Executive Director at Cooperating Raleigh Colleges | CACRAO Past President
Sara CW Sullivan is a Senior Associate Registrar, Strategic Initiatives, at the University of Iowa. She holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa, M.Ed. from Upper Iowa University, and an Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership from Maryville University. Sullivan has served UMACRAO and AACRAO in varying positions since 2015. Sullivan is a 2024 AACRAO Congressional Hill Day Advocate.
Sara has co-authored the following articles:
Commencement Matters
When COVID-19 Crashed Commencement
If You Build It, They Will Come: The University of Iowa’s FERPA TeamInterview with Melanie Ho which was featured in the AACRAO Connect article Underrepresented vs. Underestimated
Jack and Jill went up the Hill
And she was on the following For the Record episodes:
Women Supporting Women
In Memoriam Tina Falkner
Hill Day
Her LinkedIn is:
www.linkedin.com/in/saracwsullivan
www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-kiefer
Dr. Kiefer serves as the Director of Admission + Financial Aid at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. As a first-generation college student with a student-centered approach to support students in meeting their individual educational goals and career objectives, Dr. Kiefer is guided by the principles of transparency, authenticity, and equity, and celebrating the unique characteristics of the students she serves.
Capstone Project: The Enrollment Funnel: Why Prospective Graduate Students Stop at the Application Stage
A significant amount of research exists to illustrate the SEM issues facing undergraduate institutions and graduate programs, yet little information can be found on professional schools of architecture. Often decentralized within a larger university structure with limited recruitment resources, graduate architecture and design schools, as a niche market, face unique challenges attracting potential students. This study explored reasons for why prospective graduate students did not progress in the enrollment funnel to the application stage. Specific focus centered on the differences for not applying between students who had attended recruitment events and those who did not engage during the recruitment cycle.
Deborah Agee currently serves as the Interim Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management at the University of California at Davis. In this role, she oversees Undergraduate Admissions, Enrollment Management Analytics, Financial Aid and Scholarships, and the University Registrar. Deborah joined UC Davis in June of 2013 as the Executive Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships. Immediately prior to joining UC Davis, she served as Assistant Director in the Office of Financial Aid at the University of Texas at Austin.
With over 30 years experience working in the higher education field, Deborah has held a wide variety of roles over the course of her career. She began her professional life at Texas Guaranteed, a public non-profit corporation that supported the Federal Family Education Loan Program. During her tenure, she rose through the ranks from Policy Specialist to Associate Vice President of Strategy and Planning. From there she moved on to Sallie Mae where she served as a Senior Vice President in its consulting organization, Campus Solutions.
Deborah holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Texas A & M University, Commerce, and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Texas Tech, Center for Public Service, where she was a Jacob Javits Fellow.
Jerry Bracken has made significant contributions to electronic data exchange (EDX) for many years. He is a founding member of the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) and has continued to be active since 2000. He has served as an active member of the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee since 1993, longer than any current member. He has also served on the ANSI Accredited Standards Committee X12 from 1993 to 2004 and on the AACRAO Board of Directors and as the VP of Information Technology from 2005 to 2008. Bracken is retired from Brigham Young University where he focused on Java web development, application design, and data modeling.
Jeff Elliott is a Data Architect at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Previously, Elliott was with the University of Missouri System for more than ten years as the senior manager of Enterprise Data Warehouse and Reporting, supporting UM System and four campuses across the state. He represents the data domain on the Division of IT Enterprise Architecture Review Board and has been involved in electronic messaging and data exchange, first in public health and now in higher education, for more than fifteen years. Elliott was actively involved in the SPEEDE Committee and PESC.
Monterey Sims is a Director of Admissions and Evaluation at the University of Phoenix where she has worked for more than 25 years. She spearheaded efforts to implement electronic transcript exchange at the University of Phoenix, earning recognitions from Southwest Alliance for Excellence – Showcase in Excellence Award for the Transcript Acquisition Process and the PESC Best Practices Award for the Electronic Transcript Acquisition Process. Monterey has been a member of the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee since 2008 and is actively involved in AACRAO, PACRAO, and PESC.
