How to Speak SEM-ese
Challenges and Leadership in Enrollment
Management
Stanley E. Henderson
University of Michigan-Dearborn
MACRAO 2014 Annual Conference
November 5, 2014
Introducing Stanley Henderson
•
Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management and Student Life, University of
Michigan-Dearborn since 2005
•
Began in Admissions at Michigan State in 1970, went on to Wichita State, Western
Michigan, University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois
•
AACRAO’s first VP for Enrollment Management (1990); President (1995-96);
Distinguished Service Award (2007), Founders Award for Leadership (2008)
•
Co-founder of SEM conference in 1991 (one of only three people to have attended
every SEM); wrote first history of SEM; most quoted on the “Academic Context” of
SEM; SEM Lifetime Achievement Award (2014)
•
BA from Michigan State, MA from Cornell, doctoral course work at Illinois
•
Once called “Dad to 9000 students.” Ask anything about US Presidents!
SEM“SEM-ese”
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SEM-ese is like Chinese: 4 Definitions for Each
Character, Depending on the Inflection
1. While those of us in Enrollment Management are speaking from
the SEM text, which brings insight to enrollment issues and offers
significant assistance, including leveraging existing staff...
2. It would be the rare enrollment manager who had never thought
about how there always seems to be an academic solution to
every problem on campus
3. Provosts, deans, and the faculty all see issues through an
academic lens and formulate resolutions on their terms without
regard for—or even inclusion of—others’ perspectives
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The Result: The Academic Tower of
Enrollment Babel
1. Academic departments hire new advisors or staff that will
continue to do what hasn’t worked
2. Faculty design new programs that will attract the few while
ignoring SEM’s sure winners and insisting that “Admissions should
visit high schools!”
3. Academic policies seek maximum penalties instead of teachable
moments for offenses students don’t understand
4. Deans and chairs ignore the role their actions have played in
enrollment shortfalls and expect SEM practitioners to fix things
they were excluded from in the first place
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SEM-ese Interpreters: Translating Our Language
into an Academic Context
1. We need to know grammar and structure of SEM-ese
1. The context
2. The theory
3. The template
4. The practice
2. We also need to know what gives it inflection and makes it come
alive
1. Service
2. Collaboration
3. Culture
4. Partnerships
5. Community
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The Challenges of Context
Off Campus and On
What Shapes the EM Environment?
•
Demographic shifts
•
Changing economics of higher education
•
The public policy and the legal environment
•
The changing competition
•
The “Information Age”
•
The “Communication Age”
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Impact of 2014 Midterm Elections and a GOP
Congress
•
Good news: less regulation
•
Bad news: less money for research and student aid
•
Opposition to executive action agenda re:
• For-profit college industry
• Push for college ratings system
•
Democrats agenda de-emphasized
• Allowing student loan borrowers to lower their interest rates
• Holding colleges accountable for high default rates
• Further clamp-down on for profits
• AACRAO, 2014
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Impact of the 2014 Midterm Elections in the
Senate
•
New chair of Education Committee in the Senate will be Lamar Alexander of
Tennessee
•
His main higher ed agenda: Deregulate it!
•
Will drive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act
•
What to expect:
• Staunch opponent of Obama accountability agenda
• Likely to shift accreditors away from regulatory compliance
• Supporter of streamlining student aid; could see simplified federal student aid form
• AACRAO, 2014
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Redefining Higher Ed
Industrial Age
1. Teaching franchise
2. Information infrastructure as a
support tool
3. Separate learning systems
4. Silos
5. Bureaucratic systems
6. Rigid pre-designed processes
Information Age
1. Learning franchise
2. Information infrastructure as
instrument of transformation
3. Fused learning systems
4. Big tent
5. Self-informing, self-correcting
systems
6. Families of transactions
customized to needs of
learners, faculty, staff
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Consider Elements of Campus Culture
•
Pervasive attitude to not be content to
rest on past success
•
Sense of inclusiveness on the part of all
members of the campus community as
opposed to just an institution
•
A strongly held sense of mission that
recognizes the campus as “distinctive” or
“special.” “The people are special.”
SEM Planning Model
A Matter of Culture and Leadership: Student Success in State Colleges and Universities, AASCU, 2005
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Unpacking Culture – Setting High Expectations
A culture of high expectations is a culture of mutual expectations.
– Student success is up to students. Set high expectations for students.
“People don’t rise to low expectations.”
– We cannot just hold students to high standards. We must also do everything
in our power to provide them with the support they need to succeed and to
build students’ sense of personal responsibility for their achievement.
