| 0:00:09.21 | 37.6s | Alex Fronduto | Welcome to a special live edition of Admit it. I'm Alex Fronduto, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University, and we're coming to you from the 2025 AACRAO annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. This episode is part of our conference conversation series where we sit down with presenters to dive deeper into their sessions and insights. Joining me right now is Julie Taylor, AVP of enrollment management at the University of North Alabama, who led a fantastic session on rapid improvement equals growing enrollment. I'm excited to hear more about her work and the strategy she shared in her presentation. Julie, thanks so much for being here. |
| 0:00:46.88 | 2.9s | Julie Taylor | Hey, Alex, I'm excited to be in Seattle with you. |
| 0:00:50.68 | 7.6s | Alex Fronduto | Can you tell me just for our listeners a little bit more about yourself, uh, kind of your trajectory to give us some context before we dig into your session? |
| 0:00:58.52 | 37.9s | Julie Taylor | Absolutely. uh, I am from Alabama. I work at the University of North Alabama. I'm a proud alumna of the University of North Alabama and like you, Alex, I started in the world of admissions and so I started. As an admissions counselor and uh love the work that I get to do to help students navigate the college journey and from there I moved up in admissions and now get to supervise not only admissions, but financial aid, registrar, our one stop and um a scholarship program called Presidential Mentors Academy. |
| 0:01:37.2 | 12.8s | Alex Fronduto | So only a few offices and staff that you're supervising. So what led you to want to even submit this session? So tell us a little bit about your thought process and then we can dig into what you're actually presenting on. |
| 0:01:49.94 | 70.9s | Julie Taylor | Absolutely, yeah. So I, again, have been at UNA for many years now, the University of North Alabama, and there was a lady who was hired to work in our College of miss, and she came from industry. So she had worked at Toyota. And so when she came to the university, she brought a lot of knowledge about industry and how they really looked at their processes. And so she, she taught us how to do what we so lovingly called rapid improvement events. It's literally where When she came, it was Post-it notes and paper and we mapped a process. Beginning to end, you kind of establish where it starts and where it ends and what you want to look at. And in that 4 hour process or 8 hour process, you literally look at the whole A map of your process, whatever it might be, it could be, maybe it's the admissions application or maybe it's the financial aid process, or maybe it's transcript articulations. And through that, you really reduce a lot of the waste that you see and create a new process. |
| 0:03:01.16 | 10.1s | Alex Fronduto | Oh, tell me more about this waste. So before we dig into your specific scenario, you know, what are some of the things that people might look to eliminate in their process? |
| 0:03:11.39 | 42.7s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, so you're looking, um, the acronym is Tim Woods and I love that. So. Uh, that's gonna be things like um motion or, uh, where you're moving things around a lot in the process or if you have a lot of inventory that you're not using, or, um, a lot of waste can be time spent waiting. So, of course, A lot of students are waiting to hear back if they've been admitted to your institution or uh waiting to see what their transcripts will, will, what credit they might get from those transcripts and so uh we really wanted to try to reduce the wait time for students as much as we possibly could. |
| 0:03:54.44 | 8.8s | Alex Fronduto | Yeah, I feel like the instant gratification nowadays is we're dealing with with anything, whether it's an acceptance, it's, you know, a course schedule, anything, |
| 0:04:03.41 | 0.8s | Julie Taylor | so we have to be |
| 0:04:04.25 | 9.6s | Alex Fronduto | faster. Oh yes, right? I mean, that's a crazy piece of it all. And so what was the specific piece that you were looking at? I assume you applied to this method and yeah, |
| 0:04:14.49 | 31.1s | Julie Taylor | so we've done probably. At least 50 of these rapid improvement events where we're looking at different processes. Uh, some of my favorites, of course, and easy places to start are looking at your admissions application, looking at the questions that you ask and why you ask them, are they really adding benefit, uh, to the student or to your institution and so eliminating waste from your application. Um, that's a great place to start and an easy place to start to see where you could eliminate some. |
| 0:04:45.75 | 21.0s | Alex Fronduto | You know that makes me think of like when we are doing any type of like event registration and things, right, like stop asking the same questions. We know that people are gonna abandon the form after like X amount of questions and so obviously in an application we probably need some of those questions. So, um, how did you actually go about kind of identifying that process? |
| 0:05:06.98 | 24.5s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, so, um. You know, and when I, when I started in admissions, um, we had folk we were. People are gonna judge me here when I say this, but we were still using typewriters like we still had paper files. We would print a student's application, put it in their paper file, and then on the typewriter would make the label. For the student's record, you know, |
