February 1, 2016
Dear Ms. Kuhr & Ms. Power:
I wish to be considered for the Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs position
at the University of Montana. After my conversation with Ms. Kuhr, I’m confident I could move your
enrollment numbers in the right direction. The University has a great story to tell prospective students
and parents given its net price, quality of the faculty and academic programs along with its beautiful
location.
As you can see from my resume, I have extensive experience in enrollment, admission, financial aid and
student affairs. I am currently the Vice President for Enrollment at Gustavus Adolphus College. Prior to
Gustavus, I served as Dean of the College at Dartmouth College. Prior to Dartmouth, I was the Vice
President for Student Services at Grinnell College where I supervised enrollment, admission, financial
aid, institutional research, and student affairs much as it is structured now at Montana.
When I was hired at Gustavus, I was asked to reverse a three year trend of declining deposits, to
improve net tuition revenue, and to increase selectivity. After five and a half years in the position we
have grown our applicant pool from approximately 3200 applications to more than 5200 and hit our
financial targets. We eliminated our paper based system and moved to a new online CRM program
allowing staff members to read files on an IPads. The system allows me to monitor the cycle every day
and compare it to the same day over the past five years. I have done all of this with an extremely
talented and hardworking staff who know how to recruit both in and out-of-state. With all of these new
initiatives, we have added only one staff member.
Our first year classes have had an average cumulative GPA of 3.7 and average ACT of 27. With members
my team, we have enrolled the two largest classes in the College’s history despite a controversial
relationship between our former President and our faculty that dominated the news in the Twin Cities.
We broadened our applicant pool by increasing out-of-state and international applications and
eliminated our paper viewbook which is now published in the Apple and Google Play stores free of
charge.
To illustrate the benefits of a liberal arts education, we created a new website that focuses on the
outcomes of a Gustavus education called “Return on Education - https://gustavus.edu/roe/” where
students can click on majors to see where members of previous classes are employed or have gone to
graduate school. I have set-up collaborative relationships with student affairs to improve our retention
and graduation rates which currently hover around 82 percent over four years. We launched a new
website this past fall and have focused it primarily on recruiting students.
My style of leadership is highly collaborative and I believe it takes a team and community to increase the
enrollment and improve retention. Open and frank communication with faculty, staff, students, alumni,
and parents is a high priority for me and I bring no ego to the position. As a senior leader of the
institution, I would be highly visible and active in the campus community. I would bring energy and
enthusiasm to the job and expect the same from my staff. My resume highlights my professional
experience. Thank you for your consideration. I ask that you keep my application strictly confidential
unless I make it further into the process.
Sincerely, Thomas Crady, Ph.D.