About Daniel Klapper
Daniel Klapper is the USC’s Vice President of Student Services. In this role, he works with all USC-led services to provide the best experience and support to Western Undergraduate Students.
He is responsible for the oversight of the PurpleCare Trust, Clubs System, Peer Support Centre, Food Support, the USC’s new professional development program, as well as to support the good governance of the University Students’ Council.
Connect with Daniel Klapper: Email | Instagram | Linkedin
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The Transcript
**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.
Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Daniel Klapper. Daniel serves as the Vice President of Student Services for the University Students Council of Western Ontario, where he oversees a comprehensive network of support systems designed to enhance the Western undergraduate Student Experience. His responsibilities span crucial student resources, including the Purple Care Trust, Club System, Peer Support Center, food support initiatives, while also driving the USC’s new professional development program. Beyond direct service delivery, Daniel plays a key role in maintaining good governance practices within the USC, ensuring the organization remains responsive to student needs.
Sam Demma
Daniel, thank you so much for taking some time during this busy season to come on the podcast.
Daniel Klapper
Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. Super excited.
Sam Demma
Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into the work you’re doing today with the USC.
Daniel Klapper
Sure, sure. So I guess beyond the nice introduction you had there, obviously my name is Daniel. I’m the Vice President of Student Services. But beyond that, I’m an ex-Western student as well. So I graduated last year. But this year has been super exciting for me because obviously working for the USC has been such an amazing privilege and such a unique experience as well. So super excited to kind of dive into some of that and tell you about a bit of the experiences and some of the programs that we’re working on as well. Speaking of programs, you oversee so many different programs with the USC.
Sam Demma
Tell me about some of them. Um, and any of your, uh, not that you have favorites, but any of the ones that you’re very passionate about. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the student services portfolio is unique because, um, it encapsulates so much.
Daniel Klapper
So whereas other portfolios, they have advocacy initiatives and they cover advocacy kind of broadly. The student services portfolio, um, is a little bit of everything. And I guess for background, for most people who don’t know much about the USC, it hasn’t always been like this.
Daniel Klapper
So the student services role, this is the second year that it’s actually being conducted like this before the USC operated with a vice president of governance and finance. And there were all of these little portfolios that kind of were spread across the organization, either under programming or under some advocacy initiatives. The club system was kind of here and there, a little bit of everywhere. And then they kind of realized, they’re kind of neglecting all of these portfolios because they get overshadowed by the big things like concerts, orientation week, the massive programming that the university puts on. And then also getting overshadowed by like the year over year advocacy initiatives that the USC does. And so what they did was they transitioned the role from a finance role where a student would kind of oversee the budgets. And then we obviously, we have full-time staff who deal with all the accounting. So they moved that and they kind of pooled all of the services and initiatives together and threw them under one portfolio and that becoming the student services portfolio. So that’s kind of how we came to be. Obviously, like you said, we have food support, peer support, the new professional development portfolio, which has been kind of like a majority of what I’ve been working on this year is kind of getting that up and running. That’s a little bit of a passion project of mine but we also have things like Pride USC, grants and recognition which are super important so that that touches on like the scholarships and then the LGBTQ support as well from from the western side but kind of a lot of portfolios and then the REACH program as well, which technically isn’t a service, but touches on that as well. And that one’s near and dear to my heart because I actually got my start in the USC in second year by volunteering for that program.
Daniel Klapper
So kind of a full circle moment is it’s the first thing I started with. And actually when my contract ends this year, it’ll be the last program that I actually hold. So kind of a fun full circle.
Sam Demma
Tell me more about the professional development portfolio that you’ve been spending a lot of time working on.
Daniel Klapper
Yeah. So the professional development portfolio came from, uh, our president currently Emily Klagen. So she, when she was running her, her campaign, uh, she was pretty heavy on increasing the professional development support that undergraduate students have access to. Um. And so when I was hired, we started looking to, how can we make the university experience enjoyable beyond simply hosting concerts and offering services to students? Like, what are they lacking? And what we kind of figured is students need jobs. They need the connections. They need the network that at this point, everyone knows how hard it is right now to get internships and get jobs, and to kind of get that extra experience beyond your education. And the professional development portfolio was the USC solution to that.
Daniel Klapper
So we host events like the peer AI learning sessions, which are essentially students teaching other students from various faculties how to use artificial intelligence to increase their literacy with AI and kind of just overall level the playing field when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms. We also have something coming up called the Professional Development Gala, where we get a bunch of professionals from various industries. So we’ve got some lawyers, some consultants, some publishers, doctors, and we get them all in the same room. And we’re essentially extending the USC’s alumni to the undergraduate student body. Because, yeah, that’s one of the nice things that the USC has is they have a really, like extensive, you like alumni network. So there’s hundreds of people who have worked for the USC over the last 40 so years. And they’re all really connected and they always come back and they always participate in events.
