Welcome to The Higher Edge Podcast!
Sept. 20, 2022

Through the Transfer Gate: Breaking Down Student Transfer Barriers (featuring Darla Cooper)

An alarming number of students are not reaching a critical step in their journey toward a bachelor's degree — transferring their community college work to 4-year universities and colleges in order to continue their education. 

When students can’t reach these goals, it undermines their ability to succeed after investing in themselves and their education. It feels like a fruitless task. 

Darla Cooper, Executive Director of The RP Group, joins us to share what she and her research team discovered in their efforts to better understand the student transfer problem. 

Join us as we discuss:

  • Findings from the "Through the Gate" student transfer study (5:32)
  • The role of gender, race, ethnicity, or region on transfer rates (12:26)
  • How to positively influence the student transfer journey (22:31)  

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Carla Cooper: Welcome 

[00:00:08] Announcer: to The Higher Edge, a podcast for the brightest minds in higher education. Hear from the change makers and rulebreakers that are driving meaningful, impactful change for colleges and universities across the country from improving operations to supporting student success. These are the stories that give you, "The Higher Edge".

[00:00:30] And now your host, Brendan Aldrich 

[00:00:33] Brendan Aldrich: hey everyone. Welcome to the Higher Edge. I'm Brendan Aldrich and I'm here today. With Darla Cooper, who's the executive Director of the RP Group, uh, the RP Group is a non-profit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to evidence-based decision making that promotes student success, uh, increases equitable outcomes, improves college operations, and informs policy makers in the state of California.

[00:00:56] Darla, welcome to the show and thanks so much for joining us here on the Higher Edge. 

[00:00:59] Carla Cooper: Thank you [00:01:00] for having. 

[00:01:01] Brendan Aldrich: First of all, Darla, I know that most people involved in research can take a traditional approach to entering the field, such as your original studies in psychology, uh, before pursuing your master's and doctorate in education.

[00:01:13] But what I think is even more fascinating is that you started as a counselor, uh, now how do you bring that experience forward to support your work in institutional. . 

[00:01:22] Carla Cooper: Well, at first I didn't, I, I went through a period where I didn't want people to know that I used to be a counselor because I was kind of trying to move on from that career and wanting to focus on research, and I, I had this.

[00:01:34] Somewhat irrational fear that people were gonna make me, somehow they could make me start counseling students again when I, that's not what I wanted to, to do. Um, but I did spend time, I spent 10 years doing, um, counseling. Um, in a variety of different kind of formats at, uh, at usc, university of Southern California.

[00:01:55] And I, at some point, I, I, I actually had other people had to [00:02:00] point it out to me, that, uh, I had a situation where I was doing some work with a, a colleague and I just mentioned that, you know, when I was a counselor, blah, blah, blah, and they were like, and just in kind of in the middle of everything, they went.

[00:02:15] Oh my God, that explains so much. And I'm kind of like, I don't know how to take that . Um, but they, they were basically, when I was able to talk to them later, they said, oh, well you seemed different from other researchers. You, you had this more kind of human or aspect to your research. You know, really kind of focusing on, on, on the, the.

[00:02:37] And that students are people, these numbers represent people who have full and complete lives and experiences. And so I was like, oh, I guess there was a compliment then , . And then I wasn't sure, but you know, I was doing the counseling piece for some time and then while I was in graduate school, you know, I had an internship [00:03:00] that I had to do.

[00:03:01] And, um, my teacher, the one doing the in. I said, I, I don't know what to do. And they were like, oh, the vice president of Student Affairs needs help with surveys. Go help her. And I went, that sounds boring. Why would I want to do that? And she pretty much just said, shut up and do it. And I just got really like into it to the point where I started making notes about how we can improve the survey and analyzing the data.

[00:03:30] And the vice president was, um, impressed that I, you know, got that involved in it and, and had all those opinions. She told me I needed to kind of calm down, um, because I didn't, obviously coming in as a graduate assistant, you know, kind of level. I didn't understand the full picture, but she took the time to explain.

