#945 Cristina Baciu: When and How E-Mentoring Works

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Decent. I'm your host as always Ricardo Lobs. And today I'm joined by Doctor Christina Bio. She is research program manager at Arizona State University co-founder and co-director at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, a CE Scholars program and co-founder and co-director of the co-operation Scholars Program. Her research interests include mentoring in higher education, both undergraduate and graduate students, technology and higher education barriers to student success such as food and housing insecurity and other topics. But these are the ones we're going to focus on today. So, Doctor Bachi, welcome to the show. It's a big pleasure to everyone.

00:47 Cristina Baciu: Hi, Ricardo. Thank you so much for having me. It's a big pleasure to be here with you today.

00:54 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh talking about the work uh you're doing on e mentoring. So could you tell us first what kinds of mentoring FF mentoring fall under the rubric of e mentoring? I mean, what kinds of practices and technologies are we talking about here?

01:14 Cristina Baciu: Yeah, absolutely. Um So, e mentoring is just a word that people use sometimes to refer to uh practicing mentoring with the use of various technologies, right? We can um also find it under various other names um such as um um you know, um online ment, mentoring, virtual mentoring, tele mentoring, cyber, mentoring, so on and so forth. Um And basically, what it means is just refers um to um um to using various computer um mediated um programs to um ensure interactions between say, usually two people. Traditionally, according to the traditional mentoring definitions, it would be uh perhaps a more experienced person who interacts with the less experienced person who wants to learn something um to advance to advance their goals in some, in some way. Um And so a mentor um really helps support the mentee by providing them with learning, advising, encouraging. Um AND modeling that is often, I think particularly in the online environment, uh boundary list and hopefully egalitarian too. Um And so with that, there are all kinds of um various e mentoring opportunities these days. So for example, we could see um 1 to 1 e mentoring where, you know, two people interact online using various technologies or platforms to build their e mentoring relationship. Um And, and nurture it that way. Uh We could also see group in mentoring opportunities where more people come together to interact, to learn from each other, maybe to create community around some shared interests um and um and grow their relationship that way. Um We could see peer e mentoring where people who belong to a certain group um are matched by um some characteristics or interests or goals or knowledge uh to come together and help each other. Um So th those are just a few examples of uh of how that could work.

03:52 Ricardo Lopes: And of course you work in academia and uh your work seems to be focused mostly on e mentoring, e mentoring, applied to academia. But uh I would imagine that it applies to a variety of contexts, right? And do you study e mentoring only uh in academia or also in those other contexts?

04:18 Cristina Baciu: That's an excellent question. I do wanna study it more broadly, but I haven't really done any work as of right now outside of academia. Um But, you know, I think you can, one of the really great advantages of e mentoring is that you can take it and apply it to virtually probably any context, right? Uh We certainly see a lot of it happening in academia or in education more broadly speaking, it can apply to, you know, say primary secondary schools, to high schools, to college students, of course, to graduate students, um so on and so forth. Um But I think it can also be applied and it is applied um uh broadly speaking in the corporate world where companies use it for all sorts of employee on boarding procedures, maybe or as part of employee training and professional development opportunities um and so on and so forth. Um I think it can also be, be used in the nonprofits, right? Um IN healthcare, in, in literally probably anything that we could think of any field or industry could um could use a mentoring to maybe help their people broadly speaking, um form a better connections, build community and just enable them to learn from each other and grow together.

05:52 Ricardo Lopes: And how long has the mentoring been applied to the academic context? I mean, how, how old is uh are, are e mentoring practices within academy?

06:05 Cristina Baciu: Mhm That's an excellent question. Um Not that old actually um because it relies on the use of various technologies, right? So e mentoring evolved along with uh various technologies such as internet and, and email, for example. And so um I think e mentoring started to be used as a tool in higher education, for example, in about the 19 nineties um where I think the first online courses started to um to appear. And when that happened, professors used e mentoring as a tool to kind of make sure that their students are supported and get what they need in order to be able to be successful in their online courses. Um THEN fast forward over the years. Um IN the two thousands, it al also continue to evolve, right? But particularly after 2010 15, again, the more technology developed and the more people in academia, right, the more students got access to online education um and, and the more universities started to offer various online degrees um than a kind of kept up the pace with that growth um and was used more and more by universities and by professors to make sure that that the students in these online courses and programs are successful. Um And even though this happened, and even though e mentoring definitely grew over the years, right, it's debatable whether or not research really has kept up with that and with really, you know, examining abroad, um a variety of factors that might say influence the success of e mentoring relationships.

