Elizabeth Benz
Improving academic communities through strategic communication and collaboration
Early Career
I went to school with dreams of performing great musical works on stage for large audiences. I quickly learned as a music major that I was too far behind in the required classical training to achieve such dreams.
A part-time campus job advising study-abroad students unexpectedly shifted my academic interests. In that work, I had frequent interactions with communication scholars, and this inspired my decision to study communication. For the next decade, I worked as a tactician in nonprofit, corporate, and educational institutions – both private and public. The cornerstone of my endeavors within these organizations involved communicating with stakeholders.
Higher Education Professional
As the Director of Student Support for the University of New England’s College of Graduate and Professional Studies, I am responsible for the online student support division. I direct my staff to retain students, and we currently keep 94% of our students term over term. This requires me to be strategic and theory-based in my understanding of communication.
This position presents many internal and external communication challenges. I collaborate with university offices including academic departments, admissions, financial aid, student accounts, and the registrar to develop seamless communication to engage our online students. Each quarter, I collect and analyze engagement data to assess our retention plan and implement changes in communication strategies. Our online student retention largely depends on my unit’s engagement with students.
Even though I am a higher education management professional, the foundation of my work is communication – not pedagogy and assessment as many would expect in a higher education institution. Therefore, during the 2015-2016 academic year, I decided to seek a graduate degree because I needed a better understanding of communication theory, discipline, and practice. Therefore, I complated a master’s degree in communication at Gonzaga University. This path sets me apart from my colleagues not only at the University of New England - but also in higher education support.
See me in action at the
University of New England
Supporting Online Learners
Connecting Graduate Studies to My Career
I have learned that understanding what stakeholders seek is critical to the development of a successful communication strategy. The wide range of differences among stakeholder groups complicates the pursuit of strategy and tactical decision-making. The computer-mediated environment of online education further complicates the process. Additionally, trends suggest people assign value to online education based upon their own computer-mediated communication experiences. In terms of growing and sustaining online academic programs, understanding communication in these contexts is crucial.
As a communication leader at the University of New England, I focus on strategy and problem solving. I take “good communication” to the next level by collecting data, analyzing it, and modifying our on-going processes. Understanding how communication theory shapes the messaging landscape and engage people are why I am pursuing my graduate degree. If “perception is reality,” we must effectively create messages that appropriately and ethically align perception and reality. We must also evaluate all communication efforts. Then, our actions must persist to achieve our goals.
In my graduate studies at Gonzaga University, I researched communication issues that have significant effects on online students and professionals. My interests are at the intersection of interpersonal, intercultural, and computer-mediated communication, and this offers a wide-range of research opportunities. Online education is reaching untouched populations like never before, and because of this growth, we desperately need scholarly communication research to improve the profession and student experience. As both a professional and a student in online education, I believe communication can help us better understand and implement online higher education.
With more than 5,000 educational institutions offering online education and hundreds of thousands of students in online learning environments, I have an immense audience needing a virtuoso performance. Only this performance, instead of music, will be of research, data and better communication practice.
Strategy
Engage
Evaluate
Persist
