Alumni podcasts are such a big part of the higher ed podcasting world, so we are going to be discussing another show focusing on the lives and stories of faculty, staff and former students. 

John Boccacino is the Senior Internal Communications Specialist at Syracuse University, as well as the host and producer of the ‘Cuse Conversations Podcast.

As a passionate storyteller, John’s career has focused on creative multimedia storytelling across multiple platforms and mediums and he is going to tell us all about his journey and into podcasting, as well as his favorite ‘Cuse Conversations episode, that connects us with an alum with a role on the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso.

John joins Host Robert Li to talk about finding guests past those big name or active alumni, moving from sports broadcasting to higher ed comms, collaborating with other podcasts from your university, and how you never really know who has Orange running through their blood.

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

Unveiling tangible tie-ins and takeaways in every podcast episode

21:22: We try to be tie-in-friendly to current events happening on campus. I mean, look, if there's something that's crazy cool, yeah, we'll tell that story too, but we want to give you a reason for listening—not just doing an episode because we can do it, but making it a tangible tie-in and a tangible takeaway. We have a content calendar that I actually have mapped out, a design of episodes all the way through June, and we go two or three times a month. So it's important to really think about this and also spread the love around. There‘s 13 schools and colleges within Syracuse, and thanks to great relationships with the communicators who run those schools and colleges, we make sure that we get balanced. So it's not always going back to the broadcast journalism well, which is one of our most famous programs. We want to tell the architecture success stories. We want to tell engineering success stories. We want to tell the teacher stories out there too. It's really a cross-section. It's very diverse, and I couldn't be prouder of that. 

What makes an episode strong?

19:26: We feel that what makes our episodes so strong is the audience is sticky. We could buy audience members. But the people we have are diehards, and they want to listen to the episodes. And I'll tell you one more little humble brag about the pod, if you will. So, you know, attention spans are shorter than ever. People tune out from a YouTube video after, like, three to five seconds. If it doesn't hold their attention, we have almost 70 percent of our audience retained all the way through an episode, and our episodes are 25 to 45 minutes in length. If you get 300 to 500 people and 70 percent of them check out an entire episode, that, to me, is worth more than if we had 10,000 people listening to an episode because it's an engaged audience that we are delivering the messaging that's really hitting the mark.

Cuse Conversations goes beyond name-brand alumni stories

05:49: This is kind of what this podcast is all about. We do tell the great success stories of your name-brand alumni. I've talked to Bob Costas. I've talked to Marv Albert. I've talked to Super Bowl-winning head coach Tom Coughlin. But we've also been telling the stories of first-generation college students, what it takes to go away from home to find the resources to be successful. We are not just notable alumni. We are your everyday faculty and staff members who are really making a difference that you might not have.

• Zava! Meet Maximilian Osinski '06, the Breakout Star of Season 3 of ‘Ted Lasso’
• ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
• 'Cuse Conversations on Spotify
• Ted Lasso on Apple TV+

Guest Profile:

• John Boccacino - Senior Internal Communications Specialist - Syracuse University | LinkedIn
• John Boccacino Twitter/X

Listen as they discuss his role in making the Short Coat podcast, navigating medical school dynamics, prepping for intense episode topics, and adding humor and levity to institutional podcasts.

Most university podcasts come from the marketing or communications team, using audio to promote their departments initiatives. But some podcasts, like the Short Coat, come from a bored guy working in an admin department.

Our guest today is David Etler - an Administrative Services Coordinator at University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the producer and co-host of the Short Coat Podcast

David sees his role in the medical school as being a cheerleader for medical students. When he can point a student in the right direction, or offer them a way to achieve something without sacrificing who they fundamentally are— he says he can go home feeling good about the day.

Host Robert Li and Dave get into an episode from January 2022, a conversation we had with Judge Rosemarie Aquilina (the judge in the Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics abuse case).  

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

Providing relevant information to prospective medical students is valuable

05:46: The thing about medical school is you never really understand it. People could tell you ad nauseam what medical school is like, but you're never really going to understand it. And I think most people who are thinking about applying to medical school know that, and so they crave more information.

How did the podcast change David’s work mindset?

2:23: I am forever grateful for it because it really changed how I see my work. It kind of made me part of the process rather than being just a cog, gave me some investment in it. And it taught me a lot about what these students here at the College of Medicine are going through, what's changing about them, and how they think what kinds of things they want. So I'm really grateful for that.

