Academic Advising at SLU-Madrid: Building Global Student Success - Adventures in Advising

In this edition of Adventures in Advising, Matt and Ryan are joined by Jaime Ortiz, Director of Academic Advising at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus. From his early days as a scholarship student to becoming a leader shaping the evolution of advising at SLU-Madrid, Jaime shares a powerful story of growth, resilience, and cross-cultural connection.

Tune in to hear how Jaime helped transform a one-person advising office into a thriving team supporting both permanent and study abroad students, all while balancing the unique challenges of being an American institution in a European setting. Plus, don’t miss his take on building community, embracing sci-fi, and what it really means to be at the crossroads of global education.

🧭 Madrid, advising a globally diverse student body, and a touch of Star Wars...what more could you want?

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Transcript

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, welcome back everybody to another episode of Adventures in Advising. Hope your advising adventures are going well with me, as always is our co host, Matt Markin, Matt, how are things today?

Matt Markin  
Things are going very well. Orientation is over, or at least in person orientations at the time of this recording, so things are a little bit smooth, but very excited for our guest today. And I guess we can also say this is another example of connections through social media. This is someone who has been listening to the podcast fairly recently and actually posted a comment on one of the YouTube videos that for one of the interviews with Dan Wienecke,. And that's kind of how this connection started.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, we love it hearing from our listeners. You know, wherever you're finding us, it's so nice to get comments and an engagement, not just because of the way those algorithms and platforms might then sort of boost the message or find new audiences, but we're people, and we like connecting with people. And it's it's such a joy when we have folks who not only engage with the podcast and hear each other's stories, but maybe share their own as well. So if you're listening, we'd love to hear from you any part of this experience through the Adventures in Advising podcast, or some of the newer endeavors in the podcast world, for academic advising, we'd love to hear your thoughts and comments and the places that you're finding meaning and connection through the stories that you're hearing. So our guest today is Jaime Ortiz, and let's bring him in. Jaime, how are you today? 

Jaime Ortiz  
Hello, guys. How are you?

Ryan Scheckel  
Doing great. I want to introduce Jaime to our audience. He earned his degree in English from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. He also has a background in translation, and he received a Masters of Arts degree in English from St Louis University. Jaime has worked in retail and customer service and also taught English before going into higher ed. He joined the SLU Madrid staff in 2011 and has served as academic advisor and assistant dean. He is currently the director of academic advising, coordinating with other student support services and working closely with campus leadership on academic planning and student success and retention initiatives in his free time. Jaime enjoys watching TV shows with his wife and taking long walks with his dog, Onyx. He loves board games and nerding out about fantasy sci fi or the latest show he has binged. That's not the only reason we have him on, though it's great to find birds of a feather, of course, but Jaime, welcome so much to the podcast.

