#115 - Inside the Daily Deac Blog: How Wake Forest Built a Trusted Parent Communication Channel
Featuring Betsy Chapman
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SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Betsy Chapman, Senior Executive Director of Family Communications and Engagement at Wake Forest. Betsy is the voice behind the Daily Deac, a blog for parents and families that's been running nearly every weekday for over a decade and has grown to roughly 8,200 subscribers.
Betsy walks through how the Daily Deac started as an alumni blog called Quad View, how it evolved into the go-to source of information and comfort for Wake Forest parents, and the philosophy behind "Stop, Drop, and Roll" — her framework for helping families support their students without taking over for them. She also shares findings from her own dissertation research linking how deeply families read parent communications to student satisfaction, self-advocacy, and giving behavior.
Key Takeaways:
A named, first-person author builds more trust with readers than an institutional or departmental voice — Betsy's dissertation research on corporate and institutional blogs backed this up directly.
The Daily Deac isn't written from scratch every day — a mix of predictable, cyclical campus content (move-in, midterms, finals) and campus partner requests keeps the workload manageable, often just 15 minutes to an hour a day.
Schools don't need a new hire to start something like this — existing staff in communications, alumni, or student life offices can contribute, or the role can rotate across departments.
"Stop, Drop, and Roll" reframes how families should respond when a student calls with a problem: stop and assess whether the student can handle it, drop your urge to fix it, and roll with whatever solution the student lands on.
Betsy's dissertation found a correlation between how frequently and deeply parents read university communications and three outcomes: higher satisfaction, less direct intervention with university offices, and increased giving to the annual fund.
Some of the most-loved posts weren't polished or strategic — a "five senses" post written during a bout of writer's block, just describing what Betsy observed walking across campus, became one of the most emotionally resonant posts she's written.
Feedback and even pushback from readers (including families who felt a post was condescending) has directly shaped how Betsy frames advice — she treats critical feedback as information, not an attack.
Connect With Betsy:
Email: parents@wfu.edu
Find the blog: search "Daily Deac Wake Forest"
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00;00;00;08 - 00;00;02;02
John Azoni
All right. Well, Betsy, welcome to the show.
00;00;02;15 - 00;00;04;09
Betsy Chapman
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here, John.
00;00;04;25 - 00;00;31;29
John Azoni
So this is the third episode. And what I would say is like a trilogy of parent coms episodes. So we had Rita Winthrop on the show a couple months ago and talking about melt coms. And then she mentioned parent coms and the importance of parent coms in there. And then kind of a follow up to that episode was Laura Rudolph, who does consulting and is knee deep in parent communications.
00;00;32;12 - 00;00;41;01
John Azoni
So that whole episode was about parent comms, and we talked about Wake Forest's website as one of the examples to highlight of good parent web pages.
00;00;41;10 - 00;00;43;02
Betsy Chapman
And we were so honored, by the way.
00;00;43;22 - 00;00;50;05
John Azoni
Yeah. And now we have the final boss of parent and family Communications. So glad to have you here.
00;00;51;02 - 00;00;54;15
Betsy Chapman
Thanks for having us. And I now want that on the business card Final boss.
00;00;55;14 - 00;01;03;27
John Azoni
The final verse in the trilogy, I think. I don't know how many Lord of the Rings episodes there were. I've not seen a single one, but I know that they're long and there's at least three of them.
00;01;05;04 - 00;01;09;12
Betsy Chapman
Indeed, my husband is the biggest Lord of the Rings fan. That is a whole separate podcast, though.
00;01;09;27 - 00;01;15;23
John Azoni
Okay, well, what's something that you've been nerding out about lately? It doesn't have to be work related.
00;01;16;09 - 00;01;45;19
Betsy Chapman
So I have three, actually, I would say mind games, murder and mistakes. And before anybody panics about what that means, let me explain. So mind games as I get older, I'm turning 56 tomorrow, so I am becoming increasingly aware of like needing to stay mentally sharp. So my morning start with like doing all the New York Times things, the word, all the crossword, the connections, all of that murder in the sense that I am a true crime fan.
00;01;46;03 - 00;02;11;16
Betsy Chapman
And I'm particularly interested in the things that happen behind the scenes that maybe normal people wouldn't know. So I'm kind of fascinated by things like depositions and how do people ask the questions that they want to ask that helps get you to understand maybe what took place. So I like watching those kinds of shows and and I say mistakes because I'm also really interested in looking at PR crises, not necessarily with higher ed, but just in general.
00;02;11;16 - 00;02;24;12
Betsy Chapman
So what happened? Did somebody handle something well? Did somebody handle something? Maybe it could have been a little bit better. How did you decide on language? I'm really interested in kind of thinking through the behind the scenes of those things.
00;02;24;24 - 00;02;45;04
John Azoni
Interesting. So weirdly, I think world was invented by a student at Central Michigan University that I found out, and my dad and my step mom play where it all and where we go up north and visit them for vacation. They're battling back and forth. But yeah, it's about that time. You know, I should probably.
