Theme Music (00:01):

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Taylor Pardue (00:08):

Welcome to the NC State Philanthropy Podcast, telling the world how we Think and Do through the support of our friends, alumni and more. I’m your host, Taylor Pardue.

(00:18):

On this episode, we’re joined by Holly Hurlbert, associate dean of the University College’s Academic Enrichment Programs, to learn more about the high-impact experiences available to NC State students.

(00:32):

Thanks so much for joining us today, Holly. To kick things off, tell listeners a little bit about yourself and what first brought you to NC State.

Holly Hurlburt (00:51):

Sure. Thanks for having me. I’m a historian, so I got my Ph.D. in history and worked for nearly 20 years at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, which was a fantastic experience. And there I got interested in what else I might do in higher education. And so, I began working with students doing experiential-learning activities, and that was very exciting, and that encouraged me to look for other places where I might do that. And so, in 2019, I came here from SIUC to take up the position that I currently hold, which is associate dean in Academic Enrichment Programs. I oversee the University Honors Program, the Office of Undergraduate Research, the First Year Inquiry Program, which is a freshman program, seminar-style, small classes, asking big questions, and also the University Fellowships Office. So, I’ve been here almost six years. It’s been delightful despite all of the sort of ups and downs of the last six years. And yeah, it’s been really exciting because there’s so much going on here. I still feel like I learn something new every day.

Taylor Pardue (02:04):

Of all the times to come for experiential learning. I can imagine that COVID — it affected the university as a whole, obviously, in every different way, but experiential learning is a very unique one to have been impacted.

Holly Hurlburt (02:14):

Well, especially because we talk a lot about the importance of hands-on, and I think the pandemic really put some limits on our ability to facilitate opportunities for students to put their hands on. But it also, I think, was a moment for incredible, empowering, creative thinking. So, I will use the Office of Undergraduate Research as an example, which is that, every year, twice a year, we have a big symposium that’s an opportunity for students from all disciplines, all colleges to come together and present their research. And, obviously, we couldn’t do that. We couldn’t have 350 students and 500 members of faculty, staff in the community. And so, we did it online, and it was awkward and uncomfortable, but it achieved, I think, the same purpose, which is a celebration of everything that our students are doing, but also an opportunity for them to master their skills of thinking and talking about what they’re doing. And so, for me, it was really heartwarming to see the number of members of our community — students, faculty, staff, administrators — who joined a Zoom call to listen to a student talk about their microbiology research even though they couldn’t have that face-to-face exchange. So, for me, COVID was obviously a tragedy and incredibly challenging, particularly for our students, but it also demonstrated to me what this NC State community is capable of in terms of moving mountains to make sure our students get every opportunity.

Taylor Pardue (03:43):

Definitely. Not the truest sense of the word of “experiential learning,” but definitely an experience that it taught them something new. If you can persevere through things like that.

Holly Hurlburt (03:52):

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean that’s a combination of those — we talk about skills and then soft skills, and I don’t love that distinction because “soft” has certain connotations, but I think the notion of perseverance, students are comfortable rolling around in that a little bit more I think than they were before the pandemic. And maybe that’s just good training for life, because life is full of hiccups and bumps and snafus, and the sooner you’re ready to sort of roll with those punches, I think the better off you are.

Taylor Pardue (04:24):

Absolutely. If listeners don’t already know, explain that term “experiential learning.” What all does that really entail?

Holly Hurlburt (04:30):

Sure. It goes back to this notion of hands-on activity. So, traditionally, higher education has been confined within four walls of a classroom. This is where we do our learning. And for 40, 50, 60 years now, big universities like ours have been learning from trade schools and other places where part of your education is that you do the thing, you don’t just learn about the thing. In theory, you then apply what you’ve learned. And I think that this is a tremendous step forward for higher education in a lot of ways, not least because having an experience helps a student understand, “Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?” So, being in a lab, again, to refer back to undergraduate research, being in a lab is not everybody’s cup of tea. And it’s better for our students if they find that out now while they’re in a relatively safe place before they put all of their career eggs in that basket.

