The Aspen Group is celebrating its first completed year of TAG University, its educational arm aimed at providing clinical, business and leadership training to providers.
The Aspen Group is the parent company of several brands, including Aspen Dental and ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers. Chrissie Leibman, senior vice president of leadership and development at The Aspen Group and Dean of TAG University, recently spoke with Becker's about TAG U's accomplishments and goals for the future.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: How does it feel now that TAG University has completed its first full year?
Chrissie Leibman: We're feeling really great. We're super proud of where we were a year ago that even got us to the point of launching the university, and we've made some really great progress and had some great achievements in our first year. It's a little hard to believe it's only been a year, and I think that is part of the excitement. In addition, we've just had a tremendous amount of interaction and engagement with our learners. At the core of why we do what we do is to really support and enable them, and to see TAG U's impact on them has been really rewarding and is also just quite impressive to be a part of that and to have a front row seat to see their growth.
Q: What has the university accomplished so far?
CL: I think a couple of different things. There are multiple dimensions that make TAG U such a special place within the broader TAG family. In its first year, we've seen that growth in multiple directions. We launched a brand new campus in December, which is our online campus, which really gives access to learning 24/7 from wherever they are through technology. It's our online hub that brings everything from a learning perspective and TAG U together in one place. We worked on being ready for that moment for about 18 months, so to see it live and something that our learners are interacting with and meeting them in that moment at their fingertips has been really cool.
One of the things that makes TAG U such a special and different thing from other learning universities is our incredible faculty who bring life to the classes, who act as mentors and guides and coaches. We've retained the faculty we had when we launched and we've grown that faculty, adding about 15 new members over the past year, which has expanded our clinical excellence. We have expertise in patient financing, and we've really grown in leadership and coaching, so to see that group thriving and growing has been really exciting.
Our content is obviously something we're really proud of, and that content is what propels the growth of our TAG U learners. We've launched or upgraded several programs. We're about to introduce a new hygiene program. Our managing clinical director program is one of our signature programs, and we've built off of where it was a year ago and added even more to that program. We've increased our leadership offerings and we've expanded our coaching support. I think across the board, [there have been] a lot of really great and meaningful things happening and it's quite impressive the amount of things the team has accomplished in just the span 365 days.
Q: What kind of feedback have you received from the doctors on the different programs and pathways at TAG University?
CL: I have a couple quotes from learners because I always find that to be my favorite way to see in their own words what they would say about TAG U. One of them said, "I was very impressed and grateful that Aspen Dental is teaching us what empathy is in the Art of Building Relationship classes, and how it helps build relationships with our patients. After taking the course, I know that TAG cares about my patients and me. I'm very content and can't wait to grow within the Aspen family." Another [quote] around just managing stress and the emotion that comes with the job [said], "I'm becoming much more aware of stress that my team might face and how I can be a source of help and not a source of additional stress."
And then maybe one of my favorites, this is from a doctor that came through that signature managing clinical director program, said, "I came in with a list of questions, and all of them were answered. The entire week was set up in a way that was optimal for learning and retention. My network and learning from peers was also super beneficial," which I think gets to that idea of, at its core, what we want TAG U to be is that system of support where people feel like they have questions or they need to build their confidence or their capability, and they leave with those things in hand, plus a network of people, be it their peers or the faculty, who they can lean on as they go forward post their interactions at the university.
Q: Did The Aspen Group have to overcome any challenges during this first year, and if so, what was that process like?
CL: I think maybe the launch of that new campus. Any time you bring a new way of experiencing things, I don't know that I would call it a challenge we had to overcome, but a place we needed to be really thoughtful and intentional of how we [bring] a new dimension or a new way of interacting with learning. That implementation and that change in transition was a place where we were really thoughtful. I don't know that it was a challenge, but definitely a place we were thoughtful of over the course of this year that was going to be a journey, not something we could turn on quickly.
Q: What are some of the considerations your team had to make when launching that campus?
CL: Our learner is always our customer, so [we built] that system and platform with them in mind. When you're turning on an online campus, what you're giving access to is a lot of information and something that's always available, so you don't have to schedule it and it can really meet you in that moment of need. [We were] really thoughtful of how information is organized so that it's helpful and not overwhelming. How do we use the power of the community to promote and celebrate things that are helping other people like them to make it easy to decide, when you're on the platform and you have a lot of choice, what's going to be a really good investment in your development? So that idea of, how do you take something complex, that's rich, and at the same time serve it up in a way that's easy and useful and not overwhelming or intimidating. So again, a lot of decisions in terms of the actual interface and the organization of the platform, how people navigate and flow through things, and then just turning on some of the capabilities that technology enables to really enhance the experience for our learners and make it as easy and useful for them as possible.
Q: What differentiates TAG U from educational programs offered at other DSOs?
CL: I think there are a couple different places [where] we really do stand in a class of our own. The tenure and the quality and the caliber of the individuals who are on our faculty, they really are the best of the best across so many different facets, be that different clinical dimensions of dentistry, leadership effectiveness or coaching, even into operational things like financing or scheduling. We do have incredible humans who not only teach our classes and shape the content, but also serve as mentors and coaches and guides. Once people come out of those classes, they're kind of that continuing support. I feel incredibly fortunate to have the individuals we have on our faculty, and I really do think they're in a league of their own.
We've continued to make advancements in it, but the campus strategy, so the multitude of ways that learning comes to life. We have an incredible physical campus here in Chicago, so continuing to bring more and more people into that space so they can get hands on community building and learning. We continue to use and advance our classroom studio, which lets us do virtual learning in a really high dynamic, interactive and differentiated way, and then we still use the campus I just talked about and Zoom to really deliver learning day in and day out all the time. So I think the network of campuses and all of the different ways learning can come to life on each of those campuses, they are really curated and special and built to be exactly what they need to be from a learning perspective.
[With] our content and the learning experience and solutions we have, the caliber of that learning and the performance-driven outcomes, learners can benefit from coming through those. Again, that ability to teach something to somebody and have it then show up in their personal or professional life afterwards — I'm just really proud of the quality of the content we have.
Q: Is there anything else you can share as far as what's planned for TAG U going forward?
CL: Yeah, we're continuing to work on a lot of those same things, continuing to bring either new learnings or strengthening the learnings we already have. We're always looking to iterate and make our campuses more effective. We do have a couple additional faculty members joining us later this year. We're right in the middle of the strategic planning process for 2025, so in a few months, we'll be able to come back and share the specific 2025 milestones and big initiatives we're going after, but we do see TAG U continuing to grow pretty significantly in its second year.