NIU COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
STRATEGIC PLANNING COUNCIL XIV MEETING MINUTES
(Academic Year: 2010-11) ~ Friday, November 19, 2010 ~ 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
STRATEGIC PLANNING COUNCIL XIV (SPC)
SPC Members:
Tim Aurand (MKTG Faculty), Curtis Batterton (Graduate Student Rep), Ann Carrel (Director, Executive &
Professional MBA Programs), Joe Cullinane (President – Joe Cullinane Enterprises, Inc.), Ken Elliot
(MGMT Instructor, UBUS 311), Geoff Gordon (MKTG Chair), Charles Gowen III (MGMT Faculty), Lenita
Hepker (Administrative Assistant to the Dean), Sonja Herington (Director, Global Affairs & Special
Projects), Len Lundstrum (FINA Faculty), Brain Mackie (OMIS Faculty), Lori Marcellus (Director
Undergraduate Studies), Sarah Marsh (MGMT Chair), Mark Misic (Director of Technology), Christine
Mooney (MGMT Faculty), Paul Prabhaker (Associate Dean, College of Business), Nancy Russo (OMIS
Faculty), Denise Schoenbachler (Dean, College of Business), Rebecca Shortridge (ACCY Faculty), Marc
Simpson (FINA Chair)¸ Kelly Stewart (Office Manager OM&IS), Beth Towell (Associate Dean of
Undergraduate), and Jim Young (ACCY Chair)
SPC Members Unable to Attend:
Virginia Cassidy (Vice Provost), Anthony D'Andrea (Director, Development, Senior Gift and Estate
Planning Officer – COB), Michelle De Jean (Director, COB Marketing), Lia Gillet (Director, ACR), Chang Liu
(OMIS Chair), Jane Mall (Director, COB Experiential Learning and Corporate Relations), Ian Mills
(Undergraduate Student Rep), Pam Smith (ACCY Faculty), Tim West (ACCY Faculty) and Dan Wunsch
(Associate Dean for Administration)
The Dean asked for approval of the minutes from the May 18, 2010 meeting. Ann Carrel made
a motion to approve, Marc Simpson seconded. Minutes were approved as presented.
The Dean asked for approval of the minutes from the October 1, 2010 meeting. Marc Simpson
made the motion to approve, Nancy Russo seconded. Minutes were approved as presented.
Update and Discussion on Retention and Recruitment
The Dean asked for help with the recruitment and retention initiative. Right now, recruitment
is everyone’s mission. Faculty and staff can help by:
signing open house postcards to be sent to prospective students who visit
campus,
make phone calls to prospective students,
giving tours of the building during prospective student visits.
SPC XIV Meeting Minutes ~ Friday, November 19, 2010
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NIU Student Affairs and Enrollment Management
The group recapped the meeting with NIU Student Affairs and Enrollment Management that
took place on October 28, 2010 with Brandon Lagana and Katherine (Kitty) McCarthy.
Previously recruitment was very hands off at the college and department levels, now
Admissions wants to partner with the COB and departments for recruitment purposes.
Admissions would like to get the departments involved in the process.
Admissions
Mark Misic met with Kristin Rinhardt in Admissions in regards to the redevelopment of the COB
website to focus the site on student recruitment.
The University already has the resources to make “Have a question – get a quick answer
here” search engine, but it is not being utilized to its full capability.
o The COB needs to submit questions and answers to Kristin and she will populate
the search engine for the COB.
The Admissions Office uses the Hobsons EMT system for contact management:
o records every email sent to prospective students,
o records every program the prospective student signs up to attend,
o records every letter sent to prospective student, etc.
 The COB can use this technology to track the interaction with prospective
students’ through emails, etc.
Admissions has “Live Chat” software, but when tested for an open house they did not
get good results.
How can the College of Business help Admissions?
Would like the COB to meet directly with business teachers at high schools:
o give presentations about NIU College of Business in the class,
o give guest lectures on business topics,
o interact with students in a classroom setting.
Have open houses and receptions for transfer students and area high school students
from DeKalb and Sycamore – recruit in NIU’s backyard.
Create special invite events for students who meet certain academic requirements.
Update website
o The College is current revamping the www.niu.edu.cob website to focus solely
on student recruitment.
