Those that know me professionally for the past 3 years know me as ‘Jess the Social Media/Analytics Chick’. Like many in higher ed, my personal goals and passions expand far beyond this one skill set. In a previous life, I was deeply immersed in the work of education reform – at the early education level, straight through the college completion level. My love of this work and the people who do it has led me back into this territory.

The work I’m doing at Suffolk is changing. No longer are we doing ‘whats new’ or ‘whats now’. Now, more than ever, we need to research, plan, predict and change to suit the ever-changing dynamics and needs of the students in our education system. With demographic change being constant, the economy dependent upon skilled laborers and our elderly generation becoming larger with the baby boomers, we can no longer afford the status quo. We need to effect change, not only for the common good, but for the benefit and the welfare of the country. If not for those who are changing the system, we’ll continue to produce drop out factories, provide financial aid to for-profit universities who over promise and under deliver and deny our largest – and fastest –  growing demographic the education they need to supply much-needed taxes, income and labor to sustain our economy.

With all this said, its time for me to start blogging again, and to take on the work that I started 10 years ago. I’ll be blogging on college access, retention and success, including readiness and financial literacy from now on. I’m hoping this will also be of great interest to those who know me as a digital marketer, as I use these skills to complete these strategies.

Universities need to be cognizant of who they are accepting and financially supporting, how they are making these decisions, and how they contribute to continued and still widening achievement gaps. One of the largest places we can see and begin to change this, I believe, is in our marketing.