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Q&A: Susan Englese, Marketing Vermont Colleges to the World

Posted on: Monday, 5 September 2005, 03:01 CDT

Susan Englese is the executive director of the Vermont Higher Education Council. Working out of her home, she helps all of Vermont's colleges to market their schools to out-of-state students. She lives in Essex Junction with her husband, who has worked in the insurance business with the National Life company for over 20 years. Englese has been with VHEC for 17 years.

She has a bachelor's degree in English and library science. Her mother was born in Vermont, and raised here, but met her military career husband when be was stationed at Fort Ethan Allen, and Englese said she was raised in other parts of the country. While living in Denver, CO. her husband was offered a job with National Life in Vermont, prompting them to move here.

Englese says she loves gardening, reading, spending time outdoors at her home, scrapbooking and doing volunteer work at her local library.

Robert Smith interviewed Englese in Rutland.

VBM: I'd first like you to explain what your organization does and then how you became involved with it.

Englese: We're an organization to help colleges share resources and

ideas by joining together, because some of the schools are very small in Vermont. We can do more in terms of promoting the state of Vermont by working together. For example, we do some joint out- ofstate recruiting where we really try to get students interested in Vermont, and then find the school they want.

The organization started back in 1943. The governor, William Wills, set up what he called the Vermont Postwar Planning Council. They wanted to make sure that Vermont was ready at the end of World War II for Vermonters coming back from the military. One of the committees was an education committee. He'd called college leaders together. They met, discussed some things and decided that it would be really beneficial for them to work on all these issues together. The following February, February 29, 1944, they got together and met at the Montpelier Tavern, which is now Capitol Plaza, and founded the organization. We are 60 years old. Last year we had our annual meeting at the Capitol Plaza to celebrate our 60th anniversary.

In the beginning it was largely social. They met a couple of times a year and talked over different things. Gradually, it has evolved. We have a number of committees now. One of our presidents, 10 years ago, said that everything we do can be listed in three categories: improve, promote and protect. So whenever we're doing something, we check to see if it follows in one of these categories.

I became interested in the organization when I worked at both an independent and a public college here in Vermont. We'd been out in Arizona for a while where I worked at a college, and then moved back. The association was advertising for someone, and I applied. I had also worked in Denver, CO where I ran a statewide association for librarians. Since I'd done that and because I had worked with both a public and private college, they hired me, and I'm now in my 17th year.

VBM: Now VHEC isn't a state organization, is it? It's private?

Englese: Right. It's a private organization.

VBM: So how is it funded?

Englese: Dues.

VBM: So all the colleges pay dues and out of that comes your salary, and so on?

Englese: Right. Expenses, travel.

VBM: How many employees are there besides yourself?

Englese: Just me, and I'm not full time. I work 30 hours a week. We have some independent contractors who, at an hourly rate, do the web site and help me with some office mailings and publications. But we have amazing volunteers. The presidents serve as chairs of committees. People from the college's serve on committees. The work of the organization would be absolutely impossible without so many volunteers from all of the colleges. Because they believe in what this is and that together, they can be better than if they worked at it separately.

We're the only state, according to the American Council on Education, that has the one organization that all of the colleges belong to. All of the colleges in Vermont belong to VHEC.

VBM: You may not have a typical week, but what typically do you do in the course of the week?

Englese: Oh boy. It would depend on the time of the year. During the academic year, there are probably more things going on and the committees are more active, whereas in the summer it's a little bit less active. I get calls from the committees, I get calls from the public asking me where they can find information about a college. I might be doing something with the State Department on Marketing. Or we do a lot of things on certification of new out-of-state schools that apply here as well. I couldn't say that there's a typical week. That's why I've liked the job so much. Every week, it's different. Every year, there's a different president of the Association. So every year has sort of a different flavor.

VBM: So you have a web site and publications that you put out?

Englese: We actually have two web sites. We have an organizational web site, and then there's a group that is actually one of our committees, called the Consortium of Vermont Colleges, that's made up of all the admissions directors, and they have a web site where they do a lot of joint promotion and out-of-state recruiting of traditional age students. They also have a bus tour for out-of-state guidance counselors every year. That's where we bring in about 40 guidance counselors from schools around the country and they spend a week visiting colleges in Vermont. The consor tium also does this publication, which is called a viewbook, and it has a full page for each school. this is mailed out to about 4000 guidance counselors each fall. We use it also to promote the bus tour.

So there's a small fee to be part of VHEC. If you want to participate in the bus tour there's an additional fee, and if you want to be in the viewbook there's also an additional fee. The schools that don't participate either don't attract out-of-state students, like Woodbury College, which has largely in-state enrollment, and then two of our schools only take graduate students, and the viewbook goes to high school guidance counselors. So those are the only three schools that don't participate.