00;02;45;04 - 00;02;46;29
Betsy Chapman
You got to keep the brain elastic, right?
00;02;48;01 - 00;03;01;15
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. I'm also fascinated by depositions, too, and I'm like, I would be so bad at this. I would be so bad at, like, trying to, like, my kids will lie to me all the time and they're so good at it and I'm so bad at detecting.
00;03;01;15 - 00;03;28;00
Betsy Chapman
It was just so interesting because you see things that that come out in, you know, publicized trials or whatever. But there's a million legal steps that take place before that. And all of these like really boring little things that they have to ask. So I like narratively reading some of that stuff just to see, you know, what's the final product versus what were the things that people had to talk through and find out to get to that point?
00;03;28;18 - 00;03;37;22
John Azoni
Yeah, well, Carol, so give us a lay of the land of, you know, your role at Wake Forest. Tell us why parent and family communications is an important part of your career.
00;03;38;06 - 00;04;03;18
Betsy Chapman
So my title is actually senior executive director of Family Communications and Engagement, which is really sort of a fancy way of saying, I'm kind of the chief communications strategist and voice for Wake Forest parents and families. So that is involves everything from creating publications for parents and families. We have a series of things that we do over the summer for our incoming first year families.
00;04;03;18 - 00;04;25;22
Betsy Chapman
We send a message to them every week via email, like, Here's what you need to know is an incoming parent and family because those new families are really at their highest information need. And we want to make sure, like we respect that people have jobs and aging parents and other kids potentially and busy lives. So we want to try to make that matriculation process as easy as we can for our new families.
00;04;25;22 - 00;04;45;00
Betsy Chapman
But our goal released to try to figure out how can we open the front door of Wake Forest in a way that gives students the autonomy and space to be students and go through all of the student development processes that they need to. How do they, you know, grow into the people that they're going to be while providing both?
00;04;45;00 - 00;05;13;08
Betsy Chapman
A parent had once told me that my job was providing information and comfort. So trying to find that balance between how do we explain what's happening on campus, what our campus traditions are, events. Do you have a single person that you can go to when you have questions or problems that I can help point you in other places and also providing some advice on what are the things that are helpful to do with a college student that might look different from what you did in the K-12 environment?
00;05;13;08 - 00;05;39;16
Betsy Chapman
So probably like, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, I've been at Wake for 27 years and I should say I was a student here too. So I'm working for my my alma mater and overjoyed to be doing so. But at 15 or 20 years ago, we sort of said we would really like to plant our flag in the ground as being one of the best in class of the kind of communications we create for parents and families and how to meaningfully engage them in the life of Wake Forest.
00;05;39;16 - 00;05;58;26
Betsy Chapman
And our philosophy has always been the university and parents both share the same goal. We want students to succeed. We want our students to thrive and be wonderful here. And we would much rather walk hand in hand with families along the way than hold them at elbows length and say, you know, Oh, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you.
00;05;58;26 - 00;06;22;29
Betsy Chapman
You know, we really want to partner in a way that a high tide rises all boats, if you will. So that's kind of how we got started. And I would also say we approach the way we work with families as deeply believing that families are our most important partners, right? Our families are the ones that we turn to for support and love and care and bullying when we need it.
00;06;22;29 - 00;06;43;22
Betsy Chapman
So we want to harness all of the great things that parents can provide when their students are in college and also help sort of educate about what looks different in college. College parenting looks really different from high school parenting. Most of us have grown up. I have a college senior, so I'm a little bit away from this in my own life.
00;06;44;07 - 00;07;10;16
Betsy Chapman
But most of us here from K through 12 teachers and administrators, parental involvement equals student success. Parental involvement equals student success. And unless and until your students college sort of tells you, hey, it looks different now and here's how it looks different and why it looks different, I don't necessarily feel like we're doing our families justice, like we don't want to gate keep any of the success things that they need to be doing in college.
00;07;10;16 - 00;07;14;25
Betsy Chapman
We want to help them sort of shift into the right gear as they get into college.
00;07;15;15 - 00;07;21;29
John Azoni
So in 2010, you started a blog. Tell us about that and what's special about that.
00;07;21;29 - 00;07;39;09
Betsy Chapman
So back in the early days of blogging, if you will, or early for us at least, I had worked for a while in our alumni office at Wake Forest. I would hear from my friends and my classmates in recent graduates about how much they missed campus. They missed being able to see it and see what was going on and just be there.
00;07;39;09 - 00;08;01;28
Betsy Chapman
So we had started a blog that was meant for alumni that was just called Quad View because I had a window that looked out onto our quad and I would sort of look out and talk about what was happening. And we changed some responsibilities in our office. And I moved over into our parent and family office and took that blog with me sort of in a redesigned way and called it The Daily Deke.
00;08;01;28 - 00;08;21;09
Betsy Chapman
And it was meant for parents and families. And, you know, in terms of why it was a blog, probably the most reasonable answer that I can think of now is it just feels like it's so long ago is back in the day we just schools had smaller staffs, right. And we didn't always have the ability to push every single email out.