[00:03:50] A huge mentor for me and life changing because a, as a result of that internship, which was unpaid by the way, but that did turn into a paid graduate assistant [00:04:00] position. And then some, you know, I'm gonna shorten the story, but some years later it ended up turning into a full-time job, uh, with that vice President of student Affairs.

[00:04:09] Nice. And I had this unique position where I was actually doing counseling and research at the same time. Um, and then eventually I was kind of like, I, I think I really would just like to focus on the research and in graduate school I met several people who worked at the community college cuz I, I went to, um, I went to a uc right out of high school, so I didn't have that experience.

[00:04:32] But I did take a few classes during the summer at the local community college. And just from talking to my, my classmates who worked at the community college, I started to think that maybe that was a better fit for. And so I made the switch and I've been at the community college in this sphere, , uh, for more years than I'd care to admit,

[00:04:55] Brendan Aldrich: Well, and so that's, and that was your second of, of three careers really. So starting with counselor, [00:05:00] going on to researcher and now c e o of a, uh, of an education research nonprofit. 

[00:05:06] Carla Cooper: Yeah. I didn't see that one coming. I, I fully expected to kind of stick with the research career until retirement that I, I assumed retirement was gonna be my third uh, career, but here I am.

[00:05:20] Um, and, uh, I love what I do. I love our, our organization and, and what we stand for and what we're, have been our, and are trying to be. Um, so it's. 

[00:05:33] Brendan Aldrich: And we're so thankful that you are in that role because among other things, you've been doing great research, including being the driving force co-directing through the gate since 2016, which is a, a research initiative supported by College Futures Foundation, uh, EC M C Foundation and the Lumina Foundation.

[00:05:48] It involves more than 2 million students and is focused on identifying ways to increase the transfer rates of community college students who are close to transfer but have not yet made it to. I'd love to [00:06:00] hear your perspective on not only why transfer is so important, but maybe some of the initial findings from that first report.

[00:06:06] Carla Cooper: The majority of. of the underrepresented groups who attend higher education start out in the community college. It is their way to the university. Many students, for a variety of reasons, are not able to access the university right out of high school, and so they need to have a way to get another way to get to the university because again, there's lots of data that shows the how much having a bachelor's degree can affect your, your quality.

[00:06:32] Your ability to, to make money, right? For that eco economic mobility. And so that's why transfer is key. If you have most of the students from these underrepresented groups accessing, um, the university in this way, then transfer is key. So if we're not looking at equity in transfer, then we're not looking at equity.

[00:06:52] So through the gate started, um, from some simple conversations among colleagues, we're getting a sense that there was a group [00:07:00] of students out. Who were doing all the work, taking the classes, paying the money, spending the time and the energy amassing a lot of units and in some cases significant debt and then not going on to, to the university.

[00:07:15] And so that's kind of a head scratcher, right? Who's like, why would anybody go through all of that and not go to the next step? Transfer is not the student's ultimate goal. Students don't transfer and go, Woohoo, I'm. , right? It's a step to their, you know, their next goal, which is obviously achieving a bachelor's degree.

[00:07:33] And in most cases there's o other goals after that, whether that's graduate education or a, a career. And so we, we have to kind of keep that in mind when we're, we're looking at that is that transfer's not the goal. It's a goal. It's an intermediate goal, but it is the, the, the hurdle you must get over to get to those other goals.

[00:07:54] So we started off by just looking at the data and over the five year period that we [00:08:00] looked at, we found about, uh, 300,000 students who fit this category. . And so it was kind of like, okay, I think we need to research this a bit more . We need to find out what is going on, what, what is happening with, with students who, again, spend all the time, money, energy, and don't transfer.