08:08 Ricardo Lopes: So we're going to get into some of the, the details surrounding this. But does the online environment change how teaching and learning uh is done and occurs?

08:23 Cristina Baciu: Great question. Um I, I think it does, right? Um And I think it does for the better for quite some time, there was a debate there on whether or not, you know, online learning is a thing that students can engage in successfully. Is it as valuable as a degree one would get in person, you know, does it carry weight with employers? All these questions were um were um at people's um four minds for a while, right? And maybe there still are in some context, but I think the COVID-19 pandemic has largely influenced how people perceive online learning. Um And we definitely see now many, many more offerings for online programs and you know, college degrees, graduate degrees, you name it. Universities probably have it if people are interested in them, right? Um But to come back to your questions, I I think definitely the online context does change or maybe influence a little bit teaching and learning in the sense that um for one, for example, it provides increased access to education broadly speaking. So with the with online learning evolving over the years and all of these programs and degrees being available all over the side, people who did not, could not access education before, perhaps due to, you know, say time constraints, maybe they have a full time job that they have to work on or um family responsibilities, they might be caregivers, they might have dependents, Children to take care of, they couldn't go to, to enroll in an in person degree, right? Because they simply could, didn't have the time and maybe resources to do so. Um But with online education now they can do all those things on their own terms on their own time. Um ONLINE um teaching and learning is also great in that, that it offers flexibility. Um Arguably both for learners and for uh professors too, right? Um There is a little bit more, more of a flexible environment in terms of interactions. Um For students, for example, they can choose when to go in and watch the videos or complete the assignments uh based on, on their own availability, so on and so forth. Um I think it's also maybe important to mention that um people, well, there is a debate actually if people have different learning styles, uh we're not. But, but for sure, I think we can say that people might have different learning preferences. So, you know, some people might prefer to watch a video to learn about a concept or to hear somebody talking about that concept, right? Or um to um engage in various discussions with other um students, right? To, to get a different opinion and whatnot. And so online learning also pulls in all these different threads um and brings them together so that students get a bit, a little bit of a well rounded experience in terms of their learning preferences and understanding of the various topics. Um

11:56 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. No, go ahead, go ahead.

11:58 Cristina Baciu: I was gonna say that, you know what I've been saying so far, it sounds really positive and great and it is, right? But I think it's also important to acknowledge that there might be some things that are not necessarily as positive and as great. Um And one of those things would be, for example, um the digital divide, which is still very much a thing in the sense that not everybody has equal access to um internet and to various technologies. And so yes, on one hand there, we see an increased access to education, right? But on the other hand, there are still people who cannot access it because there is just not um there is just not uh they don't have access to the technology, they would need it to be successful in the first place. Um Some people also might prefer the face to face interaction with their professors, right? And some people might feel like it's easier to build a relationship with their professor if they go to classes twice a week or once a week. Right. And you get to, to talk to somebody in, in uh in person um as opposed to doing it online. Um And then, you know, like we were talking um before we started to record, sometimes you might encounter technology issues. Um And you know, you might need to join a call for class, but your internet provider uh or connection is down for the day. So, so you can't do that. So, you know, I just wanted to say that there are a lot of places and there are also some things that can be issues. Sometimes that we might need to be mindful of

13:42 Ricardo Lopes: and to teachers and professors themselves have to adapt the way they teach in online environments. I mean, and I'm here, I'm not talking specifically about, for example, back in 2020 when COVID hit uh at a certain point, I mean, I noticed this because uh since I am in regular contact with academics, I had to reschedule a few interviews because people were extremely busy moving materials online and adapting to new technologies like Zoom, for example. Uh uh But I'm not talking about that uh adaptation and moving materials online and that kind of thing, I'm talking more about the way they transmit information, the way they teach, does it change in online environments?