Jaime Ortiz  
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ryan Scheckel  
Sure so one of the things that we always ask, of course, we get to read your bio and hear that formal introduction to you, but we love to hear how we got here and what people's sort of origin stories are in higher education. So could you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Jaime Ortiz  
Sure. Yeah, well, my journey started when I was in college. Was completing my degree in English, and I happened to come across this posting on the wall where they were announcing this scholarship opportunity to join a master's program in with a partner university that was St Louis University. And well, I applied and was accepted into the program. And it was a dual degree program where you got to take classes at this St Louis University Madrid campus with SLU faculty and also with my, my actual institution at the time, the autonomy of Madrid, and it included a summer a summer experience at the St Louis campus in the States. So it was an amazing experience for me, and I was immediately drawn into, you know, the environment, the campus life, and the American education you know, firsthand and and I haven't even considered, you know, studying the US before, but you know, two in one. And it was, it was amazing. It was a great opportunity. I have to admit, I had not heard about our campus before I came across that announcement. So it was exciting to find out about it. And and, yeah, and here we are. Fast forward to to today, and I'm still working here. So in in 2011 is when I joined the advising staff. They, they were looking for a new advisor. They, they had a smaller program back then, and we, we had a single advisor working with all the small group of current students, permanent students, and the visiting students. So things were growing, and they saw the need to incorporate. It you know someone else to help with the growing masters programs and to help with the advising of students, and also they needed someone for administrative support, so I immediately applied. I recently finished my masters. I have been working for a year in retail, as you mentioned, interpreting for, for, for international customers, and things like that, in retail and I jumped at the opportunity and is to go back to campus and and actually be part of the staff. And it was great. And that's where the advising system started growing from just a single administrative support person helping the academic dean to actually having, you know, a couple of people actually doing advising and and back then, we're probably around 400 students, I would say. And so we were helping study abroad students, and we divided the caseload between my my other colleague, who was taking care of new incoming freshmen and and all sophomores. And I took on juniors and seniors and help with the master's programs. So it was nice. It started fine, and then things started growing with the years. And after that, this colleague left after six months or so, so I was there by myself, without much training, yet still fresh and green and yeah, it was quite the trip at the time, so working closely with the academic dean and and we eventually were able to incorporate a new advisor a few months after that. And yeah, that was former student and alumna from the from the campus from Bulgaria, who was great, and we worked together for 10 years. I can't believe it was 10 years. And then she eventually got an opportunity to go back to her home country, and that's where things gave a twist, and things really changed. And that was when we were able to start building, you know, that the thing that we really wanted for student advising. So we sat down and say, Hey, maybe now is the time numbers keep growing and growing. We're popular in the region, and we need more support for our students. Let's create a proper advising department. And I, we decided that I will help incorporate a new person to the department. Then by the end of that year, after training the new person, we we bring, we brought in another advisor that will help us with all the Study Abroad population that that was still big at the time. So by that time we were around the 1000 students, and that was right after COVID. COVID, of course, we took a hit and just lost our study abroad population. But so after that, that's we were a team of three. I was the director, and we started building that structure. And we still were working in survival mode. We have been for quite a few years already, but creating green those new structures and that network wasn't as easy as I thought it would be at the beginning. I had great ideas and but as of today, we just incorporated a new advisor, and that's a team of four plus me. I'm still doing advising. Which I love. I'm fine with that is I'm quite overloaded, but, but I really love but I we're now in a position where we're able to provide full advising for the four years and focus on specialization for specific schools from the university for you know, a more cohesive structure, but also to help with communication with academic departments and streamline better all those, all those things. Really excited we keep growing and coming up with new things as we find more time to do it, now that we have more help. And I have to say, I've been very lucky to have the support of my supervisors, so I've been wearing many hats during that time, helping with academic planning, accreditation, supporting other departments. There's something extra to being an American Campus at an international location, which also includes, you know, having to go through national accreditation or local accreditations. And. And, and those you know, those things are also additional challenges to being, you know, far from from the US.

Matt Markin  
Jaime wears a lot of hats in this role, but it's nice to kind of hear the journey of even how your academic advising has expanded at your institution. And I think this could be a great segue to kind of give listeners, kind of like a what the environments like. So for those that may not know much about your campus, how would you describe the SLU in Madrid campus?

