1.  Kickstart or Restart Action 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:
.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
Attributes of Campus Culture
SEM Opportunity
Pervasive attitude to not be content to rest on past success during an era of change, but lack of consensus on how to move forward. 
Leadership, information
A strongly held sense of mission (whatever it is) that recognizes the campus as “distinctive” or “special.” “The people are special.”
Communication
Sense of – or wish for - inclusiveness on the part of all members of the campus community frequently characterized as a “family.”
Build on strengths
For some: Concern about financial support and viability.
Data, analysis, planning
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 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

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

26. Let me tell you about the challenges of this model…
Division
Title will vary: often depends on type of institution
Direct access to decision-making structure
Peer level with other top administrators
Areas included will vary

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
Structural approaches and composition tend to evolve over time
Series of stages
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 a leadership effort.

51. Integrating Leadership, Structure, and Planning,
SEM Planning
Integrating Leadership, Structure, and Planning,

52. Leadership
No matter what sort of structure you create, the most important factor is executive and Board leadership.
Presidential charge
Leadership buy-in
College-wide summit
Regular communication at leadership meetings

53. -Hossler, Bean & Associates, 1990
“The more people involved in decision making, the greater the commitment to implementing the decision.”
-Hossler, Bean & Associates, 1990

54. Moving from the traditional enrollment management perspective….
Traditional Enrollment Perspective
Classroom experience
Co-curricular support
Recruitment / Marketing
Degree/goal attainment
Orientation
Student’s Experiences
Financial support
Academic support
Admission
Retention
Alumni
Numbers are often the beginning point in enrollment discussions, but in reality, the issue is enabling students to be successful. If you deliver on that goal, the numbers will take care of themselves.
Often EM structures are limited to admission and transition programs, and to me those functions are closely tied to academics. But in the culture of higher education – especially research universities -- that is not a widely held view.
Stretching
Oregon State – gain additional inroads into academics by increasing the number of points at which we address an explicitly academic agenda.
Importance
Recruitment: perceived academic quality
Retention: connections with faculty
Credibility: more than just student services

55. …to a fully integrated Strategic Enrollment Management perspective.
The SEM Perspective
Classroom experience
Co-curricular support
Degree/goal attainment
Recruitment / Marketing
Orientation
Student’s Experiences
Financial support
Academic support
Admission
Retention
Alumni
Numbers are often the beginning point in enrollment discussions, but in reality, the issue is enabling students to be successful. If you deliver on that goal, the numbers will take care of themselves.
Often EM structures are limited to admission and transition programs, and to me those functions are closely tied to academics. But in the culture of higher education – especially research universities -- that is not a widely held view.
Stretching
Oregon State – gain additional inroads into academics by increasing the number of points at which we address an explicitly academic agenda.
Importance
Recruitment: perceived academic quality
Retention: connections with faculty
Credibility: more than just student services

56. Academic Mission SEM Dolence
“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 planning…”
Dolence

57. The SEM Plan- Components
Define relationship to the College’s Strategic Plan.
How vibrant is your college’s Strategic Plan?
Does it provide some direction for enrollment?
SEM requires a
data-rich environment
Produce an Environmental Scan – internal and external.

58. Why conduct environmental scanning?
Detects scientific, technical, economic, social, and political trends and events important to our institution.
Defines the potential threats, opportunities, or changes for our institution implied by those trends and events.
Promotes a future orientation in the thinking of management and staff.
Alerts leaders and staff to trends that are converging, diverging, speeding up, slowing down, or interacting.
Enables decision-makers to understand current and potential changes taking place in our institutions' internal and external environments.

59. Why conduct environmental scanning?
Provides information everyone can see. It levels the playing field.
Verifies/contradicts/expands anecdotes and fables.
Tests assumptions about future enrollment growth, improvement, etc., against trends in your particular market or area and benchmarks retention/progression/completion data against other institutions of your type:
This helps institutions set reasonable goals that challenge enrollment potential but based upon metrics.
Sets a standard that SEM decision-making will be informed by data and information.
Provides benchmarks.

