Whenever enrollment leaders frown, there’s a good chance the campus president is to blame. Ask around: Happy enrollment chiefs tend to say they enjoy good relations with the big boss. Unhappy ones often describe their president as living on another planet.
But getting on the same page is easier said than done, as several college officials here said on Friday at the ACT’s annual Enrollment Planners Conference. During a session on improving relationships with campus leaders, Candace S. Vancko said enrollment officials often must educate their presidents and boards because "some think they know a lot more than they do."
Ms. Vancko has seen the relationship from both sides. A veteran of the enrollment field, she is now president of the State University of New York at Delhi. It’s important, she advised the audience, to assess how much your president knows, and then find a way to fill in the gaps. Gracefully, of course. "You always want to make your president look good," she said.
That means making complicated material easy to understand. Think executive summaries and key takeaways. Stop by your president’s office for brief chats, Ms. Vancko suggested, and maybe pass along a specific idea, or an article that describes a trend relevant to the campus.
Don’t be shy. "Presidents should not hear good news or bad news about enrollment," she said, "before he or she hears it from you."
Translation is part of the job, too. Don’t assume your trustees know what "tuition discounting" means, said Barbara J. Keener. "All this jargon we speak on a daily basis — they don’t necessarily speak it."
Read more The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/How-PresidentsEnrollment/231731