Boosting Efforts to Serve Students, Market Programs Through National Group

University of Arkansas

Charini Urteaga, from left, Jaime Tucker and Patty Milner are pictured at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) Conference in Denver last year.

Patty Milner encourages staff members on two teams she supervises at Global Campus to get involved in professional organizations and many of them have both attended and presented at their meetings. Milner herself, who is the assistant vice provost for student outreach and innovation, has helped organize national conferences.

Global Campus leaders encourage other staff at Global Campus to participate in professional organizations that focus on their jobs. They speak on panels at conferences, present research and participate in service projects, connecting with their colleagues across the country.

Staff take part in professional organizations based on the nature of their jobs and responsibilities. For the recruitment and student outreach and the marketing and communications teams that Milner oversees, one of those is the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, a national organization that provides research, professional development, networking and mentorship, conferences and seminars, and stakeholder advocacy for members.

Other team members participate in professional organizations such as the State Authorization Network (SAN) through the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) and the Slate CRM user community. The goal is to find the right professional community for each role to support and advance the work of each staff member, Milner said.

This is the third of four stories in a series celebrating National Distance Learning Week. These stories show how Global Campus lives up to its commitment to its core values — excellence, people, innovation, empowerment, access and reach — and to the U of A mission. You can also read more about student success and online programs offered by academic colleges at the U of A on our websites.

National Distance Learning Week runs from Nov. 6-10 and is sponsored by the United States Distance Learning Association. This year's annual celebration with free virtual webinars will focus on how artificial intelligence is affecting distance education.

Conference Organization

Milner serves on the Network Leadership Team for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. She is co-chair of this year's upcoming UPCEA MEMS conference in Portland that focuses on marketing, enrollment management and student services. She is vice chair of awards and recognition for UPCEA and formerly served on the 2021 MEMS Planning Committee.

"For my team, this is the conference where they get the most applicable information of everything that they do all year round because they are learning from other people who are doing the same jobs," Milner said. "We're learning what things we have in common. We're learning what amazing innovations other institutions are bringing to the table. We're having the opportunities just to talk about the challenges that we all have together, and really, I think, have great conversations that move us forward in the industry as well as at our individual institutions.

"These kinds of interaction across our professional networks are critical to making sure that we are keeping our institutions at the forefront of what excellence looks like across all of our professional arenas," she continued.

This fall, Milner teamed with a colleague from the University of Arizona to make a presentation at the Online Learning Consortium's OLC Accelerate conference in Washington. The two talked about the importance of online student success initiatives at their two traditional, residential, land-grant universities and how their roles have shifted in the post-pandemic, return-to-campus era.

Other presentations by U of A staff members in the past academic year:

• Colleen Whitman, online student support manager, presented a poster, "Leading a Call Center, Pandemic Optional!" and Kay Murphy, director of marketing and communications, and Heidi Wells, content strategist, presented a poster on marketing for the Reimagine Arkansas Workforce Project program, both at the UPCEA MEMS conference in New Orleans last year.
• Milner and Whitman presented "You Might Want to Sit Down for This: Lessons Learned through Unexpectedly Rapid Program Growth" at the UPCEA South Regional Conference in Atlanta last year. Also, at that conference, Milner, Whitman and Kati Williams, online student coaching coordinator, presented "No (Guts) Chem, No Glory: Student Success Teams Must Take Risks to Help Students Achieve Glory."
• Cheryl Murphy, U of A vice provost of distance education and head of the Global Campus, also gave the keynote address at the South Regional UPCEA Conference last year.
• Milner presented "We Belong, Too: Cultivating and Holding Space in Belonging Initiatives for Distance Students" at the UPCEA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., in March.
• Milner, along with Charini Urteaga, an instructional designer at Global Campus, and Jaime Tucker, a former recruiter for Global Campus, presented "So How Does That Help Me at Work: Pitching Academic Integrity to Non-Traditional Students" at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) Conference in Denver last year.

Members of Milner's teams not only present nationally, but also have received national recognition from their peers. The Marketing and Communications team won a silver award for marketing last year and will be presented a second silver award in December at the National UPCEA MEMS conference in Portland, Oregon.