[00:08:18] Why not? And so we, we looked at the, the quantitative data in a, in a variety of ways and, and then said, okay, that's great. That's lots of information, you know, kind of came from that. Um, but we also need to. Find these students and ask them, because you're not gonna get the why from the data. You can get the who and some of the what, uh, a little bit of the how, but not the why.

[00:08:45] And so that's really what, what are through the GATE study was designed to do. And then since then it has spawned other studies. Right. 

[00:08:53] Brendan Aldrich: So in the report, one of the things it talks about is that it's not just a, did you or didn't you transfer, but you [00:09:00] really developed an entire transfer continuum around the student journey.

[00:09:04] Is that right? . Correct. 

[00:09:07] Carla Cooper: Um, again, it's acknowledging that students don't just transfer or not transfer. That there's, there's a, a whole journey , that it takes a lot of, again, time, energy, effort to get there. And so our study, uh, kind of categorized, uh, this group of students and we referenced them as high leverage students.

[00:09:25] And, and we use that term because these are students who have, in most cases, at least 60 units of transferrable. . All right. And, and some of them have met their English and math requirements. Some haven't, but that's a lot of time and effort. And, and those students are, are going to be easier to leverage, right.

[00:09:45] To, to get, to transfer than a, than working with someone who, you know, only has 10 units, zero units, 20 units, that kind of thing. So that's, that's what that is. And, and essentially the, that high leverage group, we call them at the gate and [00:10:00] near. and the real difference between the two is the English and math completion.

[00:10:05] Um, so our at the gate students from, again, from everything we can tell in the data and the quantitative data. They've met the, they've checked all the boxes. They've got the 60 plus transferable units. They've, they've got a 2.0. They've completed their transfer level English and math. And we also included in that group students who had completed the associate degree for transfer.

[00:10:25] That's something specific here to California that is, is supposed to, it's, you know, more complicated than, I'm gonna simplify it, but it, it's supposed to guarantee your, your, um, admission into a California state university. If you have this degree, it's your. Into the university. So again, why would somebody go through the effort of completing that degree, which literally has transfer in the name and then not transfer, right?

[00:10:51] So that, that's kind of our at the Gate group and the near the gate group, our students who also have the 60 units also have the 2.0, but they have not [00:11:00] completed the English and math. Some of them may have completed one or the other, or. , but that is, that is their hurdle that they seem, you know, they haven't been able to to go over.

[00:11:10] So they're very near the gate, but they're not quite at the gate. 

[00:11:15] Brendan Aldrich: Hey, for everyone listening, hang tight. We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and we'll be back in just one minute. 

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[00:12:22] Brendan Aldrich: Thanks so much for listening to our sponsor.

[00:12:25] Let's get back to the. Now amongst those different groups, one of the things that you did with the study was explore the role of gender and race, ethnicity and even region for students at different points in the transfer continuum with, I thought, some interesting and intriguing findings amongst the, uh, African-American and Latino communities.

[00:12:41] If you could share some of those results. 

[00:12:43] Carla Cooper: Absolutely. So, um, the, the finding that surprised a lot of people, Not me, because I had done research in this area before was, again, if you look at the group of students, the the two that I mentioned, the at [00:13:00] the gate and the near the gate, and then you, you look at every, and then you add in the students who actually did transfer, right?

[00:13:06] So you've got kind of those three groups out of the entire population that we looked at, that the proportions were basically about two-thirds had. . And the other third was split, uh, between the, at the gate and the near the gate students, so around 66%. Well, then we disaggregated that data to see what those numbers looked like for each, um, ethnic group.

[00:13:30] And we looked at gender, not, not as much of a difference there, there were some differences by, you know, certain, certain regions, but the most striking finding in that case was with our African American. where they actually were the most likely to have transferred out of that group. So again, I, that 66%, that was for the whole group, that same number for African Americans was 75.