Matt Bemis is an Associate Registrar at the University of Southern California and is responsible for degree progress operations. He serves as the administrator over degree audit and transfer credit applications, is responsible the certification of student athlete academic eligibility, and is the project lead for the electronic data interchange (EDI) initiative. Bemis has been responsible for many process innovations via collaboration with several service providers and has been active within the AACRAO and PESC communities for many years.
Joey LaConte has worked as an IT professional for more than fifteen years at the University of Colorado. As the Associate Registrar for Technology, Communication and Data Reporting, he helps to automate business processes in the registrar’s office. He oversees operational reporting for student records and enrollment communications. In a former role as the technical lead for web services on a campus, LaConte is familiar with XML standards and structured data. Currently he is helping to provide resources as Colorado’s institutions of higher education embark on the adoption of electronic data exchange (EDX).
Craig Karlin has been with Fort Hays State University for 30 years and is currently the Registrar managing records and registration processes, supporting systems, and the admissions processes for all undergraduates. Karlin serves at the functional lead for admissions, records and registration for implementation of Workday as the university’s ERP and is active in AACRAO through the SPEEDE and KACRAO (Kansas) committees. He also serves on the Kansas Board of Regents Transfer and Articulation Committee that governs the state’s efforts with system-wide transfer and Kansas Core Outcomes initiatives.
Patrick S. Elliott, Ed.D., has more than fifteen years of experience in higher education working with electronic student records and reimagining student services. He spent more than eleven years at University of Maryland University College, leading electronic content management, electronic transcripts and business process workflows initiatives while serving in several functional and technical positions – including senior associate registrar. In 2017, he joined Harford Community College as the Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management, overseeing the admissions, registration and records, financial aid, and testing functions as well as leading strategic enrollment management for the college. Partnering with the local school district and central IT resources, he recently led his team through implementing data exchange for dual enrollment students.
Jim Feigert, Ed.D., is Registrar at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA, one of the 116 California Community Colleges. Feigert is responsible for the admissions and records operations for the college and its 26,000 students. Jim previously led the student records area in the Office of Academic Records and Registrar at the University of Southern California for more than ten years. While at USC, he oversaw the launch of USC’s PDF transcript product in 2009, one of the largest universities to send PDFs at the time. He currently serves as the chair for the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee and has been active within the AACRAO community for more than ten years. Feigert earned his Ed.D. from USC in 2014.
Doug Holmes is the Manager of eTranscripts at the Ontario Universities' Application Centre (OUAC), a centralized admissions application processing service for the universities in Ontario, Canada. Originally a software developer, he was part of the team that developed OUAC's EDI-based postsecondary transcript exchange system in 1996 and later augmented that system for PESC XML transcripts (both high school and postsecondary). He has worked with calculating GPAs from incoming electronic transcript data and has supported the OUAC's various proprietary admissions application exchange systems. Holmes was also part of the team that mapped and implemented PESC XML standards for both the admissions application and test scores, as part of the OUAC’s data exchange process with their university partners. He has served as the Association of Registrars of Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) representative to the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee from 1998 - 2005 and from 2011 to present, and is also co-chair of the Canadian PESC user group.
Sue Reyes is an Analyst/Programmer in the Administrative Information Systems department at San Diego State University. She earned her M.S. in Business Administration - Information Systems from San Diego State University. In her nineteen-plus years at SDSU, Sue has played a key role in paperless application processing and electronic transcript processing. She is the technical lead for EDI transcript processing as well as the lead developer for SDSU’s OnBase ECM software. She has also served as an Oracle Application Developer, EDI Developer, SQL DBA and is a Certified OnBase System Administrator and OnBase Workflow Administrator. Reyes joined the AACRAO SPEEDE committee in 2012 and was the acting chair from 2017-2018. Sue has represented AACRAO on the PESC Change Control Board and as a member of the PESC Seal of Approval Committee.
Tuan Anh Do has more than 24 years of IT experience, of which more than 19 has been dedicated to mid- to senior-level IT production/operation management and consultation. Do's current role is in central ITS as Senior Director of ERP & Business Intelligence, overseeing PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, HRMS and Finance. Do has been with the university for more than 23 years and has been active in the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee since 2003. Do served as vice president and president of the Singularity Users Management Team (SUMiT) as well as an active member of the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC). Most of Do’s efforts have been through providing webinars, presentations, and workshops, as well as being a contributing author to the AACRAO EDX primer.