 Have set up a module through blackboard for current students to use as a
portal to areas they would have used the COB website to access in the
past.
o Each department has been asked to review their webpages and update them for
recruitment purposes.
Open Houses/Campus Visits
Campus visits happen every day and on most Saturdays. Business students are passed through
to the COB by Admissions. Some prospective students will contact COB Undergraduate
SPC XIV Meeting Minutes ~ Friday, November 19, 2010
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Advising Office directly and ask for help from COB advisors to set up meetings with certain
faculty, to sit in on classes, etc.
Need to rethink open houses at Barsema Hall. COB’s open houses are very process oriented.
Instead of presenting information on majors, have information on what the students’ get – the
extra stuff that makes NIU – COB unique from competitors.
Student Recruitment
Admissions discontinued the Annual Honors Event in September. This last year they
incorporated the honors event with the October Open House, which was a fiasco.
How does the COB get involved with honor’s recruitment?
The Dean asked for help in creating a structure to move the student recruitment initiative
forward.
Here are 20 ideas…
o What do we do first?
o How do we prioritize them?
o What is a continuous effort?
This is not the sole responsibility of the Undergraduate Advising Office. Students do not want
to talk with advisors; they want to talk with faculty and currently enrolled students.
Action Items
The missing link in student recruitment is systems and processes.
Identify ideas and priorities.
o Create a group to identify these and then identify the process and system.
Identify the recruitment events that are already taking place and see where the COB can
help with execution. Need to do it right and well.
What can the COB do to help in recruitment that is different from what everyone else is
doing?
Need to do a better job of assessing and having measures to know what the COB is
doing well and what should be done differently.
Need to identify someone to take ownership of undergraduate recruitment –
Recruitment Coordination function.
Need to have Chairs or a point person to be on Admissions’ email list to receive email
blasts that they send out – samples attached in appendix.
Retention and Recruitment Subcommittee identified to work with the Dean:
Tim Aurand
Lori Marcellus
Mark Misic
Christine Mooney
Jim Young
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BOEA Liaison
Nancy Russo was identified as the liaison for COB Board of Executive Advisors to serve on the
two committees they are creating: 1) addressing short-term issues of undergraduate
enrollment; 2) addressing long-term issues facing the undergraduate program.
Passport Update
The Dean had to put the Passport Initiative on the side for a little while due to pressure from
the Provost Office to increase the COBs efforts with recruitment and retention.
Looking to pilot Passport during the fall semester.
Will meet with BOEA Passport Subgroup again in the spring, possibly in January.
Would like feedback from SPC on Passport Mapping document prior to meeting with
BOEA subgroup.
Meeting adjourned at 1:02 p.m.
The next SPC meeting will be scheduled in the spring semester 2011.
SPC XIV Meeting Minutes ~ Friday, November 19, 2010
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COB – Strategic Planning Council
Recruitment, Retention & Diversity (RR&D)
October 28, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Barsema Hall Dean’s Conference Room
SPC Members Present: Tim Aurand, Virginia Cassidy, Michelle De Jean, Geoff Gordon, Chang
Liu, Brian Mackie, Jane Mall, Lori Marcellus, Sarah Marsh, Mark Misic, Denise Schoenbachler,
Pam Smith, Beth Towell, Dan Wunsch, and Jim Young
COB Guest: Amy Buhrow
Special Guests from NIU Student Affairs and Enrollment Management: Brandon Lagana and
Katherine (Kitty) McCarthy
Report from Enrollment Management:
Enrollment Management is just now starting to get a sense of the impact from the
events that took place the last couple of weeks, i.e., Toni Keller.
Not sure how the applicant pool will be effected. Need to reassess the pool on almost a
daily basis.
Will be pushing the recruiting calendar out, where most students would apply by
January 1, are now looking at students applying in February.
Looking to recruit more transfer students and students that are outside of the normal
10-county student recruitment area.
Recruitment Process
New Freshman
The recruitment process starts with students in their second semester junior year of
high school. Typically these students start looking at schools in February.
o Students take the ACT/SAT exams and mark “want info on colleges” on the exam
 Colleges will then start targeting these students with mailings trying to
get the students to make campus visits in the spring.