[00:13:55] Wow. 75%. Um, and so it, it wasn't just that they were higher than the [00:14:00] average. They were the highest, which kind of, you know, lended itself to a, you know, for us to kind of ask the. . Huh? . I know that's not very, we don't actually write research questions like, huh, but that was the, the, the, the motivation to go, we, we need to find out what's happening.

[00:14:16] Because what that said to us is that, well, first of all, you have to, to step back and look at, if you look at transfer rates from the point of freshmen, right? Follow them for some period of time. Usually, you know, six years or so, African Americans have a, usually among the lowest transfer rates, when you look at it from that starting.

[00:14:36] but if you look at it from this point of like 60 units essentially, so students who can make it to some point, I don't think the point is 60 units, but some, something is happening between zero and 60 where it flips and they go from being kind of, if not the least likely, much the among the least likely to the most likely something's going.

[00:14:58] and that's where, [00:15:00] you know, um, which we'll again, talk about in a little bit. It spawned, you know, a, a new research project and to try to find out what, what is that tipping point? What is it that is turning the, the, the, the, the picture around for our African American students. And then regarding our, our, our Latinx, our our Latina Latino.

[00:15:19] Uh, communities. What we found, um, with them was that they were actually the group most likely to earn, uh, that a d t that associate degree for transfer. And they, but, and, but they were the least likely to transfer. Interesting. So again, that's that head scratcher in terms of why would anyone put forth this effort and not transfer.

[00:15:43] So we're actually in the process now of trying to, to find, uh, to conduct that research study, to dig into that question in terms of how this particular population is, is being affected, and what, again, all of our [00:16:00] research is not just to kind of point the finger to say, oh, look at this problem, this problem, that problem.

[00:16:04] It's more about, right, right, right. Who's solving this problem? And so with, with both of these studies, we want to find the, the, the places that don't fit the stereotype, right, that don't match the data that are. At transferring African American students that, or, and, and Latinx students. So that's, that's kind of where the direction that we're headed in right now.

[00:16:26] Brendan Aldrich: that'll be intriguing. I know. Now, on the original report, you did publish phase two near around the beginning of the pandemic. It was around May and July of 2020. And in this case, you actually had gone further in terms of interviewing and surveying the students to determine factors that were most relevant to them as they were deciding whether or not to transfer to the university.

[00:16:45] So I imagine getting to that why that you were talking about, and, uh, personally I love this kind of on the ground subject oriented research. Uh, what did you hear from the. 

[00:16:56] Carla Cooper: so much , so much . [00:17:00] But we, we were able to boil it down to what, uh, we call our student transfer capacity building framework, which is four factors.

[00:17:09] Um, that, uh, again, when we ask students what is helping or hindering their ability to transfer, you know, again, after they've reached these milestones again, we talked to the students who met those categories that near the gator at the gate, um, cri. . And so the four factors, the number one factor, and, and again, we disaggregated data.

[00:17:30] There's, there's so much information, that, that we don't have time for me to go into. But o the one thing I will say about the disaggregation is that for that f for the first factor, there were no differences. Meaning it was everyone's number one factor as a challenge, the number one most challenging factor.

[00:17:49] And, and that is called university afford. and what it more or less boils down to is that students don't, they don't know if they [00:18:00] can afford the university. They, they can't see it. They can't, they, they, they can't see the possibility. They don't see a way, you know, to, to doing that. They don't have enough information while they're still like in community college while they're considering things.

[00:18:15] Cuz again, everybody can look up a website and see what tuition. , but they also have enough knowledge to know that's not it. Right? There's so many, there's, it ca there's so many other costs to go into the university and not just the ones at the university, you know, books and things like that, but how am I going to, where am I going to live?

[00:18:35] How am I going to pay for that? I've got children, I've got, you know, family. I've got, there's a lot of, I've got, and I've got to. , uh, how, how am I gonna get there? What's the transportation? What about childcare? There's all these different factors that students are like, I don't see a way, and me personally, we didn't necessarily verify this in the research, but just in talking to students, [00:19:00] they, if you think about it from this perspective, at least here in California, you a lot of students can qualify to get their tuition paid for.