(05:31):

And so, the experience really, really matters. We’re also told, and the statistics bear this out, that employers increasingly want us to break down that barrier between classroom wall and experience and that future employees they’re looking for have put their hands on the thing. They have gotten dirty, they have thought about those processes and thought about how to apply their classroom learning. And so, it’s really, really exciting, certainly since I went to the college in the ’90s and there was very little to no — I’m a humanist by trade, I’m a historian, and there was very little to no concept of learning outside the classroom, even though we did it all the time. It happened; we just didn’t think about it as part of the educational experience. And this is why I think this is so very exciting, what we’re doing at NC State right now, is because we’re trying to change the conversation so that students and parents and families and we ourselves know that education is what happens while you’re at NC State.

(06:39):

And a lot of that happens in the classroom, and the classroom is incredibly important, and we are not trying to do away with traditional higher education, but it’s that value-added that you get from studying abroad, that you get from an internship or a co-op program or an Alternative Service Break experience. And it’s not enough just to offer students those experiences; we also want to help them think about it. “Why does this study-abroad experience matter?” So, the example that I’ll give you is, I work with honor students, and we take honor students on a lot of really wonderful trips, and you’ll ask them, “So, how was your study abroad?” And they’ll go, “Great.” And then there’ll be this silence, because we’re not doing everything we can to help them train their own brains to examine experiences while they’re happening. And so, part of the project that I’m involved in with NC State right now is that sort of brain-training, that reflective piece. “What am I learning about myself by having this experience?”

Taylor Pardue (07:45):

Well, it’s a perfect segue. Obviously, we’re very proud of our motto, Think and Do. NC State is known for that sort of experiential learning that really sets us apart. What makes us so unique? What, really, do we offer that other universities aspire to?

Holly Hurlburt (08:00):

I think it’s the volume of opportunities, for one. I mean, we’re a very large institution, and we’re hardly the only large institution, but in my higher ed experience, just the volume of things that you might do that give you this value-added. I’ll cite entrepreneurship, I think, as a great example. It’s not traditionally listed as a high-impact experience, but it absolutely is experiential learning, right? Because you are building a business and learning about all of the pieces that go into that while you’re doing it. And it is inherently interdisciplinary so that when you are an entrepreneur, you are thinking about the bottom line and finance, but you’re also thinking about design, you’re thinking about PR, you’re thinking about customer satisfaction, and I don’t know another university that has so many different opportunities to pull in all those threads and give students, really, an opportunity to understand this is, in microcosm, this is how the world around us works. I think entrepreneurship is something that NC State really does better than anybody else, and it is a high-impact experience.

(09:12):

I think co-op is another great example of this. I don’t know for sure, but I can say that co-op experiences are transformational for a lot, a lot of NC State students. And so, I think it’s the volume of opportunities, but it’s also that emphasis on Think plus Do.

Taylor Pardue (09:30):

Yes.

Holly Hurlburt (09:32):

That it is intentional. And I think it’s getting more intentional with every year of the six years that I’ve been here. We’re getting more intentional about understanding that that helps our students, that it’s part of who we are as a brand.

Taylor Pardue (09:46):

The word “holistic” comes to mind. Really, like you said, not just Think, not just Do, but really finding that perfect blend.

Holly Hurlburt (09:52):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s really important to help students recognize that that’s going on around them. I mean, the world is coming at our students really, really fast. They have a lot to digest in terms of mental health, in terms of their social lives, in terms of the political climate, and those are just three obvious things. They don’t necessarily take time to stop and think. And my own experience in doing this with students is that they are tremendously grateful and a little uncomfortable when they’re given that opportunity to really stop and think.

