Matt Harmon:
March is upon us and so is the midpoint of the spring semester. We catch up on the latest campus news and are joined by New Monmouth, director of Athletics Jen San with university President, Dr. Patrick Leahy. This is faculty member Matt Harmon. It's time for another edition of our Monmouth Weekly podcast series. Thanks as always for listening.
Fantastic day. The last day of February calendar says it's going to be March, starting tomorrow, which usually makes people think, wow, this semester is flying by January, done, February, done, March will start tomorrow with university president, Dr. Patrick Lehey. I'm faculty member Matt Harmon. This is another edition of our Monmouth Weekly podcast. As I said in the open, we're going to be talking some Monmouth University athletics with some news coming out just this past week. We'll save that for a couple of minutes and I'll say a very good morning to my co-host and president Lehe. I feel like every time we do this in February, it's such an easy way to start by just saying, wow, the semester seems to be flying by. We're six, seven weeks in and the campus buzzing with activity.

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, good morning, Matt. Yeah, the spring break is only a week or two away, so that marks the middle of the spring semester already, I should say. Happy leap Day to you.

Matt Harmon:
Happy.

Patrick Leahy:
I do think this is the first time we've done one of our joint podcasts on a leap day, so pretty special moment in the history of Monmouth Weekly.

Matt Harmon:
I don't know how I missed that four years ago. I'm going to have to time it now for four years from now. You think and you say, well, we're halfway through the semester, which seems crazy yesterday. I know you had an open call. I was in a department meeting yesterday and people were already talking about, Hey, what are we doing at the end of the semester? Which seems crazy to think about it, but as you had your open call yesterday and talk to the general university community, what would I say was kind of the main talking points of that since we're midway through the spring semester?

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I touted yesterday, and I hope it wasn't lost on the campus community, is that something really remarkable happened last week, and that is last week we got our 9574th undergraduate application. I use that specific term because that marked the largest applicant pool in our 90 year history, and with still months to go before this process wraps up, that means that we are going to eclipse thousand applications for the 950 or so freshmen that we want to bring in next year. So I just hope that that is a statistic worth celebrating around here, and I hope it suggests hyper interest in Monmouth University as we continue to develop. So that was a big part of it, so way too early to sort of predict what the first year class is going to look like, but I do think I'm going to be able to say that it was the largest and the finest applicant pool that we've ever had, and that would be three or four years running now. So really, really positive progress in that regard.

Matt Harmon:
Not to put you on the spot, but knowing that number and then thinking, well, there's still months to come and 10,000 seems to be a certainty. What's the normal number of applications that the university would normally field?

Patrick Leahy:
Well, a few years ago we were in 9,000 and then through the covid years it dropped a little bit. We're anticipating this enrollment cliff that we keep hearing about, and you and I have talked about multiple times on this podcast that's coming still a year or two when just the number of traditional age high school graduates looking to matriculate in college here in New Jersey is going to go down, and it's not just New Jersey, it's the entire northeast, the Midwest, really all of us in about half of the country are going to face that, so we're anticipating that, but in the last few years, those application numbers have climbed and we're up over a thousand applications this year over last year, and then we were up last year over the previous year. So I hope we're on the cusp of a trend even despite the challenges that we know are coming with just demographic changes.

Matt Harmon:
Well, I was going to say that, and we can save this for maybe another podcast. We've got other things to talk about, but since it was a point of your open call yesterday, is it possible that the, and I'll use air quotes, the experts are maybe getting it wrong that maybe this cliff isn't going to be as bad as possible or a school like Monmouth might be an outlier to that, or when I say Monmouth, I mean that could Monmouth and whoever else it's going to hit, but maybe it's not going to be as bad.