[00:19:08] Um, in the California community college system, a lot of students qualify. , well, if they're gonna, and then that's it, that's the only aide that they get. They have to figure out how to pay for everything else. Um, if they applied that same logic to the university, they're, they're gonna go, I can't afford it.

[00:19:24] If all you're gonna pay for is tuition, I, I still can't afford, you know, to go to the university. So they don't also know that the financial aid gates, so to speak, open. at the university, there's a bunch of financial aid that's only available to university students. That's not available to community college students.

[00:19:42] So again, it's things like that, that we need to, to do a better job of, of helping students understand and just see that it's possible. Um, the other factors, uh, there, we did find some differences again, uh, disaggregating, but pathway navigation students talked a [00:20:00] lot. Um, not taking the right classes at the right time in the right order, not getting the information that they need to be making the right decisions.

[00:20:09] Um, not, uh, knowing what their major is, not really getting, uh, enough help to kind of figure out their path. So, uh, a lot about that. The other one, huge school life balance. , you know, our students in in our community colleges are, are juggling a lot of things. I said a lot of them are parents or, or they have other family responsibilities for siblings or.

[00:20:31] Grandparents, you know, uh, parents things, uh, like that they have to work. Um, there, there's a lot going on in their lives and, uh, their, their, their struggle trying to see how am I gonna be able to balance everything in my life with going to the university? I'm just not seeing it. So a lot of, a lot of these factors are, are the students inability to see what's possible?

[00:20:52] They don't know what kind of help is available for, for them. They don't know what the. , look, you know, options are, you know, do they have [00:21:00] online classes? Do they have evening classes? Do they have weekend classes? You know, all of those kinds. Can I go part-time? All of those things are kind of unclear to, to, to students.

[00:21:08] They're, they're not made obvious. And then the final factor is support network, which is just acknowledging that, that, uh, hardly anybody does it alone. , I don't know anybody who has, quite frankly, in some capacity, whether it's your family at. , whether it's a group of friends, whether it's a counselor, a teacher, uh, someone who works in the cafeteria, it doesn't matter.

[00:21:32] But, but kind of emphasizing that what we saw was that having a network or not having one really did influence students. Kind of again, seeing the possibility of transfer students who had that support network and against a variety of. Fulfilling a variety of needs and a variety of roles. Um, people who had that were much more optimistic about their, their chances of, of going on to transfer it.

[00:21:57] The people who didn't have that were [00:22:00] pessimistic. They, they weren't sure, um, how they were going to, to do it. So that was so interesting. But I, I think the purpose of the framework is, is to kind of take things that a lot of us kind of already knew in some ways, but to put it in, in something concrete and tangible.

[00:22:18] And, and it, it might, he, it helped, hopefully, gives you the framework to target your efforts to try to say, what can you do about support network? What can you do about university affordability? As opposed to the bigger question, which is how do we help students 

[00:22:31] Brendan Aldrich: transfer. You'd mentioned the report, the the student transfer capacity building framework.

[00:22:36] Now with that in mind, are there things that colleges can do now to help better support students achieving transfer? Both. Both in the way that we'd used to look at it, pre pandemic as well as now during and, and toward the later ends of the pandemic. Uh, what can colleges do? . 

[00:22:52] Carla Cooper: Absolutely. Well, first I'll say, you know, we, we've put out a variety of reports and briefs and infographics and things like that, and [00:23:00] in all of them includes advice, recommendations of, of what colleges and universities can do, um, to, to help students transfer.

[00:23:09] And, and again, they were in the original. There were recommendations there. Phase two, the Covid uh, survey as well. So there's recommendations all along the way, but I would say the overall kind of recommendation is that transfer is not the community college's responsibility solely they must, universities must.

