Before beginning her work with AACRAO Consulting, Sheila spent more than 20 years in higher education in a variety of roles always with the goal of improving the student experience. Sheila’s education includes an Associate of Science at Wichita State University, a B.S. in Computer Information Systems at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and a M.S. in Education with an emphasis in Higher Education and Organizational Development at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska.
Sheila served as Registrar at Wichita Area Technical College where she was instrumental in the reorganization of the Learner Services division and development of a one-stop customer service center that included admissions, registrar, and financial aid. Additionally, she served as a committee co-chair on accreditation steering committees for two HLC/NCA site visits.
She recently retired as Director of Undergraduate Admissions Processing at Texas Tech University. During her 15 years at Texas Tech, she served on the senior management team responsible for increasing enrollment of new first-time students by over 30%. While at Texas Tech, Sheila served as chairperson of the holistic application review committee, implemented process improvements that decreased document turn-around time by 75% while also reducing staffing, developed training and resource materials for staff, and implemented call center software. She collaborated with colleagues across campus on initiatives to provide or improve access for various groups including transfer students, online students, active-duty military and veterans, and the first cohort of early college high school students to partner with Texas Tech. She also designed a process to streamline the evaluation of high school credit for international students to expedite admission decisions. Sheila served as Residency Determination Official for undergraduate students at TTU, completed two CRM implementations that included a complete application review redesign, assisted with reviewing and updating the university document retention plan, and developed and implemented a conduct review process for applicants.
Her passion is improving the applicant experience through customer service initiatives, staff training and development, and process analysis and redesign. She has been an active member of AACRAO, SACRAO, and TACRAO (Texas Association) where she has been a frequent session presenter, committee member and committee chair, and served as president of the West Texas Association. Through the TACRAO organization, she served on an ad hoc committee that provided support and training on the residency process to colleagues throughout Texas, and she was awarded Honorary TACRAO Membership in 2022. Previous presentations include sessions for holistic application review, alternative admission processes, customer service strategies, and improvements for document processing.
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