Visit students/families at the high school → Get students to campus for visit →
Communicate to students through phone, email, regular mail, self mailers, etc.,
important that mom and dad see mailers.
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The influence that families have on students’ decisions of what school to go to has
increased over the last 8 years. Family and peers have a huge impact on student
enrollment to colleges.
Current college students who have a positive experience also recruit for their colleges as
well as high school guidance counselors.
Keep engaging students from 2nd semester junior year to 2nd semester senior year of
high school.
Campus visits will spike after July 4 through August.
Need to tell students what makes us unique, why they should choose NIU over any
other college: our faculty, unique students, COB’s ELC, etc.
Outreach is important
o Talk about living in the residence halls
o Scholarships
Follow-up is very important to get students admitted
o Once admitted, need to keep flow of emails and correspondence going
o Need to come up with a good mix of electronic and paper marketing touches
Transfer Students
It is important to build relationships with instructors at community colleges to get them
to drive students to NIU.
Internal NIU Commitments to Recruitment
Chicago – hired a recruiter from Chicago who lives and recruits in Chicago area.
Latino/a – currently have recruiter who speaks Spanish but is not of Latino descent, are
looking to hire someone who has a Latino background.
Marketing – hired someone to help with the website and creating new brochures and
literature
Student Services – looking to hire someone in a “student services coordinator” position
o Live Person – chat with a person through a website
 Helps reduce number of phone calls to Financial Aid and Admissions
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Why NIU? – Continue to work on affordability and student outcomes
o Structure of message:
 What will going to NIU do for my son or daughter?
 4 year plan
 Message has to be unique
 Address student fears by telling about the services available to them
“The Power of NIU – The Power of Education”
o What can we play off of this statement?
NIU students in recruitment efforts
o Moved phone call from process to “this is what I have experienced as an NIU
student.”
Phone calls, letters, emails and getting the students here to NIU is the most effective
form of recruitment.
Using the students “Circle of Influence” – people who influence the students to go to
certain colleges
o Parents,
o Guidance counselors,
o Peers,
o Etc.
NIU Open Houses
NIU now has a web-form on their website for students to fill out when they are planning
a visit to NIU
o http://www.niu.edu/Admissions/visit/schedule-a-visit.shtml
o This form collects information such as:
 the school the student currently attends,
 their intended major,
 their high school graduation year,
 their expected starting semester at NIU.
Students can visit during the week, or on most Saturdays.
o COB would be interested and is currently working with University Admissions to
set up meetings with COB faculty/students when intended business students
visit NIU.
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Open Houses at High Schools and Community Colleges
Coordinate with Admissions and visit high schools and community colleges:
o Faculty
o Staff
o Students
o Etc.
Admissions
Once a student is admitted they will receive an admissions package with an automatic
scholarship award letter stating what scholarships they qualify for based on
 their high school rankings,
 college prep scores,
 etc.
o There are different tiers of letters depending on the student’s qualifications.
o These letters use to go out in March, but will now go out at the end of
October/beginning of November.
COB Undergraduate Advising Office will receive names of students receiving the
package
o COB needs to schedule to have communications with the high achieving students
every couple of weeks.
Students that are admitted, but choose not to come to NIU will receive a “Leave the
Light On” letter.
o NIU is hoping to pick-up students who end up going to community college with
this letter, keeping the door open to them for the future.
Cost of Attending NIU – approximation
$24,000 per year all inclusive: tuition, fees, R&B, books, etc.
$10,300 per year tuition only
$8,800 per year room and board only
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Mark Misic’s Notes from 11/18/2010 meeting with Kristin Rinehart, Associate Director of Admissions
My main purpose for this meeting was to see the capabilities of the Hobsons EMT system Admissions
uses to manage their recruitment process and contacts with prospective students. I learned a lot about
Hobsons and so much more!
Ask NIU function
On most web pages on the Admission website, the option exists for students to ask any question.
Presently, however, the answers are extremely limited and not very rich. For
instance, if you ask a question about “business majors” or even a specific area
such as “marketing” you receive a generic answer “Northern offers
64undergraduate academic majors, 70 minors, 71 emphases, and 8 preprofessional areas of study. A complete list of academic programs may be found
by clicking on majors, minors and certificates of undergraduate study….”
