughts on what a connected campus is and what's important to a connected campus.

Robert Love
Right, I like to start with the way I look at a campus, it starts with the hierarchy of its more than just technology, it’s how technology is going to benefit the different streams of information or different streams of events that affect the students, the faculty and staff. So if we think about those, we've got the environmental type of things that relate to the facilities, what are the buildings look like? What the grounds look like?

As the students go through and take classes? What does that feel like? The United said hot? Is it more?

But just as well? What is the virtual experience look like? I think the virtual is turning out to be a key role as we look at the future, of education, definitely higher education, with the onset of COVID and, the possibility of another type of COVID type disease that may hit society. To go along with that. I think the other key really important thing is, is how we how do we help the mental stability or the mental access to these students to in faculty and staff to where they're at their optimum performance level, so they can get the most out of their education? And then last, but not least, how's social fit into this? I want to talk a little bit more as we get into the session, just how we can leverage and how important social is today, what the key differences are than what they were, the six months, 18 months, and even, gosh, five years ago?

Kris Lensmeyer
You're so right. It's amazing how the colleges and universities have changed and had to pivot over the last few years. But I think a lot of these things are things that were coming. And that COVID has just accelerated some of that, especially in the technology and the connectivity that we're talking about. So how do you think higher education standards compared to other industries when it comes to talking about technology and connectivity? Well, that's a great question.

Robert Love
My observation and experience in the key industry is healthcare. As you look at health care compared to all the elements that they're measuring, they're trying to grasp as the patient care.

Theatre happens once they enter, an emergency room, or just daily and monthly and regular visits to their health care provider. I think they have so many other touch points that higher education is not leveraging at this time. So some of those key things is being able to tie some of the desperate pieces of information that we already know about the student into key areas of auxiliary services, whether it be food service, whether it be student services and the way that they plan their activities, and different things that happen in the day parks, and even during the weekend of campus, whether it be in person, virtual, or combination there.

Kris Lensmeyer
Yeah, I think that the experience is so important, especially in well, anywhere, whether it's healthcare or retail or higher education. But I know that higher education, it's their lifeblood, whether it's online or virtual, as you mentioned earlier, or it's on campus, it makes such a difference. I know, you talked about kindness, personalization, and getting data, and we are utilizing data in a way collecting data and utilizing that in a way that impacts and allows for the colleges and universities to be much more impactful for the students. So can you talk a little bit more about your thoughts on that, and some of the things that you think are kind of coming up in the future?

Robert Love
Well, I think if we look at that we need to take a close look at the student information systems. And the student information system, that's typically where the information about the student starts with their college, and higher education experience, if you will. So that contains their grades, their academic schedules, and of course, their payment status.

But what it doesn't do, since it has that rich information is pulled together some of the things from auxiliary services such as food service. And so a good example of this is that typical food service vendor. And again, let me qualify this, if they don't have this, they should be will have some kind of kitchen technology system that allows them to create menus. And that should be set up and designed based on the student demographic.

I think a lot of times what ends up happening if you will, is that student demographic is observed after the menu is created. So there's no way for the person or the teams that are responsible for that, to understand any kind of demographic information about the customer before they hit the door for and I say hit the door I mean, enter the food service venue to enjoy the food that the team has worked hard to prepare, I think the next step for that is to be able to write in a good conduit of solutions that will actually talk to both and bring them together in a meaningful way. So in other words, if the manager, the chef, if the while starts to make the menu, and they're looking at a certain date, part, or day, they need to understand what demographic is going to be in person on campus and for that particular day part.

If you take it even a step further, let's say that, that student or a group of students is involved in sports or athletics, is that if we know and we can talk to that schedule, at the same time to know, when a particular demographic, a student is going to be in the food service venue, let's say football, soccer, if you will, basketball, just to name a few, we know when they're going to conclude their practice for the day, we know when they're going to hit or come into the dining venue. So we're hyper-prepared for that food, and even a custom menu. If you well, that's just a small sample of what I'm talking about, as we need to regroup here and look at the system that the food service venues are using, along with the student information system, and even the athletic system. And that whole scheduling of academics and practices and even games for that matter, and bring them all together in a way that people can access that information and use it.