Patrick Leahy:
You're a glass half full guy, aren't you, Matt? I

Matt Harmon:
Sure am. I definitely am only on leap year though, so it only happens on

Patrick Leahy:
Leap day leap head. So who knows is the bottom line, I mean all of the demographers, if you will, are consistent on this. That just the numbers. Again, you need to look at it from a macro perspective. Numbers are moving against this. Look at it from a micro perspective that is institution to institution. I hope you're right that our institution is going to sort of buck that trend because maybe we're doing some things here, maybe we're on the move in a way that will allow us to get a disproportionate share of those decreasing number of applications and that will allow us to continue to enroll robust class maybe at the expense of some other institutions. I don't know. So all of the demographics point toward decreasing demand, but that doesn't mean that individual institutions like Monmouth don't have a few strategies up our sleeve to try to figure out how to ensure that we're one of the strong ones in that tough market

Matt Harmon:
Transition to this, and I know this has been a talking point for you the last couple of years. Speaking of how Monmouth could buck that trend, some of the capital projects that have been important to you to make the campus bigger, better, whatever the adjective that you want to throw in there, is that part of this as well?

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, I mean, one of our greatest assets, our next guest knows this. Everyone who's directly connected to Monmouth knows this. One of our greatest assets is our campus, and then you take that beautiful campus that integrates historic buildings like the Great Hall and the Guggenheim Memorial Library with State-of-the-art facilities like the Ocean First Bank Center and our business school buildings and Edison Hall. You take that beautiful campus, but then you locate it in a fantastic location here right at the Jersey shore in a shore town close to New York and Philly. It's a great asset. It's one of our greatest assets. In some respects, we're going to keep tending to that asset and developing that asset. So a lot of small things like new turf fields for our athletics programs, not just our varsity athletes, but our intramural and our club athletes. We've just made some enhancements to our student center and to our fitness center, small enhancements while we're simultaneously working on the big ones, which I think we announced last fall, the building of the Bruce Springsteen archives and Center for American Music right on our campus.
Last week at the board meeting, we got final approval to move ahead full speed on that project. So we're constantly investing in the campus, both small projects, no one of which is going to be a game changing. It's a combination of things like our intercultural center and the way we've retooled the Great Hall and the way we've built out our career development center and the like. It's a combination of those small things and then punctuated by absolutely game changing investments like the Bruce Springsteen archives in the Center for American Music. So it's something we constantly are tending to is the look and the feel and the usability of one of our great assets. Our campus.

Matt Harmon:
You mentioned the turf fields being redone, part of the athletic department here on campus, and just two days ago news came out that the search for a new director of athletics was completed. I will let you make a formal introduction to our guest here today. No big surprise if you've been following Monmouth from a community standpoint, emails went out. It's posted on the website on all the social media, but we're pretty excited to have our next guest come on here today on Monmouth weekly.

Patrick Leahy:
It was Monday, I think at 2 28 that we've finalized the naming of our permanent athletic director, and that would be Jennifer San Vero, jd, those of us who are involved in the Monmouth community. As you suggest Matt already know Jen. She's been serving as the acting athletic director for the past six months or so. I've been joking with her that I think six months is a long enough interview, don't you think? Makes sense. And she passed every conceivable challenge. During that six month interview, we did conduct a search because I want to ensure that if there are any other in particular internal candidates that were interested in the position, that I would go ahead and interview them and give them consideration. But no surprise Jen emerged in that process as our lead candidate. I offer her the position and she's accepted it. I'll just say a couple things about why I think Jen is the right person and we'll talk later about how complex an environment intercollegiate athletics is right now.
I talked to a lot of people in athletics and I've learned that Jen is tough, so she's up to those challenges. She's incredibly fair to all of our teams, which is really important to me. She is herself a college softball player, but she treats all of our 22 sports with great care and equity. So that spoke to me, but what really drew my attention was the deep enduring sincere care that she has for our student athletes, and I've been watching the way she interacts with our student athletes for six months. I asked their opinion over the course of the last six months, and she has really deep relationships with so many of our student athletes, in particular our student athletes of color, which I think is really important to make sure that our minority students feel really welcome here at Monmouth. So for all those reasons, she was a great choice.
The other thing I've been saying is she's a great inside outside candidate. Well, what does that mean? Well, she's new to Monmouth about two and a half years, and she came from some other fine institutions that are mid major athletics programs like ours, not as good as ours, but mid-majors like ours. And so she brought two, two and a half years ago a fresh perspective that I believe we desperately needed in athletics. No disrespect to the giants that came before her, but we hadn't had that fresh perspective in athletics in decades. So that fresh perspective is really important, and she opened my eyes to some things that we need to change and improve in our athletics department. So she's a great outside candidate, but she's also a great inside candidate because in those two years, two and a half years, it's become clear to me that she knows Monmouth, she knows how we roll.
She appreciates our values here at Monmouth. So that was very important to me as well. So you put the two of those together. I think you have an ideal person. I've been saying too, I'm thrilled that she's trained as a lawyer because given the complexities that we're going to face, it's helpful to me and our entire university to have someone trained as an attorney to help sort through some of these challenges. I just think, as I said in the release, she's the right person at the right time, at the right place, and I'm really anxious to work with her in the years to come.