Jaime Ortiz  
Well, so Madrid is it's an urban campus. It started, and I think I mentioned this to you guys last time we spoke. It has an interesting history. It started as any other study abroad program back in the late 60s, and it was in collaboration with local public universities, bringing us students for for study abroad experiences for a semester, offering a few classes is, of course, as any other program. It started small, and then as time passed by in the 70s, especially in the 80s, it kept growing. And it was decided that, you know, buildings will be bought for a more stable location. And I think, in the early 90s, school was purchased and turned into the first few buildings that we right now have. We still keep them. And so that started with a single building, then a second building, and right now we're opening our fifth building. So we've expanded. Never enough, never enough. But it's, it's, it's nice to have been part of that. You know, we have witnessed that, that growth from from a small campus to, you know, to a more robust, you know, even if you're one, but all buildings are very well connected, very close by, close to each other. And and it creates, now, does create that sense of, you know, more more compact, but still at the same time, you know, well distributed campus, and we're always reorganizing the spaces to maximize, you know, the use of those, but we're really excited, because as we grow, we get more labs and more student spaces, and we are able to provide better service. Again, back to the history of the campus. I have a couple of anecdotes that maybe will be fun to share. So I have this great aunt who apparently lived close to this area. I just found out about this, like, a month ago. Okay, so she used to host students from from the US back in the 70s. So it turns out that she probably hosted, you know, she, she was providing housing to some students that were probably studying here on this campus. I had no clue. But then in a family conversation, you know, they would make links to things, and then wait a minute, and then it's so so that's that was funny to hear about, so that maybe I already had a connection there that I didn't know about from from as far back as the 70s, so And so in I think 2010 or so, we open our biggest building yet, which changed things a lot. We got an auditorium, a big cafeteria, dining spaces. That was a big change for us. So again, we keep expanding as best as the area allows, but our student numbers keep growing too. We're happy to see our permanent students growing as well, and in higher numbers than before, and it's now pretty balanced. We actually do probably have more permanent students now than study abroad, but we host, you know, many, many study abroad students from different programs, many, many different universities in the US. We have big groups from Northeastern University, Delaware. We have students coming from Lafayette or St Joseph's or name it. We will have many. And so it's great because it reaches the campus people coming from all over the US. We have 60 to 70 nationalities, sometimes on the same year. So you can imagine how diverse the campus is. It really feels within the limits of of the buildings. It really feels like you are in a US campus with the, you know, the added value of being in a city like Madrid and having everything close by. So students are really excited and attracted to this environment. We're also the gateway to the rest of Europe. So it's very attractive. Poses challenges, as you might imagine, because, you know, the. Balance between giving good education and students wanting to travel a lot, so you have to handle that and deal with it. But yeah, we, we are proud to say that, that the quality of our classes are excellent faculty. They're great researchers and and, yeah, the students have sometimes low expectations in terms of, you know, I'm going to a nice study abroad program in Spain, and then, you know, they see who okay, that this is more than I expected. And sometimes they they realize that they shouldn't be traveling that much.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I think academic advisors often find real purpose and maybe value, both personally but also in their institution, because we're in between things. You know, we're in between maybe the culture of the student and the institution. We're sort of at that crossroads of those cultures and and when you're in a confluence situation, whether it's by circumstance or or some other cultural approach, there's some real unique insight that can be gathered and and gained. And I'm kind of curious your background, but also your campus, but also your role. It puts you at multiple crossroads. What has that been like for you, just personally, as you've grown in your role as an academic advisor, as an educator, as somebody at your institution, taking the perspective of so many different influences and attempting to forge your own path?

Jaime Ortiz  
Well, you definitely grow as you work on this role. You start from maybe missing parts and not have, not having much awareness or really important and relevant, you know, issues that that are critical to our to our role, and then as you grow into it, you start getting that experience and identifying things more and more easily, and anticipating students needs. And we are fully aware we are a Jesuit institution, and those values are really important for us, and we integrate them into what we do, and students choose us because of that too. And as for the role of the of academic advising, I always say I see this as a hub of communication between the different student support services. I tell you know, the advisors I work with, the excellent team that I have, we communicate a lot and and we do, we do realize that we are at the center of that of the hub where we connect students with a with a different resources that they need. And we have to be really being communication with everyone, all the stakeholders on on campus that we need to know everyone know how to connect with them and get the students what they need and the support that they need. And also, you know that really, really know the psychology of everyone to find solution, to help find solutions by, you know, by connecting in the right way. When you know everyone's busy and and that there's, there are times during the semester that it's, it's really stressful, and everyone's, you know, has piles of papers on their desks, have multiple zoom calls and the it's difficult to get hold of someone. But the benefit of having a small campus is you can walk in some someone's office. This I love, because I you know, you get to stand up. Or you can always call everyone, but you can get to stand up, go down the hall, or, you know, take a little break, walk to the other building. Hey, you have a minute? I wanted to talk about this student. I want your advice on this, or go to the to the counseling services and say, Hey, I know you cannot disclose anything, but let's talk about student X, and how do you see this we do have a few years ago, we put together what we call the care team, which we are seeing that it was a great idea. We love it because it's allowing us to serve students very well, especially when they are struggling or in a difficult spot. So the This comprises the the Vice Rector for academics, who to whom i i Report, and then the director of counseling, the Director of Student Life and myself. So we we meet every week, once a week, and we go over all the student cases that there are, you know, big challenges, or students who are struggling or important, you know, student issues that we need to address, to be updated on them, to be all on the same page about it, to monitor the progress and see if any action needs to be taken. So I coordinate with my advisors in the office to have a, you know, a share file of student issues where they can flag any situation to me, and I bring it to the to the care team. And then we, you know, review and try to help the student as best we can, or at least, we follow up on their progress during the semester. So we found this to be very useful. This definitely avoids, helps us avoid having, you know, lose notes, or randomly, you know, random conversations or no, this centralizes. You know that that attention to those students who are struggling within a specific team that reviews every week. So that's been very helpful. I have to say.