(10:29):

So, I had the tremendous privilege and pleasure to take a group of students to Venice, Italy, over spring break a few weeks ago, and we had class in the morning, and they had free time in the afternoon to explore. And I said, “I want you to stop and think every day.” And they looked at me like, she has three heads. This is very strange. After the trip was over, two of one, they said, “Thank you.” I need to remind myself, and this is a good lesson for me as an educator as well. The world is moving by very quickly. We need to stop and think. It would be great that, when you and I are done with this conversation, I took a minute and thought, “What did I just learn from that experience?” And I think if we model that behavior as educators a little bit more than we do, that will really help our students digest all of the Think and Do.

Taylor Pardue (11:25):

It seems like it would be so simple, but yeah, taking that time and just, not rewiring, but just reframing how we look at the world. Yeah, it’s seemingly simple, deceptively simple, but being able to train students and really show them how that works at home and abroad is huge.

Holly Hurlburt (11:42):

Well, and it’s a wonderful mental-health practice. We know this. It’s also, it can be uncomfortable because you have to grapple a little bit. So, I took my students to Venice. Venice is a wonderful, magical, amazing place. It’s also a place that is suffering from massive over-tourism and is suffering from the effects of climate change. And so, you have to take some time and think about, “What are the implications for me? What are the implications for these people who live here and work here?” And that’s not always a comfortable conversation to have, but I think we need to do everything we can as citizens, as educators to encourage uncomfortable conversations.

Taylor Pardue (12:27):

And especially, talking about Venice, specifically, and other places like that, where students may never get to visit again — really making the most of that thoughtful, timely vision of everything and really taking it in.

Holly Hurlburt (12:39):

And it will be different. I think maybe the most valuable educational experience for me going through this with these students is — I’ve written two books about Venice. I’ve been to Venice a hundred times. It’s changing, and we can’t stop that. And I think coming to terms with change is a huge struggle. And so, being able to do that in a kind-of-safe, conversational way, for me, it was tremendously rewarding. This generation of students, in particular, they’re very environmentally aware. They’re very attuned to some of the things that are happening and how the planet is changing, and they’re thinking about it in a way that my generation did not. And so, I find that tremendously rewarding and hopeful.

Taylor Pardue (13:24):

What is a typical experiential-learning opportunity look like? Is it a group setting like that? Is it individuals going on experiences of their own studying abroad?

Holly Hurlburt (13:33):

In an ideal world, and education scholars have done a lot of research on this, and so, there’s a mountain of scholarship about what makes the best experience a student can look to get certain things out of the experience. This ability to reflect and stop and think about how the experience applies, that’s the gold standard. Along with that, it’s an opportunity for a student at a really big university to operate in a smaller community. Maybe that’s 20 people on a study abroad. Maybe it’s five people in a research lab. Maybe it’s 12 people in a leadership course. So, it’s that community within a community. It’s also the depth of the experience, and there’s no measurement that says this is the right amount of time and the right amount of energy to give to an experience. But in an ideal world, it’s something that you do regularly and intentionally or for a particular, intense period of time, and that during that time you’re working collaboratively. That might be informal collaboration, like, “Wow, we’ve all got to run to catch this bus so we can get to our event.” Or it might be intentional team-building.

(14:44):

And then, I think, finally, it’s an opportunity to work with people who are not necessarily the same as you, and it’s the opportunity to get to know a faculty mentor or a staff mentor or a researcher or graduate student PI and those relationships. I think that’s where the magic is. I think if every one of our 30,000-plus students had a person that they could talk to about what they’re experiencing and that they could look to that person for a little bit of guidance, I think we go a long way to demystifying some of the very frightening uncertainties about being an 18- to 25-year-old right now. And so, those are some of the characteristics that you could be looking for. And I agree with you, there’s definitely not a typical experience, and I think that the great thing about those categories that I just listed is that you can achieve them in a whole bunch of different things.

