March 1, 2021, letter from Jeff Gant, Vice President for Enrollment Management
This message was shared with all faculty and staff via email on Monday, March 1.
Dear Colleagues:
At the beginning of my third month as a member of the New Paltz community, I write to share my thanks for a warm welcome and onboarding experience; to introduce the strategic vision for the Division of Enrollment Management; and to highlight some of the goals, challenges, and opportunities the College faces today as they relate to recruitment and enrollment.
Though the conditions of the pandemic have dictated that my introduction to New Paltz be largely virtual, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to connect with many members of the community and to confirm what I’d known all along—that SUNY New Paltz is a special place brought to life by special people. Much of the work in Enrollment Management is telling that story to our students, both prospective and current, and helping them to feel connected to the community, buoyed by it, and propelled forward into the world with the full transformative power of what it means to be Forever Orange and Blue behind them. As members of this community, you are among our most authentic storytellers, and we appreciate your support as we work to “yield” the fall 2021 class of new freshmen and transfers.
New Student Yield
Indeed, “yield”—the higher ed jargon that refers to converting an accepted student into one who has committed to the institution—represents one of our most significant opportunities for increasing new student enrollment, which we must do in light of the budget challenges the college faces. Over the coming years, we will work to put in place tactics, strategies, programs, and policies that are designed to increase the yield on our freshman class from 17.5% to at least 21%. By converting more of our accepted students to committed students, we will maintain our selectivity while achieving greater efficiency in recruitment.
Some of the work toward this goal has already begun. The Office of Undergraduate Admission has been hard at work the last several weeks notifying a larger-than-ever group of scholarship recipients about their merit scholarship awards. In addition to a select group of Presidential Scholarship recipients, a broader group of students have been chosen this year to receive $2,500/year awards in recognition of their academic achievements. The principal goals of this scholarship initiative are to expand the college’s reach, to increase yield, and to encourage students from our most diverse recruitment territories to enroll next fall.
New Student Registration Timeline
Another initiative aimed at promoting strong new student enrollment is the shift we are making to register deposited freshman much earlier than has been the practice. Students and families have become savvy, discerning “shoppers” when it comes to higher education, and the work of building students’ affinity with the institution and instilling in them a sense of belonging is increasingly challenging. Beginning to schedule committed freshmen in late May-early June rather than in July or August gives us the opportunity to start meaningful conversations and onboarding processes much earlier in the students’ journey. We expect this will make students feel more connected to the College and rooted in their decision to attend in the fall.
It also affords us the added benefit of earlier, more transparent course enrollment management. We look forward to your support and partnership as we pilot this new process for fall 2021 registration.
Strategic Enrollment Management Plan
It is in this spirit of transparency and partnership that the Division of Enrollment Management will, this semester, embark upon the process of drafting a comprehensive Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) and recruitment plan. Recognizing that planning must begin in earnest to move from a position of crisis management to one of strategic action, we will identify a set of goals, objectives, and tactics across the full spectrum of enrollment—from developing a pipeline of potential students to recruiting, retaining, and graduating them. The SEM plan will chart our course for the next three years and will address the competing challenges of the demographic downturn in college-going students, the devastating effects of the pandemic on at-risk populations, our desire to maintain a high degree of selectivity and student preparedness, and our mission to provide access to high quality education to as broad and diverse a population as possible.
The path forward for enrollment at SUNY New Paltz will be, as for many institutions of higher education, a challenging one to navigate. We will need to be open to change and experimentation on a level perhaps not previously experienced or required. I am, however, confident in this community’s capacity for greatness and innovation. I’m certain that the drumbeat of inspiration, warmth, and openness that resonates from this campus will continue to draw in our likeminded students. And I am privileged now to be a part of such an exceptional place.