Kris Lensmeyer
Well, that's all information that we have within higher education that we're collecting as soon as they come in. And I know from a standpoint of getting somebody, a student interested in the enrolment process to being a student to the alumni kind of the whole lifecycle of a student is important. And so we've also talked about that experience and, and being able to know where people are on campus and when they're in certain areas to utilize it. And you've talked about lighting and how lighting can impact the experience on that. So can you tell us a little bit more about how we could do that or the impact of what that could have on the campus experience?

Robert Love
Great. Thank you, Kris. I think it rolls up to a phrase that I've kind of put together. And that's just in time sensory network. So sensory network, let me see if I can describe it a little bit more a sensor could be, a utilization centre meaning somebody, it's a sensor that knows someone is in a particular area. It’s a sensor to know what the temperature is, it's a centre that knows what it is outside and what it is inside of a particular area. But as well as what time of day it is. So if we look at that holistically, and we think more outside the box and think about the circadian rhythms that our bodies go through to do the biological processes that it was kind of built to do, I think that's the key to make sure that we're not just forcing an environment on a student is that we either do a couple of things, number one, we pre-design it, but we allow them to sign it themselves to customize what that would look like.

So what am I talking about? So if we take the temperature, a lot of our facilities today, already have temperature monitoring, we know that the facilities department if you Well, that's overseas can monitor it adjusted based upon available resources, the temperature outside, so forth, and so on. But the one thing that we haven't been able to look at yet, and I talked about a little bit earlier touched upon is the circadian rhythms. And that comes down to the different light, and the different light spectrums.

So we know for a fact and studies that it's human nature with a different light spectrums that will perform differently. So if you're in a dark environment all the time, you're going to have a different reaction to stimuli, the different human biological processes. So what I like to do and retain and really put out there and these technologies are already out there, by the way, is that as we build new facilities that we put in lighting, that does a couple of things, number one, that it will adapt itself to the time of day, and different and produce different spectrums of light, to keep the optimum learning happening for the students, as well as the optimum productivity for the faculty and staff. They're doing different services across candles. The other critical one, I think that is, in my opinion, has been on untouched, definitely for higher education. And that's being able to sanitize these different rooms with different spectrums that are not harmful to human beings, those solutions are out there today.

So as we replaced these different lighting, solutions that are out there, I would challenge us all to think about and you can reach out to me and I can provide these different types of loose solutions that I've studied. and there have been studies done on that, as you replace the new buildings or even lighting, it may be something that you might want to look at that would be marketable, as you start to talk about your students that are still on campus, but as well, as future students are going to come on campus, how do we can take something that you've never thought about turning it into a marketable thing that is going to help that student get the most out of their learning experience, but something as simple as the lighting.

Now, of course, there are all other kinds of things when we talk about facilities, whether it's, law mores, here in the US, depending on the locale that you're at, there may be something that needs to be grounds keeping that was that can be automated. That's pretty easy, I think, to go along with that, what I'm guiding us into is a thought process, because we're all experienced experiencing it today. And that's a more transient workforce, a more transient faculty, and staff, meaning that the folks and people that were responsible for the student outcomes, or some, their tenure has been reduced to probably just a few years versus 10, maybe 20 years, as what we've seen in the past. Well, when those folks leave, they have that knowledge. Typically, it's not been recorded in a fashion that can be passed on. So I think with this automation, by putting it in place to where we've got the sensory, and you mentioned, even artificial intelligence models that we can apply to that, to help these newer employees that may not know all these nuances of the campus. I think that's key. And I think that's where I'd like to see us go.