(15:45):

I go back to undergraduate research and study abroad because those are the ones that I focus in, but a good leadership experience will give you that. A good entrepreneurial experience will give you that. A good community engagement program that is sustained, and so, it’s not, “I’m going out to pick up trash once.” It’s the, “I’m taking a community-engaged class, and we’re meeting with members of community, and we’re having those conversations. And I think hands-on is a great way of thinking about this kind of work, but it’s not just hands-on; it’s people-engaged. So, it’s really about meeting people in a lab space, meeting people in a community space, meeting people in a business space that you might not do if you were just having that four-walls-in-a-classroom experience.

Taylor Pardue (16:32):

I keep thinking of the word “immersive.”

Holly Hurlburt (16:33):

Yeah.

Taylor Pardue (16:34):

Sometimes, I think people hear “immersive” and they think, “I have to spend six months or a year, however long, in a place, in a culture to really maximize that.” But “immersive” is anything beyond, like you said, just that one-time experience. It really is that return to that opportunity. And …

Holly Hurlburt (16:50):

Yeah, I think the Alternative Service Break is a great example of this. These are trips that go five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 days over spring break in the Maymester, right after graduation. It’s not living abroad, and sometimes it’s not even leaving the country, but it is immersive, and you are given a set of ideas to think about in advance, and you are given a set of ideas to unpack and chew on and reflect on afterward so that the moment might be gone like that, but it’s something that you’re going to keep thinking about because we have given you the tools to keep thinking about it.

Taylor Pardue (17:32):

This year especially, I feel like it was so important. Students went and traveled to western North Carolina and really helped with Hurricane Helene recovery. You mentioned that these trips don’t have to take place overseas; they don’t even have to take place out of the state. Talk a little bit about that experience, particularly. I think that was just so powerful and, really, I think it speaks to our land-grant mission of really benefiting people all across the state. Literally. That’s not just something that they might benefit from the research that took place here on campus one day or these students who go out and become employees and leaders in these communities. But, I mean, they saw a direct benefit from this special period in our state’s history.

Holly Hurlburt (18:12):

I think we need to do more and talk more about the benefits of “study away” as distinct from “study abroad,” which is not to take anything away from study abroad. The variety of experiences that are possible in the state of North Carolina from an ecological perspective alone, and because NC State is NC State, we have partnerships in every one of the 100 counties. We have a major research center on the coast. We have partnerships in the west. We have state forest land. And there are so, so many opportunities. And I think it’s particularly important because I grew up in suburbs, not in North Carolina, in Virginia, but a lot of our students are aware of the ecological of the historical diversity of the business diversity in our state. They might know that somewhere in the middle of the back of their head, but again, we’re not asking them to think about it until something like Helene happens, and then we’re asking them to think about it in a particular way.

(19:24):

And so, it will sound trite, and I do not mean for it to sound trite, to talk about this. When I did teacher training a million years ago, this is what we call a “learning opportunity,” which feels terrible because these are people’s lives and livelihoods, but the very idea that this is — we’re all in the same state, and that our institution was set up to help the state, and the very idea that you can put your hands on that, I can’t imagine how powerful that must have been for those students and, particularly, knowing some students whose families were impacted by that.

Taylor Pardue (19:59):

Absolutely.

Holly Hurlburt (20:01):

I think it must do a lot for the sense of NC State, as large as it is, being a small community where we look out for each other. My work is in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, and some of our teams were part of a first response as well, and it makes me feel like I’m part of a community, and I know how beneficial that must be for students, but there are so many opportunities, and we don’t have to go through the expense or the hassle. You don’t need a passport to go to all of these places.