Matt Harmon:
Well, and excited to bring around the podcast now, Jen Sansevero, you just heard officially named Monday announced on Tuesday as the eighth director of athletics in Monmouth college slash university history. Jen, thanks for giving us a couple of minutes here this morning. Welcome to the podcast. I'll start with you here, president Lehe, talk about you and why you are the right person at the right time for this job, and I'm sure in a way to hear it in even a more intimate setting right now where it's just three of us, it's probably a little humbling, right?

Jen Sansevero:
Oh my gosh, I'm so honored and humbled being able to live a dream out. I grew up in Monmouth County. I'm a Monmouth County girl, and Monmouth has always been a first rate institution with a great reputation and what a time now under Dr. Lahey's leadership to assume a position of leadership here myself. It's truly humbling and I'm so grateful.

Matt Harmon:
He had mentioned President Lahey, your stops along the way. I know you played softball, graduated from Mount St. Mary's, worked there, worked at Wagner, worked at UNC Greensboro. Tell me what you learned along the way at those three stops before you got to Monmouth to become, and I think President Leahy said it well, a really good outside inside candidate.

Jen Sansevero:
Yeah, those were all amazing opportunities and all really shaped me in a different way at the Mount. When I went back, I was an alum working for Lynn Robinson, another female athletic director who was a student athlete, a coach, and then the athletic director. She really taught me how to take care of a department, how to, it's all about the people and how to be somebody who genuinely cares, supports and relates with the student athletes and the staff and coaches, and I was able to build a compliance unit there from scratch, so really kind of learned the inner workings of college athletics. I also helped establish a sport management program there, so was involved in the Bolt School of business and taught a class or two in the sport management program, so was engaged holistically with the community at the Mount, and it'll always be a place that really is close to my heart since I went there and played there and then worked there.
Then I was able to get an opportunity at UNC Greensboro and worked for Kim record another female athletic director in the business, and she really taught me how to be an elite level administrator. She comes from a background of SEC and a CC experience and really taught me how to take my career to the next level and how to demand more of people and work towards excellence. We had a lot of success at UNC Greensboro. It was a state institution, so it was a little bit different than the Mount and other private institutions I was at, so that was interesting to be part of the UNC system and a state school as big as UNC Greensboro and then came back home in the area to Wagner College and really learned how to establish and develop an entire unit for student development, student athlete development. We established a fueling center there, an area of sports nutrition, mental health, established again, a sport administration major, so it was connected on campus, served as an academic advisor as well as an athletic administrator, so really learned a lot at Wagner about how to build a unit in order to really help and support student athletes and engage with the community and then was able to get an opportunity to come to Monmouth in 2021 after Jeff Stapleton assumed the responsibility of being an athletic director here and really got to work doing a lot of those same things in building up a student development unit.
We were able to establish a position for a sports behavioral health specialist and sports psychologist consultant here this year. We were able to navigate getting a sports nutrition consultant and really engaging with the community here at Monit. I'm an adjunct professor. I teach in the health physical education department and teach principals of coaching, and that's such a great experience to be able to see student athletes in a different light in the classroom and be engaged in what is truly higher education learning and the exchange of ideas. I've always been an academic and to continue to be in that environment is really cool. And then what we've been able to do in the last seven months in my acting ad capacity really hit the ground running. We established the NIL collective. We were able to manage getting the two turf fields replaced. We were able to win some championships and really play at a high level and beat some really good teams. And our winter seasons are really off to a great start and March Madness is about to kick off, so it's the best time of year as far as I'm concerned.