Kris Lensmeyer
I think the other thing that's interesting when you talk about facilities is also some of the automation that can track things that are being done. for instance, you go into airports now, and it will tell you outside the door of the restrooms because everybody's getting off the plane and needing to that how many stalls are available or where the next stall is. And so there are some interesting things in that kind of way that could be implemented within higher education as well.

Robert Love
That's correct. The other thing that I would say that that, you're talking about, again, just in time, a sensory network, that's going to let people know real-time, what's going on in that different particular area of the campus that they're starting to go into, or want to learn more about. So what I mean by learn more about, so let's say that it's, it's a particular location or venue, that as a student may be very crowded, yourself, you're not feeling very well today, or, based upon the most recent information, that there may be some different things happening on campus that you need to maybe stay away from, or don't be exposed to, it's probably a better way to do so. With these different types of sensory networks today, we can provide portals or information, from just the diversity app in itself, to let the student know how many people are in a particular area, and or how long they've been there. And so they can make an educated decision based on their class schedule to whether or not they have time to wait for a particular service or activity before they have to hit their next class.

Kris Lensmeyer
So how do we talk about this connected campus? How can there be can you explain some of the efficiencies that could be in place to help higher education and the administration of higher education make decisions and that kind of thing? Right?

Robert Love
So one of the key things is satisfaction. Today, there are surveys they're taking, or there's just, what I call brute force information that's given to you, unsolicited by just the students that want you to know about different things that they want you to know about. But what if we can put the network out there that, that you could just tell by the settlement of the sentiment of a facial experience, whether or not that is something that we need to pay attention to? So for example, the comment to the registrar's office, you can pick up, it's picking up a facial experience, that they're confused, or maybe not happy. So then that can be shared immediately, or it can be flagged that potentially that we need to pay a little bit more attention to this particular interaction that's happening with this with a student or even faculty and staff member. Now, that's not to say that we want to spy if you will. That's it's a harsh term. But I think, again, if we can find the SEC, Gnostic type of tools that are just aggregating, basic information without identifying the person, I think that's the key. But I think we still have to be very careful because it very easily, can be construed by the student or by the faculty and staff, that we are monitoring them specifically, we don't want that to happen. This is all about how can we improve the real-time experience for that student or that faculty staff member.

Kris Lensmeyer
Yeah, that's great. That's wonderful information on that. The other thing I know you and I have talked a lot about when it comes to campus college campuses, is safety, and how there are things that can be done to ensure safety, as well as privacy, as you just talked about information for people. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Robert Love
Sure. I think today, there need to be more ways that we can creatively look at different people of interest that are coming on campus that the system or the campus has never seen before. And granted, we all have policies and procedures, that what you're supposed to do when you come on a particular campus, but what happens when it's 12 o’clock at night, and someone is on campus that, the public safety, folks, and teams can't be everywhere all at once. So I think that's where the sensors come in place. Help us understand those types of things, meaning, and it's 12 o’clock at night, and someone is walking on a remote sidewalk that typically doesn't have a lot of traffic. Or conversely, we know it's someone that's triggered themselves that they want to be monitored as they walk back to their dorm because it's late at night. So I think those are the type of things that we can put in place that are very easily done. I think all these things can be done with just the technology that typically each student has on their person, whether it be their cell phone, whether it be their iPad, or some type of mobile technology, as long as it's allowed, and the student will know that it's not going to be abused. I think that's the key.

Kris Lensmeyer
And I know that even in dining services, looking at every student's like that late-night meals, and how do we provide those and utilizing technology, maybe it's mobile order delivery, or utilizing technology and other ways to ensure that food is available to students at an at midnight or two o'clock in the morning, when there may not be people around? So there are lots of interesting ways to look at that.

Robert Love
Yeah, I think the other thing that I'd like to have you consider too Kris is that, since we've had COVID, and in since the students have come back onto campus, I think what we've seen is that they're coming together in small groups and they're doing it in remote locations. So, I think what's cool about that is that they're not coming back and into these larger, congested areas

Kris Lensmeyer
Okay, sorry about that. We had a little technical issue on our side, but we are back. So, Bob, we were talking about a kind of a customized experience, a personalized experience, versus a forced experience, and how this campus-connected campus can assist in that personalized, customized experience that students today expect.