On balancing humor and information 

20:41:I do enjoy the episodes where we get to be a little bit less reverent when we get to engage with our humor a little bit more cause there's a lot of funny stuff that happens in life, and I think that's my default: to look at the world as though it's pretty crazy, ridiculous place, and look what just happened. I think that's just who I am and who a lot of the co-hosts are; they're a young group, generally speaking, and the audience is pretty young. They're, for the most part, I don't think they forget how serious their lives will become, their professional lives will become. And so I don't want to force that upon them just yet. So I want to have a good time.

• Breaking the Silence: Judge Rosemarie Aquilina on the Power of Trauma-Informed Care | The Short Coat
• The Short Coat
• The Short Coat | Podcast on Spotify

Guest Profile:

• Dave Etler - Administrative Services Coordinator - University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine | LinkedIn

Alumni and marketing departments are always on the lookout for new and compelling ways to tell the stories of their institutions and former students. And the story that Dan Morrell and his team stumbled on in 2018 was a real treasure in this sense, spanning decades, multiple countries, and a world war, all focusing on 2 Harvard Business School alumni.

Dan Morrell is the Senior Associate Director of Alumni Communications and Content Manager at the Harvard Business School and the host of their alumni podcast, Skydeck. 

He is also a co-founder and partner at Dog Ear Consultants, who we work with a lot here at University.fm.

Dan catches up with host Robert Li in this episode, touching on how podcasting is a natural fit in the alumni communications world, when to try narrative storytelling over the typical interview format, and reflecting on how much the podcast has changed in the 5 years since this episode came out. 

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

The impact of anecdotal feedback on Skydeck podcast

20:05: We did a story about a fellow who lost his family's fortune while he was at HBS...He told that story on our podcast, and he sent me some of the emails that he got about alumni who heard it, friends of his who heard it, who pulled over to the side of the road in tears, who shared some intimate details about how it moved them. And it reminds me of the value of this medium. It's in your ears; it feels so much more personal, right? And it really speaks to the mission and vision of the podcast, which is the personal side of business. 

 

On the future of Skydeck

30:01: The potential for Skydeck to reach a new audience is very exciting to me. Even a recentering potentially of the podcast itself, like I mentioned this episode, and so many of the narrative episodes, have been such good experiments for us to grow and stretch. But I think there's an opportunity to refocus it and keep the podcast a little bit more narrowly defined. I'm excited about what that could be and how that could reshape our thinking. But I'm mostly excited about how we approach content marketing and how we think about better ways to socialize audio and get younger listeners engaged in what we're doing. Because I think what we're doing is executed at a high level, and I'm excited about figuring out how to get it to more ears.

Reaching new audience through podcast

03:38: My whole career has been about storytelling, like talking to people and understanding where they came from. I get good at talking to strangers, but I think the podcast was a new way of doing that, and not just from the medium; we know it's audio, but I saw the opportunity for a new audience, and potentially a younger audience, but I knew the skill set of my team, and my team's skill set is storytelling, and this was a new medium. We are great interviewers. We've done it our entire careers, so it matched with who we were and what we do, and it was also something that I aspired to be good at; I'd seen it done, I'd seen high execution, and I knew what it looked like. And I just saw a great opportunity there.

• “A Shout Through Time” - Alumni - Harvard Business School
• Skydeck | Podcast on Spotify
• Dog Ear Consultants

Guest Profile:

• Dan Morrell
• LinkedIn - Dan Morrell
• Dan Morrell | CASE
• My Finest Work

Over at Penn State, The Democracy Works audio team isn't just producing engaging and thoughtful podcast episode. They're also working on media training, promotions plans and helping other podcasts in the democracy space network and grow.

Jenna Spinelle works in strategic communications for Penn State's McCourtney Institute for Democracy. In this role, she is responsible for developing and executing marketing strategies, including the Democracy Works podcast. 

Since graduating with a bachelor's degree in journalism from Penn State, Jenna hasn't strayed too far from State College, PA, serving as an adjunct instructor in the College of Communications, as well as having worked in the admissions office. 

Host Robert Li & Jenna sit down to cover her favorite episode of Democracy Works called “What student debt says about democratic institutions,” a topic we’re sure hits home for many.  

Listen as they also discuss trying to cover politics in new and unique ways, utilizing feed drops for promotion, The Democracy Group podcast network and why networks are great to be a part of, and offering services beyond just podcasts & audio editing. 