14:34 Cristina Baciu: Excellent question. Um I think it does to some extent, right? Um So I guess for example, one thing that comes to mind is that when we teach online, we gotta make sure that we design online friendly material for students to engage with. Right? And so what does that mean? That means that if we assign, you know, a really long piece of material, audio video, whatever to a student to listen or watch, they might or might not do it. I think it depends from a student to another in their preferences. But in general, there is, you know, research out there on how, you know, cognitive overload and you know, our attention spans are not getting longer but shorter, right? And so with those kinds of things in mind, I think it's important to uh maybe, you know, create um shorter, more digestible content for students to engage with um using a variety of multimedia and various online tools that keep students engaged and active with the material. Um And I think this is particularly important because because motivation and showing up every day to do online work is a big factor in the success of online learning, right? And, and, and I feel like if students don't have fun, engaging things to come to every single time they, then they might not be as motivated to do those things to come back to engage, to do well in the course. Um Let's see, what else? Um I think, I think, um I think that communicating and, and building community is also really important um in online learning. And what I mean by that is um you know, maintaining regular communication with students, um creating the of presence of, we're here together, we're here to learn, we're uh you know, we, we can do pretty much a lot of the things that we can do in person, I think, right? Like learn from each other, listen to each other's stories and inputs and insights, right? Um GROW together, um create opportunities for feedback and for discussion. Um THOSE things, those kinds of things are really important. Um I believe for educators to do in order to create an effective um online learning environment.

17:17 Ricardo Lopes: So I would like to ask you now if we know what predicts the success of e mentoring, I mean, does it depend for example, on any specific individual traits of students?

17:35 Cristina Baciu: That's a great question. Um There, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, but even before there were, there were studies out there looking to understand, you know, what exactly the factors or traits of students might be um that would predict the success of a knee mentoring relationship. And so, um I can get to that in a second in terms of my own work. But before I do that, just in general, um there are, you know, some, some things in the literature, like um a commitment, you know, students commitment um to um to mentoring to their own goals, right? Might influence the ways in which they show up and engage in that particular mentoring relationship. Um Communication is also very, very important. You cannot have a successful mentoring relationship if you're not there to communicate effectively and timely with your mentor, right? Um And so are clear goals and expectations. So it's really important that everybody, you know, both the mentor and the mentee really knows what the goals and expectations are so that they're able to um to build backwards almost from there, right? So the mentor or probably any mentor actually who engages in a, in a mentoring relationship will initially have a conversation with their mentee where they really get to, you know, the people get to know each other. Um And the mentor really asks the mentee about their goals um and, and future plans, right? And then with that in, find the mentors job for the most part is to kinda like backtrack and see how can they help the mentee get to this distant point or more distant point in time to accomplish their goals. Um They established a set of steps maybe um that they can work on together so that the mentee can get there. Um Another thing that we see is important in the literature is cultural and emotional intelligence. So it's important for people to, you know, to be able to be aware, we're all different people, we all coming from different backgrounds. And so I think it's important to have an awareness and appreciation for that so that we can really, you know, um have rich conversations and, and learn from each other. Um And then, you know, there is like other more technical uh the things like the mentors, skills and knowledge, like you would have to make sure that a mentor, you know, is, is, is appropriate that the pairing I should say is appropriate because not every mentor is gonna be good for every mentee and the other way around, people need to have some things in common. Um Right, in order to ensure that they have um a, a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship.

20:46 Ricardo Lopes: Uh And so I, I, in what ways do perceptions that students have of particular aspects of e mentoring matter here? So, for example, uh role modeling and psychological and emotional support. And I would imagine when it comes to role modeling, uh specifically having uh mentors who are of the same gender, for example. So, uh how does that work?