Robert Love
Oh, this is one of my favourite topics. And, it's one of my big visions for the future. And I think that's why human rights are such a big part of this because I'm interested in how can we look at multiple factors, if you will, of measuring those multiple factors of the student experience. So let me see if I can dive into this just a little bit more in the past, in a lot of universities there are key areas that the students always go to, for several funds for different functions, whether it be athletics, whether it be for food service, whether it be for even classrooms, right for different things, that the typically a large population of students for different classes versus smaller classes, I think what my observations have been, and I think this is what we need to be hypersensitive to, and that's why if I could take a pause and reflect on what we've already talked about this just in time sensory network, if we have that in place, to where we have motion sensors, we have different door sensors, we have all these different things that can contribute. And they can be put together.

And we let artificial intelligence models be smart about learning and do some machine learning to give us that information just in time to where we're not having to digest it and make actions ourselves. But we've got a system that's going to be smart about it. I think that's key. So what I found obsolete, with my observation is that the students are congregating in smaller areas, and they may be a little bit remote. So instead of all coming to the same food service finish, they're finding different places outside once they picked up their food. And they're doing that or it's in a different lobby of a different building, that they're coming together and even eating their lunch or doing studies. They're not coming together all in one place. And I think that's key.

I think they've learned that they want to be safe, yet they want to have social interaction. And I think this is going to help them. So again, if we backtrack a little bit and then we can look at what it looks like as far as these heat map areas, right of the different buildings, and we put the technology in place to make it easy for our academic and facilities and operational people on this campus to understand what that is, as they look at bringing new buildings on, or, more importantly as the schedule different classes for the next physical year or next academic year, a year or semester for that matter, they can be sensitive that look back and replay that information. If they move this population, a certain population over to another building. What would that heat map look like? That's possible today. So, again, if we can look at this, just in time, sensory network, I think that's the key for me, and be able to make it where it's agnostic, where it's anonymous, if you will, to a certain degree, but still be able to tie certain factor of information together, but it doesn't tie it to a name.

Today, your cell phones do that they know what cell phone different cell phones are, what if we could tie the different cell phones to a higher level of different demographic that you would never know who that person is? Now, the only difference is that typically, what we want to do, going back to the mental and just well-being of a student is that if we find a student that's not participating in certain activities, then we can use these systems to be a smart advisor or Smart Alert to where we can check on the well-being of a particular stood. Again, it goes back to facial recognition. I don't want to call it facial recognition, it's looking at the sediment of what the face is giving us does that student look healthy.

More importantly, we've got temperature sensors, I know some of the universities out there have temperature sensors that can read the temperature of a person as they go through different points of the campus. So if we look at all that, and combine it, we can alert our nursing teams that are on campus to enforce the well-being of a particular student to maybe make sure they're getting the right nourishment, the right medical attention, and so forth and so on. That also goes to something I saw the other day Is that a true-life example where the facilities can look at where handicapped, or a disability person may have challenges for a particular type of area in a building, do they have the still the way to be mobile, and be able to get where they need to be. So what I was hearing to say is that there's an example, where an elevator was down for like three days, and a particular student was living on, I think, the fourth floor of a particular dormitory and they couldn't get out. So this is key information, if it was done right, would be shared across all the major constituents or stakeholders for the well-being of that student, as well as her participation in classes, so forth, and so on.

Kris Lensmeyer
Yeah, I think a lot of things that you're talking about really impact retention. And as we know, recruitment and retention are the lifeblood of our colleges and universities, we want to make sure that our students are taking care of that they're having the kind of experience if they're connected in a connected campus because if they're not connecting to campus, and what you're talking about, can put some red flags up there, or identify some individuals or groups of individuals that maybe aren't connecting the cause, then be proactive to make sure that experience is positive students, they like to have flexibility in their schedule, they're used to having things that they want and when they want them, and they're used to the customization of personalization. And I agree with you, as we talked about earlier that higher education isn't necessarily on the cutting edge of this. And they could be in a lot of ways because they are collecting a lot of information. And a lot of the information that you've talked about can make an impact on campus, I believe.

