Kickstart or Restart Action Planning for Strategic Enrollment Management

1. Kickstart or RestartAction Planning for Strategic Enrollment Management WSSSC Workshop Clover Park Technical College Lakewood, Washington October 10, 2014 Christine Kerlin Senior Consultant, AACRAO Retired: Vice President, University Center and Strategic Planning Everett Community College, WA

2. Welcome • Does your institution need to get on the road to managing its enrollment? Have you started the engine but can't seem to get traction? Whether your institution is seeking to increase enrollment or manage shifting enrollments this session will provide an outline for a process that gets you on track. Concerned about outreach, retention, completion, student services program mix, curricular offerings, and new student demographics? Come prepared to learn, share and discuss. • If you are already on a productive SEM road, please share your tips for success.

3. Introductions and agenda • Logistics • Who is here? • Ask questions, share experiences • Our goal – essential steps and an action plan • History, concepts, structure, planning

4. Historically, over the last 35+ years… As a concept, Enrollment Management was born in the early 1970s at Boston College. • The growing research & theories of student departure (retention). • The emerging sensitivity to marketing in student recruitment & in higher education generally. • A focus on the traditional full-time undergraduate students • The 1980s enrollment crisis in higher education. Marketing

5. EM in the 1990s was marked by… • An emphasis on integrating financial aid, pricing, and net revenue planning • Inclusion of adult, part-time, & graduate enrollments • The explosion of information technology • Increasing and changing competition • A mushrooming consulting industry • The emergence of substantive literature and professional status. Integration

6. Today Enrollment Management evolves as a strategic component of institutional planning…. • Instructional programs and services designed with intentionality, purpose, integration of effort, service efficiency, and positive interventions with students. • Integrated cross-campus collaborations and partnerships between faculty, administrators, and staff. • Use of assessment and information-driven decision making. • Understanding how campus cultures impact enrollment management efforts. • Importance of shared leadership at multiple levels. See “Leading Up” at: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/leading-up-the-art-of-managing-your-boss/ Strategy

7. Redefining Higher Education Industrial Age • Teaching franchise • Information infrastructure as a support tool • Separate learning systems • Silos • Bureaucratic systems • Rigid pre-designed processes Information Age • Learning franchise • Information infrastructure as instrument of transformation • Fused learning systems • Big tent • Self-informing, self-correcting systems • Families of transactions customized to needs of learners, faculty, staff Fusion

8. We Face Real Challenges EXTERNAL: • Increasing competition from other learning organizations that utilize e-tools more effectively than we do, and package their content to meet demand for non-traditional, online and global delivery. • These new learning organizations are emphasizing the high volume, low-cost options. • Our own public baccalaureates are moving into workforce training and the adult market – our bread and butter. • Our regional demographics are shifting away from – or adding to - our “known zone”. Fewer traditional-age students, aging adults, more traditionally under-represented populations.

9. More Challenges EXTERNAL: • Affordability. How will families and independent students assess cost and value? • A complex funding environment for institutions AND students • The public, and students, have high expectations of service, of product, of performance, of affordability, of outcomes. Students and families are “consumers”.

10. More Challenges INTERNAL: • Our budgets and our organizational structures are stretched. • High enrollment produced more staff/classes, low enrollment forces decisions. • Too many committees? • Fluctuating enrollments, stressed staff and systems. • Low level of flexibility with our own workforce structure. • Our enrollment targets and funding are driven within a political model. Our enrollment targets are getting sliced and diced. • Evolving into CTCLink. Our internal understanding of how our databases “really” work may be imperfect. Our uses of data to schedule courses, analyze viability or need or demand, may be imperfect.

11. More Challenges INTERNAL: • Achieving viable program mix to a) serve, b) meet goals, and c) respond to the realities of our own institution. • Inability to rapidly adjust curriculum. • Accommodating various non-competitive rules in our systems. • To “bacc” or not to “bacc”, or how to “bacc”? • The pressure serving underprepared students and special populations. • The dynamics of Change Management. • And, here’s a big one: Does your Institutional Strategic Plan provide some direction to your enrollment planning? • You can name more….. Facilities, space availability, scheduling?

12. What are your challenges? A real example from one of your websites: “Technology” As the need for costly, up-to-date technology continues to grow, the college should: • Provide professional development training in new technologies for faculty and staff. • Maintain sufficient capacity and appropriate infrastructure to support e-learning and data collection activities. • Develop new platforms that best serve the technology needs of students and staff. • It is most helpful to express them as issues. An issue statement implies an impact and a need to respond. “Funding” vs “State funding has stabilized but tuition income has decreased to the extent that we cannot meet our current costs.” • “We need to attract more students” vs “Our enrollment declines are seen in recent high school graduates enrolling in Fall, and in low enrollments in our manufacturing tech programs, and in our criminal justice program.”