So, the Consortium of Vermont Colleges also has a web site that is designed to attract students, while ours is an organizational one. Theirs is about why to come to Vermont. They have a way to search on there, so if you're interested in a particular major it will tell you what Vermont schools would have that. They have very promotional photos of the schools. We try to send people to that web site, which is www.vermontcolleges.org. That's the one we want students and parents to see.

VBM: How important is it to get out-of-state students into Vermont schools?

Englese: About half of our students are from out-of-state.

VBM: So they would normally pay a higher tuition, the out-of- state students?

Englese: Only at the public schools. At the independent schools the tuition is the same. But out-of-state students bring more than just money. They bring new experience, the classes are more interesting, they bring a more diverse background, and we even have international students. I think it's important for a small rural state to have this, to have the students who are staying here to have this experience of interacting with people from other areas and from diverse backgrounds.

We do a project each year with the Department of Tourism and Marketing, where the governor sends a letter to the families of all the new out-of-state students. We just completed it. We collect all those names and addresses and the governor welcomes them. It's through Tourism and Marketing because this is a wonderful group of people to get to come and visit Vermont. So he thanks them for choosing Vermont, and tells them if you're coming to visit your student, to extend your stay and enjoy the foliage or the snow or whatever, or if someone else in your family is thinking of higher education, tell them to come to Vermont.

This is especially interesting because our current governor came from out of state to go to college in Vermont. He mentions that in the letter. We just did this letter, and than we ran the statistics. This fall we had students from every single state and the District of Columbia and 50 foreign countries. It's pretty amazing for a small state to have that kind of attraction.

Along with the governor's letter they get the Chamber of Commerce vacation guide and a map of the state of Vermont. We've done that for six years now. It's our way of tying in our marketing of the state of Vermont with Tourism and Marketing. They recognize that this group is interested in Vermont, because their son or daughter goes to school here.

VBM: What are some of the other programs that VHEC is involved in?

Englese: One of the biggest things that we do is to try to provide professional development on campuses for presidents and for their staff. We can bring a speaker in to speak once and have a lot of people come in from a lot of schools that might not have the money to send people to a conference. We can do it cheaper than it would be to send one person to an out-of-state conference. We use interactive television for workshops.\We just had a workshop yesterday at 10 Vermont interactive television sites on the Vermont- brand and how we could tie into that. We just had a workshop on crisis management. The speaker was a young woman who had been the PR director at Texas A&M University when they had their bonfire that collapsed and students were killed. We had her join us on a satellite link and did a workshop about how to respond to a crisis at that level. It was very interesting.

We've had the Vermont state economist talk about the Vermont economy. We try to look at best practices in the state as well as bring people in. We were aware that Marlboro College had done a wonderful institutional study showing the impact of the college on their community. Knowing that, we had that person come and relate to all the other publicrelations directors how they had done this. It's a way to bring more resources and to allow that kind of hearing of what we are doing well.

One of the biggest things we do is to protect. We have a role with the state Department of Education, and it's in state law that in order for an out-of-state school to be approved to offer degrees in Vermont, it has to be with the advice of the Vermont Higher Education Council. This is unusual because we re a private organization. So if there is an application for an out-of-state school to offer degrees in Vermont, the state Department of Education contracts with us and we do a study. We do a site visit and we make a recommendation whether or not they can be approved. They have 10 standards that they have to meet. There are now four out-of-state schools that offer degrees in Vermont, and every five years they are reviewed. So we constantly are checking to make sure that Vermont students are well served. We're very busy with that.

VBM: Are you talking about an outof-state school that offers a degree in Vermont, or is-it like a correspondence course? Do they have to have a physical presence here?

Englese: Yes, they have a physical presence here. The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is one of them. They offer a doctorate in psychoanalysis in Dummerston. Springfield College in Massachusetts has some offices in St Johnsbury.

VBM: So they just offer of few courses?

Englese: It's usually just a course. They hope that there's a need. Some outof-state schools have opened programs here, and then left. They decided there weren't enough students. Or they felt they could attract enough students, but because of the size of the geographical area, travel or other issues, it just didn't work. We look at this whole area of certification as consumer protection. Vermont students know that if they are going to a college in Vermont, that it has been reviewed that it's accredited and that it's regularly looked at.