[00:23:30] Step up and be true partners in this and, and, and it has to go beyond, you know, what do they call those university days or, you know, where the universities come to campus. It's, it's, it's got to be mu much more effort has to be put into that, uh, helping students, uh, as close to seamless as possible. But, but most importantly to, they need to, to.

[00:23:55] they need to see that it's possible for them and how, how it's possible [00:24:00] not just a dream with no, no specifics, but literally how is it going to be possible? For me to go to the, to the university. And so, um, that's kind of the key thing in terms of the university affordability. Again, if that's their chief concern, then that's what we need to be focusing on getting, helping students see it in a realistic way, not just like, I'm sure it'll be okay.

[00:24:22] And again, I'm not promoting that we should start packaging students for financial aid at the university while they're still at the community college. Obviously not. But even just telling them the this is this, these are all the costs. and these are the, this is the, the financial aid scholarships work study, all the different ways that you can access that you may not have access to now, um, when you transfer to, to the university that there, there is more aid available to you.

[00:24:52] Finding ways to give students the information they need based on where they are in. because that student who has zero units, who [00:25:00] has 30 units, who has 45 units, 60 units, they need different information. And there's so many times I have been doing this a long time and, and one thing I have heard consistently for, again, longer than years than I want to quantify is the students saying, I wish I had known about this.

[00:25:20] Whether that's a program, whether that's a requirement, whether that's advice, you know, uh, that, that would set them up for success. They wish they had known about things earlier. So really kind of taking into account and mapping out what does a student with zero units, 15 units, 30 units, 45 units, 60 units need to know at that time.

[00:25:38] Um, school life. This is one where we were concerned that when we put this out there, that people would kind of push back. College folks would push back and say, well, I can't control their life. I can't change their, the fact that they're a parent. And I'm like, no, of course not. But are you trying to take that into consideration when you're scheduling?

[00:25:58] When you're scheduling classes, how you [00:26:00] offer the classes, are faculty taking that into consideration in terms of these, these rules of no, except no late papers and no, no exceptions, and none of this. Where's the compassion? That's, that's what school life balance, you know, that factor's really trying to appeal to you is.

[00:26:16] where's your compassion? And then I'm not tr, I'm not saying, you know, just, ah, just let everything go. Obviously students need structure. They need to understand, and, and a lot of people kind of argue about the real world doesn't have that. I'm like, actually, the real world does have exceptions. , quite frankly, right?

[00:26:31] You know who you know and where you are and you know what you know, and all of those things. So compassion. Um, and also looking at your services. If you're only open, you know, nine to. , what about the student who works nine to five? Right? How are they supposed to access tutoring? How are they supposed to, you know, get to financial aid, you know, have things online.

[00:26:53] That's the other thing the pandemic showed us, and we heard this from a lot of students, is how certain services were actually became more [00:27:00] accessible in the pandemic. because they were forced to, to go online, you had to make an appointment online versus there were schools that make students have to come in person at a certain time, on a certain day, make an appointment, not to see the counselor, make an appointment, to see the counselor, and when they run out of out of appointments, try again next week.

[00:27:19] But with the online scheduling, students can go in at whatever time onto the website, look it up, all of that's fine. Uh, so that's kind of. , uh, the piece about the, the compassion and that. And then finally, again, support network. First, you gotta let students know that they need to build one, they need to have one.

[00:27:37] They cannot do this alone and then help them build it, facilitate different kinds of activities and opportunities for them to, to get to know their teachers, to get to know counselors, to get to know other students and other people on the. 

[00:27:51] Brendan Aldrich: The research has spawned additional, uh, research efforts as well, uh, including what looks to be some exciting insights into African American [00:28:00] students with the African American Transfer Tipping Point study.

[00:28:04] Now, I think you're near the end of that study and wondered if there were any insights that you could share with us about the work maybe ahead of the actual official report publication. . 