Daniel Klapper
But usually it’s just the executives who have access to those individuals, right? Like there’s some really great people. So we wanted to kind of extend that network to students this year and make sure that they have an opportunity to chat with people and see what’s out there. Kind of same that we have this year.
Sam Demma
That’s awesome, man. I think about some of the most meaningful experiences I had in school and it wasn’t so much the lessons learned in the classroom, although those are also very important. It was those extended opportunities where I was able to ask questions. I was very curious about to industry professionals or when people took the time to provide me with unique opportunities that really helped me develop my soft skills. It sounds like the professional development portfolio really does that. I know that REACH also does that for a different subset of students.
Sam Demma
Tell me more about that program and why you’re so passionate about it.
Daniel Klapper
Yeah, so the REACH program is similar. I guess you could consider it professional development for grade seven and eight. So it’s been around for a while, actually. So it started in 2004. This is like the history of the REACH program here as a history major. But so started in 2004, and they called it the choose your own adventure game. And so the idea was, you get 250 or 300 grade seven and eight students, and they come onto campus and they do a choose your own adventure, where you pick different classes. And by the end of the weekend, you kind of see where your career is heading based off of the decisions that you made throughout the weekend. Funnily enough, we got or we as in the USC was actually sued because choose your own adventure is a trademark for that book that they made. So they actually, in like the mid 2000s, they were sued for using the name, Choose Your Own Adventure, and they swapped it over to the early outreach program. So that’s kind of how that name came about. The idea is kind of similar, same idea, but we’ve kind of switched it over. So essentially we take 300 students from various grade schools from across the London Middlesex community. We try to pick the schools that are feeder schools into the high schools that have the lowest dropout rates or the highest dropout rates, sorry. And the idea is to bring them on campus. They stay at Ontario Hall, which is one of the nicest residents on campus. They eat there. They have parties in the Wave, which is our restaurant and bar on campus. Obviously everything’s shut down, no alcohol or anything like that, but they have the opportunity to kind of like hang out in the same spaces that undergraduate students do. And they really connect with it. And they have the opportunity to talk to university students. Over 80 volunteers come out and really just have a good time.
Daniel Klapper
And then on top of that, they get to hang out with some professors. They go to mock classes. So they’ll go to anthropology class, and like, dust things off of dinosaur bones or make slime in the chemistry lab. So the opportunities there are kind of endless. But the real goal is that they go into high school the year after. And that weekend long experience really has a profound impact on them. And they leave thinking like, hey, like university is something that I’m capable of doing. It’s something that it’s accessible to me. And it’s not just for students who have 100% in all their classes. And it’s not just for students who come from wealthy families, like there’s opportunity for financial aid.
Daniel Klapper
We teach them how to write a resume so that they can get jobs. Really anything that’s just going to set their mind in the right track so that when they do get to high school, they start thinking about like, how can I improve my grades? How can I improve my extracurriculars?
Daniel Klapper
And like I’m setting a goal for myself that Western is where I want to go. And we’ve had a pretty good, like proven track record. And we have some students now who volunteer for the program who actually attended the program when they were in grade seven and eight and actually went to Western because of the impact that the program had on them. So has a special place in my heart because of great relationships, but also seen how it affects students that young really how much of a positive impact it has on them.
Sam Demma
I always tell people I think the most important gift you can give a young person is belief in themselves. And I think it’s any human being, not just young people, but when you are exposed to that at a much younger age, it can change the course of your entire life. It sounds like that is the impact that the program is having, and I hope it continues long after you transition as well.
Daniel Klapper
And hopefully no one gets sued.
Daniel Klapper
We’ve, we’ve upped the, uh, the parameters for like making sure it’s all, all set in stone and everything we’ve, we’ve gone to the point now, post COVID where we’re running the same program year over year, it just gets better and better. So it’s in a good spot and hopefully it can continue. I’m sure I’ll come back to volunteer even when I’m back in my master’s.
Sam Demma
You work in student services. You support the diverse needs of the entire population across the campus. How do you determine what students need? There’s a lot of schools that have students and they wanna figure out out what do we, what clubs do we start? What, what services do we promote and provide? How have you guys kind of figured out what, what students need on campus.
Daniel Klapper
Yeah, it’s actually, I would say that is the most like difficult part of working for a student union is like, you would think it’s so obvious and that students are so straightforward with what they want. But it’s actually much harder to engage with the student population than like at face value what you would think and it’s not as simple as going out or putting a survey out of like, what do you want? Because there’s the saying like, if you build it, they will come but we’ve we’ve learned very, very many times if you build it, they sometimes don’t come and there’s no reason. And so it’s this like continuous effort, honestly, not even on my part, but mostly on our student engagement part. So Shreya, she works full time as the vice president of student engagement. And that’s kind of her job this year is really figuring out like, how do we talk to the students who aren’t part of that bubble, who look at all of our posts, right? We have a pretty good following on Instagram. around 40,000 students, but the student population as a whole is much bigger than that. So how do we get the student who doesn’t want to come to the concert? They don’t want to come to craft nigh.