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

Navigating the flow of consistent content creation

16:01: With a show that comes out consistently, you sometimes just have to go with the flow to keep episodes coming on a consistent schedule. As much as I would love to have a strategy lined out, week to week, there's a beast that has to be fed, and sometimes it's just whatever kind of catches our eye in the moment.

A unique approach of Democracy Works into political podcasting

12:27: I think so much media in politics, whether it's podcasts or YouTube or even things like cable news, right? It's all about debate. It's all about: we're going to get somebody from the right, somebody from the left, and they're just going to argue in varying forms. Sometimes it's more civil, sometimes it's not. We're just going to try to take down the other side, right? That's not my style of interviewing. That's not what we do on the show. And we also try to, as much as we can, avoid the, you know, while Republicans did this, and Democrats did this, and really look at the structures and institutions that are behind our democracy.

Political news can be a source of hope

04:49: It's easy to feel overwhelmed and depressed by the state of our political news these days, which tends to focus on conflicts and these sorts of things. But the stories that don't get told are often those of people who are doing work to bridge divides or people who are finding solutions to problems in politics in their community, whether that's the local level or the state level. We want to highlight some of those stories. And the thing I hear most often from our listeners, and the thing that came through everything else, is that the show gives people hope. 

• Democracy Works | Podcast on Spotify
• Democracy Works podcast
• What student debt says about democratic institutions | Democracy Works
• The Democracy Group
• Tink Media

Guest Profile:

• Jenna Spinelle - Communications Specialist, McCourtney Institute for Democracy - Penn State University | LinkedIn
• Jenna Spinelle (@JennaSpinelle) / X
• Jenna Spinelle
• Jenna Spinelle - The McCourtney Institute for Democracy

The guest / host dynamic is one of the most important parts of making a podcast interview interesting and engaging. But with remote work and coordinating busy schedules, it can but hard to find even more time to get to know someone before they sit down to record with you. But this aspect of production is vital to the success of Think Fast, Talk Smart. 

Jenny Luna is the Senior Digital Content Producer at Stanford University, managing all podcast and audio products for the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In this episode, Jenny and host Robert Li focus on the Stanford podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart which provides the tools, techniques, and best practices to help you communicate more effectively. It has also consistently held top spots on the Apple Podcast charts in the Business and Career categories. 

Robert & Jenny chat about the origins of the show, putting guests at ease and making sure they are prepped before taping, sourcing guests that align with the show brand, how they have grown podcast awareness to such an expansive audience and maintaining an engaging online community around the podcast.

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

Consistent publishing is key in building audiences

20:37: We were also really diligent about publishing, and we didn't take a break. We have seen, in the weeks where we have taken breaks over the summer or the holidays, we see a slight dip in listenership. And so, really, we just moved from every two weeks to every week. We publish an episode because people want the content, and we want to be there for them. So that was another reason I think we could build audiences that we were in. They subscribed, and we were in the top of their podcast feed consistently. We didn't take a hiatus.

Criteria for sourcing guests for Think Fast, Talk Smart
15:32: It's really important that the person isn't coming on just to promote their coaching business. For example, we get a lot of pitches from people who are communication coaches, executive coaches, and it's a way to get their name out there and their brand. It's really important to us that there's still an academic element or there's an element of track record leadership.

Helping people, a core value of the show

50:22: First and foremost is helping people. That's our main mission and our main goal. And that's honestly why we've made a lot of the choices that we have. We want to grow as much as we can. For example, we've found a lot of people are using the show to learn English. So, we are doing a lot of English language learning to help that segment of our audience. That isn't necessarily something that we have experience in or something that aligns with the business school, but it's to help. Our listeners—that's really our main goal.

• Think Fast, Talk Smart: The Podcast | Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Think Fast, Talk Smart: The Podcast on X
• Ep. 88, Best of: Leading From Home: How to Create the Right Environment for Communication
• Matt Abrahams c/o Stanford Graduate School of Business - Newsletter
• Matt Abrahams | LinkedIn
• Matt Abrahams

Guest Profile:

• LinkedIn Jenny Luna
• Jennifer Luna - Stanford

With an early career in TV news & congressional PR, Andy Fuller had always been video first. But its when he was mowing his lawn one afternoon listening to a podcast, that he realized how captivating the work of audio-only storytellings could really be. 

Andy Fuller is the Executive Director of Brand Content at Notre Dame, and the host of the University’s podcast Notre Dame Stories. Highlighting the work and knowledge of the University's faculty and students, Notre Dame Stories features interviews with Notre Dame faculty members who can lend insight into some of the major national and international stories of the day, as well as pieces that show the breadth of the life and research at the University.