21:17 Cristina Baciu: Yeah, that's an excellent question. So, um in, in my dissertation work, um I looked to um understand how online students um it perceive and engage with e mentoring. Um And so, in doing so, um um I examined a couple of different factors or traits um of students such as gender, age, digital competence, um social self efficacy and goal orientation. And I looked specifically at seeing how these things map onto um students perceptions of psychological and emotional support, um degree and career support, academic knowledge support and role modeling that you just mentioned. And so all these things, psychological and emotional support, degree and career support, academic knowledge support and role modeling are part of um of um um somebody else's research. Um uh Her name is Doctor Gloria Crisp. And she created this um thing that she calls the co college student mentoring scale. Um That was I think first published in about 2009 or so. Um And so that's a widely used scale in mentoring to try to understand how various traits again, influenced, say in our case, students perceptions of all these different areas of e mentoring, right? Um And so with role modeling, you, like you were asking um in my own work, I have to like browse through my brain really quickly uh in my own work, I found that um when it comes to role modeling in particular age and gender, do not really um inf influence play any role, right? Um INTO it. But, but digital competence, goal orientation and social self efficacy do. Um SO, in fact, if I remember correctly, I think social self efficacy only influenced students perceptions of role modeling and not their and, and did not um influence their perceptions of psychological and emotional support, degree and career support and academic knowledge support. Um And, you know, that may be the case because um say students who have higher levels of social self efficacy um are maybe, you know, more inclined to um to look up to their mentors, to interact, more with them, to want to be more like them if that makes sense, right? Um And to be more receptive um um in that relationship.

24:13 Ricardo Lopes: Uh And what about uh future engagement with e mentoring opportunities? So, if people have already engaged with uh e mentoring, uh what predicts if they in the future will do it again? Uh I mean, if they were satisfied with enough with the experience and they will and will want to have it or try it again.

24:39 Cristina Baciu: Mhm Yeah. So um again, in, in my work, um um I did not see contrary to expectations and to what previous research indicates I did not find that age or gender had any influence on um online students um likelihood to engage with future e mentoring opportunities. Be they formal or informal? Uh By the way, we looked at both these things to see whether there would be a difference in terms of um formal versus informal um e mentoring programs. And there was not um however, digital competence and goal orientation were the most significant predictors of students um interest to potentially engage in both formal and informal mentoring opportunities in the future. And that's no big surprise, right? Um When we say digital competence, by the way, we mean just a student skills to um to effectively gather information, online, engage with all these different um technologies um excuse me, um and, and be able to use them effectively, right? Um And on a side note, because particularly with younger students, we have, you know, been growing up through all these technology developments, sometimes in higher education, we tend to assume that these students who are also known as the digital natives would be absolutely comfortable um with all these tools. And, you know, we assume that they are say, for example, highly skilled in things like digital competence, but sometimes that's not the best assumption to make because, you know, just because somebody grew up with these tools does not necessarily mean that they know how to use every technology effectively or how to bring them all together and so on and so forth, right? So I think it's important to, you know, just to throw a little caution uh there and, and make sure that, you know, maybe we conduct assessments, um if we have say e mentoring programs, right, to kinda see where the students are at, um where the professors are at because they're not no exception either, you know, sometimes the professors are also assumed to be really digitally competent and perhaps that's not necessarily the case um since there are so many tools out there and we cannot possibly know every single one of them. Right.

27:24 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. And also I would imagine that even for the younger people who have been exposed to these newer technologies for a longer period of time, I mean, since new ones are coming around all the time, uh perhaps we also shouldn't assume that they are familiar with all of them because that's, I would imagine virtually impossible.

27:49 Cristina Baciu: Absolutely. Yes. And then remember we talked about the digital divide a few moments ago. So that's a whole other thing. And, you know, particularly for students coming from rural, rural, that's a hard word to pronounce rural environments. Um WHO did not necessarily not even have access to all these technologies as they were growing up or the internet connection, right? Um JU uh just assuming that they would be digitally competent would be a huge, huge mistake and lost opportunity. And actually, you know, us helping them get to the point where they are comfortable using um using all these tools successfully.

28:31 Ricardo Lopes: So I think we've been sort of alluding to this throughout the interview, but just perhaps to sum things up a little bit, what would you say are some of the advantages and disadvantages of e mentoring compared to some more traditional forms of mentoring?