Below, I will leave you with the vision statement the enrollment management directors and I crafted for the division. We will use this statement to anchor our work and inform the SEM plan. We thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Jeff Gant, Vice President for Enrollment Management
Vision Statement for the Division of Enrollment Management
Drafted February 2021
Anchored by its talented staff and enrollment leaders, a history of achievement, and a reputation for excellence, the Division of Enrollment Management will continue to move SUNY New Paltz forward by meeting its biggest challenges head on. Whether they be the challenges posed by budget constraints, the aftermath of COVID-19, or the difficult outlook offered by trends in demographic shifts and population decline, we will continue to orient our offices, the services we provide, and the strategies we employ to best serve students in an ever-changing and modern context.
Across all our work, we are rooted in our mission to provide high-quality education to students of all socio-economic backgrounds and varied prior experiences with education, and we are committed to executing this mission in a way that acknowledges and combats systems of institutionalized oppression.
Our goal, as always, is to maintain healthy, sustainable undergraduate enrollment. We strive toward this goal in the context of our time’s many challenges by being strategic and focusing on four core principles:
- Capitalize on our strengths.
- Expand a culture of data-informed decision making.
- Pivot quickly in response to opportunities, threats and emerging research and best practice.
- Increase our ability to provide our students with a high-touch experience and strong community of care throughout the enrollment lifecycle.
Capitalizing on Our Strengths
The story of SUNY New Paltz is one of a reputation that has been elevated through hard work and deliberate action. The Division of Enrollment Management will continue to work with our colleagues in the Office of Communication & Marketing to leverage this reputation through current, leading-edge marketing and promotional tactics and strategies. We will evaluate our efforts continually, changing course when needed, and investing more deeply in those strategies that produce the strongest results.
Example: By expanding the scope and reach of our digital marketing efforts and leveraging the full power of our CRM system, we will connect right-fit students with timely messages in order to increase applications from diverse groups, promote strong yield, and create sustained engagement that supports our enrollment goals.
Expanding a Culture of Data-Informed Decision Making
Leveraging the tools and software we use across the division, we will work to increase rapidly the sophistication of the data structures that guide our work and decision making. We will achieve this by expanding and maximizing our use of key functionality in our software systems and by capturing actionable student behavioral data. We will build on these structures to create predictive models for retention, new student yield, and merit scholarship leveraging.
Example: Students take many actions between the time they are admitted and the time they set foot in the classroom. Those action points along the enrollment cycle provide valuable behavioral data that can help us understand a student’s potential to submit a pre-enrollment deposit and, ultimately, show up for the new semester. By capturing these data in our software systems, we can build important analyses that will inform our communication and recruitment plans. Ultimately, similar observations can help us build stronger interventions for retention and advising once students are on campus.
Pivoting Quickly in Response to Opportunities and Threats
Many of the challenges SUNY New Paltz will face in the next five to ten years must be met with bold, creative action. Tapping into the strength and deep knowledge possessed by the leadership team in Enrollment Management, we will seize upon opportunities to apply the most current research and industry best practices to our work. In this spirit, we will embrace a model of quick decision making, rapid prototyping, and experimentation. We will seek input and inspiration from external partners in higher education and other relevant industries, and we will apply them to our particular enrollment context by thoughtfully considering how we can take the best idea and “make it New Paltz.”
Example: One of the most significant challenges inhibiting our ability to increase new-student yield—in any year, let alone during COVID-19— is the limited availability of merit scholarship funding. Amidst the challenges posed by the pandemic, for 2021, we set up a new scholarship strategy designed both to increase new student enrollment and provide important insights as to the power of these incentives in future recruitment cycles.
Providing Our Students with a High-Touch Experience and Strong Community of Care
SUNY New Paltz is characterized by its sense of community and the caliber of its student services. It is also an institution that is steadily reorienting toward processes facilitated by automation and increased efficiency. We will continue to identify ways to streamline the work we do with the aim of freeing up staff time for student-facing work. As we pivot to meet the needs of a changing student body, delivering high-touch, concierge-like experiences for our students is a top priority.
Example: The Division of Enrollment Management is embarking upon a survey of all the communications that come out of its offices. With an eye toward making them student-focused, impactful, and helpful, we are taking stock of the types of messages we send, the channels we use to disseminate them, and their effectiveness at helping students navigate the business of being a student.