To improve the quality of responses, Kristin said if we supplied questions and answers tied specifically to
business, they would take care of adding them to the Q&A database. We would just need to be
respectful of other majors on campus and not attempt to drive all students only to business when there
are other options also. For example, if a student entered “technology major, ” OM&IS, Engineering
Technology, and Computer Science might be valid responses.
If down the road we found the need to have our OWN “Ask COB” question function, we could explore
purchasing this software from Hobsons.
Email Blasts
Admissions currently sends out regular Email blasts to appropriately potential students (somewhere
they indicated a possible interest in “business”). Kristin has written most of these using content from
our website as well as received some specific content from Accountancy through Rhonda Rosborough
and from Lia Gillet in ACR for potential scholarship recipients. Samples of several email blasts are
attached.
Every email sent through the Hobsons product is tracked and there is information on the date sent, who
received, did they open it, etc… Essentially it is a contact management system specifically geared
toward school recruitment. Kristin indicated that while their email blasts are achieving over a 40%
“viewed” rate, she wants to get them to over 50%.
Online Chat
Last summer, Admissions experimented with an online “chat option” for prospective students. A
specific 2 hour window of time was setup when students could use the chat function. Overall, the
response was poor. This, however, may have simply been due to only offering it at a very specific time
rather than more open ended. Depending on how it was promoted and supported, chat might be an
effective way to connect with high school students who might have idle time during study hall or other
breaks during the day where they have access to the internet but can’t or don’t want to use a phone.
Partnering with Admissions on Recruitment
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College Fairs at High Schools - College Fairs held at high schools are not the place where Admissions
needs our help nor would it provide much value to high school students. Many of these College Fairs
are used by high school students to simply quickly grab information and go. They are not the place for
long discussions about business majors. Universities are also limited to how many visits they may have
at each high school and therefore a College of Business visit to the high school at large is not an option.
We could, however, make contact with business teachers at the high school and arrange for a business
specific visit to a business class – this would not count as a visit by the university.
College of Business Receptions – Admissions suggested that we consider holding “receptions” at our
NIU Outreach Centers (Hoffman Estates, Naperville, and Rockford) where we invite high school students
located near the Outreach Center to attend a reception where they can come for snacks and
refreshments and have lite presentations by the dean, faculty, students, or other relevant people.
Admissions can assist us in directing invitations to students within the close geographic proximity to the
Outreach Center at which we are hosting an event.
Barsema Hall Visits – Allowing students and parents to visit Barsema Hall on days other than open
houses is also encouraged. Utilizing both students, faculty, and advisors for tours is what other colleges
are using. Some of this is occurring already but we (College of Business) have not actively encouraged
visits we have mainly just responded to visitors who showed up unannounced or came through
Admissions. Lori Marcellus’ office has handled the bulk of these visits.
Barsema Hall Reception for DeKalb and Sycamore High School Students – A similar reception to those
at Outreach Centers could be held for local students at Barsema Hall. For these students, we need to
show them how attending NIU can be as exciting and unique an experience for them as if they went
away to a school. For example, living in the Business Career House gives them a unique experience
despite the fact they would still be living in their hometown. Currently we do not do a good job of
pursuing local high school students.
February 21st – This is a unique day already scheduled that is oriented specifically for “Admitted”
students. It is not same as a regular open house or orientation. Essentially we want to take the admitted
students and help insure they end up registering by giving them a deeper understanding of what it will
be like to be a business major. This might mean allowing them to sit in on regular business classes. Lori
Marcellus’ office is still working out the details and schedule for the day, but since it is a regular class
day at NIU there are no open classrooms to hold large group presentations. We may want to consider
forming smaller groups that rotate through the building using areas that can accommodate them (i.e.,
the dean’s conference room, a computer lab, the ELC) as well as arranging for classroom visits. The
number of attendees is unknown at this time but at present we have 400 students admitted who would
be eligible to attend and will be receiving an invitation.
Transfer Students – Need to talk to Missy Gillis at the Transfer Center to talk about ways to partner with
her office that targets transfer students.
MOST IMPORTANT THING WE CAN DO TO ASSIST ADMISSIONS WITH RECRUITMENT IS UPDATE OUR
WEBSITE TO BE GEARED TOWARD RECRUITMENT!!!
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Admissions Email Blasts
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