There is a whole area now called diploma miffs, fake schools. One actually opened in Vermont in 1995. Barrington College. They opened illegally. Their attorney had actually contacted the Department of Education. He wouldn't reveal who his client was, but said he wanted to open a school and he got some information. The Department of Education was able to find out who they were through the Secretary of State's office. They found the name of the school, and then the school changed its name. Then we found out that they'd opened up a mailbox in Burlington. So our liaison with the department of education, Bob Lorenz, checked with them. The school would not release information without a subpoena. So we really struggled trying to find out what they were up to.

We called the number they had, and it was always an answering machine. They wouldn't return our calls. Then, as fate would have it, a young man called me from Rhode Island. He'd seen an ad for the school and said it sounded too good to be true. That's usually a tip- off, when you can pay money and just get a degree. He faxed me their catalog, which sounds incredible that he could fax the actual pages, but he did. And there were things in it like the statement that there were "no annoying tests." It actually said those words! So we were able to work with Bob Lorenz, because we had this information about the ad, and he took it to the Attorney General's office. They got the school closed down and then found it guilty of consumer fraud. They had to return all the money that they collected from students while they were here in Vermont, and pay a $12,000 fine to the state of Vermont. And they had to leave the state.

We want to have a reputation in Vermont that these diploma mills can't come here. That was very good because it was very public. There has been so much publicity now about people saying that they have degrees that they don't have. Notre Dame's coach, Dartmouth's athletic director. So many of these things have hit the paper. So Congress is looking at these diploma mills, which are fake schools. It was found out that some people from Homeland Security had degrees from fake schools. Doesn't that make you feel safe?

VBM: There may he a few legislators with fake degrees...

Englese: I don't know about that! But it's hard because the schools use names that sound like real schools. There was a school a few years ago that advertised in the weekly Rutland paper and their bold headline was "cam a college degree in 27 days." It said it was accredited and legal and guaranteed. But, they make up the accrediting agency, so it's not really accredited, and it's not legal. The name of that school was Columbia State University. 'nat sounds really legitimate, but it operated out of a mailbox in Louisiana. In their publications, they had a picture of Notre Dame's library!

So we worked with VSAC and the Department of Education on a consumer education task force. We came up with some guidelines and they have some information on their web site. That information is provided to all Vermont students now through VSAC, because it's so easy to be pulled into that. They are telling you it's guaranteed, it's accredited, and it's not. It's a temptation to put down a couple of thousand dollars and say you have a degree. But it's not worth it. A degree for $2000 might be a bargain, but not if the degree is worthless. It means nothing.

VBM: At one time, a lot of students from Asia were coming here. Is that still so and how has this been affected by September 11?

Englese: For this fall, the top three countries for out-of-state undergraduate students were Canada, Norway and India. After that it's China and Korea. It's much more difficult for students to get student visas. September 11 helped in that it improved Vermont's image as a safe place, but that was for students in our country, while it made it much more difficult for foreign students to come here. It made it more challenging for international students, although the figures are up from last year.

VBM: Is the figure still down though from, say, 2000?

Englese: Yes. We did a survey in the early 1990s, and we had students in the colleges from 83 different countries, and this fall, there were students from 50 different countries. So you can't say it's half as many foreign students, but it is a challenge. And they're so many issues about financial aid. One of the college presidents said to me, I could fill my classes with international students if I could give them all 100% financial aid. But it's finding students who can come here who don't need a full ride, that's a challenge with every student on financial aid. But there are some countries that I was astounded that we had students coming from, like Nepal and Afghanistan. I would like to go talk with those schools and ask them how they did that. That's very interesting recruiting.

A number of years ago I heard from Green Mountain College that they had a student from the island of Yap, in the South Pacific. And there are no telephones on Yap. You have to take a boat to another island to get a call. When I heard that, I called their PR director, and I said, how on earth did he find us? How on earth did he find Vermont? It turns out that it was a Peace Corps volunteer who had a connection with Norwich University. He traveled, and had taken a small brochure about Vermont colleges with him, which he handed out as he traveled. So it's fascinating the way the contact was made. Schools still try to recruit foreign students. The Chamber of Commerce does a tour for the schools, and there's a fair in Taiwan that they go to and some of the schools participate in that. It's very expensive if you travel over there to recruit.

VBM: What are the other programs that VHEC is involved in?

Englese: It's fascinating, because there are schools that know what they're doing, and then there are fly by night operations that are state shopping, looking for a state with no regulations, because there are a couple. We've really had some initiatives with the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development. They recognize that our students and our alumni are a wonderful resource.

It was about a year and a half ago that we worked with Kevin Doran, and we had an initiative with our alumni. Colleges had a joint initiative which used the governor's picture in a letter from the president of the college which was put up on their web site specifically directed toward that school's alumni. It invited them to think about moving a business here or opening a business here. The folks at Economic Development met during Middlebury College's homecoming to talk about bringing businesses here. We had a section on the agenda where the visitors could meet with some business owners who were alumni, and there's actually a good possibility that something is going to come out of that.