– Leaders need to set high targets for faculty and staff performance. They
need to set targets that actually can be met, provide support and example
to meet them, then raise the bar another notch.
A culture that succeeds like this is always in dynamic balance.
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A Matter of Culture and Leadership: Student Success in State Colleges and Universities, AASCU, 2005
The Corporate University
•
Our campuses are being “corporatized” by business practices, a drive for
efficiency, intrusion of portfolios that have non-student-centered viewpoints—
all couched in terms of “professionalizing” the campus
•
Hierarchical leadership models concentrate decision-making in senior
leadership without input from those in the trenches who understand the
issues and student needs
•
Deliver or else management requires results NOW
•
The impact on us as enrollment professionals is that we are as much at risk as
Brady Hoke if we don’t have that perfect recruitment season—the only
difference is that if he’s fired, he gets a multi-million dollar payout
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The Dispensable Staff
•
There is a concerning faculty/staff divide where increasingly staff are likened to the
wheels on a wagon—necessary but easily replaced
•
Staff with operational responsibilities in running offices are upbraided if they fall
behind the on campus projects that dedicated academic staff can devote full time
to
•
Deans meet to discuss enrollment planning without representatives of the
enrollment units present
•
A view that “we will decide and you will implement”
•
“Our new program is stalled in the Registrar’s Office”
•
As a result, there is a sense of marginalization among many staff, a sense of almost
being disrespected
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Enrollment Management is an Institutional
Balancing Act
•
Meeting Enrollment Goals
•
Improving Quality
•
Increasing Diversity
•
Ensuring Access and Affordability
•
Increasing Net Tuition Revenue
•
Increasing Retention & Graduation Rates
•
Improving Student Learning Outcomes
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Theory: Guiding Principles for the
SEM Ethos
STRATEGIC Enrollment Management
•
Comprehensive process
•
Achieving and maintaining optimal recruitment, retention, and
graduation rates
•
Optimum defined in academic context
•
Institution-wide process that touches every aspect of
institutional function and culture
•
Academics are an umbrella concept
• M. Dolence, 1993
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Shared Responsibility
•
If SEM reflects institutional identity, 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
•
Each member of community takes responsibility for nurturing SEM
Ethos
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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
•
If SEM isn’t part of strategic planning, not much can be accomplished
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Focus on Service
•
In SEM Ethos processes and procedures are more important than
structure
•
Academic foundation dictates business practices
•
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
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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
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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
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Key Performance Indicators
•
Enrollment managers struggle with notion of KPIs as indices of
institutional health
•
In reality, KPIs are placeholders for institutional values
•
Bodies, not student fit, approach is out of synch with the academic values
of the institution
•
If the enrollment manager has an academic understanding of the place,
KPIs set themselves
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Research and Evaluation
•
With SEM Ethos SEM has to have research and evaluation plan
•
SEM staff are “people people”
•
More and more industry standard is data and research—tools of
the academy
•
SEM units cannot continue to do “feel good” programs that can’t
show support for academic goals
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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
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The SEM Blueprint:
A Refocusing of SEM
The Elusive SEM Template
•
Every enrollment manager wants one
•
We all say it doesn’t exist, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach
•
It’s not very helpful to tell the young enrollment manager that she
has to get to know her institution
•
In fact, the SEM Ethos does provide a template
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Template: 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,” EM fails
•
All must understand that academic well-being is linked to enrollment
health
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Template: Integrated Planning
•
enrollment management (lower case) is just managing enrollments
•
STRATEGIC Enrollment Management (upper case) happens when SEM unit
planning and strategies are integrated with the institution’s strategic plan,
academic master plan, and its fundamental (academic) mission
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Template: Lateral Communication
•
Top-down communication is necessary to set the tone, but successful
implementation of SEM requires lateral communication across campus
•
SEM needs lateral communication to ensure adherence to the institution’s
academic ethos
•
Colleges to enrollment units and enrollment units to colleges: the
tentacles of an octopus
•
Communication has to become a part of the culture; it has to express the
ethos of the place
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Template: Structure for Participation
•
The institutional academic ethos will set the structure to provide a means
for faculty, staff, and students to contribute to SEM
•
SEM 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
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Template: 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 will seek to know the academic grounding
of the institution and then seek a structure based on that foundation
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Applying the SEM TEMPLATE
The Faces of SEM
Integrating Structure, Planning,
Leadership, and Community
Structural/Managerial Face of SEM
•
Focuses on the structure and management of those departments and
functions formally charged with achieving the institution’s enrollment
goals
•
SEM decisions focus on optimal resource allocation to achieve enrollment
goals
• Marketing and recruitment priorities
• Need-based versus merit-based FA packaging
• Course offerings and scheduling
• Service efficiency – One-Stop
• Processing of academic policy
• Student intervention initiatives
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Planning Face of SEM
•
Focuses on the outward- and forward-looking at activities that guide the
institution’s pursuit of its preferred future in a constantly changing and
competitive environment
•
Focuses on long-range planning and institution-wide strategy
development
• New curricula & academic programs
• Facilities development and renovation
• Marketing and image campaigns
• Investments in technology
• Pricing decisions
• Retention planning programs (early alert interventions, first year
seminar, learning communities, support services, academic advising,
etc.)