Matt Harmon:
President Lay, let me follow up and throw a question to you. You had mentioned it in your statement bringing Jen on that you had talked to several of the student athletes over the course of the last six months while Jen was serving in an interim role, and much of her answer right there was all about making things better for what 600 student athletes that we serve on campus throughout the 20 something sports that we have. When you hear her respond back to, Hey, tell me about why you wanted the job or your interest level in the job, you already know it, but is it even more comforting to hear it another time?

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, it never gets told for me to hear it. I mean, when I visited with the student athletes, they see and understand and appreciate what Jenna has done to try to support them, the nutritionist, the sports psychologist, and just the ways in which she puts the student athletes first in our athletics department. The other thing is we have two sets of stars in our athletics department. I mean the student athletes for sure, and then the coaches who coach them and the administration and the staff are the unsung heroes in that effort because they do a ton of work to create an environment where our student athletes can be successful and they don't get the credit that they deserve. I just got a sense in Jen, a similar sort of humility that she's quite comfortable like I am, like so many others are doing the work, whether it's recognized or not, to make sure that those stars can shine.
And I hear that from the student athletes that that's her mentality. I hear from the coaches, I have coaches that I go to Matt that whose opinion I respect a great deal. I didn't get to petition all 22 coaches or whatever, but five or six of them and it was unanimous that look no further. We have our person in Jen and that says a lot to me. I mean, if the coaches had come back to me and said, I'm not sure she's the right person. That would've affected my opinion perhaps, but they did not. It was unanimous and when I announced it Monday at an athletics department meeting that Jen had coincidentally scheduled, there was a standing ovation for her. So that confirmed for me that this was a good choice. And one last thing before I complete this segment, I do think it's worth shouting out. Jeff Stapleton here. Jeff Stapleton served the university really well for 30 some years. Short Stanner is our athletics director, but it was Jeff who hired Jen. So I give Jeff a ton of credit for going out into the market, finding someone of Jen's caliber and bringing her to Monmouth.

Matt Harmon:
Jen, tell me this, and it's probably a much bigger topic, but in the world of college athletics today where there is so much attention on NIL, there is so much attention on transfer portal. There is so much attention on the big money that college athletics is how at a mid-major school like Monmouth, do you survive and I say survive slash thrive so that the student athletes that are on campus at a place like Monmouth or any other don't get lost in the shuffle of the Alabamas, the Michigans, the UCLAs, all the big schools part of the Power five because it's a much different world today. You and I were talking before we hit record, I was on mama's first football team in 1993. That world does not exist anymore in college athletics. It's a whole different ball game.