Nancy Umphres is a Senior Business Systems Analyst with California State University’s Office of the Chancellor and is the functional lead for the advisement and transfer credit modules within PeopleSoft since 2016. In her current role, she works with EDI and is on the eTranscript California steering committee. Previously, she was with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where she held various positions within the Office of the Registrar, lastly as a Business Analyst. She was heavily involved with SACRAO, the national Oracle/Peoplesoft user group community (HEUG), and co-founded a regional users’ community (SCHRUG). She joined the SPEEDE Committee in March 2020.
Electronic Transcripts 2021: The Landscape and Future of Electronic Document Exchange
Amy M. Adams, Ph.D., is the Vice President for Planning & Advancement at Marion Technical College, where she has served since 2016. Previously she served in various roles at Capital University, Xavier University, and Northern Arizona University. She has presented on various topics related to both enrollment and fundraising at the national and state level.
Increasing Community College Enrollment When Everything Says You Shouldn’t
Kris MacDonald, Ed.D., works at SUNY Corning Community College as the Director of the Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence, Director of Online Programs and is the campus Electronic & Information Technology (EIT) Accessibility officer. She also works as a Resume Editor for Indeed and Curriculum Developer for Switch Vehicles, Inc. Prior to her current roles, she taught in higher education for ten years. She holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Management from Drexel University, a MSed in secondary education with Pennsylvania teaching certification in English for grades 7-12, and a B.A. in communications/journalism from Shippensburg University.
Gauging Accessibility in an LMS: Finding an Ally in Blackboard Ally
Alex Patturelli, M.S., is an admissions professional at Regis College in Weston, MA. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. His research is centered on improving the college admissions process for low-income students. With more the five years of experience in enrollment and communication, he has been a leader on the strategy development pursuant to the institutional goals of increasing higher education access for first generation and low-income students.
Text Messaging: The Enrollment Management Strategy for Increasing Enrollment and Promoting a Sense of Belonging for Low-Income Students
Dr. Michelle Brown-Nevers, known widely for her leadership skills, supports institutions of higher education in enrollment management, change management, innovation, service improvement and other operational areas. Engagements involve reviewing, assessing and refining policies and processes used to recruit, enroll and retain students.
Her experience crosses public and private institutions from community colleges to Ivy league universities. She held progressively responsible positions throughout her career including vice president of enrollment management and student success at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). Under her leadership, NOVA has made great progress in the ongoing advising redesign work, begun the NOVA Corps student internship program, and established their first strategic enrollment management plan, among other accomplishments. Prior to joining NOVA, Brown-Nevers served as associate vice president for student services at Montgomery County Community College, associate vice president for student registration and financial services at the University of Pennsylvania, and associate vice president for student administrative services at Columbia University. She began her higher education career at New York City College of Technology, formerly New York City Community College. Michelle is currently President of MHBN Consulting, LLC.
She has been a strong advocate for student success. She is known for making transformational change through streamlining and automating processes, improving front line services; creating enrollment and retention initiatives and, developing staff to work across boundaries. She created and supported strategic enrollment management plans to help ensure every student succeeds. She believes that students do not attend higher education institutions to learn the administrative processes; therefore, these processes have to be as intuitive as possible for them.
Brown-Nevers is an active member of the higher education community. She served on advisory committees for the CommonApp, is currently a mentor for the AACRAO ASCEND program, has been an instructor for the U.S. Department of Education and is a charter member of the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education. She has been a consultant to the National Student Clearinghouse and to various universities, including Sullivan County Community College, Lafayette College, Ithaca College, George Washington University and McGill University.
Michelle’s personal interests align with her professional success. She dedicates her time to supporting young people pursue higher education through her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She served as the chair of the Scholarship Committee for the New York Alumnae Chapter. In that role, she initiated mentoring support for these young adults in addition to the funding provided to them. Many of the students awarded scholarships under her leadership completed their programs and have pursued professional careers.