Daniel Klapper
and they’re not interested in any advocacy initiatives. They just want to go to school and come back? How do we make sure that we’re also servicing those needs, even if they’re not voicing their opinion, right? And that’s been a challenge. I think we’ve done a great job this year, in particular with the UA and EA roles, which is University Affairs and External Affairs. And then as well as our president going out and talking to students, kind of meeting them where they’re at, doing a lot of initiatives in the atrium, which is like the big building that we have here, right in the center, and just kind of, whether it’s doing a kahoot to kind of tell students about what we’re working on, or doing a massive survey with some giveaways, just kind of like making sure we have an informed decision as to what students want. And then the other time, other times it’s kind of just a guess, right? Like we were students ourselves once, so we have a unique perspective as like as to what is required. So the professional development is a perfect example. When we’re planning these events, we’re not necessarily going out and asking students like hey would you come to a gala if we host it? It’s more a personal experience that if I was in second year, if I was in third year and the university invited me to a gala with 30 to 40 professional individuals and they charged five dollars to get in, no chance, like no chance I’m passing that up, right? So like those are the types of things where it’s not always necessary to kind of hear feedback from students but it definitely does help make an informed decision of whether or not the program continues or whether or not the services actually being used. So lots of feedback, but also just personal experience and trial and error, I guess.
Daniel Klapper
You’re so close in age still to a lot of the students and you can put yourself in their shoes and understand some of the challenges they’re going through.
Sam Demma
It sounds like the $5 professional gala night is a massive success. Is it really highly attended by students and something that you guys do every year?
Daniel Klapper
Yeah, so we this is the first one that we’ve done. So it’s happening on March 19th. So we’re tickets are still up for sale. So we’re still pushing that and making sure that every student knows about it. Sometimes, like I said, Instagram can be an awesome way to get the word out, but honestly, sometimes we have to reach out personally.
Daniel Klapper
Like we’ve got 230 plus clubs, a lot of them being business clubs, women in leadership, STEM club. And sometimes we just reach out to them like, hey, we’re hosting this event, we’re thinking of you and we’re designing it.
Daniel Klapper
We’d love for you to come out and that’s sometimes the best way to get people out. With the AI stuff too, we’re reaching out to the people who are interested in that. So when we were hosting our most recent session was in January, we did applications of AI in entrepreneurship and business and we made sure that we involved the Ivy students in the conversation and the BMOS students because they’re kind of the ones who are looking for that type of info. So we’ve done a pretty good job at kind of pushing our events.
Daniel Klapper
And honestly, we have a full time team who works on promotions, all the graphics, all the social media as well. And they’re absolutely killers at what they do. So I can’t take any credit for it because I’m not great with the whole social media thing. it for it because I’m not great with the whole social media thing, but it’s definitely, definitely an art of knowing when to post, when not to post, when to repost, and they’ve got it down to a T, so they do a pretty good job. When you think of events that the USC hosts that are classics, like people love them, and maybe you’ve heard from other people on the team that we’ve done these for the past 12 years and it’s always a hit. Are there any ideas that another school team listening to this could think about replicating on their campuses? I know there’s a lot of educators also listening that want to engage their students in grade 12 and grade 11 and they might be able to borrow some ideas. Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Klapper
I mean, one of the things that’s nice about this job is we’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of student councils from across Canada. So we attended conference in British Columbia called SUDS hosted by the AMS over at UBC. And it was fantastic. We got to talk to hundreds of other student leaders and really get to hear about what are they working on? How does their club system work? How do you guys host events? Really at the end of the day, it comes down to money. And I think that’s an issue that everyone faces is things are expensive. One thing that we’ve noticed this year is beyond the classic, like if you were to ask a university student at Western, what’s the classic event at the USC hosts that everyone’s gonna go to? It’s always the concerts. So we’ve set a pretty big name for ourself by bringing some pretty big artists like Sway Lee, Quavo, all these really great, Josh Ross, another one country artist. But beyond that, I think the smaller programming, which is what Sarah Fullerton, our vice president of programming, has done a really great job of this year, is finding the students who don’t wanna come to the concerts and hosting things like craft night. We’ve done paint and sip where we host wine nights in the wave and you get to come out. 20 bucks gets you two glasses of wine and a canvas and paint all set up, ready to go.