The governor met with the graduating MBA class at Norwich, and they are reaching out, recognizing that we have a lot of alumni on the databases and about 75% of them are out-of-state. This is a great crew that we would love to have bring their businesses here. So we've been working with economic developmen\t to reach out to that group, to the alumni business owners to have them think about bringing their businesses to Vermont.

Another thing we are doing with economic development is, we set up

what we call a skills forecasting group. We are looking at what skills

and education will be needed in the future in Vermont. What are the

jobs that are going to be developed, where are the openings going to

be? This will not only help the state meet those needs, but it will help

students graduating in Vermont to have - jobs here. Working with the

folks in economic development and labor, industry and training, there

is going to be a report given this fall at our annual meeting by that

group, and that group will continue working probably at least another

year on this. They'll keep looking at what the trends are in the state

and what different businesses and different careers are developing

here, which will help the colleges gear up to make sure students are

ready to meet that need.

VBM: That's one of the issues that consistently comes up as I talk with

Vermont's business leaders around the state. They say Vermont is a

great place to live, and it's a great place to go to school, but we lack

enough good paying jobs to keep students living here once they

graduate, whether from high school or college.

Englese: Exactly. Someone from economic development contacted me just a couple of weeks ago. They want to do a research study about how many students would really stay in Vermont if there were a job for them. We can't say all some marry, some have families, some just wanted to be in Vermont for a few years, and we were happy to have them. But it will be a very interesting study to ask students, if there were a good paying job here, would you stay here, and find out how many would. We think it would be a lot. I think of myself I happen to have graduated college in Maryland, but I had no plans to stay there. But how many students would stay here if they had that option? That brain power that we are developing, it would be wonderful to keep it here.

VBM: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Vermont colleges now, and what do you think it will be in 10 years?

Englese: I think continuing to recruit students is always difficult when we are ranked 49th of all the states in terms of state funding per capita for higher education. Financially, now, VSAC said last year that the average student graduating has $27,000 in debt. That is always going to be an issue. We look at the demographics ahead and in a few years it's going to be a larger percentage of minority students, largely Hispanic, so our schools are going to have to determine how to reach those students. What are their needs? And then convince them that Vermont is a good place to come to school. I think filling your class, recruiting students, is going to always be an issue in higher education.

I think we need to be really, really careful in that the schools have to work really, really hard on the best uses of their resources. When someone gets upset at the rising cost of gasoline and heating oil, just think of how that affects a college campus. They have dorms and offices and everything else. You set your tuition rate and then something like this happens. All the schools work very hard to make the very best of their resources, to offer the classes and the degrees that people want, to use their facilities to attract the community. That's going to continue, but it's not going to get any easier. Everything that impacts a household impacts a college. If there is a terrible frost in Florida and food prices go up, that affects the food services on a campus. People don't think of that in the same terms. If the library resources and books are more expensive, that affects the college. Those are things they need to purchase. So I think those will always be issues that the schools must deal with.

VBM: I've interviewed the presidents of several Vermont colleges - St Michael's, UVM, Norwich, Landmark College, and I just interviewed Geoffrey Shields of the Vermont Law School - and there may be a couple more in there that I can't remember right now. We seem to have a strange situation in Vermont, where our tuitions are rather high, while our student aid is rather low.

Englese: That's right, and that's why the tuitions have to be high. We used to be a state that said our model was high tuition and high aid. We kept the high tuition, but we don't have the high aid.

VBM: What can be done about that? I remember Howard Dean, when he was governor, speaking at Landmark College about bringing in more state aid to the schools. I was covering it for the Rutland Herald at the time. What happened to that initiative?

Englese: We've gotten a little better over the last few years. We have a group called the Commission on Higher Education Funding, which was established by the Legislature, and they have been increasing funding over the last few years. This past year, the Vermont Business Roundtable came out with a report on higher education, and they have been very supportive. One of their goals is to move Vermont up the list from 49th to 40th place, which is better than aspiring to 50th place! However, Texas used to say that at least it's education system wasn't as bad as Mississippi's. I used to think, what a strange way to describe your educational system! In terms of whether or not it's as bad as another state! That's not what we want.

I think that the fact that we have new groups coming out, like Economic Development, Tourism and Marketing and so on, it can only make our case stronger and the legislature has to see what education means to Vermont. We really add an incredible amount of money to the state. And it's beyond the money.

VBM: Some of the colleges are among the state's major employers.