(20:35):

One of the best experiences I had when I first got here is that I was “volun-told” for a bus tour of North Carolina. I’m an East Coast girl; I’m from Virginia, but I hadn’t been back on the East Coast for 20-some-odd years. And I thought, “I don’t know that much about North Carolina. I should do this.” And I am still in touch and friends with all of the other new faculty and staff who had that experience. And we learned about sweet potatoes, and we learned about the Air Force, and it was just two days, but it was two incredibly rich days. And I think that’s very important because I think that North Carolina models the world. And so, I think if you understand North Carolina and you understand the history and the populations and the environment and the opportunities and the challenges, that sets you up well to go anywhere in the world and do anything.

(21:30):

I would say another experiential-learning opportunity that really, I think, leans in very much to the land-grant mission is a program called Rural Works! So, Rural Works! is run by, out of the Career Development Center, and it is a project that pairs interns with businesses in rural communities who could use an extra helping hand. And it’s been very popular with the College of Engineering. And last year, I was part of a group that helped set up a partnership between Poole College of Management and the Rural Works! community. And so, we’re placing future engineers and future accountants and future business managers with these small communities. And I think that’s so very important. Again, giving back to the state, but also building these networks of communication and breaking down the barriers that sometimes exist between the academy or higher education and the business world.

(22:28):

And the students who have had those experiences, they just tell these phenomenal stories about, “I didn’t know what I was getting into.” But as it turns out, when you go to work for a small company, oftentimes you get a lot more experience than you do if you have an internship at one of the other places. Not that there’s anything wrong with those; those are fantastic experiences, but oftentimes you have the ability to write your own program a little bit and lean into your own strengths. And I think anything we can do to plug students into our Extension mission, the research that’s happening at the CMAST (Center for Marine Sciences and Technology) center on the coast, these are win-wins because the student gets the experience, the student gets the mentorship, but the student also gets a sense of how phenomenal an education they’re getting at NC State because NC State has this incredibly wide reach.

Taylor Pardue (23:23):

Absolutely.

Holly Hurlburt (23:23):

That’s something I had no idea about with my own undergraduate education. I didn’t think about, “OK, I’m at this university.” I thought, “I’m going to get this degree, and then I’m going to do my next thing.” And now, looking back, I understand how powerful it is to know that you are a part of this community. I have had the tremendous pleasure of working with a student named Chloe Sharp. Chloe Sharp is from Johnston County; she’s very proud of that fact. She’ll tell you if you talk to her, and she did an internship last summer through Ag Extension, and she ended up working with Johnston County farmers and promoting what it means to be a farmer in the 21st century and having conversations with communities and doing podcasts like this one and little videos, and to hear her talk about it, it just makes your heart full.

(24:14):

And this is often, the happy ending of a good internship story is always “and they offered her a job.” Well, they offered her a job, and it’s a great job. Chloe is a great example of what a student can get out of multiple experiential-learning opportunities. So, she’s done an internship, and she’s done leadership positions, and she has studied abroad, and she’s going to pull all of those things together and present them in this remarkable package that makes her marketable. And she could have gone anywhere and done anything, but because of the series of experiences she had, she’s staying right here. And I think that’s going to matter for the future of the state, is making sure that we keep some of these good minds here.

Taylor Pardue (25:00):

That’s the perfect segue, I think, because just a fact of life, unfortunately, so many times students leave university with student debt, and they have to go beyond, maybe, where they would want to be to go for the salary to be able to pay back those student loans, and then maybe they can go to where they want to be later when they’ve finished paying that off. Talk about philanthropy and the ability that enables students to not just take part in these experiences, but to do it in a way that leaves them less debt or maybe debt-free and be able to stay at home and go back to Johnston County and really to be where their heart is.

Holly Hurlburt (25:36):

Yeah. It’s shocking to me even though I work in higher education and I think about it every day, how student debt has spiraled in the time that I’ve been employed in higher education. And one of my hesitations when I got involved in this high-impact experience, experiential-learning crusade that we’re on right now is, it’s really great to talk about these experiences, but there are some students who you can have one sentence out of your mouth about study abroad or an internship in New York City if you’re a fashion designer or a research position somewhere abroad, and they will shut down, and they will shut down for two reasons. And these two reasons are interrelated. One of them is money, straight up. “I can’t afford that.” And the other one is imposter syndrome, and you cannot tease those two apart. So, a student who faces financial challenges, and that is now the bulk of our students, automatically is going to think, “That’s not for me.”

