Enrollment, Retention, Graduation, Success
Simply identifying, recruiting, and enrolling students is no longer a measure of institutional or academic success. With demographics changing, institutional finances straining, and student loan debt increasing, it is strategically important, and difficult, to find the right students, support them, retain them, and have them graduate prepared for gainful employment. This course considers the mission of an institution as inseparably linked to student success. Taught from a systems thinking perspective and examines the multi-fold ways to consider cost and academic effectiveness. The use of data for decision making is emphasized, along with policies, practices, and strategies needed to improve an institution's academic reputation and ultimately graduation rates
Reflection
Strategic Enrollment Management is neither a mountain nor an island; SEM is an atmosphere, and done correctly it permeates every aspect of higher education. For me it was less the numbers and statistics that I found fascinating, but rather the connections among and between everything that garnered my greatest interest. That is what makes the world we live in such a fascinating place, the way everything is connected to everything else. This is how SEM succeeds. In recognizing the interconnectedness of life and capitalizing on the inherent value of those connections.
It was however not between the pages of a book where my greatest learning came, no, it was my peers who brought the material to life and gave it depth and substance. It is my peers who brought me from having absolutely no idea what SEM is into this crazy notion that SEM is indeed about connections. And I thank each and every one of them for sharing with me their stories and their learning throughout this course.
Signature Assignment
2020 Assignment
In this assignment we had to imagine a single student, better yet a single type of student and imagine...
Short Writing Assignment
Here, students had to think of a single type of student and through careful consideration imagine what they might need to keep on the path to their degree.