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Leadership Face of SEM
Focuses on leadership as a shared responsibility—occurring at all
levels and deeply embedded in the way the institution works as on
organization on a day-to-day basis
– No silos
– Enabling leadership at multiple levels
– Servant leadership
– Engender trust
– Communicate purpose
– Motivate people
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The Human Face of SEM
•
In an institution, there is always a policy, a rule, a faculty culture,
or an answer
•
In a community, we must look beyond the policies and the history
to find what benefits individual students and the community itself
•
The Community of SEM is about building relationships;
understanding how to create, nurture, and appreciate
relationships will help the enrollment manager to structure, plan,
and lead SEM
•
This is the Human Face of SEM, integrating the other faces into
the Community of SEM that emphasizes Student Success through
services and inclusion in a culture of participation and
contribution
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Putting Humanity into Each SEM Face
•
The community of SEM can harness the broader culture and broaden the
academic solution syndrome by ensuring that there is a human face in each of
SEM’s traditional three faces.
•
Structure should facilitate seamless service and create open channels for
feedback and foster creativity.
•
Planning should understand that data are critical only insofar as they improve
service and contribute to the cradle to endowment concept of student
success, and…
•
Leadership must be willing to lose itself in followership
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The Community of SEM…
•
Requires an understanding of the complex dynamics that shape the
university’s culture as well as its enrollment profile
•
Requires a focus not on individual functional and departmental silos but
on the entire enrollment process as service for success
•
Requires keeping the emphasis on student success through the
enrollment continuum
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General
Prospects
Inquiries
Applicants
Depositors
Enrollees
ACTIONS
Specific
Continuing
Students
Graduates
Alumni
Continued Cultivation
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SEM Planning
Recruitment /
Marketing Orientation
Classroom
experience
Co-curricular
support
Degree/goal
attainment
Student’s college career
Admission
Financial
support
Academic
support
Retention
Alumni
Turning the enrollment funnel on its side…..to express progression
forward….and emphasize the multi-dimensional processes that exist.
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Moving from the traditional enrollment
management perspective….
Traditional Enrollment Perspective
Recruitment /
Marketing
Orientation
Classroom
experience
Co-curricular
support
Degree/goal
attainment
Student’s Experiences
Admission
Financial
support
Academic
support
Retention
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Alumni
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…to a fully integrated Strategic Enrollment
Management perspective.
The SEM Perspective
Recruitment /
Marketing
Orientation
Classroom
experience
Co-curricular
support
Degree/goal
attainment
Student’s Experiences
Admission
Financial
support
Academic
support
Retention
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Alumni
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Setting Enrollment Goals: The Classic Conundrum
•
All may want better students
•
Administration may want more students
•
Faculty usually want fewer students
•
Departments may be reducing capacity
•
Access vs. Quality
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Important Reminders
• SEM is…
– Mission and niche based
– Subject to organizational history
– Dependent on expertise of available staff
– About collaboration, not org charts
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SEM is a Journey
•
SEM requires systems thinking
•
SEM requires strategic thinking
•
SEM is resource hungry and it is all about ROI
•
SEM is growth by substitution (can’t do it unless you take something
away)
•
SEM Math (2 + 3 = 7)
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The Practice
Strategic Enrollment Management at
Work in an Academic World
Our Every Day Reality in Student Success
1. There is abundant evidence that students are not as engaged as we
would like
2. There is also evidence that students are not as engaged during the first
year of college as they thought they would be!