(26:39):

They’re not even going to take that moment that we’ve been talking about to think and explore and reflect and consider the possibility; they’re just going to shut right down. Add to that that many of our students have the perception that the combination of their academics and the other things they want to do means there’s no time for experiential learning. This is particularly a problem with study abroad and also with research positions In the undergraduate research world. We have a huge struggle with students who want to be in a lab and who need to be in a lab who won’t get into grad school or med school if they haven’t had that lab experience. But the lab experience either is not paid for — they tend not to be salaried positions, particularly for undergraduates — or the salary is not as much as they can make working in the dining hall, working on Hillsborough Street, working someplace else, and they’re being asked to choose, and they have to make the fiscally responsible choice.

(27:40):

So, I think philanthropy is essential. [The] other thing that I think is that it doesn’t have to be “philanthropy pays for the whole experience.” So, a colleague down at the University of South Carolina — South Carolina has done a similar sort of, “Let’s lift up experiential learning,” over the last few years. She did some research, and she found that, when you say to a student, “OK, you’ve got an internship in New York City. It pays minimum wage. You cannot live in New York City on minimum wage. I can’t pay for the whole thing for you, but I can give you $500, $1,000 toward housing,” or, “I can give you money toward transportation. I can give you a piece of the pie,” that changes how the student thinks about it because, first of all, that’s money. It might not be the whole thing, but it’s something. But the more important thing is, that sends the message to that student, “I’m worth somebody investing in. This matters enough that somebody’s willing to give me a helping hand.”

(28:43):

On the trip that I just took to Venice, there was a student who couldn’t go and couldn’t go and couldn’t go and then found that he could get airfare funding through the engineering year experience program on campus. And he was able to go, and he would sit here and tell you that his life is forever changed for the better because of that experience. And so, I think this is not as much of a financial mountain as we might be afraid of, but what we do need to do is figure out, understand some of the hidden costs of experiential learning. The students who do Rural Works! — there’s a real problem with housing writ large in our country, but particularly when you go to a small town, there’s not a lot of apartments that you can rent for the month. A lot of students end up staying in hotels, so we need to do some building of infrastructure. And here, I think the golden thing about university philanthropy is that it is not just about, or even primarily about, money. It is about relationships. So, we need to do a better job of understanding where the NC State alums are and how they can help.

(29:57):

And so, that help might be financial. That help might be, “Oh, we have an extra bedroom here in Wilson. We’d love to have a student come and stay with us.” Building those sorts of communities and opportunities. I think the limited experience I’ve had in talking to potential donors and donors and alumni about this work is that lots of people have a memory of the thing they did in college that was transformational. And so, I think lots of people understand that that’s a good place to give back, to pay it forward. “I had this great experience doing X; I really want to help a student do Y, and Y doesn’t cost $10,000 or $50,000 or $100,000. Y can be incremental.”

(30:41):

And so, I think that’s incredibly exciting. I think that we can really change the game. It’s a culture change, because we have to help students understand that money does not have to be a barrier, one, but also, two, that whatever your financial situation is, we at NC State are committed to helping you have at least one if not several experiential-learning opportunities.

Taylor Pardue (31:07):

Absolutely.

Holly Hurlburt (31:08):

And that means grappling with the money and grappling with transportation and grappling with the human anxiety and imposter syndrome and all of those things.

