AACRAO's SEM Endorsement Program (SEM-EP) participants recently attended a virtual field visit hosted by Prairie View A&M University in Prarie View, Texas. This visit was a fantastic opportunity for participants to learn more about the unique challenges HBCUs encounter in SEM and was the first HBCU field visit in the program's history.
The SEM-EP program is a 12-18 month professional development program focused on enrollment management practices and offers formal recognition of enrollment management skill, on-the-job experience, and facilitates
career advancement in the area of SEM.
For this article, we interviewed Robert Wyant, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at SUNY Brockport, about his general experience with the SEM-EP program and what he learned during the recent field visit with Prairie View A&M.
In the Field
Opening the interview, we spoke about Mr. Wyant's background in Admissions, how he came to his position, and how he discovered the SEM-EP program. Mr. Wyant commented,
...I graduated from Pitt with a degree in business management and accounting and took a job selling newspaper advertising, and (after) two months of that...I was like, 'why? I hate this job.' I was fortunate that my coach reached out to me and said, 'Hey, there's a position open in the admissions office where you graduated...would you be interested in applying?'
My boss now is the one who suggested the SEM-EP program, and it has been great. I think that I'm getting the most out of this because I have a lot of experience, I've read the textbooks, and I have my master's degree in enrollment management, higher education, and marketing. So I've read all the books on theory, but this has been more practical, and I've been able to interact with other people, people that I would have...never connected with because they are three time zones away or they're in a
different country.
When asked about the recent field visit, Mr. Wyant said,
It's really interesting to learn about HBCUs and how they approach many of today's challenges...especially because they're similar to the challenges we face, a lot of first-gen students and students that need help navigating the process.
If you're a higher education institution, and you've increased enrollment in the last four years or five years, you're doing something right. So that's what made me really interested in their system and automatic admission process. That's something that we are exploring.
Something that stood out to me was how they went about doing that. And I really liked what they had out there, with their communication plan, which I thought was well thought out. It's interesting to see how admissions offices are laid out; they have an admissions office and a recruitment office, and here, it's all under one umbrella so it was interesting to see how those two officers speak to each other.
Closing out the interview, Mr. Wyant reiterated the value of networking provided by the SEM-EP program and how important collaboration and community have been to his career. If you are interested in learning more about SEM-EP, visit our SEM-EP page for added details about the program, including the faculty, the SEM-EP National Registry, our application process, and much more.