Welcome to the sixth volume of SEM Quarterly. This first issue marks a significant milestone for the journal, as we celebrate its transformation from a start-up to a robust resource in many ways. You will undoubtedly note the change in format. We moved from a more traditional online journal format provided by Wiley Publishing to a more innovative style, published in-house by AACRAO. We are grateful to Wiley and all we learned in our first five years.

As we move into our next phase of growth for the journal, we are excited to provide easier access to its content for AACRAO members and other researchers. The new format is also one that is more familiar to readers who read content from books or periodicals online. You may read the articles in our online journal directly from the new AACRAO website, or download the issues and articles as PDFs.

We are also marking this milestone with a new and important series of articles. This sixth volume begins with the first in a series of leadership articles by women in the SEM field. Susan Gottheil, widely respected in SEM across North America, offers her vast experience and expertise in our “View from the Top.” The issue also features three strong research articles. Crounse, Hinkle and Shatzer focus on adult student welfare, an oft-neglected aspect of mature learner education, and its relationship to student choice among this increasingly-important segment of higher education. Readers may wish to pay particular attention to the conceptual framework adapted by the authors from recent work by Braxton. As student choice factors drive institutional SEM planning, especially in marketing and recruitment, traditional models may be quite limited in their ability to reach and attract adult learners.

Scott Secore provides a complementary article on student choice and persistence with a focus on campus environment. This research examines how environment, from the campus tour through engagement that fosters retention and completion, impacts student choices for initial and ongoing enrollment. Readers should consider both articles when developing differentiated enrollment strategies to reach the broad market of both traditional and adult learners.

Our fourth article is a case study from Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. Authors Muhammed and McManus describe their work to strategically use data and social media to improve results in the university’s financial aid office. The article is well-constructed, grounding its work in literature and offering readers a framework for examining student actions. It follows with logical, well-planned actions that resulted from data analysis, one of the fundamental practices of SEM.

I hope you enjoy our new format and the content of this issue. We enjoy and benefit from the feedback of our readers, so please let us know if we are hitting the mark for you or any ways that we can continue to improve and enhance SEMQ in the future.