| 0:05:31.64 | 0.7s | Alex Fronduto | and so, yes, yes, and so, |
| 0:05:37.89 | 36.2s | Julie Taylor | you know, taking rapid improvement events, it's a great way to kind of zoom out because you're in so much of the daily work. It's a great way to zoom out. And it creates guardrails to create change. It's so hard for people to change their daily work, the processes that they do over and over every day. This, we were just used to using typewriters. Well, guess what? No more, that's not necessary. And then that adds value into that employee's work. To be able to talk to students or it frees them up to do more meaningful work instead of manual work. |
| 0:06:14.36 | 20.1s | Alex Fronduto | Right, and I mean I feel like I know this is gonna be a side comment, but it is a conversation that's happened a lot around generative AI, right? People are like, they're gonna steal my job or Going to shift to the work you're doing and especially in the admission world, right, to be more front facing, to be contacting the students, being potentially on the road, that's kind of the connection I see |
| 0:06:34.42 | 21.8s | Julie Taylor | that's what I love so much about lean and some people would call it 6 Sigma. Uh, is that there is always value-added work to be done. Nobody's ever going to lose their job by redefining what the process looks like, looks like it's only to um add more value to their work. |
| 0:06:56.64 | 18.2s | Alex Fronduto | I love that. And so let's dig into your session. So do you kind of go over the process in which someone would do this? Did you apply to a specific scenario? Kind of give us a quick synopsis of someone obviously could not be in your session or wasn't here at the conference, like what would be some of those key takeaways you would want them to know? |
| 0:07:15.4 | 64.5s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, yeah, so we will. I brought some Post-it notes. We're gonna whip them out and let people kind of work through. There's kind of a um. mock scenario. It's a video that we'll watch and folks will be able to write down their idea cards. That's also another part of the process is. So when you map out your process on paper, you get Post-it notes and folks literally write down ideas that they have while you're looking at the process. And nothing is off the table. You can write down any idea that you want to. There's no bad ideas through the process. And so, um, Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about our history at the university and really how it's revitalized our enrollment. We have seen tremendous enrollment growth and retention growth that I think is attributed to um having these events and being able to zoom out and look at the process, um, and then kind of going through what lean is and um what some of those terms mean with lean. And then we will do some hands-on applications as well. |
| 0:08:20.10 | 20.5s | Alex Fronduto | That sounds awesome and it sounds, it's very tangible, which is obviously what people are looking for, so I appreciate that, especially the engagement with the sticky notes, like feeling like you're a part of it is I think great. And so tell me about, you said you've done so many, so clearly you must be a great facilitator now of it. Too, so like, where did you start with it all? |
| 0:08:40.95 | 0.3s | Julie Taylor | did you what did you, |
| 0:08:42.87 | 1.9s | Alex Fronduto | how did you become so great at what you do? |
| 0:08:45.35 | 61.1s | Julie Taylor | I'll give a shout out to Janice Ven. She's the lady who came from industry that came and worked at the university, and she really taught me everything that I know. Uh, we've been able to present together. Um, there are other institutions doing this work. Um, there's, um, an organization called Lean in Higher Education. Um, and it's a global network, so this is not unique to our institution. What I would say is unique about what we do at North Alabama is how we've done it with enrollment and admissions and registrar and financial aid, those offices. Um, we see quite often that a lot of institutions are using it for financial, uh, the finance side or HR, um, but we've not seen it a whole lot in the enrollment side, so. Uh, yeah, Janice brought it to our university and um helped train me and then also now at North Alabama, uh, we do facilitate trainings for others that want to learn more about this as well. |
| 0:09:46.71 | 13.6s | Alex Fronduto | Oh, I love that that you are providing that value anyways. And do you feel like even as an institution, not just enrollment kind of the offices you oversee, I'm sure are doing it, but do you feel like it. It's kind of gone across the university at all as well. |
| 0:10:00.56 | 23.5s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, there is a, um, our deputy provost, uh, Doctor Amber Paul is very involved in, uh, hosting these and so we've also, she oversees, um, our student success center, our retention efforts, so she's been able to do some of the same work in in that area as well and we have seen, um. In the last 10 years, our enrollment growth has been almost 50%. |
| 0:10:24.28 | 2.1s | Alex Fronduto | Well, that's not a problem. That's a good problem to have |