Jen Sansevero:
Yeah, it really is. And I talked to this the other day with some coaches and staff this phrase called tactical patience, and I think we need to implore this in how we navigate the current landscape of college athletics and it's ever changing and sometimes volatile place that it finds itself is that our mission is the focus and our mission always remains the same. We're in the business of human development. I always go back to that. We really truly are. I talk to our student athletes all the time. We want to prepare you for the most important lineup of your life, which is graduation and to go on to be productive members of society and this community and that mission always remains the same. Now, how we do that and how we engage and how we stay relevant in the mid-major market of college athletics, we will need to implore this tactical patients in order to understand how things are going to maneuver, how we engage with the CAA, what we see happens at the Power five level, how we continue to stay engaged in the recruiting process.
Like Dr. Lahey said before, this is a gem of an institution. It's a first rate institution of higher learning and a very competitive athletics department. We have transitioned into the CAA and we haven't missed a beat. We continue to compete at the highest level. We've won in our premier high profile sports like women's basketball. We're having great seasons right now in men's and women's basketball. Our fall was phenomenally successful with three sports, getting to the CA championship game, tournament championship game. But we need to be decisive. We need to be patient. We need to see how things transpire and roll out from the NCAA and those bigger schools. But we will continue to grow. We will continue to develop and our mission will remain the same.

Matt Harmon:
I'm not sure if you got a sense of this during your, I'd say now almost three years if you're rolling into the fall of 2024, so two and a half years now at this point, the president of the university is quite competitive and doesn't really like to lose very often. He has touted many times along the way on the podcast, Hey, did you notice that we beat this school? Did you notice that we beat that school? But it is a balancing act, right? I love that phrase. Tactical patience. When you think of you're not always going to win. You mentioned three teams winning regular season championships in the fall, and then as the nature of the beast, you're not the team that goes to the NCAA tournament Last year, women's basketball enters the CA tournament as a seven seed and winds up winning the whole thing. I just spoke with Ginny Bogguss the other day. I had her on the men's lacrosse game as our halftime interview. She knows that there's a target on the back of mom of going into the tournament, but I think everyone would say, me, you President, Lahey, all the coaches. If the target's on your back, it means Monmouth is relevant and that's a good thing for everybody.

Jen Sansevero:
Absolutely. I talk about this day a lot because it was just an absolutely amazing experience. I was down in at Towson University on the sidelines watching our women's soccer team compete in the CA championship while at the same time watching on two other people watching our men's soccer team compete in the semifinal game at Monmouth and our field hockey team compete in the CA championship game at Delaware, and I'm standing next to the ad at Towson and the president of Towson and they say, what's going on at Monmouth? Wow, what an amazing run that the school has had. And to be able to position Monmouth to extend its brand and the reputation of not only the academic excellence here at Monmouth, but an athletic excellence and a tradition of excellence that people are saying, wow, what's going on at Monmouth? That's really an amazing thing to be a part of. I'm just so excited to shape the future of our athletic department in this new role.

Matt Harmon:
President Lay, you've got a big smile on your face as Jen gives that answer because that's what you want to hear, right? The brand of Monmouth expanding.

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah. I mean, I was on the sideline that day here on campus watching the men's semifinal, which went into penalty kicks as you recall, and I had one of the games on my phone and another one of our athletic staff members had the other game on his phone. So we were watching, but I'm chuckling because I just now figured out why Jan and I are going to be such a good team. Do you know why? Because she talks about tactical patience, and to me it's like I just come up with the corollary to that which is strategic urgency. So between the strategic urgency that I hope I can bring to the situation, and Jen's tactical patience calming me down when necessary, I think that's going to bode well for the future of athletics at Monmouth.

Matt Harmon:
One would hope. I mean, Monmouth's, such a longstanding history, whether it was at the NEC, the Mac and now the CAA, Jenna, if you had to tell me what the biggest challenge is in college athletics today for you as the now incoming director of athletics, and you could probably look back at me and say, how can I pick one thing? But I'm going to put you on the spot with that and say, tell me what the biggest issue right now for you entering the job here in the winter of 2024 is.

