Enrollment Planning Philosophy

“Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) is a comprehensive process designed to help an institution achieve and maintain the optimum recruitment, retention and graduation rates of students where ‘optimum’ is defined within the academic context of the institution. As such SEM is an institution wide process that embraces virtually every aspect of an institution’s function and culture” (Black, 2001).

Enrollment Development Process 

EDPAC is the enrollment goal setting and planning group and it oversees the SEM process for the University. There are several leadership groups actively working on projects and tasks initiated by EDPAC. Through these groups, the action plans and the assessment work of enrollment development take place. The leadership groups report their progress to EDPAC on a regular basis. The groups are instrumental in setting the action items and performance indicators. Each group has members from EDPAC and members from the greater university community each determined by the work and expected outcomes.  

Projections and Analytics is a group that includes members of EDPAC with specific responsibility for institutional analysis, enrollment projections, recruitment, academic services and the Provost’s Office.  

Graduation Rate is a group of EDPAC members that could also be known as the Retention Rate Study Group. The single goal of the group is to find reasons that students fail to be retained and recommend changes or actions to improve student persistence. 

Marketing and Recruitment Group has a focus on marketing, recruitment and communication, and web presence issues related to student enrollment. The scope of the work includes all aspects of undergraduate student recruitment including financial aid.  

Graduate Group concerns itself with all things graduate and has several task groups reporting to it related to marketing, recruitment, communications, application processing, and retention/time to graduation and student success.

Orientation Group could also be named Orientation, Transitions, Advising and Retention. Members of this group have responsibility for students from “cradle to grave” and have concern for the continuity of service delivery throughout.  

International Group works on issues related to recruiting and retaining students from outside the United States. The scope of this group is also “cradle to grave.”  

Financial Aid and Scholarships Group deals with aid issues as they relate to enrollment goals and objectives. 

Merit Scholarship Processes Group concerns itself with tactics that aid the recruitment and matriculation of students with high academic credentials. Its purpose is to coordinate efforts, making certain that the university continues to be attractive and attentive to this segment of the FTIAC market.  

Advising, Persistence and Time to Graduation is an umbrella group which connects the University Advising Committee, the Retention Committee, and the many sub-committees and task groups associated with retention and advising to EDPAC. 

Persistence Pals is a r group that is working specifically with new FTIACs and transfer students who are not living in campus housing, a serious retention risk. They are developing treatments, actions and interventions to improve the rate of persistence for the FTIAC group as well as other groups with known high risk rates i.e. first generation, rising juniors etc. 

Transfer Initiatives Group is a  group that is working on issues related to the recruitment and retention of transfer students from both two-year and four-year institutions. The initiatives range from counselor relations to program articulation to face to face meetings with deans and unit heads from both institutions.