| 0:10:26.36 | 23.8s | Julie Taylor | a good problem to have. And then, um, you know, our retention rate for a 4-year public regional institution is almost at 80%, which is a huge feat. And so, um, it's certainly not this alone, but I think this has contributed to allowing us to be able to again zoom out and to enact change within guardrails. |
| 0:10:50.34 | 8.9s | Alex Fronduto | Right, and I think especially in the admission world you can never attribute anything to one piece it all the time like oh if I do this one thing we're gonna grow 10% |
| 0:10:59.22 | 1.2s | Julie Taylor | everybody's job, |
| 0:11:00.50 | 25.1s | Alex Fronduto | right, exactly right. And so I appreciate you sharing that every time, you know, this isn't the only thing that's probably done it. So, um, I'm always appreciative of that. So tell me a little bit about maybe a specific example. So you've already kind of used the application process, but is there any examples, for example, maybe Something you got rid of in your application process or something you got rid of in another piece that you felt like this process really helped you get to that point. |
| 0:11:25.71 | 43.9s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, there, there are 3 levers for change when you're evaluating a process. It's people, process and your tools and so it's been so fun to go through so many of these and to see different outcomes for each of them. Um, we did a rapid improvement event for housing. And through that they realized that they needed a new tool and so they were able to get Starrez through that process. And so, um, sometimes it's also a great way to make justification to be able to hire new people, get a new tool, and of course the easiest thing to do is to change the process, but um it's a great way to kind of map and then you can advocate for the resources that you need. |
| 0:12:10.23 | 22.1s | Alex Fronduto | And do you find that your institution specifically since you are doing these so much across the university, it is taken with that weight because obviously the next step is like you can do this process, but as everyone knows like the buy in to get the resource or get the tools. So I'm curious about that connection. OK, we did this and we need for that housing, we needed this, like how does it get. So |
| 0:12:32.33 | 49.0s | Julie Taylor | another huge part of mapping the process is then you do 30 by 30s. So you meet every 30 days. So once you've finalized and mapped your process, folks submit all these idea cards and then you literally go through all of the idea cards and create action items. Based off of those ideas. And so then you're meeting as a team every 30 days to mark off the action items and some of them are easier to accomplish than others. Um, I've seen action item list as easy as we want to add this communication to the communication flow. Um, some more difficult where it's like we would like to hire a new communications coordinator. Well, that one might take a little bit longer. |
| 0:13:23.97 | 1.8s | Alex Fronduto | Yeah, resources are resources is always the big one, |
| 0:13:26.61 | 10.6s | Julie Taylor | but it is you're, you're coming together and meeting every 30 days again to get out of the weeds to make sure you are accomplishing the goals that you set out for yourself. |
| 0:13:37.61 | 13.8s | Alex Fronduto | And so with that, uh, you're saying you're meeting every 30 days. Does that length of time in which you're meeting for how long is that really dependent on the process, or is it dependent like there is a structure to like how you get to the finish line? Yes, |
| 0:13:51.65 | 19.0s | Julie Taylor | there are people in my office that will come. It made me like can we end this? Are we done? I don't, sorry, but yeah, you really work through the action items until you check them all off or it gets to a point where you determine that some of them are not accomplishable at this time. |
| 0:14:11.10 | 15.4s | Alex Fronduto | And that makes sense. And so I'm a big person on evaluation, so you've kind of done the process, you made the change, so is something built in or are you doing something different in terms of the evaluation of now looking back and seeing either about the process itself or the change you made. |
| 0:14:26.49 | 54.7s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, so that's, that's also a big part of um lean and 6 Sigma is the two foundations are you always have respect for people, so there's never any blame for the way something's been done in the past. The way that we did it in the past was the best way we knew how to do it at that point. So there's never any blame, but the second part is continuous improvement, which honestly I kind of hate because You never reach a point where you're like, uh, we did this, and I think that can be frustrating for some of my folks in my office that we do all this hard work and then it's like, well, we're gonna do another one of these. But you never reach a point where you are, you've checked all the boxes and you're like, I'm done with this. We can move on to something else, but it's always continuous improvement. |