Matt Markin  
Definitely I agree with you saying academic advising, and especially like your unit, can kind of be that hub at your institution. Now you know you have very student population, so it's like you have, like the permanent students you have your study abroad student populations. How do you feel like you and your team kind of can still foster like a culture of advising that supports both populations?

Jaime Ortiz  
Well, we, we do have a dedicated advisor for study abroad students these we decided a couple of years ago, I proposed this idea, and we thought it will be good for us to have an additional advisor that would focus on helping students studying abroad at our campus, but also partners that were sending us bigger groups to connect better with them, to have a personal reference for them to work with and connect the different advising services at those institutions with ours. In the past, as I mentioned earlier, we were helping our permanent students and our visiting students so they would randomly show up in the office. They said, Oh, are you visiting? Sure, come on in. How can I help? So at that time, we thought it was a good moment to to try and have someone that will really focus on helping these, this specific population that was still, you know, any it is still today is pretty big in our campus, so that that has helped a lot. I mean, the advisor working with study abroad students is amazing, but, but the students really have more direction than they know. They have someone they can go to and that that advisor can follow up on specific issues. Connect with the home universities, if necessary. It's given us structure in terms of, you know, knowing how to help students and where to direct them, as opposed to, again, randomly helping a student and not knowing much about them. The study abroad advisor on campus, he knows every single university that is sending us students his, you know, review lists of students, knows immediately, can identify who it is and where he's coming from or she's coming from. So the that that does make a bit, that's made a big difference, I have to say, yeah. So that that in terms of comparing, you know, permanent students and and study for students, then, of course, other students coming from international locations as well cultural differences. Again, as you grow in this role, you learn strategies to do, to deal with the different, you know, especially for international students. Me being in for the US an international student at the time, and being an international staff member, it's, it's, it's very interesting how we, how we, you know, address those needs and and many of these students come from that. They probably come from international schools, and they've been exposed to a similar system oftentimes, but other times they come from their own educational system. It's confusing for them at the beginning, and you have to walk them through it. Sometimes they. They don't know what they're getting into. It's like, Why do I have to take a theology course? Again, I said you probably can explain this already, but this is the institution that you are at. These are our values. This is why. So you go over that, no, but, but, yeah, it's, it's interesting. You know, you you lend your strategies to to make them feel comfortable. I think that's very important, too. And I tell my colleagues all the time, if you learn couple words in a few of those languages and you throw to them on their first meeting, they immediately feel like, you know, you get me. Okay, do you know that was nice. Thank you. So they appreciate it. Of course, when they ask, Oh, do you speak my language is not at all, they just know those words, but I'd love to learn more from you. So that's that opens new opportunities and and again, this is a two way learning process, and they learn from us, but we learn from them a lot about their cultures, about it's amazing. It's the best job ever.