Andy joins The Word on Campus host and university.fm owner Robert Li to dive into one of his favorite episodes, catching up with Notre Dame alums all over London. 

Listen as they chat about Andy’s 10+ years with the University, capturing sound all over London, Andy’s favorite editing platforms and audio gear, and leaning into narrative storytelling.

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

Writing for the ear: A skill for all media

23:07 - The soundbites you need for video are very similar to the soundbites you need for audio. And even when you're writing too, you have to write for the ear. In other words, you have to make people understand something the first time they hear it—because they can't read and go back, right? If they didn't catch something, they can't go back two lines and say, "Wait, I didn't quite get that." You kind of have to be clear right from the bat. And shooting for video and interviewing that way is a good practice for your audio output as well—because you've got to be clear first and immediately.

How podcasting's accessibility is fueling its growth

21:12 - That's why I think podcasting has taken off the way it has because the barrier to entry is quite a bit lower than it ever used to be. You sometimes have the tools in your literal back pocket to make what can be really good parts of an episode.

The impact of the podcast in Notre Dame community

28:46 - This idea of understanding an issue at depth and how the university is addressing it, providing timely information, then also brand affinity, where we're really seeing impact on that—the only thing I'll mention there is it also is a great way to repurpose content sometimes. If we have some video interviews and we cut that package, okay, cool. Can we also go to our podcast channel as well? Because communications 101 is kind of go where the audience is, you need to be where they are. And a lot of people are in their cars, driving to work. And we wanted to have a presence or an option for them to get some Notre Dame content information, that platform in that way at that time as well. So repurposing has been a nice, value-add to the podcast as well.

• Countless Journeys: Notre Dame in London | Podcasts | Stories
• Notre Dame Stories | Podcast on Spotify

Guest Profile:

• Andy Fuller Twitter
• ND Storytelling Twitter
• Andy Fuller LinkedIn
• Fuller House: Brothers Tony and Andy Fuller bring Notre Dame stories to life | Latest | NDWorks

It all started with a LinkedIn Message, that brought Kate Young from the world of PR and dabbling in the podcast space to being the writer, producer, and host of This is Purdue, Purdue University's official podcast that highlights the stories of students, alumni, and staff in the Purdue community.

In today’s episode, Kate brought us one of her favorite episodes, “#79: From Purdue to President of Pizza Hut: In-Depth with David Graves.” For this episode they actually flew Pizza Hut President and Purdue Alum David Graves back to Indiana to shoot on location in a Pizza Hut, and talked all about his favorite advertising and marketing initiatives over the years, as well as his favorite pizza toppings.

Kate sits down with The Word on Campus host and university.fm owner Robert Li to discuss how her background in daily news helped her in the podcasting world, curating and producing larger-scale field productions, navigating emotional moments in interviews, and how the university decided to go all in on its podcast.

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.

What is it about podcasting that attracted Kate to the medium?

02:56 - Knowing that you can tell these stories and have the listener's attention for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes—an hour—was compelling to me. And that, writing component, because my episodes are so special and unique because there's a script around them. And I take great care in writing that script and further telling that story.

How do you make the guest comfortable in an interview?

14:42 - So, I have found that about halfway through an interview, people get comfortable, or at least more comfortable with you. They trust you. So we kind of save things that are going to evoke emotion towards the end. 

What makes an episode unique?
09:17 - That's definitely something that makes that episode unique—those fun behind-the-scenes stories. You have David commenting on what his favorite pizza is, but you have to do this when you eat it, or you have to. So there are all these kinds of little quips and fun behind-the-scenes stories that make it really special.

• This is Purdue Podcast - Spotify
• This is Purdue Episode #79: Purdue to President of Pizza Hut with David Graves
• Full Video Interview with Purdue Alum and Pizza Hut President David Graves
• Purdue University (@LifeAtPurdue) / X

Guest Profile:

• Kate Young | LinkedIn
• Kate Young | Twitter

Ever wonder how some of your favorite university podcasts are made? How many people are on the team, and how they nailed down an episode, or got buy in from their team?

Well we here at The Word on Campus want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the best university podcasts are made. 

Join host Robert Li, the co-founder and owner of University FM, every other week as he chats with hosts, producers and marketing teams from all kinds of shows,  as they walk through parts of their process, and share how they overcame hurdles unique to the higher ed world.

Our first episode drops September 27th and every other Tuesday after that, right here on your favorite podcast app. 

The Word on Campus is produced by University FM.