00;08;21;09 - 00;08;41;14
Betsy Chapman
So we found a blog service that allowed us to post to our Web site, feed it out to interested subscribers. And it was not, you know, an individual staff member formatting or anything like that. So it was less labor intensive and just a really nice way for people who were interested to opt into the blog. And over time that readership grew.
00;08;41;15 - 00;09;10;03
Betsy Chapman
We have probably about 8200 subscribers right now. Wow. Our undergraduate class, the four undergraduate classes total, probably 50 to 5500. And not everybody that is in our system that receives this blog is a current parent. One of the interesting happy accidents of the Daily Deke is that I hear from a lot of brand new staff members who have subscribed because somebody else on campus has said this is a great way to learn what the school is about.
00;09;10;03 - 00;09;27;09
Betsy Chapman
Helps you understand campus traditions and moods and the ebbs and flows of the year. So, well, it's mostly parents and families. We have some staff and some also some undergraduate students who read it, which is an enormous point of pride for us. We like to feel like, you know, we're a big tent. Everybody's welcome.
00;09;27;24 - 00;09;36;04
John Azoni
Yeah. So walk us through how you decide what goes into that. It isn't. It is on a regular cadence every week. Or is it just kind of whenever something comes up.
00;09;36;16 - 00;09;56;06
Betsy Chapman
So it is, if you can believe this, it is an every weekday. Oh well, year round with the exception of like I've started taking off like winter break and, and stuff like that, I'll take off holidays, I'll take off winter break. But part of the joy of a blog is sometimes you can prescheduled like we had orientation for our new families Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
00;09;56;06 - 00;10;19;09
Betsy Chapman
So I had prescheduled some content. I knew there would be people that would need information, but one of the great joys of working at a university is it's cyclical, right? Every year you have move in and orientation and midterms and people getting that first fall cold and finals and football games and all the all the things. So there's a certain amount of content that you can predict from year to year.
00;10;19;17 - 00;10;51;11
Betsy Chapman
And there's also those moments that you can capitalize on something that's happening, a big athletic win and everybody's excited or a great speaker coming to campus or whatnot. So the Daily Deal has been a mixture really of those things that we can predict. And I happen to use Slack. We've got a nice scheduling feature where I put in what I've written about today and I carry those calendars over from year to year so I can look back and go, Hey, around this time of year we talked about this thing, but I also capitalize on what's happening in the moment.
00;10;51;27 - 00;11;12;05
Betsy Chapman
And because we've been doing this blog for such a long time, I'm fortunate to have a lot of campus partners, colleagues of mine who have information that they want amplified. So for me to come up independently with 225 columns a year, if you will, would be one thing. But I have lots of people saying, hey, could you make sure students or families know about this?
00;11;12;05 - 00;11;25;27
Betsy Chapman
Hey, we've got this great new program at center. So it's this really beautiful blend of campus partnership s observation on my part experience and the regular ebb and flow of college life helps inform how we decide what to say.
00;11;26;13 - 00;11;28;18
John Azoni
That sounds like a really fun job. Like.
00;11;28;26 - 00;11;34;04
Betsy Chapman
It's amazing. I love it. I would say I have the best job at Wake Forest, but other people would say that there's the best.
00;11;34;16 - 00;11;54;28
John Azoni
Yeah, because it's like I hear it from a lot of higher Ed Markham leaders. And you know, when we talk about content and content strategy and stuff, it's like, well, my only job isn't just to do, you know, make content creation or managing the content. It's also this all this other stuff, you know. And so especially Mark, I'm leaders that like smaller schools where they're wearing a lot of hats and stuff like.
00;11;54;28 - 00;11;56;14
Betsy Chapman
That, lots of hats. Yes.
00;11;56;24 - 00;12;24;03
John Azoni
You know, we're having conversations of like what's like the few things you can do that are the highest leverage, you know? And it's like the dream would just be I get to roll out of bed and like, write, you know, you know, talk to my audience. I find that super fun. The newsletter that I do weekly for higher ed marketing leaders, and it's the most fun part of my week because I just love sitting down and just going, What are we talking about today or this week?
00;12;24;03 - 00;12;24;12
John Azoni
You know?
00;12;24;12 - 00;12;42;24
Betsy Chapman
Right, right. And I think part of the way I look at my job is I've in years past, as we were trying to sort of build these connections with campus partners, I would say what questions do you get all the time from families? Let me help you answer them, because if I can put them in here and answer it once or twice, you may not get ten phone calls about it.
00;12;42;24 - 00;13;09;22
Betsy Chapman
So there really is a beautiful symbiotic relationship between things that our campus partners want families to know. And the way I can help get those messages out there. And I'm grateful for their partnership. They have so many interesting programs and things to tell and exciting stories and new research that a lot of my job is amplifying the great work of others and kind of curating it in ways that that makes sense and timing that makes sense for our families.