Ryan Scheckel  
I'm really curious about your own experiences, of course, as a student in the US and returning home and that kind of stuff. Do you see any of the experiences you had as a student abroad and and the context that you developed through those experience really being valuable, not only in your work, working with those students, but with your team, and sharing those perspectives. The value of your experience as a student, informing your approach and practice as an advisor and administrator?

Jaime Ortiz  
Well, it's definitely very, very important to have had that experience. Having been a student, in my particular case, from this same institution, has given me, you know, not only information about institution itself, before I arrived as a staff member, but also, you know, provided me with with a perspective and with a sense of what you know, a big institution like like ours, and big campus like the one In St Louis offers, as opposed to what you know, this smaller size campus has to offer, in contrast with its, you know, pros and cons, but it's definitely been exposed to the culture, to the resources, to to the way that things are organized, and to the accessibility to to those resources that that's key, because you're not only aware of the structure of university, but also you know culturally, you know what's important, how you can, you know, reach out to people, how, where The challenges are, of course, and as an international student myself, at the time, I totally empathize with our own international students, and I, you know, we're very understanding of confusion and needing time to adjust. And I think that's, that's what you learn the most, and how you can apply it, and being, you know, not only empathetic in the sense of, you know, okay, this is different for you. I have to be aware of that, and it's fine, take your time. It's how it works. No problem. But also, you know, when students struggle for many different reasons, but if this is one of them, you will have to approach it from, you know, compassionate and empathetic point of view and help them, you know, get there and get to the finishing line. And oftentimes is the challenge is really big, and they don't realize until they're not exposed to it. So, so yeah, any any prior experience that you've had yourself, definitely, you can draw from that and say, Hey, I remember when it's turning worse and worse. When I use that. I started as the older cousin, and now I feel like, you know I can be that, but, but, yeah, it still works sharing anecdotes and personal experiences. I think we can all agree that is a great way, and we'll do it to, you know, connect with our students.

Matt Markin  
I feel like it was like five or six years ago when I had a conversation with a student, I realized, yeah, I'm getting older, for sure. When the words that came out of my mouth and I couldn't take it back, was well, back in my day, and I was like, oh yes, I'm at that age. 

Ryan Scheckel  
I just lean into it now, and I'm like, I started advising in 2002 which makes me feel really old. I used to talk about how none of you were a. And I'm like, I'm not going to make that weird.

Jaime Ortiz  
Yeah. No, never do that.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah. The advantage, the advantage that those years have, are certainly worth it. But I remember when I used to think it wasn't that long ago, and then I like, Oh, I'm I'm losing a decade in there. I'm not carrying the one.

Jaime Ortiz  
only this. Sorry, go ahead, Matt. 

Matt Markin  
Oh, no, go for it. 

Jaime Ortiz  
No. I was gonna say, only this morning. Just this morning, someone from the admissions team asked me about a student. Hey, do you know anything about the student? He's reapplying. So what's the student's name? Gives me the name, and I'm like, Yeah, sounds very familiar. It was not that long ago. The let me check, I check 2020 or something like this, like five years ago, and it felt like last year. So, Ooh, he's been away for five years. Okay, let's review. So, yeah. 

Matt Markin  
Especially during the covid, years like, yeah, I don't know if that was five years ago, 15 years ago, yeah, it all kind of mixes together.

Jaime Ortiz  
And when you asked, there's a blank page there within that one year and a half or two? Yeah.

Matt Markin  
Now, it's exciting to hear like, you know the growth of academic advising at your institution, and you know, the work that you've put in over the years, and I imagine some many of those years might have been stressful because it was just, you know, you were wearing so many hats. You still do. You know, there's more structure now with it, you have more members of your team. Not that you have a crystal ball, but if you had a wish list, where do you see? You know, your your office and academic advising in general, looking like in the next couple years. 