60. What type of information is gathered? External
Income and Expense (tuition, program costs) benchmarks:
Where do your costs fit within the costs in your market/area?
Peers and Competitors:
Application, National Student Clearinghouse, ACT/College Board data
Trends:
Demographics
Employment trends by programs or areas, demand for labor
Technology
International
Higher Ed trends:
Changes in high school graduation rates, populations in grades K-12
Changes in delivery systems and preferences
Regulations and compliance

61. What type of information is gathered? Internal
Enrollment trend data for the past five years:
Overall size of the institution
Demographic trend data (age, ethnicity, geography)
Student preparation characteristics
Remediation
Retention
Program profiles:
Enrollment, retention, completion, cost, by program
Trends in student transfer:
In and out

62. What type of information is gathered? Internal
Business/industry connections
Alumni:
Placement, licensure rates
Overall satisfaction with the experience
Rate of alumni participation (giving, volunteerism)
Financial Aid and Scholarship programs: practices, awards
Campus and student surveys
Facilities plans
More. The list is long and is determined by your context

63. Where is all of this data?
Some is quantitative, some is qualitative.
Your ERP or SIS
Surveys, focus groups
Hidden in individual offices of the institution
Census
Government sources: NCES, DOE, state or province coordinating agencies, warehouses
Independent agencies: NCHEMS, WICHE
Local, regional and national economic and workforce agencies
Higher Ed data: Clearinghouse, Inside Higher Ed, University Business, professional associations, consulting agencies (white papers)
K-12 school districts
Web searches
Education literature
This is very good!

64. The SEM Plan- Components
Analyze the data, transform it into information.
Identify vital issues
This is done in the context of your strategic plan, your mission, and the data analyses that inform your understanding of your position.

65. The SEM Plan- Components
5. Respond to those issues:
Key leverage initiatives
Very important initiatives
Relatively simple initiatives
….The possibility of low-hanging fruit…..

66. The SEM Plan- Components
Set Goals:
enrollment targets
program mix
program delivery
income targets
expenditure limits
services ?
Include Measurements/ Key Performance Indicators
Most goals should be measurable
Know your baseline data, and measure against it

67. The SEM Plan- Components
It is so easy to go straight to “strategies”. But you should do your homework first and start with step one.
Develop Strategies
Instructional Program Mix
Recruitment
Marketing
Policies and Procedures
Retention
Financial modeling
Aid and scholarships
Etc.

68. The SEM Plan- Components
Establish accountability
Who does what and when?
How is progress measured and documented?

69. SEM – Follow-up Follow-up and assess.
Establish a monitoring and report process
Update often – this is not a long range plan...it is a strategic plan. Be strategic!
11. Assure continuous communication with appropriate and interested parties. Check out the Change Management dynamics.

70. The SEM Plan- Components
Define relationship to the College’s Strategic Plan
Produce an Environmental Scan
Analyze data, transform it into information
Identify vital issues
Respond to those issues
Set goals, measurements
Develop strategies
Establish accountabilities, timeline, etc.
Follow-up and assess
Update often, especially Environmental Scan
Assure continuous communication

71. A Plan is not forever…… Revising Your Plan The environment changes.
Your issues change.
Your Strategic Plan is tweaked.
You have new leadership.
Your metrics are not working.
You have learned how to do it better.

72. Review, Revision, Renewal
How can your structure help the institution stay strategic?
Annual environmental scan
Regular data tracking
Regular consultation
Continuously engage knowledgeable stakeholders or ongoing committee members
Built in accountability process
Who does this????

73. Your Turn Do you have buy-in? (Brief sermon on incremental SEM)
What about structure?
How will you approach identifying the issues?
How will you link to the Institutional Strategic Plan?
What are your next steps?

74. Doing It Better the Second Time
Adjust your issues.
Clean up your data collection and analysis.
Shorten the Plan.
Re-think (or strengthen) your structure: are you really integrated with Instruction?
Re-write and gain buy-in.
and keep on going…..

75. A Final Word…A Few Tips Organize around a compelling purpose
Be careful to build trust and secure by-in
Be consistent with your institutional mission
Carefully assess the environment
Keep your goals and objectives manageable and to the point
Constantly evaluate your progress
Success of the SEM plan = the measured outcomes + the process itself

76. Take the lessons of this workshop and season them with the salt of your institutional environment.
Look for low-hanging fruit as you practice the theory and apply the template of SEM.
Develop SEM through the process of collaboration.
Understand that culture does not change easily, but progress comes to those who dare to begin.
Incrementalism in the pursuit of progress is no vice.

77. Thank you!