3. Levels of performance in high DWFI rate courses should be a cause for
embarrassment and action, especially in mathematics
4. There is still too much unacceptable attrition
5. There is much instability in the viability and leadership of retention of
Student Success “programs”
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Our Every Day Reality in Student Success
6. The response of the academy to the challenges of Student Success has
been primarily to design “programs” rather than a more comprehensive
institutional response
7. We are competing for ever scarcer resources in a larger society that does
not currently share our values
8. And we are competing for students’ most precious of resources: their
time, energies, attention, priorities, discretionary monies—Success in
college vis a vis their jobs, families, pursuits of pleasures, busy
demanding lives
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What Will It Take to Build Success?
1. Core values that support a set of assumptions about a comprehensive,
integrated, and coordinated approach
2. Programs and services designed with intentionality, purpose,
integration of effort, service efficiency, and positive interventions with
students
3. Integrated cross-campus collaborations and partnerships between
faculty, staff, and administration
4. Use of assessment and data for informed decision making
5. Understanding of how campus cultures impact enrollment
management efforts
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But Remember…
1. There are NO SILVER BULLETS! There is no template, one-size-fits-all
model that ensures student success
2. Campuses have to move from “enrollment by chance” to “enrollment by
design”
3. To do that, strategic enrollment planning has to first understand and
then become part of the culture of the entire campus
4. Only then can there be clear goals and efforts for optimal enrollment to
fulfill institutional mission and services and programs to improve student
learning and success
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Defining Moments of the Millennials Experience
•
Oklahoma City bombing
•
Schoolyard shootings
•
OJ Simpson arrest
•
Columbine
•
Contested presidential election
•
9/11 and the War on Terror
•
2 sets of parents, 4 sets of grandparents
•
Technology pervasive
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Common Experiences Shape Common Values
•
Special
•
Sheltered
•
Family-oriented
•
Confident
•
Team-oriented
•
Conventional
•
Pressured
•
Achieving
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Millennial College Students…
•
Have “helicopter parents” who will scrutinize what goes on in the classroom
and on campus
•
Assume they will be successful
•
Expect one-on-one attention that “no child left behind” instills
•
Expect technology to be integrated into the classroom
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Millennials’ Behavior
•
Perceive greater danger and less reward in being creatively different
•
Are risk averse
•
Want and expect team teaching and team grading of team projects
•
Are less likely to “cheat” but may have difficulty defining “cheating”—is it
plagiarism or is it information morphing?
•
Expect and want high academic standards but also expect A’s
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How to Sweet-Talk Millennials
•
“You’ll be working with other bright, creative people.”
•
“Your professor is in his/her late sixties” (the later, the better!).
•
“You and your team can help turn this place around/accomplish this
task/finish this project.”
•
“You can be a hero here.”
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How Different Are the Millennials?
•
When they see wire-rimmed glasses, they think Harry Potter, not John Lennon
•
“Press pound” on the phone is now translated as “hit hashtag.”
•
Celebrity “selfies” are far cooler than autographs.
•
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has always been the only news program that
really “gets it right.”
•
Hard liquor has always been advertised on television.
•
Hong Kong has always been part of China
•
Courts have always been overturning bans on same-sex marriages.
•
Joe Camel has never introduced one of them to smoking.
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The Millennials’ World
•
Yet another blessing of digital technology: They have never had to hide their dirty
magazines under the bed.
•
Attending schools outside their neighborhoods, they gather with friends on Skype,
not in their local park.
•
Affirmative Action has always been outlawed in California.
•
“Good feedback” means getting 30 likes on your last Facebook post in a single
afternoon.
•
Their collection of U.S. quarters has always celebrated the individual states.
•
Since Toys R Us created a toy registry for kids, visits to Santa are just a formality.
• Beloit College, 2014
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Guess Who’s NOT Going to College?
•
Among high achievers from low-income families, 75% went to
college but only 29% graduated
•
Among high achievers from high-income families, 99% went to
college and 74% graduated
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Hopes Delayed
•
Among the best-prepared American high school students: 20% of
those from low-income families don’t go directly on to college
•
Among high achievers from high-income families, only 3% don’t
enter college right away
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The Changing College Student
•
Hispanic students will increase from a 9.3% share of public high
school graduates in 1994 to nearly 20% in 2014.
•
White students will decline as a percentage of the high school
graduating class, going from 72.4% to 58% in the same time period
• WICHE, 2003
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The Faces of the New Students
•
Minority share of high school grads has grown from about 7
percent in 1960 to 31 percent by 2002 and
•
Will grow further to 45 percent by 2018.
• Mortenson
•
When the Boomer Echo peaks at 3.2 million high school grads in
2009, 80% of the growth from the beginning of the 21st century
will be students of color.