00;13;10;20 - 00;13;21;19
John Azoni
Do you have a real example of where the daily like really changed a parent's behavior or students behavior or like something kind of concrete where this major win, you know, came out of it?
00;13;21;28 - 00;13;48;05
Betsy Chapman
I do. I was thinking about how to sort of show what that might look like. I get emails from families all the time and sometimes their families that I don't ever hear from until graduation. And they, you know, tell me that they did this or that. But I had an email from a mom this recently in May. Her student was graduating, and she reminded me that she had talked to me earlier in her son's time at Wake Forest, and he had been having some academic challenges, if you will.
00;13;48;05 - 00;14;14;08
Betsy Chapman
And she said, I remember reading one of your blog posts about class, our Center for Learning Access and Student Success, which has peer tutoring and academic coaching and all kinds of resources, and she had provided that information to her student. And she told me that his experience there was transform Active and helped get him from the struggle moment of being an early, you know, first or second year student getting the help that brought him ultimately to graduation.
00;14;14;08 - 00;14;31;23
Betsy Chapman
We occasionally we tell students a lot of the same information, right? Sometimes it doesn't resonate when we tell them directly as much as it does if their family gives them a little boost. We have a really world class Office of Personal and Career Development at Wake Forest, and one of the things that they've done in the last couple of years is they have a professional photo booth for headshots.
00;14;32;01 - 00;14;46;14
Betsy Chapman
And there was a I had advertised that in our daily deal, like, Hey, if your students need headshots, there's this great free resource. All they have to do is walk into this room, in this building and they can get it. And a mom messaged me that her daughter had been saying, Oh gosh, I've got to get a headshot for LinkedIn.
00;14;46;14 - 00;15;18;24
Betsy Chapman
And mom was like, Hey, here you go. And the daughter quickly got that headshot. And I also have a lot of families who will say, I followed your advice and did this, or I followed your advice and did that. I also get not infrequently some emails from colleagues. We have a tremendous baseball analytics program at Wake Forest, really top of the line in terms of how we have students that work with our baseball coaching staff on analyzing film and pitch count and all the things I don't know.
00;15;18;24 - 00;15;48;01
Betsy Chapman
All the things is I'm not as up on baseball as I should, but they try to recruit incoming first year students because what they're really looking for is can we get students that can do this for all four years and sort of really grow their expertise? And I got a lovely email from one of my colleagues that is working with baseball analytics and asked me if I could share something this past summer with our incoming students because they said The Daily Deke was one of the most popular ways that the students who applied in the previous year knew that this program existed.
00;15;48;14 - 00;16;09;07
Betsy Chapman
So it's a it's a combination of helping move the needle in parent or student behavior, but also assisting colleagues who say, you know, I get the most boost when we ask students to apply for X if it's been published in here. So it's really a joy to be able to help connect all those pieces together to help our students and our campus partners.
00;16;09;19 - 00;16;16;13
John Azoni
Yeah, that's amazing. Do you get a lot of comments like, is it a mental thing or is it mostly you'll get back and emails.
00;16;16;25 - 00;16;40;14
Betsy Chapman
Mostly it's back end emails. I have not generally had the time to to moderate comments individually on the blog, but I get a lot of emails. I mean, I probably get oh, I get hundreds in a year. And part of what I commit to is anybody that emails me about the blog or in response to it, or even just to ask an unrelated question, I will respond to them because I feel like we owe that to them.
00;16;40;24 - 00;16;57;12
Betsy Chapman
You know, we want to be the kind of place where we're going to be responsive that way. My favorite emails, if I'm most honest, I get emails from graduating senior families a lot, which I've sort of referred to as break up emails where they're like, Hey, Betsy, you don't know me, but I've been following you since my students first year.
00;16;57;12 - 00;17;16;08
Betsy Chapman
And, you know, I've loved feeling connected to campus and I feel like I know you. And it's time to say goodbye now because John is graduating. And so, like, nothing makes my heart warmer than those moments. It's an honor to be connected or to be part of that connective tissue between a student's experience and that parent's experience of your institution.
00;17;16;08 - 00;17;23;29
Betsy Chapman
It's just really it affirms me in so many ways, and it is great to be able to feel useful to our parent community that way.
00;17;24;08 - 00;17;32;22
John Azoni
Yeah. When it speaks to your philosophy of, you know, having there be a person behind the blog, not just an institutional voice.
00;17;32;22 - 00;17;34;00
Betsy Chapman
So yes.
00;17;34;00 - 00;17;50;18
John Azoni
And I think as a parent, you know, just envisioning my daughters going to college and getting, you know, an email or a blog or something from the Office of Admissions or something like that would seem so much more cold than from Betsy. I mean, you feel like, you know her and.
00;17;50;21 - 00;17;51;07
Betsy Chapman
Right.
00;17;51;07 - 00;17;56;21
John Azoni
You feel like you can email her, ask a question. So, I mean, how has that played out for you?