| 0:15:21.44 | 23.6s | Alex Fronduto | And I mean that makes perfect sense, especially as things consistently and constantly changing, so your process is going to have to adapt no matter what. And so do you have specific timetables? So let's say you did make all of these changes to your application or to the housing process, like, when do you come? Obviously it's still continuous, but do you feel like at some point you have to go through this process again and like how do you know when to do it? |
| 0:15:45.32 | 36.5s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, that's a great question. Um, now at this point I really let my team be the driver of the processes that they would like to look at and map. Um, when we started this, um, administration was really the driver of a lot of the processes that we wanted to look at, um, but at this point, I really let my team decide. And so they came to me and they're like, we'd really like to look at our dual enrollment process. Can we, can we map it? It's like, yes, we can definitely do that. So, um, they really get to be the voice in deciding what we want to do next and what processes we need to |
| 0:16:21.80 | 13.8s | Alex Fronduto | improve. And as a leader, I'm sure that empowerment is helpful to you, of course, right? Like you can't be in the thick of everything as you've moved up and so what people coming to me like I want to map this out, that must be. Achievement in itself rather than oh I don't want to do it. |
| 0:16:35.70 | 41.2s | Julie Taylor | I know, I know, yeah, it's, it's very exciting for me. I, I really have, I feel like this has shaped the way that I lead because again it creates those guardrails for change as we've said before is so necessary and so, um, I love that it's and it's not for everybody. I, I will admit that I definitely have folks who, um, it's not their jam and that's OK too. Um, but hopefully, it's a, a unifying process where we can all come together and be able to speak freely. Again, no judgment for how it's been done in the past, um, but just creates great guardrails and communication for change. |
| 0:17:17.97 | 36.3s | Alex Fronduto | And I think this is kind of a separate topic in general, so I'll try to take your quick answer on it. But that history piece is always important. Like you said, there's no blame on how it was done in the past because that's the time, but have you had situations where it's hard to move forward, right? You always are sometimes. Stuck in terms of people believing that that was the best way and still is. So how do you get across that with certain individuals? I think that might be something our listeners are like, yeah, I want to make this change, but 5 people have been here for 30 years and don't want to change. |
| 0:17:54.52 | 44.0s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, and that, you know what. I've experienced that quite a bit and that's OK. We, we will only enact the change that people want to make. You can only control so much um through the process and so um if folks dig their heels in about a certain thing, that's OK. Let's, let's refocus and see what over here that we might could change. And so, um, it's definitely not um. You know, dictating in any way or um it is only folks have to raise their hand to participate, um, and it's not something that we want to to force change on. |
| 0:18:39.6 | 25.7s | Alex Fronduto | Right, and I think the whole approach is trying to be as collaborative as possible and so um I definitely understand that. Um, so obviously with all of these conference presentations you submitted it a while ago. Again, it's a bit, it's a topic that's high level enough that you could be continuing to do it, but is there anything been different or different times or shifts that from when you submitted to today even and then thinking to the future of like what's next? |
| 0:19:04.95 | 67.0s | Julie Taylor | Well, you know, I mean. There, there have been a lot, you know, we did a lot of things. We made a lot of changes during COVID that I still think we're evaluating to see what the impacts are and, and evaluate. Um, I think we made a lot of changes at that point that were necessary, but maybe are not necessary anymore that we need to go back and kind of uh reflect on and, and see, um. What waste might be in the processes that we created because we were moving fast and having to make fast decisions. So, um, yeah, I think there is always the um You, you have the eye looking forward uh on to trying to keep your finger on the pulse of what students need and how to help them navigate the college search process, but you're also always looking backwards to see what processes you've created to then streamline them or change them or, you know, so it's this balance of what do students need in the future and looking at your current processes to help them blend together. |
| 0:20:12.31 | 11.0s | Alex Fronduto | I love that. And in terms of any of the processes, specifically, is there anything that you're like, I want to start this now or you're in the middle of it now of like any specific examples of what you're trying to do? We, |
| 0:20:23.35 | 46.7s | Julie Taylor | we've, we got Slate, which is a huge game changer. We got that through doing a rapid improvement event around admissions and so, uh, we're really blending a lot of registrar and financial aid into slate at this point, um, I We have a lot of manual uh entering of scholarships and the the transcript articulation process, both of which we've mapped, but we're trying to eliminate the manual work of that. And so we're trying to automate a lot of that through Slate, which is so fun and so exciting, um, because those folks who are doing the manual work will it'll it'll. Revolutionize the work that they get to do. Right, |