Jaime Ortiz  
Yeah, well, I probably would have said something more, more elaborate than what I I'm going to say now four years ago, but yeah, right now, we're in a great place. I can't complain at all. I've gotten all the help that I've been asking for to, you know, in the near future, build the most robust and helpful structure for our students. There's a lot to do. As I said, I have many things in mind that I wanted to do, and time didn't allow or, you know, or the workload, but we're getting there where we're putting together a success program for new incoming freshmen for this academic academic year to support those who struggle after their first semester, building a Canvas course for that, I have to really thank my colleagues from the St Louis campus, because they've given us. They have something like that, and we're benefiting from the hard work that they've put into it, and and they're doing great things. And and we communicate more and more in the past we will, since we were not a proper unit, we were just again in survival mode, working closely with with the academic dean and and helping students as best we could, but we didn't have time to really connect in a meaningful way and get into, you know, the the more formal structure of an academic unit. Now we are, and we're benefiting from the hard work from from the home campus, and they're very helpful. So again, can be more, you know, thankful for, for, for their feedback and their support. And again, now in a couple years, I'm not expecting to have more staff, so what we have right now will have to make do. Let's see how the student enrollment progresses or not, but hopefully, yes, it's These are difficult times, so we're lucky to keep things growing, and our missions team has done an amazing job in the last 10 years, but they've, they've doubled the enrollment so so it's amazing. So you, we, we, I would like to have, and we are in conversations to build, you know, to expand our service and look for opportunities for more data review, more student success initiatives, retention data is key for us. We want to build that better. And then also, of course, we want to keep coming up with ways to communicate better with students. Have more maybe events. We have a few ideas and and I think that that will help a lot, because, and I. I'm sure you and many other advisors will agree, communication with students is always a challenge, and there's no perfect formula for that. So you we all struggle to get, you know, to connect with a student that is, you know, not not responsive and and, of course, we use the different tools that we have at hand. We send email communications. We have email campaigns. We come out with meetings for students on campus. They rarely show up. It's difficult to find the perfect time where in between classes and student engagement, you know, it's, it's part of, it's part of our role to find ways to engage, to have them more engaged with, with us and with the different support services. And it's, it's surprising. Sometimes still surprises me how you know you talk to a student who's not doing well, and after all the orientation sessions first year, and after all the information that you send every semester to them, they still say things like, oh, yeah, I didn't know we have counseling, or Yeah, yeah, I have ADHD forever. Oh, so we have disability services can request accommodations. It's like, have a seat. Let's talk. So it's as much as you try if you don't get the students engaged and comfortable. You know, connecting with with the services and with us in particular, it's hard, so it's, it's always a challenge, so you have to find ways to make it work.

Ryan Scheckel  
You mentioned interactions with your colleagues at the St Louis campus here in the States and and, you know, I'm just mindful of the unique position that your campus in Madrid has being an American institution in a Spanish setting and in a European setting. Can you share a little bit about what it's like in a professional networking and professional engagement or professional development sense from from your unique point of view?

Jaime Ortiz  
Well, in terms of communication with our home campus in the States, of course, there's the time difference. So it has to be afternoon meetings for us, morning meetings for them, as you guys see. So that that's that's one of the first challenges the time zone. Of course, if you you send questions or ask for, you know, confirmation on something, or you have a difficult case that you need to check them on, you really have to rely on, on, on that time difference to work and have to be patient to wait for a response a little later, urgent as it may be, and that's that applies to any other you know, unit and office here on this campus. And of course, you know, we will have to be understanding with the challenges that any any campus has. Ours in this in St Louis, and they sometimes as busy as we are, and they're not able to get to us in a timely manner. So it's you have to deal with that frustration, understanding that, that it goes both ways, sometimes, but, but yeah, we, we, we do communicate, you know, over the all the means possible, teams, chats, Zoom calls, of course, email chains. It's a one denying that it's something so challenge because we are far away. So they have their their priorities for the day. And then, oh, wait, yeah, sorry I didn't get back to you about that so, but again, totally understandable, but we have to learn to navigate those challenges and and maybe get a, you know, get another notch to remind them, hey, what about the student? Ask about but again, I totally get it. So we have, I have to say, we have good communication with them, and they, they over the years, it has improved a lot. At the beginning, it's a big campus in the States, so many of the units were not as aware of the of the Madrid campus as they are, in the last 10 or maybe 15 years before, before my time, it was probably more of a challenge, but in recent years it has improved a lot. We were receiving a lot of support. So So yeah, it comes with its challenges. But, but, yeah, that's that's really something that we you learn to navigate and be patient about. And any impacts in you know that it sometimes impacts how you're dealing with a case. If it for some reason, it needs to be reviewed over there for our own permanent students here in Madrid, completing full degree, seeking students. We we review any any case here, but it say there's a student from the other campus visiting, we have to check with their advisors and see if there's anything special that that needs to be addressed on their end and things like that. So, yeah, it might take a little longer that issue, the magic we can do about that, I guess.