Daniel Klapper
Bingo was huge. We hosted bingo a couple of times. Sells out instantly. Battle of the bands has been really cool. I actually just was sitting in Sarah’s office right before this watching rehear- or like audition tapes of students who want to show off their talent, they want to show off the band that they have, and those are cheap events because we don’t have to pay anyone to do that, but it gives students an opportunity to come out and really engage with each other, sit in the smoke, grab a drink, grab some food, and just listen to other student artists. I think those have been super successful this year. And I think probably something that the USC will continue to do. Another thing that we brought back is, not every school has this, but it’s not hard to do. But we have like an auditorium that can be turned into a movie theater. And post COVID, it kind of was abandoned.
Daniel Klapper
We hadn’t used it in a while. So one of the initiatives that Emily proposed in her platform was movie nights. So we’ve been doing like Tuesday movies, free to come. You’d basically just show up, first come, first serve. We’ve been buying the rights to like old movies.
Daniel Klapper
So Halloween, we went and watched The Shining, they had some horror movies, and then Christmas movies, and then now they’re doing classics. So you can go on a Tuesday night, first 25 people to show up get free popcorn. So those are all things that we don’t have to pay much for. But we see awesome engagement from the students. And it might not be your 4000 person concert, but you compound those small events over and over again across various areas of interest on campus. And by the end of the year, you have a student body that’s really gotten to experience something awesome with their peers.
Sam Demma
One of my friends is obsessed with marketing and he says, someone has to interact with your stuff for seven hours before they make a decision to feel like they’re a part of your products and services and a part of your mission and your movement. And I think about it from the same perspective of students on a campus.
Sam Demma
Even if they just attended the concert, maybe it’s still not enough for them to really feel like they’re involved. They got to have these other touch points throughout the year, which are all these other amazing opportunities for them to build more relationships, meet new people, steal some popcorn and watch some movies.
Sam Demma
I’m curious when you think about your own professional development in this role and in other roles you’ve been in, are there any resources or people or mentors that have had a really monumental impact on you? And if so, like what were those resources or people and what did they do for you?
Daniel Klapper
Yeah. So, I mean, I’ve had a pretty unique university experience that I think most people don’t typically have in the sense that I probably did more work for free extracurricular wise than I did school and so I spent all of my free time whether it was with the Pre-law society participating in mooting competitions or mock trials, or last year I was on the social science student council running their finances. And I found that to be the best way for me to kind of interact with people because I came in second year after a year of COVID online, right?
Daniel Klapper
So I showed up to the university with my three closest best friends. We lived in an apartment together and our second year we did nothing. We went to class, we came home, we watched movies, we made food and repeat. We didn’t know that the USC existed, we didn’t know who our president was and we didn’t know that there were clubs available to us. And then in my third year I started to think and I was like, you know what, like it’s about time I get out there and start testing out the stuff that’s available to me.
Daniel Klapper
So I looked into the club system really. And I looked at, at the time I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I’ve kind of pivoted more to the business side. But at the time I looked at the pre-law society and was like, oh years older, but they’re running all these awesome initiatives. And I looked at the vice president of finance for a club or the president of a club, and to me, they were like the highest of high that you could get at university. And I looked at them and thought, like, I wanna be one of them one day. I wanna be a president of a club.
Daniel Klapper
I wanna help organize the budget for the pre-law society or the mooting society. And so I just started showing up. And when I started showing up, I noticed that I call it like the snowball effect. But before I knew it, I was going from one club and then I was on an executive team. And one guy was on an executive team for another thing. And he’s like, hey, come out to our one networking event. And next thing you know know you end up meeting like this spider web of people who are all connected on campus. And in the end it resulted in me having this job because by the time two years had passed I went from not knowing that the USC existed and thinking that being a part of a club was untouchable, something that only the highest of high people could achieve to overseeing the entire club system in two years. And so I always think about the people that I met along the way who kind of introduced me. So whether it was the social science president from two years ago, Bianca, or like looking at the USC president that time, which was Ethan Gardner and thinking like, hey, these people are pretty accomplished and they kind of, like just listening to them talk, even though I didn’t really have personal relationships with them, just like seeing that they were able to do it
Daniel Klapper
and that they also came from like a social science background, really inspired me to kind of get involved. Although my friends never kind of came with me, so my roommates never got involved on campus. They stuck to their studies.
Daniel Klapper
Mind you, they’re engineers, software engineers, and medical science students. So I’m sure their classes were a lot harder than the history student who had a bit more free time on his hand. But yeah, all those club presidents and then the USC execs really inspired me to kind of get involved and kind of make a name for myself on campus. And then eventually the job opened up for this and put my name forward and it worked out well so far.
Sam Demma
It sounds like it has, and I’m sure it will continue to. I’m so grateful that you took some time to come on the show, share some of your lessons learned in education and the work you’re doing, share some ideas around supporting students. I hope that the rest of the academic year goes really well. I’ll be rooting you on from the sideline. Good luck at the golf tournament we’ll touch base again soon.
Daniel Klapper
Awesome. Thank you. Pray for good weather.
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