13. SEM can have a transformative role in your organization • Realigning the organization with its changing environment • Redesigning the organization, its structure and tools • Redefining individual roles and responsibilities • Reengineering processes in the transformational context …“Culture” is a big factor

14. Elements of Campus Culture and the SEM Opportunity Adapted from: A Matter of Culture and Leadership: Student Success in State Colleges and Universities, AASCU, 2005

15. With all these cultural aspects, SEM is an institutional balancing act • Enrollment Goals • Instructional Program Mix – type and mode • Quest for Quality • Increase Diversity • Ensuring Access and Affordability • Increasing Net Tuition Revenue • Increasing Retention & Graduation Rates • Improving Student Learning Outcomes • Expansion or contraction of mission

16. So, what is SEM? • SEM is a comprehensive process designed to help an institution achieve and maintain optimum enrollment, where optimum is defined within the academic [instructional] context of the institution. • Adapted from SEM Primer • SEM enables the fulfillment of institutional mission and students’ educational goals. • Adapted from Bob Bontrager • Strategic enrollment management is a concept and process that enables the fulfillment of institutional mission and students’ educational goals. • Adapted from Stanley Henderson • Enrollment management is a comprehensive and coordinated process that enables a college to identify enrollment goals that are allied with its mission, its strategic plan, its environment, and its resources, and to reach those goals through the effective integration of administrative processes, student services, curriculum planning, and market analysis. • Christine Kerlin

17. What is SEM? • SEM is a comprehensive processdesigned to help an institution achieve and maintain optimum enrollment, where optimum is defined within the academic [instructional] context of the institution. • Adapted from SEM Primer • SEM enables the fulfillment of institutional mission and students’ educational goals. • Adapted from Bob Bontrager • Strategic enrollment management is a concept and process that enables the fulfillment of institutional mission and students’ educational goals. • Adapted from Stanley Henderson • Enrollment management is a comprehensive and coordinated processthat enables a college to identify enrollment goals that are allied with its mission, its strategic plan, its environment, and its resources, and to reach those goals through the effective integration of administrative processes, student services, curriculum planning, and market analysis. • Christine Kerlin

18. Myth Busters Myth Busters • SEM is not just a recruitment plan. • SEM is not just a marketing plan. • SEM is not separate from the academic mission of the institution. • SEM is not always about growth. • “SEM is effective integration of administrative processes, student services, curriculum planning, and market analysis.”

19. What does SEM look like on a campus? A SEM Tree Welcome to SEM Hall Professor SEM Or……

20. Like this???

21. Creating a Structure • Create a structure for leadership, planning and decision-making with regard to five concerns: • Institutional culture • Governance structure • Enabling the institution to review issues, goals and strategies through these lenses: • curriculum planning • administrative processes • student services • market analysis • Budget decision cycle and involvement of budget decision-makers • The dynamics of Change Management.

22. Selecting the Right Organizational Structure for Your Institution • Committee • Coordinator/Matrix • Division

23. Committee or “Task Force” • Working Group (continuous) – • VP Instruction, Deans, Student Services leadership team, Director of Public Information, Publications Director, Director of Institutional Research, Director of Enrollment, International Programs, …other….. • Advisory Group (periodic) – • Running Start, International, Information Technology, Enrollment Services, Financial Aid, Advising, Diversity Services, Publications, Research and Planning, Workforce, Outreach, Career Services, Branch Campuses, TRIO, e-Learning, Faculty representatives…other

24. Committee • The SEM Committee is best supported through an effective partnership with Instructional Council. • The SEM Committee often spins out a variety of other committees or links to other existing committees. Examples: • Student Success and Retention Committee • Information Technology Planning Group • Research • Needs a presidential charge.

25. Student Services Instructional Division Coordinator Information Services Administrative Services Coordinator To whom does the Coordinator report? Needs a strong Presidential charge. 25

26. Division Let me tell you about the challenges of this model…

27. How is your institution approaching enrollment management? • Committee ??? • Coordinator ??? • Division ??? Some assert that structure may be related to your institution’s current perspective on enrollment management, and/or the perceived urgency of your situation……

28. SEM Transition Model Strategic Tactical Structural Nominal Denial Adapted from Dolence

29. Let’s put this into perspective…

30. Does Structure Matter? • Some would argue that an over-emphasis on structure misses the point. (We’ll talk about institutional ethos in a minute….) • Too much emphasis on structure delays the initial action. • For many of us, SEM is an organic, incremental process. • HOWEVER, organizational structure issues tend to come to the fore as you continue to work and re-work your Plan.