28:52 Cristina Baciu: Hm, that is an excellent question. Um And one of my favorites when I talk about e mentoring actually. So, um yeah, we alluded to these things a little bit. But I think, you know, in terms of advantages, um one of um one of the biggest advantages I think um from um e mentoring um a awarding this really huge geographic flexibility. So with traditional mentoring relationships, often time times people would be um uh location bound, right? You had to be at the same school, you had to be at the same company, you had to be in the same location. But with e mentoring, virtually, you can, you know, reach as far as you want, right? And find the people you would want to connect with um no matter where they are in the world um and reach out to them and, you know, kinda kinda see what happens, right. Mhm. Um So that's huge and that, that's also really, really important because um it um it brings up new opportunities for people who maybe would not have had such opportunities before. So, for example, again, going back to online students, for example, um who, you know, maybe are full time workers and parents and all these things, um it's unlikely that they could have, you know, had in-person mentors. But again, with e mentoring now they can engage with people and, and build these connections um which can come with really, really great benefits. So, you know, for example, for women, um and people who are coming from um traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, um E mentoring is really, really important because it can help them, you know, be more connected. Um THEY have a broader network which will maybe lead to more opportunities. Um It can shape their interest in graduate school and various careers that they would not, that maybe have thought of otherwise because, you know, somebody like me does not necessarily go there because I did not have a role model, right? And I didn't know that that's possible for me. So we see that we have countless examples throughout um the mentoring, the e mentoring programs um that I'm involved with, for example, um Then another big advantage I think comes from um from the flexibility, kinda hinted to this already from the flexibility that people have, you know, we can work around our schedules, we can find a time that works for everybody, right? Um And we can make this um this relationship happen. Um Maybe it's also important to mention that with e mentoring, um we can keep track of conversations, maybe document conversations, right? So if, if our meeting today say was um uh was an e mentoring meeting, then we could record it and, and you know, me as the mentee, I could then go and look at the recording transcript on my own later on. If I wanted to reference something to remember something, you know, to go do some research on some resources, maybe reference so on and so forth, right? So it would be easier from that point of view too. Um Then in terms of um of disadvantages, um like I mentioned before, some people might feel a lack of personal connection with e mentoring. Um BECAUSE, you know, for various reasons, some people might prefer to meet in person, some people might feel like it's more difficult to, to really build genuine relationships online, right? Um And they might really be feeling like they miss on those personal interactions, um technical difficulties, right? We mentioned that already those can happen too and they are no fun. Um There could be some privacy concerns in terms of, you know, data sharing and stuff with various software recording, you know, people's email addresses and, and, and phone numbers and whatnot. But, you know, I would argue that these are no different than, you know, the information that's being collected when you sign up for, you know, a new grocery store newsletter or whatever, right? Something that you would do maybe anyways. Um AND then, um I guess sometimes there can be this a little bit of a disconnection in terms of delayed responses. So if we communicate via email, for example, you know, the conversation does not quite happen in real time. Um There is a little bit of a delay between uh what I send what I receive, you know, um A and maybe, maybe that's problematic for some people. Um But again, I, for me personally, I feel like these things are can be easily or somewhat, at least easily addressed. Um And I think that the advantages um are far, far um beyond the disadvantages for a mentoring.

34:31 Ricardo Lopes: Uh By the way earlier, uh you've already mentioned, you've mentioned uh COVID-19. Uh So what impact did the pandemic have on e mentoring and out with this study,

