Education Azimuth Check

I started this project in my Engaged Projects and The Voice(s) of Expertise: How Podcasting Is Changing the Way We Listen and Learn courses knowing that I wanted to learn more about how student services were being implemented at higher education institutions and wondering what impact they had on the students they claimed to serve. Specifically, I wanted to focus on learning more about programs and their effects on the military-related student population.

As a part of this project, I spoke and worked with my sponsor, Ramiro Hernandez, a Veteran Academic Counselor at San Diego Mesa College. During one of our initial discussions, he mentioned how one of the issues they have been having was getting information to specific groups within their military-student population due to policies in place at the district level. Because of this, they were trying to figure out a unique way to circumvent this issue and get information out to as many people as possible. Out of this conversation, we started to explore the idea of a podcast and how that could help spread knowledge. From there, Education Azimuth Check was formed.

I started off by creating a project plan, which laid out all of the assignments/sections that I needed to complete in order to successfully launch this podcast. From this, I created a draft of my project where I was able to create a mock website of what the podcast could look like, as well as a couple of episode layout drafts to show that I had been working out the structure, flow, and possible guests.

I then established the podcast’s format by mixing the interview and advice formats mentioned in Kristen Meinzer‘s book, So You Want To Start A Podcast. With the general idea that each podcast episode would be centered around highlighting a program or service that is available for military-related students pursuing their goals in higher education.

I then settled on a structure within each episode so that listeners will be able to hear and engage with three different voices:

• The host (I will be the host and help guide a conversation between the two guests) 
• The lived experience expert (a military-related student that has actually used the program/service that the episode is exploring and how it impacted their personal journey through higher education),
• And the institutional expert (a representative of the given program/service being covered in the episode and will provide an overview of the program/service, as well as help cover any areas that the lived experience expert may not be able to answer).

Right at the end of the semester, I was able to record the first two episodes of the show covering the Warrior-Scholar Project and the Posse Veterans Program. This project has allowed me to explore my interests learning more about military-related students in higher education, as well as find a new way to share the lessons and information I have learned throughout my own time in higher education.