Matt Markin  
A lot of different types of student situations that you have to work through, absolutely. And as we wind down with this interview, you know, I know we were mentioning when we started recording that we kind of had this connection through social media, because you had been listening to that recently to some of the podcast episodes. So you originally posted a comment on our interview with Dan Wienecke, about academic recovery, but also before we started recording, you were mentioning that you had listened to the episode with Lisa Rubin and Ashley Thomas, and I'm kind of jealous because you've already ordered the book that just came out, so the ethical issues in academic advising, I'm like, I'm still waiting on my copy here.

Jaime Ortiz  
Yeah, no, no, it's I immediately order it through our library, and our librarians are amazing, and they got it for us, and it just arrived. So I was, yeah, I was looking through it real quick, and I saw a couple case studies, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I relate a lot. So, so yeah, those are good. So, yeah, looking for and again, you mentioned professional development, and that's something that I really want to work hard on to to help, you know, the advisors and myself, you know, grow in our knowledge and and be more engaged with the current literature that is out there and research and, you know, having this kind of book published, it's, it's really helpful, because, again, you you realize you know how much you know we're all sharing similar challenges, regardless of location and and It's, it's great that that the professional, you know, side of the advising work, it's, it's been recognized and growing us as a profession, and it's able to, you know, to build a meaningful literature and which is helpful for everyone and be more, you Know, engaged with, with the advising community.

Matt Markin  
100%. And I feel we got to end on a personal note here. So Ryan was mentioned in your bio that you nerd out about fantasy and sci fi and the latest shows that you've been so what's been the latest a show or two that that you've binged?

Jaime Ortiz  
Okay, I don't always do fantasy and sci fi, but those are my favorites for sure. I am currently watching foundation on Apple TV. It's, you know, it's, it's really good. It's, I'm really enjoying it. It's, it's fun. It has great, you know, design and and it's, it's, it's really good, I recommend. And then, of course, I can help but mention Andor, it's, it's, yeah, one of the top shows of the year for me. But Ryan, you know what I'm talking about. But, yeah, I'm a Star Wars nerd too. So, so yeah, that that was, that was very good,

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, if anyone out there is listening, is not watched Andor.

Jaime Ortiz  
What's wrong with you? Yeah, yeah, the the

Ryan Scheckel  
foundation, I read the ___ books way before I think I had an appreciation for the value of adaptation and and I'm sure there are hardcore ___ foundation fans who are have their quibbles with this adaptation, but if people appreciate a great performance, Lee paces performance, especially from one season to the next is, is really, really fascinating in in there. And if we're making recommendations, if anyone hasn't checked out murder bot on Apple TV, it's worth the time. 

Matt Markin  
Now, the crazy thing about Andor and then even Rogue One was when Rogue One was in development, I was like, there, there's no need for for this movie. And then the movie came out, and then it's probably one of my top three Star Wars movies of all time. And then when they were developing and or for Disney+, it was like, they don't need to make this. And then it became probably my top Disney+ show, still to this day.

Jaime Ortiz  
Now for me, is peak TV for sure.

Matt Markin  
This is a fun conversation. Learned a lot about what you do your team again, hearing like the history and the growth of it, yeah. I mean, kudos to you for everything that you put in your teams put in, and even just talking about a little bit about sci fi is always fun as well. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Jaime Ortiz  
Yeah, thanks for having me.