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New Students: A Profile in Barriers
•
Over 16% of the entering class each year will come from families with annual
incomes under $20,000
•
The New Students will be the first in their families to go to college
•
Many will come from academically weak schools
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First Generation Students
• 34% of 5-17 year olds in the US are considered first generation
students
• 41% of those are African-American
• 61% are Latino
• 23% are white
•
NCES, 2012
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First Generation Students
• 82% of non-first generation students enrolled in US colleges
immediately after high school
• 54% of first generation students whose parents finished high
school enrolled immediately
• 36% of those whose parents had less than a high school education
enrolled immediately
•
Choy, NCES, 2001
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First Generation Students
• 50% of students in US higher education are first generation
• 30% (5.6 million) of US college freshmen are first generation
• 24% (4.5 million) are first generation and low income
• More than 25% of those will leave after their first years
• Only 11% will eventually graduate
• Whereas 55% of higher income, first generation students will
• And 78% of higher income, second generation student will
•
US Department of Education, 2010
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First Generation Students
• The average age of enrollment for first-generation college students is
22, compared to 20 for students who are not first generation
• 54% of first-generation students were financially on their own, while
only 27% of students who were not first generation had full financial
responsibility for themselves
• 30% of first generation students had dependents with 11 percent being
single parents, while only 14% of non-first generation students had
dependents and only 4% were single parents.
• Concordia University-Online, 2009
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Latino/a Students
•
Between 2000 and 2012 the states with the fastest growing Latino population
were:
•
Tennessee up 163%
•
South Carolina up 161%
•
Alabama up 157%
•
Kentucky up 135%
•
South Dakota up 132%
• Saenz, 2014
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Latinos in the US 2014
•
54.1 million
•
17% of US population
•
35.5% foreign born
•
Nearly half live in California and Texas
•
Two thirds live in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois
•
Median age is 27; nationally it’s 37
•
Every year an estimated 600,000 Latinos turn 18
• Saenz, 2014
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Latinos in College
•
In California in 2012 23% of Latino high school graduates were eligible for
admission to the CU OR the CSU systems; for Latinas it was 33%
•
This means that 77% of Latinos and 67% of Latinas were eligible ONLY for the
California community college system
•
In Texas 8.9% of Latino eighth graders earn a higher education credential in 11
years
•
7.7% of African-American eighth graders earn a higher education credential in
11 years
•
16% of all eighth graders earn a higher education credential in 11 years
• Saenz, 2014
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What’s Happening to our Latino boys?
•
Over-representation in special ed
•
Over-representation in school discipline pipeline
•
Under-resourced schools, novice teachers, leadership turnover, systemic
inequalities
•
Fewer males in teaching ranks
•
Disparate learning styles are not considered
• Saenz, 2014
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A Generation Abandoned
•
They will not be students who have traditionally been represented in American
higher education
•
What will be the response to them by our admissions officers embedded in
enrollment management?
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Building Rankings, not Futures
•
The Academy Awards of higher education
•
Lobbying the rankers
•
Mailed ads
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Tools and Accomplices: The Usual Suspects
•
Early admission
•
Out-of-state admission at public institutions
•
High school counselors and their trophy schools
•
Helicopter parents and their Christmas card kids
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Raising Our Profile vs. Growing Our Leaders
•
Abandoning the marginally prepared to raise the academic profile
•
Screening out with traditional measures
•
Higher education as the hospital that doesn’t want anyone too sick
•
Excellence measured by diversity or academic quality: Are they mutually
exclusive?
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A New SEM Agenda: Beating Back Barriers
•
Begin early with providing information and support related to going to college
•
Embrace families’/communities’ social and cultural values that support
achievement and college aspirations
•
Create school structure that facilitates supportive relationships with caring
adults, mentors, and peers with postsecondary aspirations
•
Empower parents to advocate for their children
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Who’s Job Is It Anyway?
•
Retention officer, yes, but where does he/she reside?
•
Academic Affairs? The faculty have the most contact with the
student
•
Student Affairs? Over 50% of what you learn in college is learned
outside of class
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It’s a Partnership
•
The faculty need to take responsibility for engaging the student,
whether in the co-curriculum, the academic realm of the
classroom, or experiential learning
•
The student life professional needs to take responsibility for the
academic success of students—every student activity or
organization is an enrollment unit
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The Blended Outlook
•
Enrollment Management is a quintessentially academic enterprise
•
Still, at the end of the day, it is about individual student academic
success
•
And it is supported by administrative changes to policies and
procedures that make it difficult for students to navigate the
campus
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The Sex Appeal of Recruitment
•
Campuses obsess over freshmen numbers
•
The glitz and glamour of recruitment lives in the fast lane
•
Retention is the gray lady of enrollment management
•
Enrollment Management as the tortoise and the hare—steady
wins the race
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The Value of Value
•
Autopsy studies always show students leave for academic,
financial, or personal reasons.