| 0:21:10.6 | 22.4s | Alex Fronduto | it goes right back to what we were talking about in terms of capacity shift in work and so I love to hear that around kind of those processes and thinking about that and I think a lot of people may be in that similar boat. We know that technological advances have skyrocketed, so I, I wouldn't be surprised that most people are thinking about what are those types. processes, improvements that we could be continuously making, yeah, |
| 0:21:32.61 | 32.9s | Julie Taylor | and through the um through the mapping process we do establish a future state map which is very dreamy and really relies on technology. I mean, technology is a huge part. AI will radically change the work that we do in enrollment and so we want to embrace it and be able to um. Embrace the uh technological aspect and and be able to make things faster, but still be so personal in how we interact with with students and their families. |
| 0:22:06.20 | 12.3s | Alex Fronduto | I appreciate that. I know this isn't an AI, but that, you know, first in admissions knows that that is so key and you know you don't want to go too many steps away from that. |
| 0:22:18.60 | 4.2s | Julie Taylor | You can't sacrifice it. |
| 0:22:23.46 | 17.1s | Alex Fronduto | Um, I think that that's a great point about AI as well. And so you kind of talk through your process, talked about where we are, some examples, curious if there's anything we didn't talk about that you think a listener should want to know or any other advice that you haven't shared yet. |
| 0:22:40.90 | 83.0s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, I will also say another big thing that I learned through lean is a term called going gemba. And so, you know what. OK, going Gemba, it's where you go and see, you ask questions and you show respect. And so, um, that's huge for me in particular in my leadership style. Uh, I love to um see what the other offices are doing. I, I would say I'm pretty hands-on and so going Gemba from um A lean term is basically in a manufacturing setting, folks would go and see what's happening in the in the line or um they actually go and talk with people and so um I think it's so important to uh interact with, uh, I, you know, I started in admissions and I really got to work with students and have that interaction. Um, but now I have less interactions with students, which makes me really sad. But now I want to be able to advocate for the folks that, that, that I work with. So my folks in financial aid registering admissions and so I think it's very important for me to go Gemba and go talk to them and ask questions and and really show respect for the work that they do. |
| 0:24:04.6 | 66.0s | Alex Fronduto | And I think that it's huge when we think about retention of staff and understanding where they're coming from, how many times do you hear like they don't know what I do, right? Like you hear that over and over again and so I appreciate you sharing that and you also kind of shared it from both viewpoints, right, from the staff, you know, viewpoint, but also from the student, like you said, the student, the parent, you know, and. I think that's really hard as you move up the leadership track right as you said, you become further and further away from the student and if that's who you need to be thinking about like how do you pull yourself back to that and so I appreciate you know that's something I talk about a lot as people move up is like you have to find ways to still connect back to that kind of boots on the ground like are you taking a random meeting with a student and family? Are you going on. Tour like obviously you can't do it all the time, but can you build that in to your day and your structure every so often so that you do know what's happening and you do know what the experiences are changing. Um, I, I think a lot of leaders sometimes struggle in that specific piece. They think it's, you know, when I did this X amount of years ago, it may not be the same environment today. |
| 0:25:10.35 | 34.2s | Julie Taylor | Yeah, yeah, I would say that. The folks who are boots on the ground are the most valuable to know what the students' needs are. I'm, I mean. I went to North Alabama where I work now, and I can talk about my experience 20 years ago, but it's so different now and so I can't, I can't be the expert on what a student's needs or wants are now because I'm out of touch. And so, um, those folks are so valuable because they know it better than than anybody. |
| 0:25:45.7 | 5.8s | Alex Fronduto | I really appreciate that. Any final words, final thoughts before we end that you want to share? |
| 0:25:51.6 | 17.9s | Julie Taylor | I'm just so appreciative of this time together. Alex, you letting me talk about all these weird terms that you've never heard of before and so um hopefully that will Pique some of the listeners' interest in in some lean work. So, um, I just thank you for this time together. Oh, |
| 0:26:09.9 | 6.9s | Alex Fronduto | thank you so much and thank you for sharing all these insights. I'm sure our listeners are gonna love it and thanks for coming on today. Sure |
| 0:26:15.98 | 1.1s | Julie Taylor | thing. Thank you. |