00;17;57;02 - 00;18;17;05
Betsy Chapman
I think that's been part of the secret sauce and I'm not sure that it was intentional on my part. At the beginning. I wanted to just be myself, right and to share a little bit about my life. You know, I'll post pictures of my dogs, I'll tell stories about my kids or my husband or whatever, like not overmuch, but just enough to let me feel like a human to them.
00;18;17;16 - 00;18;42;29
Betsy Chapman
Yeah. And when I was doing my dissertation, some of the work that I was looking at was how are blogs received? How are corporate blogs or institutional blogs received? And the ones that came from an actual person, a named first person author engendered so much more trust than ones that were like the office of, you know, insert name here for all the reasons that you say.
00;18;42;29 - 00;18;57;19
Betsy Chapman
And if you think about the way many of us are, if you have to, you know, call a business or a company and you have to go through eight steps on an automated thing to then hear an automated voice as opposed to like, Hey, it's Betsy, can I help you? It just makes a difference in how you feel.
00;18;57;25 - 00;19;23;08
Betsy Chapman
Receive. And part of that, I think, is the spirit that Wake Forest has always held as an institution from my student days and preceding my student day certainly is that we're a face to face place where a personal place we want to, you know, offer sort of warm southern hospitality, if you will, but also help you feel like you matter and being an individual person with a name that you can hit reply and I'll answer you.
00;19;23;22 - 00;19;46;17
Betsy Chapman
We know it's not insignificant that families are entrusting their most important things in the world, which is their children to us for four years. Tuition. Whether you're going to, you know, any school in the world, tuitions, a tuition is a thing for families. Like I hate writing that check every time. You know, it's a lot. And, you know, I want you to feel and moreover, Wake Forest wants you to feel like we're in your corner.
00;19;46;17 - 00;19;49;28
Betsy Chapman
We want to you know, we want to provide something for you that can help you.
00;19;50;09 - 00;20;10;23
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. And you mentioned your dissertation. So tell us more about that because you did research linking parent comes to, you know, real outcomes. So walk us through I think it's cool to have I mean, that's what makes you the final boss here I think is that now you know you've actually got evidence based stuff you're bringing to the show, so lay it on us.
00;20;11;03 - 00;20;43;09
Betsy Chapman
So my degree is in higher education, but I was doing a communication based dissertation. And one of the things there's a lot of research out there on colleges and students and various nuances of students, first generation students, you know, working parents, you name it. There is very little research on the communications resources that colleges and universities dedicate to how they describe themselves, how they describe their institution, and how they build relationships with their parents and families.
00;20;43;24 - 00;21;05;29
Betsy Chapman
So I wanted to look at is there any kind of linkage between how often and how deeply do parents and families of college students read the things that student not that students that universities produce for them? And if there are any outcomes of interest that may have a connection. So I was trying to think of like what matters to institutions.
00;21;05;29 - 00;21;29;01
Betsy Chapman
So I think, first of all, one of the things we all want is for parents and families as well as our students, of course, to feel like they are satisfied with their student's college, Right. So do they report high satisfaction with that experience? The second thing I think about is there much has been made over the last 15 or 20 years about parents and families being involved in their students.
00;21;29;01 - 00;21;46;08
Betsy Chapman
For example, like if their student is experiencing a difficulty, is mom or dad trying to call the office in question or the president or the dean or whatnot about how do I get this fixed? Or are they letting the student do it? And one of the things most schools would tell you is we really want to have a student connect with those offices themselves.
00;21;46;08 - 00;22;02;07
Betsy Chapman
It's much more meaningful for a student that has a housing issue to talk to the housing office, get to know the people in the office, form those relationships than it is to have someone else take care of it for them. And then last I thought about, you know, every college runs like an annual fund or something where they're trying to get, you know, charitable donations.
00;22;02;21 - 00;22;30;15
Betsy Chapman
So I was trying to look at how deeply did families read those communications that were provided to them, and did they seem to have any impact on those behaviors? And probably not surprisingly, with lots of research, you go in with a hypothesis, and a lot of times you find that it's true. Those families that read the most frequently and the deepest tended to be the most satisfied, the least likely to intervene and more likely to make a gift when that annual fund ask came.
00;22;31;03 - 00;22;51;26
Betsy Chapman
And I would be remiss as a scholar to not specify correlation does not equal causation. So I did not do the kind of dissertation where I could say because they read this, they did that. But I can say there appears to be a pretty strong linkage between the two. And if I were ready to get back into the research world, I would be doing some follow up studies.
00;22;51;26 - 00;22;59;10
Betsy Chapman
But I started my dissertation at 45 and ended at 49 and I'm really happy to get out of that mode for a little while, so maybe I'll go back to that one day.
00;22;59;18 - 00;23;15;19
John Azoni
Yeah. And you have speaking of, you know, parents kind of coming alongside and letting the students, you know, lead the change and, you know, advocating for themselves. You have a term that you use stop, drop and roll, which I haven't I did since I was like seven. You know.
00;23;15;28 - 00;23;17;21
Betsy Chapman
It's the old fire safety standard.