Taylor Pardue (31:17):

And on the flip side, I think of it, too, having talked to as many donors as I have over the years in my role, so many times, I think donors think — and I really try to hammer it home with this podcast over the different episodes that we’ve done — they think, “If I give to the university, I have to fund a scholarship. I have to fund the entire scholarship for a four-year ride, or it’s either zero or 60. I can’t do anything in between.” And there’s so much that I want donors and listeners to know about leveraging the networking of the Pack. So many companies, universities, everyone, they talk about networking and the importance of it all. It’s built into our DNA with the Wolfpack mentality, and there are so many opportunities for, like you’ve mentioned, with students thinking that, “I have to have the entire thing paid for or I’m not able to do it.” Same thing on the flip side for the donors. What you can give is appreciated and important, and it incrementally can build to a full ride or can do so many different things. And then just volunteerism, mentoring, things like this. I mean, the gift of just your past experiences, things that were transformational for you and paying it forward, like you mentioned. Just so many opportunities there that are as wide as the experiential-learning opportunities that they go on to provide.

Holly Hurlburt (32:35):

Well, and it’s so important because I think a lot of students come in with the expectation that life will be a straight line, and it’s not. I don’t know a single college alumnus who cannot talk about the moment when this happened and I ended up over there, and you know what? I’m still here, and here’s what I learned from it. And so, those conversations in the University Honors Program, we are currently working on a program to do informal mentoring, so just a sort of coffee and chat with somebody who is a Duke med doctor now but majored in English and took some time off and did all of these things that are counter to the idea that we must march in a straight way to our destination. Or those folks who did a career for 20 years and then decided, “Nope, I’m going to do something different.” And entrepreneurship, started their own businesses. So, these models that it’s not just, here’s a real person with a real job and a real life. They pivoted. They changed direction. And that was not only OK; it was good. And so, the power of having a conversation, again, as I said earlier, with somebody who’s been there, even if their “there” wasn’t what they expected, that’s incredibly valuable. I’m a little bit afraid that we have suggested to students that there’s a track, and if you follow that track, everything will be fine. And so, then when you decide to color outside the lines a little bit, it feels dangerous. And this is something we see in the Honors Program a lot, because we have a lot of engineers who are like, “Wait a minute. You want me to take a literature class? Why would I do that?” And on the other side of that, they’re like, “Oh!” What you do with that information is limitless.

Taylor Pardue (34:26):

At the end of the day, whatever you’re studying here, whatever you go into, we are all very unique people. And your life, your career does not have to focus on one passion. There are so many different things that you might find you’re passionate about, and maybe it’s not your ultimate job, but these different experiences. I think at the end of the day, that’s what we want alumni to be, is to be passionate about what they do, passionate about the university as alums, things like that. But really, to go out of here with a multidisciplinary look at their lives and what they can accomplish.

Holly Hurlburt (34:58):

Yeah, I think that’s incredibly powerful. And I’m willing to bet that people will say, “I studied this, [but] I still draw wisdom from these things over here.” I think higher ed, this is another super-exciting way in which higher ed is changing, that over the last 100 years, we’ve gotten more and more and more discipline-specific. And in the same way that I think we now understand we need to bust down those walls a little bit and have students get their hands dirty, I think we now know that it’s a good thing for students to get their hands dirty in a couple of different things, and many of our majors are constructed that it is hard to do that, which is why co-curricular experiences are incredibly important. It’s why clubs are incredibly important, and those are the places where students, those are the building blocks to a really good experiential learning. That’s where you learn about ASB (Alternative Service Breaks), that’s, you know, talking to your roommate is where you learn about a co-op or a community-engaged service class. And so, all of those networks lead in an important direction.

Taylor Pardue (36:02):

Well, here’s the big question: How do students learn more about these different opportunities? Like you said, they go across colleges, they go across majors. Where can they learn more about getting involved in these, and hopefully with funding support as well?

