This article explores the external environmental factors that affected organizational change at Joseph's University and Villanova University two private Catholic institutions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-resulting in differentiated market positions at each institution. Specifically, the role of demographic changes and the role of intercollegiate…

This article highlights the challenges, triumphs, and setbacks experienced by a mid-sized, public institution in Eastern Canada that is now more than two years into the SEM process. It shares how a team built a sense of urgency in an institution with historically-low retention rates and developed a variety of strategies and structures to improve…

This article explores the perceptions of senior enrollment managers at Canadian colleges and universities regarding the effectiveness of using the Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) model within the Canadian context. The research design consists of a qualitative approach involving 23 individual interviews. Research participants reflected on…

Robust strategic enrollment management plans include an integrated focus on student retention. While Piedmont University has seen steady new student growth over the past few years, retention rates had dropped from the mid-70s to an alltime low of 62 percent. Significant and immediate action was necessary. The Retention Vortex was created as a…

This article describes the strategies employed to make a university-wide commitment to student success, persistence, and graduation rates. The shift in culture has made student success everybody's business, and there has been a high level of buy-in to the enterprise. The predictive tools that have been developed have given focus to serving those…

Wichita State University (WSU) began the SEM process in 2015 with a steering committee co-chaired by the university registrar and the chief data officer (CDO). Work leading up to and undertaken throughout that process and the implementation of the SEM plan it produced helped to form an extraordinary partnership between these two professionals.…

During the 2019 American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Conference, there was much discussion about how important change management is for successful SEM implementation. While we have known for some time that SEM needs institution-wide collaboration and support to achieve its…

Using a case study approach, this paper recommends a SEM project management system for organizing and maintaining SEM implementations and maintenance. Through the practical application of SEM concepts to an active SEM implementation plan, the author applies a model of a project management methodology. First, an institutional profile along with an…

Utilizing five recent highly-visible case studies of campus tensions between boards of trustees and trustee activism, the researcher examined each case, the history of trustees, the shift in trustee activism, what happened and what can be learned from each case, institutional context, the role of the trustee, and several responses. The researcher…

University campuses continue to see an increase in the number of helicopter parents, those parents who are hovering about the campus, ready to swoop down and rescue their children at the first sign of distress (Cartmell and McCullough 2014). Retention personnel on campus questioned whether it would be possible to develop initiatives that would…

In this article, the Ontario Committee on Student Affairs and the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance partnered to examine the availability and use of international student support services at Ontario universities. Results of the recently administered Ontario Committee on Student Affairs, Canadian Bureau of International Education, and…