00;23;18;03 - 00;23;33;23
John Azoni
Yeah. So what is that philosophy? Because I think this hits on the biggest resistance that schools have, at least that I've heard to, you know, people that have been on the show. And then I've talked to you about not wanting the parents to get involved because they want the students to be independent. So, yep. Tell us what you think.
00;23;33;23 - 00;24;00;02
Betsy Chapman
And again, this kind of comes back to the whole idea of we don't want to gate keep what the rules are at the college level. So understanding that it's so important for students to develop their own problem solving skills and to learn to self advocate and, you know, to troubleshoot, to learn how to problem solve. And as a mother myself, even though I do this for a living, it's very hard when my own kiddo has an issue and I am a type A problem solver, I want to help.
00;24;00;02 - 00;24;16;13
Betsy Chapman
So it's really hard for me not to want to react and do. And I've had to very much bite back some of my gut reactions. So we were trying to come up with something that was sort of short and memorable to realign the sort of best practices, if you will, for college parenting. And we came up with Stop, drop and roll.
00;24;16;13 - 00;24;31;05
Betsy Chapman
So every college student in the world at some point is going to pick up the phone or face time or text and have this sort of litany of either things that they're unhappy about or big decisions that they have to make that they're mulling over. Should I be a major in com or should I be a major in English?
00;24;31;05 - 00;24;56;23
Betsy Chapman
And I don't know and or, you know, my roommate's bothering me and I have a burnt out bulb in our bathroom, you know, all the things. And so we came up with stop, drop and roll. And the whole idea is sort of like when you get that contact from your student, whether it's a complaint or a decision they have to make or a problem that they have to handle, just kind of stop and take a deep breath and kind of ask yourself, is this something that your students capable of handling on their own?
00;24;57;01 - 00;25;18;20
Betsy Chapman
And many, many times it probably is. So that's the stop. The drop is drop. Whatever plans you might have to help provide the answer or provide guidance and lean more into questioning that might help them get there on their own. So you know, gosh, honey, I know it must be hard to try to decide whether you want to be a car major or an English major.
00;25;18;27 - 00;25;41;20
Betsy Chapman
Are there any officers on campus who might help you work through some of that discernment? What have you already tried? Didn't I hear at orientation we had a facilities customer service line where if you had a problem, you could get there. So like figure out ways to help them think through it and then role. This is the tough part role with their solution, especially if it's not your solution, right?
00;25;42;02 - 00;25;44;19
Betsy Chapman
It is. It's so hard. And I again.
00;25;44;19 - 00;25;50;18
John Azoni
I'd be like, role is my solution anyways, no matter what your solution, let me give you the solution. Rolling.
00;25;51;07 - 00;26;11;03
Betsy Chapman
I know I said at some parent things before, like imagine right now you've got a child in college and they've got a cold and they know they have a big test or a big presentation coming up and there's some little, you know, irksome administrative thing that they have to take care of. You as a loving parent or family member might be inclined to say, like, okay, you're sick.
00;26;11;15 - 00;26;33;18
Betsy Chapman
I'm going to order you some, you know, Theraflu to come to your room and I can make that call to the office and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I say to them, as lovingly and well intentioned as I can, like five years from now, your student is going to be in a job and maybe they have a house and the AC has just broken and they're getting ready to take their toddler to daycare and the toddler throws up and they have a big presentation, do it work.
00;26;33;18 - 00;26;56;13
Betsy Chapman
So like, let's let your students learn now to manage multitasking and putting out fires and figuring out their way, because if they do it now, when other things happen later in life, they're ready. Like, my problem solving skills are extensive. I have done this for years. I'm almost 56. My 21 year old still needs to build those things and get that muscle memory.
00;26;56;13 - 00;27;15;18
Betsy Chapman
And so that's really what Stop, drop and roll is about, just helping us not react like one of the terrible things about being a parent is we hate when our students are uncomfortable, sad, hurt all the things, but how do we take ourselves out of jumping in those moments and figuring out maybe our students can get there themselves?
00;27;15;20 - 00;27;17;20
Betsy Chapman
Yeah, if we just get in space, right?
00;27;17;27 - 00;27;22;28
John Azoni
Yeah. My dad used to say all the time, You're only as happy as your least happy child.
00;27;23;10 - 00;27;42;17
Betsy Chapman
100%. Well, it's funny. I was telling this story during parent orientation. I was talking to a family. So when my students started college, I think they were two weeks in. It was almost Labor Day. And they had said something about like, My throat's a little scratchy and I was not thinking too much of it. And then they called me the next day and said, Can you come home and pick me up?
00;27;42;17 - 00;28;06;08
Betsy Chapman
I have COVID. And my immediate reaction was like, Whoa. Like, I had no idea this was happening. And was a little irked maybe that my student hadn't told me, but then they told me what happened. Well, their throat was scratchy, so they tried to get an appointment with student health. Student health was full, so they researched what CVS MinuteClinic was close by, went to CVS, had the presence of mind to say, I wonder if I should get a COVID test.