Brown-Nevers holds Master of Education and Doctor of Education degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Science in Education from Baruch College (CUNY). She also completed certificate programs at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and Columbia’s Business School. She further completed the Leadership at Penn Program at University of Pennsylvania and the Civitas Leadership Development Program at MCCC.
Capstone Abstract:
This study compared retention rates of students who experienced a strengths-based freshman seminar curriculum to those who did not. Whether enrolled in a freshman seminar or not, freshmen who did not take the StrengthsFinder® assessment had a retention rate 28 percentage points below those who took the assessment and were enrolled in the strengths-based freshman seminar. This same percentage difference applied to students who took the StrengthsFinder® assessment and enrolled in a non-strengths-based freshman seminar. Students who took the StrengthsFinder assessment but were not required to enroll in a freshman seminar course per their program or admission requirements had a higher mean ACT score but were retained at a rate 20 percentage points lower than those in the strengths-based freshman seminar/learning community.
John Knific is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Wisr, a digital community for higher education founded to help students “see their future self,” enabling authentic peer-to-peer interactions that bolster enrollment outcomes. Wisr was acquired in March 2021 by Education Advisory Board (EAB) where it is being integrated into a next generation recruitment ecosystem for universities. Based in Cleveland, OH, Knific has co-founded two Education Technology and lead five early stage capital raises. He is a 2009 graduate of Case Western Reserve University and continues to support student entrepreneurs as an advisor and angel investor.
Measuring Outcomes of Virtual Enrollment Yield Programming
Kate Dyki is the Enrollment Program Management Specialist at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. She holds a B.A. in English from Alma College and a M.A. in higher education administration from the University of Michigan. Dyki has more than thirteen years of experience working in higher education. As a first-generation student, she is passionate about student preparedness, access, and success. In her most recent role, Dyki leads initiatives including enrollment, retention, and support programs for admitted and continuing students, admitted student outreach, resourcing initiatives, and programs focused on providing working professional adult learners with pathways to a university education.
Dawn Medley, Ed.D., is the Vice Provost for Enrollment Management at Stony Brook University. Prior to joining Stony Brook, she was the Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management at Wayne State University (WSU). Prior to WSU, Medley served as a vice president at St. Andrews University, Warren Wilson College, Forest Institute and was chief enrollment officer at the University of Arkansas. She worked in enrollment and financial aid at Missouri S & T and Southeast Missouri State University. Medley has a B.S. in English education from University of Missouri, a Master’s in administration from Southeast Missouri State University, and an Ed.D. from Lindenwood University. Medley is expert in financial aid, access, innovative support systems for students, technology for student engagement, and is a nationally recognized leader in financial aid solutions and technology adoption for enrollment management.
Julie Teague is a Senior Analyst Programmer for the Bloomington Assessment and Research office at Indiana University-Bloomington. She has more than 35 years of experience in systems development and in providing data research and solutions in the higher education setting. She has co-authored articles for peer-reviewed publications and presented research results at national conferences such as Educause.
Data-Driven Decisions: Using Network Analysis to Guide Campus Course Offerings
Linda Shepard is the Senior Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of Bloomington Assessment and Research at Indiana University. Linda provides leadership for the campus in the development of institutional resources used to inform campus policy and strategic initiatives. Linda has served in numerous professional capacities, as a faculty member, in leadership roles at IU, and institutional research professional organizations both locally and nationally. She holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University in Educational Psychology with a minor in Psychology.
Stefano Fiorini Ph.D., is a Social and Cultural Anthropologist with the Bloomington Assessment and Research (BAR) at Indiana University. He has extensive applied research experience in the area institutional research and learning analytics in which participatory approaches are applied to place the stakeholders at the center of the analytic provision. He has published in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings and presented at national and international conferences (e.g. AIR Annual Forum, CSRDE, LAK), earning best paper awards from INAIR, AIR, and SoLAR.
Gina Deom is a Data Scientist with the Bloomington Assessment and Research (BAR) office at Indiana University. She has over five years of experience working in higher education data and research. Gina has published work in conference proceedings and has presented at many national conferences, including but not limited to the Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference, the SHEEO Higher Education Policy Conference, and the NCES STATS-DC Data Conference.