Robert Love
Well, Kris, spot on. I think if I could take a step further for us. What I'm trying to communicate is not only do we as the faculty and staff and administrators of the universities have a better understanding of what their students and their customers are doing if you're well, but I think we need to make sure that technology can assist with letting the customer define what their experience is going to be versus like you said before a forced experience, meaning this is the way it typically works. This is the way we're going to do it and we're going to try to get, take care of 80% of the people that want to do it this way than that 20%.

Well, I guess they'll just have to adapt, I think those times are over, we have to find ways to for the key areas that are important for every student, that they have some way to control what the experience is going to be. And I think, again, if we look at all the connected technology that we have today, that's available, we just have to find a way to deploy it, I think we're going to be on the right track, to make sure that we can make sure those students are engaged, they're healthy, and they're getting the most out of their college, and educational experience to prepare for the future. So again, education, they're having to spend more money today for education than they ever happened before. So, we need to find ways, so they feel good and they do get the highest value and perform at the optimum level. So they can take into education as it comes to them from our great professors, faculty, and staff and their experiences. So they can be great. And take that information and leverage it to the greatness that we know we want them to achieve, not just for today, but in the future. And then for the future, what I see happening too, just to kind of bring it back into a close circle, if we find a way that it's not invasive, to use some way to identify that human being, whether it be facial, I’ve used that several times a day, but I certainly think there might be some other things in a long term future that allow us to understand who that person is that comes back on campus or starts to participate into a maybe an activity that we can know when that person is on campus, or we know when they're on virtually observing. And we can let them know we still think about them. Because we're very dependent upon these folks.

And as word of mouth when I say a word of mouth to continue to talk about their college experience and how positive was. So it encourages other students that are coming up through the other grade schools, and even the high school, if you will to get ready for college and university life, how well and how great that experience was. This all contributes to skin and can contribute to the unit rating system. And that's why it's been built. That's not just looking at a couple of different factors. That is what the experts are taking a look at but it's an open ranking system, where everybody can contribute to it and what means what it means to be special for them for their college experience.

Kris Lensmeyer
That's so important. So what did we forget to talk about? Is there anything else that you have the I think we've covered a lot of great topics, and hopefully the audience's learned some wonderful information from us by just want to make sure there wasn't anything else we were forgetting to talk about?

Robert Love
Right. So I didn't get into specific technologies, we can do that later on, or you can contact me and we can walk you through some of those things, I think a lot of it has to be is that we need to look forward. So as you're planning and looking at new systems, whether it be student information systems, or your food service provider, whatever, we have to find, either something that's going to connect those altogether, where they're not disparate pieces of, or silos of information is that they all can talk collaboratively together to where we can create an experience that excels and enables that student to excel themselves into higher education and for the future for themselves.

Kris Lensmeyer
Yeah, I agree. I know one of the positions I was in higher education, different databases and different connections or sources of information that did not talk and it created more work for the people that were working there when they were not connected. And so that is important with all of the systems that they're looking at as well. So thank you for inviting me to participate with you today. This has been enlightening and some great information. And we hope that the audience enjoyed this and got some information as well.

Robert Love
You bet. And thank you, Kris, for being here with me today. I'm so excited about what higher education is going to mean for our, children today and more importantly for the future. And again, I'm so excited and so honoured to be the chairman of UniRanks and this whole conference, because I think this is just a start Out of the future that, that I'm so happy that we've got an open system that everybody around the world can contribute to, to help each other, make that student experience even better than it is today. Thanks, everyone for being here. And thanks again, Kris for being my sidekick, if you will help us talk about some of these things that are very important to me. And we wish you a continued great experience with the conference. Have a great day.