31. A Key Factor in Structure: SEM through the Academic Lens

32. “An institution’s academic program is inexorably co-dependent on enrollment management. The quality of the academic program can only be developed and maintained in a stable environment, and stable enrollments are only possible through sound [academic] planning…” Dolence

33. SEM INFORMED BY THE ACADEMIC MINDSET Ethos: the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution. Merriam-Webster • Institutional Ethos is largely described by and through the academic enterprise. • Locating SEM in the academic enterprise enables SEM to draw from that ethos and to have the validity it needs to work. • Structure needs to be the servant of effective SEM implementation, not the master of it.

34. GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE SEM ETHOS

35. SEM Ethos:Shared responsibility • If SEM reflects institutional identity and culture, it becomes an institution-wide strategy owned by each member of the community. • No individual or office is responsible for enrollment strategy or outcomes. Everyone has responsibility for institutional and student success. • Each member of community takes responsibility for nurturing SEM Ethos, implementation, outcomes. Comprehensive

36. SEM Ethos:Integrated Institutional Planning • As an academic enterprise, SEM can be easily integrated into institutional planning. • If it’s academically centered, SEM will be a defining part of institutional positioning and strategy. • If SEM isn’t part of strategic planning, not much can be accomplished. Integrated

37. SEM Ethos:Focus On Service • In SEM Ethos, processes and procedures are more important than structure. • Business practices need to be aligned with academic mission. • Institutions want to test students’ talents in the classroom, not their patience in navigating institutional business practices. Student Success

38. SEM Ethos:Students’ Seamless View • Students see enrollment as a seamless process, not as a railroad track with multiple station stops • Enrollment is non-stop rather than stop and go (or even one-stop) • SEM is a big tent view of student expectations: everything is there, but they don’t want to touch what they don’t need Integration

39. SEM Ethos:Intuitive Service • It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to us: does it make sense to the students? • Why is the student in the institution? • The only way he/she stays in school is for an academic reason. • Retention is academic success. • Processes and procedures should enhance academic success. Student Success

40. SEM Ethos:Key Performance Indicators • Enrollment managers struggle with notion of KPIs as indices of institutional health. • In reality, KPIs are placeholders for institutional values and indices of health. • The “Bodies” approach is out of sync with the academic values of the institution. (“Student fit” is in sync.) • If the enrollment manager has an academic understanding of the place, KPIs set themselves. Mission

41. SEM Ethos:Research And Evaluation • With SEM Ethos, SEM has to have research and evaluation plan. • More and more industry standard is data and research—tools of the academy. • EM units cannot continue to do “feel good” programs that can’t show support for academic goals. Evaluation

42. SEM FOR THE LONG HAUL • SEM is long-term and never finished. • Academic foundation is fluid; so must SEM be. • Academic disciplines change with new research, new paradigms, new interests. • Changes cannot be instantaneous. • There needs to be a run up to the take-off point. • SEM must follow the deliberate path of the long-term academic, not the quick fix of the repairman.

43. Factors, and the Plan

44. Essential Factor: Academic Leadership • Leadership articulates the strategic academic aspirations, goals, needs, and strategies of faculty and students. • If the CEO says, “Enrollment is paramount,” and fails to say, “to the academic mission,” SEM fails. • All must understand that academic well-being is linked to enrollment health.

45. Essential Factor: Integrated Planning • enrollment management (lower case) is just managing enrollments. • STRATEGIC Enrollment Management (upper case) happens when enrollment strategies are integrated with the institution’s strategic plan, academic master plan, and its fundamental (academic) mission.

46. Essential Factor: Lateral Communication • Top-down communication is necessary to set the tone, but successful implementation of EM requires lateral communication across campus. • EM needs lateral communication to ensure adherence to the institution’s academic ethos. • Communication has to become a part of the culture; it has to express the ethos of the place.

47. Essential Factor: Structure For Participation • The institutional academic ethos will set the structure to provide a means for faculty, staff, and students to contribute to SEM. • EM structure grows out of the core of an individual institution; it cannot be transplanted from institution X or Y. • The structure cannot be more important than the cultural foundation itself.

48. Essential Factor: Matching Structure To Mission • A community college may have a campus-wide structure. • The research extensive university may have multiple structures in academic units. • The wise enrollment manager(s) will seek to know the academic grounding of the institution and then seek a structure based on that foundation.

49. Recap • Academic Leadership • Integrated Planning • Lateral Communication • Structure for Participation • Match Structure to the Mission…and it is an academic mission!

50. Recognizing the Three Faces of SEM • SEM as a structural/managerial focus. • SEM as a planning process. • SEM as aleadership effort.