34:46 Cristina Baciu: it had a great impact um like you did on, on online education really. But, but with e mentoring too, um you know, I started my doctoral program in May of 2020 when, when the pandemic uh was very much a thing, right? Um And I finished my doctoral program throughout the pandemic. And I think I only went to school in person maybe like three times. Um Otherwise all of my classes are online, all of my meetings with my colleagues, with my advisors, everything. Um And it was great, I loved it, it worked really well for me. Um But at the same time, I had decided that I really early on in 2020 that I will focus my dissertation on e mentoring. So I kept a really close eye on how the field was developing, right? Um And so, so I've seen a lot of great papers come out throughout the pandemic. Um And, and many of them really focused on understanding um how the pandemic is impacting students and e mentoring, you know, are they are students more likely to engage in e mentoring that they would have been before? Absolutely, yes. Um Are they drawing benefits from being engaged in e mentoring during the pandemic. Absolutely yes. Again and so some of those benefits would be things like, you know, there has been papers who um who uh were authors who have found that students who were engaged in e mentoring relationships during the pandemic reported significantly less anxiety and depression, for example. And compared to people who are not engaged in e mentoring and overall just better, just better mental health. Um They felt um they were, they indicated um that they felt higher rates of belonging and inclusiveness, which is really important, particularly during the pandemic when you know, everybody's world was kind of shattered and rearranged in some way, right? Um And just like before, um before the pandemic, pretty much, you know, the results were consistent um showing that students were engaged in e mentoring, had overall better grades, better GPA S um better access to various network um um opportunities um a larger social capital. So they knew more people that they could uh go to when they needed help um and so on and so forth. So, so yes, the pandemic really influenced how much people were actually focusing on e mentoring, both as a practice and as a field of study.

37:51 Ricardo Lopes: So do you think that the work you and other people are doing on e mentoring, how it works when it works with whom it works, et cetera, it can help uh mentors and educators design e mentoring opportunities.

38:11 Cristina Baciu: I certainly hope so. Yeah, and I, I surely hope so so. You know, one of the big um I think from my perspective, there is like two main messages that I would put out there, right? One has to do with digital competence and it's important for e mentoring and more broadly for online learning. Um I think it's really, really important to uh you know, to run assessments of digital competence, both for students and for T teachers um and professors and to really develop training um modules and various other, you know, provide various other support opportunities for them to help them um develop this skill further and further. And I think that it's not, there is not gonna be a point where we're gonna say, OK, you have a lot of digital competence and you can stop. Um I don't think we're gonna get there because technology advances, like we said, you know, so at, at such a fast rate, right these days um that we, you know, we have to keep learning and we have to keep improving our skills um in order to be effective teachers and learners and mentors and new mentors and so on and so forth. Um And another thing I wanna mention from my personal experience um as the co-founder and co-director of the A Scholars program um and the Corporation Scholars Program and all the other mentoring programs we're running at A SU um is that I think community is really really important when it comes to e mentoring. So building community and nurturing community with students is going to be crucial for the success of any e mentoring opportunity. And what I mean by community is really nothing fancy, right? What I mean is just creating this welcoming environment where students know that they are appreciated for who they are, where we treat students from an what we call in higher education, an asset based perspective rather than a deficit perspective. So in a deficit perspective, we say, oh, students are not good at math. Um And therefore we're gonna do this to fix it. Whereas in an asset perspective, we say, oh you know, they're great at multiplication. This is a silly example, right? So we're gonna focus on that and building the skills that they're good at to kind of like help build everything and carry it on, right? Um So in our own experience, we find that when we encourage students to bring their whole selves to school, right? In this case, and to work too, I would argue and just create this environment where um you know, it's uh warm and welcoming and really appreciating of everybody's backgrounds and interests. Um THEN people are more likely to engage, they start to share various stories and experiences, they realize that they are more alike than not, right? Um And this really great thing happens where everybody learns from each other and we grow together as a community of scholars in this particular example.

41:45 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh that's about e mentoring. Uh I have one last question slash topic I would like to explore here. So I know you're also interested in uh barriers to student success. So, uh what have you studied in that regard? And which do you think are some of the biggest barriers here?