Englese: There are about 10,000 people throughout the state employed full and part-time in its colleges and universities. When you think of some of the smaller communities like Castleton and Craftsbury, the colleges have a huge local impact. It's not just education or just employment, but the colleges are a community resource. There is the library, the lectures, the performances. If I could I'd tell people to find out more about their local college. If there is something advertised in the local paper, go and see what it is like.

VBM: And Vermont has some unique colleges. Landmark College in Putney is the only accredited school specifically for students with learning disabilities.

Englese: Right. Norwich is the oldest military school in the country. The New England Culinary Institute is another example. I would urge people to think about what we have here. It's astounding, the number of degrees that are offered here in Vermont. VSAC has a program that was started here a few years ago, called College Pathways, for high school juniors and their parents. They have an all-day event, telling them about how to write your application essay, how to evaluate a visit to a campus, should you go to a two- year or four-year school. It's all free and there are wonderful workshops. It has grown so large that they actually do two of them, one in March and one in April. That is reaching a very important group - high school juniors. When you've got to make up your mind.

In my office, the calls I get are not from high school students. They are more from people who didn't go to college, but who worked for a while. They no longer have a guidance counselor to talk to. How do I go back? VSAC has a wonderful outreach program, and I advise these people that if they know what they want to study, I can tell you where it is offered. Each year we do a directory of every degree and certificate that is offered in Vermont, and it is on our web site. You can go there and research it on the web site. Maybe you can travel to another part of the state or move to another part of the state or maybe you can't. Start looking at the schools that are closest to you.

VSAC is considering doing a College Pathways program for the nontraditional student as well. Maybe these people went a year and quit, or maybe they are working and now they realize that most jobs are going to require some kind of college education for advancement and they want to go back to college parttime. They have a lot of questions. What will it cost them? Can they still get financial aid? I get calls like that every week in the office, They're a wonderful group of students when they go back. They're really directed, they're paying for it and not their parents. They are very, very serious about studying and they often go at night or on weekends.

VBM: What else should be a part of this interview that we, haven't yet discussed?

Englese: What we're looking at now is that the way we market higher education in the way that the state markets Vermont. We just had a workshop comparing the latest research on the Vermont brand. I was invited to a Travel and Recreation Council meeting last month, and one of the things that came out of that was that they see a need to develop a brochure specifically to get to the young people.

Bill Stegner, who operates Jay Peak, said that the promotional pieces that he has for his place target young families with little kids or the older person, but we absolutely need to target the collegeage student. I met a lot of people who came to Vermont to ski and came back here to go to college because they really like Vermont. We're going to be working with Tourism and Marketing and the Vermont Ski Areas Association on a brochure aimed specifically at the younger person. I think that's a big step forward. We have wonderful programs, but they are not programs that are not offered in other states. What we're really telling people is come to Vermont to study, so we're marketing Vermont the same way that Marketing and Tourism and the ski areas are. It's an easy state to market. It really is.

We have a couple of other things we've been \involved with. Vermont Teddy Bear, about five years ago we started working with them and developed an award. They wanted to recognize a senior at a Vermont College who was exemplary in community service. So they give a $3000 award. One thousand dollars to the student, $1000 to the college and $1000 to the nonprofit where they volunteered. They do that each year. I'm on the committee that helps choose the student, and it's very, very hard. Each president can nominate only one student. We're trying to make sure that people recognize what college students are doing right. Of course there are problems, but the Vermont Teddy Bear Company really wanted to step up and do this with us.

I did mention to you that we have a bus tour each year for out- of-state guidance counselors. They pay their way to Vermont, and then we cover the cost for the week, when they visit 17 different schools. This past year we had counselors from Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia. We've had them from as far away as Hawaii. A couple of years ago, during the bus tour, one of the counselors said this is the perfect school for a student that we've not been able to find the right school for, She called back to her high school right then, talked to the student, and the student ended up going to that college.

If you can get people here, if you can get them to see this state - and we bring them here in April, which can sometimes be risky. We've even had snow. But you put them up in nice inns, they have meals at different campuses, they listen to presentations from the students, and it's a really wonderful experience. We've done that for 26 years.

VBM: What kind of a budget deal have to work with?

Englese: We're a non-profit, and just VHEC, this year our budget was slightly under $90,000. The consortium, which does publications and the bus tour, has a budget about the same size, but they have no salaries. They are all volunteers. They put their brochures and information at all the welcome centers in Vermont.

We want people coming here and thinking, I could come back here and go to college.

Copyright Boutin-McQuiston, Inc. Aug 01, 2005

Source: Vermont Business Magazine

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