•
These may be placeholders for students’ perceptions that they are
not getting enough value for the time, money, effort they are
putting in
•
Price elasticity studies show cost is not as important in decision as
perceived value
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Build Value and They Will Stay
•
The enrollment management agenda should be directed at what
leads students to perceive value in their education
•
Value provides a new definition of retention built around what
motivates students
•
Perhaps the high ability, third generation student can more readily
see value in school; hence more go, and more stay
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Service as Retention
•
Retention improvement comes from improved business practices
• B. Bontrager
•
Seamless enrollment processes provide perception of value
•
Let students’ talents be challenged in the classroom rather than
have their patience tested in navigating the institutional
bureaucracy
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Engagement as Retention
•
Involvement redefined
•
What keeps the student going to class, doing the assignments,
passing the tests?
•
For some, extracurricular activities
•
For others, internships and co-op
•
For still others, undergraduate research
•
For a few, study abroad
•
Don’t forget what they do in their community—how can that be
harnessed to the campus?
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Linking Recruitment and Retention
•
Market student engagement through individualized opportunities
to capture student interest
•
Guarantee student engagement
•
Study retention rates by individual high schools: where they fall
below the class average, gear recruitment to retention services
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Building Buy-in to Value
•
Parents want to be reassured they sent their student to the right
place—tell them that regularly, at least during the freshman year
•
If the student is unhappy or unfocussed, the parents who have
been told repeatedly they did the right thing may be more likely to
support the student in staying the course
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Retention for More Than a Day
•
Data identifies and tracks the at-risk groups
•
Research identifies the services that can keep students successful
•
Recruiting for retention identifies and admits the students most
likely to match the institutional Ethos and to succeed
•
Service helps retention
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MERGERS AND PARTNERS Through the SEM Lens
•
Improving service as a template for partnership development.
•
Reviewing processes and procedures on an annual basis.
•
Building a culture of education, not regulation.
•
Cross-training and blending.
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STRATEGY ISSUES
•
Academic offerings and support services
•
Marketing
•
Security
•
Buildings and grounds—the Million Dollar Walk
•
Student services and activities
•
Recruitment/admissions/enrollment
•
Information technology
•
KPIs/data/research/evaluation
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Student Success, not Retention
1. Retention is clinical rather than aspirational
2. Retention is merely a measurement, a benchmark of educational
attainment
3. And often, as John Gardner would argue, a minimum one at that:
Retention is a C- and a pulse, the ability to fog a mirror
4. Retention restrains us, limits our vision and our capacity for creativity
and excellence
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Recent trends in Student Success Best Practices
1. Use of technology to track and monitor student engagement,
utilization of services
– Starfish Early Alert and Connect
– MapWorks
– Degree audits and maps
– Swiping
2. Use of data to identify risk characteristics, apply predictive
modeling
– Matching GPA’s to graduation rates to determine where to put
resources
– Identifying key courses for graduation
– Attendance
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Recent trends in Student Success Best Practices
3. Structures
– Retention Office
– Retention Committee
– Student Success Alliance
– Executive officers or Boots-on-the-ground Staff?
4. Policies
– Requiring students to take certain courses and earn certain GPAs
semester by semester
– Reassigning majors
– Advising plans requiring use of career planning
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Recent trends in Student Success Best Practices
5. State accountabilities
– Funding based on graduation rates
– Loss of state aid for repeated classes (students pay)
– Federal policies
• Lifetime limits on federal financial aid (Pell Grants, loans)
• Future: Loss of aid for poor graduation rates?
6. Membership Organization services
– Education Advisory Board
• Research publications, general and customized
• Interest Forums: Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Business Affairs, etc.
• Data and analytics for end-to-end solutions
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SEM Leadership: Inspiration and
Perspiration
Reflections
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my fellow AACRAO Senior Consultants…
Bob Bontrager
Jody Gordon
Tom Green
Wendy Kilgore
Clayton Smith
Amanda Yale
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Questions & Comments
Stanley E. Henderson
sehender@umich.edu
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