42:10 Cristina Baciu: Mhm. That's, that's an excellent question. Um And an unfortunate topic that we have to be aware of in higher education, I think. Um, IT was quite a few years ago, maybe during my master's program. So, so quite a few years ago when I learned about this thing called basic needs insecurity, um and basically means insecurity is an umbrella term that basically, um, is composed of or refers to um food insecurity, um housing insecurity, um and things of that nature, right? That students um could experience that will most definitely prevent them from being successful um, in their educational endeavors, right? Um, THERE have been quite a few researchers over the years who have looked um at these things. Um, THERE, there is this big group that's based um out of the Temple University now. Um, IT'S called the Hope Center. Um, AND they do a lot of work on basic need and security and, um, you know, they try to survey nationally representative samples across the United States and for the past few years, they have consistently found that as much as 45% of the undergraduate student population um experienced some sort of food insecurity at some point during their college experience. Um And, and that's a huge problem because you cannot learn and you cannot be successful in school when you are hungry, right? Um And when you don't know where your next meal might be coming from, um, in the, in the same line of work, they also looked at um students who are experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness and they define these things, they put them into two different categories, I think. So, um housing insecurity is when um people have temporary issues with housing. So they might, you know, um go um crash on somebody's couch for two weeks that would be housing insecurity or they have, you know, um eight roommates uh within two bedrooms. That's also not ideal, right? Um And homelessness, it's quite obvious, you know, you, you don't, you just don't have a place to live um for housing insecurity again, a huge proportion of students up to 20% or so if I remember correctly, um reported having experienced that at times and about 10% or so of students reported experiencing uh homelessness um at times while being in school. Um So those are obviously really great issues that students are dealing with. Um And you know, if the basic needs are not covered then then people just cannot be successful period in school work or otherwise. Um And so over the years, we've seen an increase of universities um and colleges across the country really, you know, working to uh to start to address these issues. So for example, um universities have built um and are supporting um having pantries on campus where students can go pick up some food every now and then and just, you know, more in general, maybe connect students with various resources that they need. Um From here on in general, I would go and say that there is just broadly speaking, a bunch of uh financial constraints that students could experience that could really impact their success um in higher education. So, you know, with that again, um we know that an ex an unexpected expense of um of $500. No more, no less, right? I mean, maybe less, maybe more. Um BUT just in average something like $500 that comes out of nowhere that a student needs to cover for a car uh repair or something like that can really derail their education because they might not be able to cover tuition. And if you did not pay your full tuition by the end of the semester, you will not be able to enroll in classes for the next semester. Now, you have a hold on your account, then you have some more fees added on top of that. Right. Then things can snowball really quickly. And so with that universities have started to create um these emergency funds, they call them where students can apply for um for financial um aid um to cover an emergency that they um had. Um THOSE are, you know, great initiatives to help students succeed. Um And probably we could, we could do even better in terms of being more responsive and, and helping students more timely with these kinds of things and, you know, having really streamlined processes. So, so that when a student applies to something like um um an emergency financial aid type thing, they don't have to wait a week or two weeks to receive the money they needed right then and there, right? So, so, so something a process that that could go faster would probably be a little, a little bit more ideal.

47:59 Ricardo Lopes: Uh AND do you think uh and this will be my last question and uh do you think that uh the trends when it comes to some of these barriers you mentioned to uh success uh in university and elsewhere? Uh THAT uh do you think that trends there are positive or not?

48:23 Cristina Baciu: I think they're positive. And I at the same time, I think that there is a long way to go too, right? Um A again, going back to the basic needs and security example, we we definitely seen lots of changes only over the past five years or so with various programs in place, universities really being more aware of this, really being an issue, right? But before, like 10 years ago. I don't know if, if we even knew that that's a problem. Probably not. Um, SO now we know that that's a problem and we work to address it and that's, that's great. So, the trends are positive. Um, AND at the same time, um, you know, now that we tackled this big thing, um, maybe we kinda have to wonder, you know, what are other things that might be out there that prevent students from being successful um And see how um how we can help address them?

49:22 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So, uh just before we go, would you like to tell people where they can find you when you work on the internet?

49:31 Cristina Baciu: Thank you for asking that. Yeah, absolutely. So, um I have a website where I try to centralize a lot of my work. Um That is um Christina batu.org. Um I'm also on Twitter and linkedin and I should say that I'm really more than happy to connect and talk to people. Um I, I love just, you know, having conversations, exchanging ideas and um and you know, see where that takes us.

50:02 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So, uh thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show and it was really good to talk to you.

50:10 Cristina Baciu: Likewise. Thank you so much for having me, Ricardo.

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