"Clear goals keep us steady. We focus on a few key tasks, so everyone knows where we're headed."
Chris Montagnino has nearly 25 years of experience in adult and online higher education, building successful leadership teams and launching and scaling online education programs.
As Vice President of Online Operations, Montagnino leads the online division of Champlain College, which features more than 80 career-focused degree programs in business, cybersecurity, healthcare, information technology and marketing. online.champlain.edu
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Chris Montagnino: I have spent the last 25 years immersed in adult and online higher education, building leadership teams and launching and scaling online programs.
As Vice President of Online Operations, I lead the online division of Champlain College, a private, nonprofit college in Burlington, Vermont that celebrated its 30th year of offering online degree programs in 2023. Champlain College Online features over 80 career-focused certificate and degree programs in business, cybersecurity, healthcare, information technology and marketing for 2,000 students.
Before I joined Champlain College in 2022, I worked as the Vice President of University Partnerships at Academic Partnerships, building strategic collaborations to help institutions develop, market and grow their online offerings. I’ve also worked with Excelsior University, University of Phoenix and Herzing University.
I am passionate about delivering online programs to students from all demographics, especially those often underserved in traditional higher education.
I believe that these online programs can be life-changing for students, leading to greater educational, economic and social equity.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Chris Montagnino: I am grateful to be operating a business centered around improving the lives of others by increasing access and equity through education.
I firmly believe that if you can rally your team around something more than revenue – something inspirational and human-centered – people will stay longer and work harder.
Our staff comes to us either driven by their desire to change lives or develop this passion over time within our organization. Communicating our values regularly with consistency builds trust, as does transparency and empathy.
As a leader, I spend a lot of time in conversations across our business and teams, listening and learning, and providing space for people to be heard. I think this combination of approaches helps us retain staff and build upon our student-centric culture.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Chris Montagnino: With the explosion of remote and hybrid work related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers shifted to distributed teams and organizational models. It’s become more valuable than ever to have employees who’ve mastered virtual communication and collaboration, as well as managing their own productivity, and all of these skills are inherently obtained through an online higher education experience.
Champlain College Online is training online students to become highly skilled and effective remote employees as they (and sometimes before they) enter a remote workforce.
This value will continue to drive enrollment in online higher education, given it is so much more accessible than an in-person college experience.
In the coming year, Champlain College Online will focus on integrating artificial intelligence into our student experience to provide personalized, 24/7 service and support for our students learning asynchronously across time zones.
Higher education has the potential to use generative AI to reinvent teaching and learning, hyper-personalize the student experience, provide constant academic and career support, create administrative efficiencies, and save on financial and human capital resources that can trickle down to students, ultimately reducing the cost of attendance.
When my team is free of administrative and repetitive tasks, they can spend more quality time talking, coaching and advising our students. To me this means that AI is actually driving further human connections, not reducing it as the headlines often report.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Chris Montagnino: I am incredibly passionate about equity in education. If I could write a book, it would be a guidebook for increasing access to meaningful higher education that can propel the lives and careers of underserved people forward.
At Champlain College Online and the organizations I’ve worked with in the past, I’ve prioritized initiatives around equity and access with success by providing competitive tuition rates and maximizing transfer credit through prior learning assessment, workplace experience, military service, training and certifications, all while also bringing financial literacy to the forefront of federal and private aid conversations with students.
More institutions that focus on the best interest of students are needed in our competitive and changing landscape, so I’d love to share my experiences with the goal of making higher education accessible to all people, no matter their age, race, economic status or geographic location.
Years 2020-2023 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2024? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Chris Montagnino: The value of higher education has been debated more and more over the past five years. While many see this as negative, I’m heartened that students are holding us accountable for continued improvements in quality and outcomes.
We must embrace the fact that our students, especially online, come to us with valuable skills already, so we are responsible for teaching them how to articulate and apply existing experience and learning within their academic program. Students are asked to bridge their prior knowledge and learning into active and applied learning in the classroom, which helps them recognize our value well before graduation.
I see a lot of businesses operating out of fear or reactivity right now, but I tend to take the opposite approach and ground our team in three to five primary initiatives so our organization as a whole is aligned – we always know where we’re headed and what’s important.
This doesn’t mean that we aren’t forward-thinking and exploring new tactics – because Champlain College Online is the most innovative place I’ve ever worked – but I don’t take changing our priorities lightly. I firmly believe that teams become less productive when they don’t understand what is mission-critical and most meaningful to the business at any given time.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Chris Montagnino: Success to me is three-fold:
- Bring more students to Champlain College Online to earn affordable career-focused degrees steeped in authentic and applied learning.
- Expedite paths to degrees by increasing awareness of access to credit for prior learning.
- Increase our student population from underserved communities through transfer credit initiatives.
Champlain College Online provides the best online higher education in the market thanks to our incredibly talented practitioner faculty and subject matter experts, skilled eLearning team, and supportive and thoughtful staff.
The more students that join the CCO community, the more informed, career-ready, mindful, collaborative, and remote-capable critical thinkers we’ll have in the workforce, propelling our economy and lived experiences forward for generations to come.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Chris Montagnino for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Chris Montagnino or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