Holly Hurlburt (36:15):

Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard at NC State, and it must be particularly hard when you arrive here. In fact, I know it’s particularly hard because I arrived here from a small campus. NC State is massive. I thought, “How do I learn things?” So, I went to Google, which is what we do, which is going to barf out a whole bunch of information at us, and that can be really overwhelming for a student who is looking for a specific thing. So, we have talked in the last couple of years as part of this high-impact learning crusade that we’re on. We have talked to lots and lots and lots of students, and they have said, “That is great, but I don’t know how to get started.” And we have heard that. And so, the following things are happening. Two, I think really, really important things. First of all, we have the fledgling beginnings of a good website that sort of describes the benefits. What that will have within the next month or so is a dedicated, student-facing page. I don’t have the website address at the top of my head, but I can tell you if [you] Google “Packways …”

Taylor Pardue (37:14):

We’ll include it in the show notes, definitely.

Holly Hurlburt (37:16):

Thank you. What students want to know is, “How do I do the thing?” They don’t want to hear that from me. They don’t want to hear that from you. They want to hear it from each other. And so, perhaps the single-greatest thing I have done this year — and remember, I’ve traveled to Venice with students, so it’s been a good year — is, I’ve had the pleasure of working with two student media interns who are traveling around campus collecting stories from students that they’re basically doing what you and I are doing right now, sitting down with the Chloe Sharps and saying, “OK, Chloe, how did you find your internship experience? How did you decide it was OK to study abroad even though you felt uncomfortable leaving the country?” We’re building a huge library of student stories, and I think that’s the single-most important thing, is getting those out and available on X, formerly Twitter, on Instagram, on a YouTube channel. And I think this accomplishes a couple of things. First of all, it helps us with that imposter syndrome problem. It’s like, “Oh, that person’s a student. It’s not just some 50-year-old lady talking to me about this experience.” So, there’s that familiarity, but also it’s practical information. It’s practical information that I often, I have no idea how students get internships today.

(38:33):

Students know how students get internships, and when they don’t know, they say, “And I didn’t know, and I talked to this person.” So, I would say a media campaign is going to be tremendously, tremendously important, but as we ramp up this Packways, high-impact experience vocabulary on campus, it’s going to take everybody knowing a little bit. It’s going to take every faculty member telling their students in the 30 seconds at the beginning or end of class, “Hey, I saw this really cool opportunity you guys should know about because we get hundreds of these through our email through, you know.” So, it’s just the culture of paying it on to students so that they know about it and letting a student know. When I tell you, “I think you could have this internship or this research position,” the message that sends is that student thinks, “Oh, if Professor X says it, maybe I can do it.”

(39:25):

And so I think I’m excited about the sort of various ways we can have conversations about this, but I also get that students want a one-stop shop. They want to know where to go. And so, we’re in the process of building a website that will connect all of the various high-impact experiences. We’re also doing some professional development work with people who run study-abroad trips, internships, leadership programs, so that they will have a little bit of coaching about how to tease out those reflective moments so that it’s not just that the student is having an experience; they’re having the very best experience they can possibly have.

Taylor Pardue (40:04):

Sounds great. Holly, thank you so much for joining us today and just for the work that you’re doing here at the university. That is something that talking about, again, the motto, Think and Do, it really sets NC State apart and really sets us above and beyond what many people may think of as a typical university experience and, really, just gives our students something that they can take on with them throughout their lives.

Holly Hurlburt (40:24):

It’s a pleasure to do this work. So much good stuff is happening. This is largely a communication problem. How do we on-ramp students to all of these amazing experiences and help the students feel that they’re worthy of them on the front end and help them make the most of them on the back end? And that, for me, that’s a labor of love. So, I’m happy to talk about it anytime.

Taylor Pardue (40:53):

To learn more about high-impact experiences and how you can make them possible for NC State students, please visit go.ncsu.edu/experiences. If you’d like to hear even more stories of Wolfpack success, please subscribe to the NC State Philanthropy Podcast today via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Podbean. Please leave a comment and rating as well to let us know how we’re doing. Thanks for listening, and as always, go Pack.