To provide affordable, quality education to a diverse population by recruiting and enrolling qualified freshman, transfer, adult learners and graduate students for admission.
Objective
Competitive Marketing Team
Streamline the graduate admissions enrollment process by hiring a graduate e-communication person to implement Hobson's in the admissions process.
KPI
Qualified Communication Staff
Qualified staff hired. Communication plan used with prospective graduate students from inquiry through enrollment.
Result
Graduate Admissions Staffing
Mary Pascarella was hired as the Associate Director of Graduate Admissions (under Diane McCormick Asst. VP of Enrollment Management) to implement Hobson's communications for graduate Admissions.
Kristi Williams was hired as a Graduate Recruiter to continue succsessful recruiting efforts of first time master's students, returning, and transfer students.
Concepcion Rodriguez was hired as the Staff Assistant of Graduate Admissions to DRAFT
KPI
Online Communication For Graduate Students
Create the intial foundation of the yield rates from application to acceptance for graduate students through online communication.
Result
Digital Marketing Delayed
Digital Marketing was delayed in starting for Fall 2013 enrollment. The marketing efforts began in July 2013 for Fall 2014 enrollment efforts.
Action
Communication And Recruitment
Professional consultation from an outside firm provided action recommendations for effective communication, recruitment and marketing lead to successful enrollment of graduate students. The audit report also recommended that the Graduate Admissions office report to Enrollment Management. This transition was completed in August 2013. Additional assessment for the area will transfer to the Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management and Graduate Admissions.
Goal
Identify An Appropriate Enrollment Management Tool (EMT) Hobson/Recruiter
Identifing an appropriate enrollment management tool (EMT) Hobson/Recruiter would allow our Department to stream line communication, provide a portal for advising, increase reporting and tracking from recruiting to enrollment to graduation, and allow for additional or supplemental application materials.
Objective
Streamline Communication
Streamline communication to students, provide a portal for advising. Increase reporting and tracking from the start of recruitment to time of enrollment to graduation. Allow for supplemental opportunities for additional application materials.
KPI
Cost Analysis
Cost benefit analysis of various enrollment management tools (EMT) available.
Result
Hobsons V. Recruiter
The Ellucian Recruiter system is a replacement for the existing Hobson’s system that builds on existing functionality by providing better integration with Banner as well as additional features for supplemental application materials (e.g., writing samples, letters of recommendation, performance samples).
The primary alternative is to remain on Hobson’s products. However, this solution is not viable considering the complications with synchronizing data between Hobson’s and Banner. Hobson’s also does not currently provide the ability to load and sync supplemental application materials with Banner.
Lastly, the Recruiter platform provides a foundation for other success initiatives that could be implemented to assist with student retention as well as increasing alumni involvement. These initiatives are licensed separately, but will work using the existing platform and hardware.
Action
Ellucian Recruiter Implementation
Sam Houston State University began implementation with Ellucian Recruiter in March 2014 in order to maximize recruiting and enrollment efforts to better achieve university goals as outlined by President Gibson. Currently through Banner and the utilization of Hobsons Connect, SHSU encounters voids and problems tracking and effectively communicating with prospects and current students at undergraduate and graduate levels. Through Ellucian Recruiter SHSU will be able to utilize reporting tools to track cold prospects through graduation, territory management for counselors/recruiters, and Travel Track system for ROI on recruiting and travel efforts with dashboards for staff to track metrics. Recruiter will also enable SHSU to collect supplemental application materials and utilize Event Management to include our daily tours, summer camps, orientation and open houses.
Enrollment Management Communication, Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate Admission and IT are working in collaboration with Ellucian Recruiter consultants in two implementation phases 1. Undergraduate and 2. Graduate to replace Hobson's Connect with Recruiter. Impacted departments: Enrollment Mgmt, UG, GR, IT, IE, AA and VC.
Goal
Recruit And Identify Higher Quality Undergraduate Students
New strategic plan: Competitive Packaging Program "Sam Scholar". A recruiting program to identify higher quality students that more than likely would not have applied to SHSU on their own. This program will develop scholarship packages for these individuals based on test score and high school GPA. Goal is to attract higher quality students to support the new College of Health Sciences and all other academic programs as SHSU.
Objective
Sam Scholar
Competitive Packaging Program – a recruiting program to identify higher quality students that more than likely would not have applied to SHSU on their own. This program will develop scholarship packages for these individuals based on test score and high school GPA. Goal is to attract higher quality students to support the new College of Health Sciences and all other academic programs as SHSU. We intend on targeting 20K students who have not applied to SHSU that fall within a test score of 23-31. Our goal is to have 3K apply to SHSU and have at least 500 enroll with SHSU.
Build a team to support the program by utilizing current employees within Admissions, Financial Aid, and Enrollment Management. The team will create the appropriate messagin, monitor distribution of messages and udpate messages as needed. The messaging includes dollar amounts for specific sholarship. The team lead will monitor the distribution amounts to make sure that we are staying within budget.
This is not a short term program. We will implement and adjust as needed but this will become an enduring program in order to support our academic programs.
KPI
Qualified Team And Team Lead
Appoint a team lead to CPP and utilize staff within Admissions, Enrollment Management and Financial Aid.
Result
Sam Scholar Team
Melissa Christine Gann has been tasked as the Team Lead. Her duties within Undergraduate Admissions as well as the responsibility of implementation of CPP, data reporting management and effective communication between SHSU, CPP team and Miller/Cook-Capture Higher Ed.
KPI
Miller/Cook & Associates, Inc. And Capture Higher Ed
Utilizing third party vendors for initial setup process. Although this is a proven recruitment tool, it is a completely new program and a completely new way of thinking for recruiting students at SHSU. Although we have had an increase in enrollment over the last 7 years, we must begin to attract higher quality student especially with the possibility of outcome based funding. Additionally, the university has announced the new College of Health and Sciences. The new programs that will be housed in this college require a higher quality student. For example, the current average ACT score in the US is 20. However, the average ACT score of health science majors is 24. We have to attract the higher quality student to ensure that they have the academic standing needed to be successful in health science programs
Action
Year 1- Sam Scholar
Sam Scholar Team and Capture Higher Education Inc successfully kicked-off the Sam Scholar, competitive packaging program in February 2014. As this was the first year of this project and our team was aware of our late start to the recruitment cycle, our intent was to target 20K students who had not applied to SHSU with a test score of 23-31 (ACT). A goal of 3K applied and 200 enroll.
With our late start of the recruitment cycle we ended up targeting and communicating to 12,300 students and had 34 students succesfully accept and enroll at SHSU with Sam Scholar. As our agreement with Capture Higher Ed was to target 20K students eligble for Sam Scholar for FY15 our agreement extended to targets for FY16 as we were unable to find 7700 eligible students of the original 20K agreement.
During the end of July 2014 and early August 2014, SHSU met again with Miller/Cook & Assoc. to re-evaluate our target market for Sam Scholars for FY16. We adjusted our student pool in order to attract higher quality students with a test score range of 23-31 with 5 UG programs identified with room for growth, and targeting specific geo-markets identified as areas for enrollment growth. In addition to the remaining 7700 names we have extended our agreement to a total of 12K names with the goal of 3K applied and 200 enrolled for FY16. We will begin communicating with students end of October 2014.