AACRAO Spotlight interviews are published twice weekly before major professional development meetings. They feature our conversations with industry experts, highlighting key issues and promoting sessions and workshops at the upcoming conference.
Below you'll find brief summaries of three recent Q-and-As with links to the full interviews.
Making Community College Cool
Taking a campus from humdrum to hip requires a concerted effort, revolutionary thinking, and “ in many cases “ not a lot of dough, according to the SEM team at St. Clair County Community College in Michigan. AACRAO spoke with the college's Registrar, Carrie Bearss; Vice President of Student Services, Pete Lacey; and President, Kevin Pollock, PhD, about their upcoming AACRAO SEM Conference session Making Community College Cool.┬"
Read AACRAO's conversation with Pollock, Bearss and Lacey here.
Building the Enrollment Management Brand within the Enterprise
The flashy side of strategic enrollment management is the part that's marketed to the public. But a successful SEM program must be built on a campus-wide unified vision”which requires clear, consistent internal communication.
At this year's SEM Conference, Pam Horne, Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions at Purdue University, will address the importance of Building the Enrollment Management Brand within the Enterprise.┬"
This is about communication about enrollment management within the institution,┬" Horne said. Institutions tend to think of enrollment management as who's walking in the door, but we try to tell a broader story. Recruitment and admissions are the first piece, but SEM is also about the interrelationships among units on campus to ensure optimal student enrollment and success.┬"
Her session will give attendees practical tools and strategies for this kind of comprehensive intra-institutional communication. She sat down with AACRAO to talk about why it's important for institutions to focus on internal SEM branding. Read AACRAO's interview with Horne here.
Holistic Admissions in the On-Going Fisher Era
A major aspect of strategic enrollment management is ensuring that an institution admits a diverse student group that would contribute to the campus community in meaningful ways. Institutions that implement holistic/broad-based admissions take into account a student's interests, passions, special talents and personality instead of solely GPA and standardized test scores.
Schools need to broaden their perspective of who they're admitting,┬" said AACRAO Managing Consultant Michele Sandlin. With vastly changing student demographics, I think [holistic/broad-based admissions are] becoming increasingly important.┬"
Sandlin and University of Maryland College Park Professor Emeritus William Sedlacek will be sharing their 30 years of supportive research and experience in a preconference workshop at AACRAO's SEM Conference in Chicago to answer major questions about holistic/broad-based admissions and how to implement non-cognitive variables in the admissions process to better assess student potential and institutional fit. Read our conversation with Sandlin and Sedlacek here.