00;28;06;08 - 00;28;24;00
Betsy Chapman
Here are my symptoms. All of that was done and dusted by the time they told me they were sick, had COVID and were too sick to drive home. So while my initial reaction was sort of like, Gosh, I wish they had relied on me, I was actually so proud because they figured all that stuff out without me bombing it through for them.
00;28;24;13 - 00;28;35;18
Betsy Chapman
Yeah, and that's kind of the essence of stop, drop and roll. And once I had that moment, I was like my kids a lot more prepared than I realized and I should just let them go and they'll let me know when they need me.
00;28;35;26 - 00;28;41;06
John Azoni
And does that does stop, drop and roll like make its way into the daily or at all? Is that like.
00;28;41;07 - 00;28;57;19
Betsy Chapman
Yes it does. Yes, Yes it does. And I will be very honest and tell him he's I repeat, sort of the idea of stop, drop and roll several times throughout the course of the year. And I have a message that one of my sort of weekly messages over the summer just to the incoming parents sort of introduces them to that concept.
00;28;58;00 - 00;29;17;18
Betsy Chapman
And I say to them, like, Hey, if you contact my office about something and I say, You would be best served to let your student handle that, that is not me trying to be sort of judgy or telling you what to do. That's I'm really trying to help your student grow. I knew Stop, Drop and Roll was working when I started to get emails from families saying I stopped, dropped, enrolled.
00;29;17;18 - 00;29;41;25
Betsy Chapman
I did it. And it was really nice to be able to affirm that. And I've also gotten emails from families where they've said, I stopped, dropped, enrolled, and my student has done this, this, this and this, and they are still stuck. Now I need help. And I'm like, That's perfect. Like if your student tries all the things and they haven't solved their issue, that's exactly the time to come back to me and let me figure out where I can help connect them to get it done.
00;29;41;25 - 00;29;52;06
Betsy Chapman
So it's not meant to be a, you know, stay out of things and never get involved. But like, let's give them first crack at it. And largely families are have been pretty responsive to that.
00;29;52;15 - 00;30;14;08
John Azoni
That's great. I like that. So 17, 18 years of doing this, there's probably something about the blog that didn't land the way that you wanted it to or some sort of failure or some you said something wrong. I know there's been a couple of times in my newsletter where I have I have misstepped a little bit and I've gotten an email people say, like, you shouldn't say or something like that.
00;30;14;08 - 00;30;15;13
John Azoni
What is that, Ben for you?
00;30;15;22 - 00;30;37;14
Betsy Chapman
And you know, I'm of the belief that all feedback is good feedback, right? It it helps us grow. And it's funny that you ask this question on the heels of talking about stop, drop and roll, because that was one of the things that I got an email from a parent once who was very offended at the idea and felt like I was lecturing, felt like I was infantilizing parents and sort of out of my lane.
00;30;37;14 - 00;30;55;18
Betsy Chapman
And that was 100% not my intent. But I also recognize that intent and impact are two different things. So, you know, I wrote Mom back or Dad back. I don't even remember and said, I am really sorry that I offended you. I did not mean to offend you. This is meant sort of lovingly as a framework that you can use.
00;30;55;18 - 00;31;17;11
Betsy Chapman
So I said, Look, I really did not mean this in that way, and I've taken that to heart since then, trying to make sure that as I'm thinking about word choice and other things, do I tell people like it's hard for me too, sometimes that humanizes the advice. Do I? You know, I'm quick to say, you know, I didn't do it right here or just framing like, I mean this lovingly.
00;31;17;20 - 00;31;39;28
Betsy Chapman
And that has tended to go better. But I've tried to be much more aware of our parents are coming from every single background and worldview and mindset, and there are going to be some things sometimes that don't hit the way I think they would, but trying to have sort of an honest conversation and thank them for that feedback and see what I can learn from it and we all move on.
00;31;40;10 - 00;32;06;13
John Azoni
Yeah, I like that. All feedback is good feedback or it's helpful feedback. You know, it's not necessarily someone isn't generally trying to be malicious and offend you with their feedback. It's just like, Oh, this is how it hit them and they're just mirroring back to you how they understood it. MM Yes. So my last question for you. I think the big elephant in the room is for schools that don't have a blog.
00;32;06;22 - 00;32;26;19
John Azoni
Should they start one? Do they need to hire someone like you to be that voice? Like, how do they start to take some of these concepts of, you know, having close relationships with parents in this communication format and actually implementing it within the structures that they might already have without, you know, making a complete new hire or do they need to make a hire?
00;32;26;27 - 00;32;44;21
Betsy Chapman
I am of the firm belief that folks don't need to make a brand new hire. And I also want to acknowledge that there's lots of different models that other schools do. The school that my student goes to, they have a wonderful parent conversation calendar that they send out every now and again. That sort of tells us things we should talk about their students.