[00:28:12] Carla Cooper: Well, this study is, is modeled very similar to Through the Gate in terms of phases. So we're, we're just ending the first phase, which is that quantitative piece.

[00:28:21] And again, trying to find in that data where are those, uh, again, kind of tipping points where, where, what is making the difference between a student being more or less likely, uh, to transfer. So we, we did that research and we looked at the results and went. , what does that mean, ? And so we concluded that we needed to, to pause and, and speak to students and practitioners to try to get some context around what these results kind of mean.

[00:28:55] And we're very, very thankful that we took that pause because we were very [00:29:00] concerned about if we just released this information without context, people are just gonna go, oh well, , nothing we can do about it. kind of that response. And so we wanted to, to say, to try to give again that context some nuance to where it's like, well, we, why is this finding, why did we, you know, find this had an, uh, an impact?

[00:29:21] And so our plan is to, uh, release the, the information, the reports, and we're gonna have a webinar, uh, in October. Is, is what we're, we're targeting. It's not surprisingly, uh, what we found was that completing transfer level English and math, uh, was sig a significant influence on it, on whether a student was going to be, uh, successful.

[00:29:46] And uh, but in addition to that, we found impacts related to counseling, whether students receive counseling or not. Uh, whether students had put put on academic prob. or not, and whether they had [00:30:00] participated in a program that we have here in the state of California. It's called O osha, U M O J A O, osha, which is a, uh, African term for, for Unity.

[00:30:09] And it's a program that is for African American students in the other California community college system. And so we found that students, you know, being able to, who participated in that, um, had higher chances for. So that's, that's where we are. You know, there'll be lots more information coming in October, so invite you.

[00:30:30] And your listeners to, um, check that out when, when those come out. 

[00:30:34] Brendan Aldrich: I know we're getting close to, uh, to wrapping up, but before we do, I typically love for our listeners to hear these insights and these experiences from our guests that that might help give them the higher edge and the way they look at and approach things.

[00:30:46] So I'm curious, we started by talking about your journey from counselor to researcher to ceo, and I wondered if along the way there was a, a story maybe about something someone said or something you experienced. Maybe help shape the way you look at and [00:31:00] approach your work that you could 

[00:31:00] Carla Cooper: share. What comes to mind is to work hard and be open.

[00:31:05] And so you have to be open to the opportunities that that come your way. But the, the opportunities are more likely to come your way if, if you work hard and people see that. If you let people see who you are, what you can do, um, then that you're more likely to, for somebody to reach out and say, Hey, you ever thought about doing this?

[00:31:25] Hey, I think you'd be good at. . Um, because you, you gotta let pe people see your, your, your shine, right? You've gotta let people see what a star you, you are, and then you just have to, to be open to making that left turn. , you know, uh, again, I, I, none of these steps along my, my journey were what I originally planned or planned after that, or planned after that.

[00:31:50] it was always just kind of like, oh, okay. I'm, I'm, I'm happy doing what I'm doing, but I'm, I'm working hard. I'm letting people see again who I am and what I can do, and [00:32:00] opportunities, you know, came my way and I, I said, yes, , I said, . 

[00:32:08] Brendan Aldrich: Great advice. Well, Darla, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experiences with us today.

[00:32:13] Uh, for our listeners, we've been talking with Darla Cooper, the executive Director for the RP Group in California. For more information about the RP Group and to download full copies of the published work, including the studies mentioned on today's show, please visit their website at www. Dot RP group.org.

[00:32:31] Darla, would it be alright, uh, with you if listeners would like to reach out to you with questions about today's episode? Absolutely. If you're listening and you'd like to continue the conversation with Darla, just drop an email to Darla the higher edge.com. That's Darla, d a r l a, the higher edge.com.

[00:32:49] Darla, it's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks again for coming on and being a guest with us, uh, on the higher edge. And for everyone listening, I'm Brendan Aldridge and we'll talk. Thanks 

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