In today’s higher education landscape, strategic enrollment management (SEM) planning is a must for any campus. Enrollment outcomes have a direct and significant impact on an institution’s financial performance; however, reaching enrollment goals extends beyond merely increasing the number of enrolled students.
In 2011, AACRAO Consulting began working with Indiana State University (ISU) to align their current strategic plans with enrollment planning on campus. This project included familiarizing the Institution’s leadership and key stakeholders with SEM concepts and helping them to prepare for SEM planning. The consultants conducted a SEM workshop on SEM Core Concepts in order for the entire campus would become more strategically and purposefully engaged with enrollment issues.
The project expanded into multiple parts throughout 2012 and 2013 to assist Indiana State University in developing a long-range SEM plan. AACRAO Consultants Drs. Green and Bontrager and Mr. Stanley Henderson (Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at the University of Michigan-Dearborn) observed from previous visits that although SEM inherently links recruitment and retention, ISU had more of an opportunity to focus on their retention initiatives, to enhance the alignment amongst recently launched initiatives, to focus energy around some high impact potential new ones, and to embed SEM principles into the culture of the organization. These consultants worked with a variety of ISU committees, including recruitment, retention and data to strategically review the university’s structure and outcomes of their student success programs and residence life programs to aid in developing a strong retention-focused SEM plan. After working with a variety of committees and counsels in charge of SEM AACRAO Consulting was able to assist ISU in developing and implementing a long-range SEM plan.
After making a strong impact on ISU’s campus, Joshua Powers, Associate Vice President for Student Success, stated that the consultation “…turned out to be a partnership in the truest sense and one that not only helped to give focus to what we were doing and why, but that helped keep me and our team focused on regular deliverables and preparation for the 'next meeting with Tom.' Even more importantly, it helped to strengthen a budding culture of data to inform decision making and a process that reinforced the importance of work across traditional lines for addressing a complex issue like retention and completion. […]Thank you for all that you did to assist us, support us, and champion us, and to what I do see as a relationship that can continue.”
For more information about SEM planning, contact us at AACRAO Consulting.