Jen Sansevero:
Well, I'll have to give you the lawyer answer, Matt, but it depends, right? It depends on how some things go here in the landscape of college athletics, but I think the litigation, the labor union decision that Dartmouth student athletes are employees and a combination of NIL and how mid-major schools will engage with those influential decisions and the things come at the NCAA level, that will be a big challenge to navigate. But like I said, our mission always stays the same, and we will continue to be in the business of human development and take care of our student athletes. Our coaches are some of the best and brightest in the business. In my interview when back in September, one of the most impressive things that I was able to go through or to engage with was as the SWA candidate, I was on a call in my interview with all the female head coaches here at Monmouth, and they are just some of the most impressive leaders, competitive humans and great people. It was just so impressive to be part of that group and to lead now lead in this capacity. That group, along with our other head coaches, our coaches are just phenomenal. And I would put them up against any coach at any school at any level. So really excited to get to work with them.

Matt Harmon:
Is this where I say I've watched enough law shows, do I say point of order or do I say redirect and let President Lahey now have a comment?

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, I would like to comment on that because I am not a lawyer, Matt, so I appreciate very much Jen's sensitivity around this. But let me answer the question about the greatest challenge facing US resources. Let's just be honest. It is getting increasingly costly to compete at this level, and we're going to work really hard in the coming years to figure out ways to generate additional resources so that our student athletes can have, and our coaches can have the tools that they need to be competitive because we know other institutions in the CAA are investing heavily in athletics, not just capital investments, but operating investments. And we're, as we've talked about, one of the smallest institutions in the CAA. So we're just going to be focused on trying to make sure that Jen, to the extent possible, and proportionately, because athletics is one part of a much bigger university, has the resources that she needs to be successful.
One of the resource constraints, and maybe we've talked about this, Matt, is the increased cost to send our teams much further afield than in the Mac, right? Well, I wouldn't trade that for the world because now we're sending teams up to New England. We're sending them as far down as South Carolina. And as we've talked about before the last year in the Mac, we had a chance to play on television two times two of our games. I think one men's basketball game and one women's basketball game was on television this year, because of the great work that Jen's doing with our communications and media people, we're going to have over 70 games on television from New England to South Carolina, and that does wonders for our institutional brand, and if that requires an investment to get our programs a little bit further afield, I think that that's worth it.

Matt Harmon:
Jen, appreciate you coming on this morning. I know it's always a busy time. This February reminds me of November where fall becomes winter and now winter becomes spring, so you've got multiple sports going on. We mentioned the end of the basketball season. The conference tournaments will be the next couple of weeks down in DC for both the men and the women. I would imagine. I'll see you down there for those. You've got swimming right now with their conference championships down in Virginia, the start of the lacrosse seasons, the start of baseball, softball, track and field, all the other spring sports. So I know carving some time out here this morning was probably a challenge, but I wish you nothing but the best in the job and a heartfelt congratulations. It sounds like from all indications, president, Lehe, administratively, coaches, staff, student athletes, you're the right person for this job, and you're going to take Monmouth to the next level. Thanks

Jen Sansevero:
So much, Matt. I appreciate the time and thank you, Dr. Lehe.

Matt Harmon:
I would invite both of you to stick around a little bit since you're both on. Maybe we could talk about some broadcast or raise type things, if that's in the cards at all. Everyone's gone on mute. Everyone's gone on mute.

Patrick Leahy:
I'm sorry. I think, yeah, I was just going to say, I think you're on mute. I didn't hear that.

Matt Harmon:
President Lahey, happy leap day. Enjoy this extra day of planning on campus and at the university. I'm sure I'll see you down at the basketball tournaments as well. Thanks for setting this one up. So important to highlight the newest official members when they get promoted, especially when they're within the Monmouth community. This was a lot of fun to take part of.

Patrick Leahy:
Well, I have a saying that it's great people that make great universities, and I think this announcement this week is the latest reflection of that commitment. So I'm really glad to have Jen formally in the role, and of course, always glad to be with you in our podcast efforts to bring this information to a broader audience,

Matt Harmon:
Monmouth Weekly will be trademarking tactical, patience and strategic urgency immediately following this broadcast. For Jen Vero University President Patrick Leahy, I'm faculty member Matt Harmon. This is the end of another edition of Monmouth Weekly. We'll see you in March.