00;32;44;29 - 00;33;02;05
Betsy Chapman
Some people have great social media games where they're posting a lot of things there. So you have to make sure that your solution fits your audience and fits your staffing. Having said that, I don't think generally speaking, you need a new FTE to create a blog, even a daily blog, and there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
00;33;02;13 - 00;33;19;15
Betsy Chapman
I sort of built this job for myself because I liked doing it and I got all the other responsibilities that I was supposed to be doing done. And I this was my passion project, so I built it on my own. There is probably any number of people on a campus that could be great contributors to something like this.
00;33;19;15 - 00;33;38;17
Betsy Chapman
There's somebody that's already working in your magazine office or your communications office for your alumni office that might really have an interest in having a short little something in a blog. You know, here's what I'm seeing on campus. Here's what I'm, you know, doing. Here's a great event. Here's a campus tradition that we want to tell you about and that the blogs don't have to necessarily be long.
00;33;38;27 - 00;34;02;21
Betsy Chapman
Another model people could look at is who on campus might be able to be rotating. Contributors say it's someone from your parent office that does one a week. It's somebody from your dean of students office, somebody from campus life, you know, pick your athletics, whatever your events, team, etc. and they all do a contribution. There are some places that have students write some of the blog posts that they do.
00;34;02;21 - 00;34;22;14
Betsy Chapman
A lot of times tend to be on admissions sites. So I don't think there's necessarily any one model. When I look back and think about how I do it and framed with the idea that I've been doing this a long time. So I'm not starting from scratch. But on short days it takes 15 minutes. On long days, it takes an hour or an hour and a half.
00;34;22;14 - 00;34;49;24
Betsy Chapman
And I have lots of other things that I do. But parents and families want sort of an authentic view, not overly curated, not overly produced. So that could look like you walking across campus with your iPhone and taking pictures of here's our beautiful trees or flower beds or here are posters of events that are happening here, students reading on the grass, taking those, you know, very candid shots and adding them like, hey, here's what your students are seeing today.
00;34;50;05 - 00;35;07;17
Betsy Chapman
One of the best things that I've ever done in The Daily Geek came through writer's block. I had nothing in the tank and I just thought like, Oh gosh, I got to write about something today. So I went and sat myself at a high traffic area of campus and just people watched because that's something I like to do and started jotting down.
00;35;07;17 - 00;35;27;04
Betsy Chapman
I see a kid in an L.A. Dodgers hat. I see almost everybody's carrying a backpack. I see, you know, 50% of our students have exterior headphones on, 50% have earbuds. Just did some basic like five senses. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel? Etc. The sun's warm, the breeze is good, whatever.
00;35;27;13 - 00;35;46;27
Betsy Chapman
And I just put those together in sort of what I call the five senses post. And I made it thinking like I wasn't sure how it was going to land because it didn't feel intentional. And that is one of the things families have loved the most. I got more email from things like that where they said I felt like I was right there with you and that's really the value of this.
00;35;46;27 - 00;36;06;01
Betsy Chapman
How do I help families feel like they know what's going on or I have an in particularly one where I don't have to ask my student what's happening? The students don't love to answer a thousand questions from their loved ones. So it can be as simple as as those things and as simple as thinking about what are the normal things that happen in a year?
00;36;06;10 - 00;36;33;15
Betsy Chapman
How could I write about them? How could I tag up other people? Maybe you get the registrar to write a short post about what class registration looks like or what family should know, and there's lots of ways to make it happen. And I would say if there's anybody that's listening to this that wants to talk about how that could work, I'm happy any time to talk about this to anyone because I think it can be so valuable if it's the right solution for your school and only you know, practitioners at the individual schools will know if this is right for them or not.
00;36;33;27 - 00;36;37;15
John Azoni
Yeah. What's a perfect segway? Tell us where people can connect with you.
00;36;37;26 - 00;37;02;14
Betsy Chapman
So probably the easiest is if they email me at parents E, A.S. at WFMU, dot edu. That's our generic sort of parent and family information email. Those come straight to my inbox. I would be super happy to talk to anyone they can find the Daily deal. You can just google daily Deke d l y dea c r mascot is the demon deacons.
00;37;02;14 - 00;37;22;06
Betsy Chapman
So we call ourselves the Dicks. So Google Daily Wake Forest and you'll find us. You can read it there and see what else we have going on. But again, I like being able to have parents feel like they're warmly welcomed and they're in the know because it helps them help their students, it helps them help us and everybody wins is my theory.
00;37;22;13 - 00;37;42;10
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. Well, it's been so great hearing from you and I. I mean, just talking to you for the last 45 minutes, I can feel your warmth and I could feel how that would come through in the writing, and I could feel how that would be really impactful for a parent who's wondering what's going on with their kid at school, who doesn't want to answer questions and things like that.
00;37;42;10 - 00;37;43;27
John Azoni
So, yeah, thanks for being on the show.
00;37;44;05 - 00;37;51;05
Betsy Chapman
Well, thanks for having me. And I admire your work too, John, and love to see what else comes forth from you in future podcasts.
