Advisory Committee on Enrollment: Minutes – Tuesday, 20 October 2009 – 9 a.m. – Lynch Hall 102
Present:
Joyce Bucchi, Brandi Darr, Rick Fogle, Susan Isola, Jodi Kraisinger, Bill Martin, Dean Nelson, Carl Rossman, Sharon Smith, Mark Stauffer, Ronna Collard, Beverly Gaddy, Wes Jamison, Bill Rued, Robert Smith, Joel Sabadaz
Absent?: Heather Kabala, Liz Marciniak, Melissa Marks
(PP#) = PowerPoint slide being referenced
Agenda:
· Review Agenda for 2009-2010
· Enrollment Goals
· Historical Data
· Projections
· Values
Dean Nelson – Review of Agenda for 2009-2010 (see PowerPoint slides for supplementary information)
Dean Nelson reviewed the proposed outline for developing a Strategic Enrollment Management Plan (PP1) that is expected to include:
· Mission, values, vision
· Enrollment goals
o Historical Data
o Projections
· Environmental Scan
o Demographics
o Competitors
o Marketing
· Recruitment Initiatives
· Program Development
Main enrollment goal is to have an FTE of 1750 while improving student quality, but we may want to know what constitutes that 1750. This intentional process will present us with a lot of choices, choices that should be consistent with our values and other goals. (PP2)
We can’t decide what historical data and environmental scan without tying them back to the enrollment goals. Those will interact with recruiting initiatives. We will need to define what we mean by certain terms.
History:
Enrollment went down in 2006 because the make-up of the class changed. We lost option students because People Soft was implemented, and applications were processed differently. It took the campus and the students applying to regional campuses several years to adjust to the new system. People Soft was implemented in Fall 2005. (PP3 & PP4)
During the years when enrollment was going up, there may have been a question of quality, so retention may not have been has strong (SPSmith).
Part-time appears to be decreasing because a lot of industry in the region that once provided employees with educational assistance have left.
Students can find cheaper classes at other institutions. (WJamison)
There’s been a drop in the number of tuition remission programs. A lot of students can go to the community college and pay less. (RCollard)
What else would be useful to us in building the strategic enrollment plan? (PP5)
EX: If we want to increase geographical diversity, we will want to know what our geographic diversity has been in the past and the present. How capture geographic diversity over time?
What majors with highest level of placement in the job market or grad school or law school? What are our outcomes?
Just starting to gather this information. It is difficult because it depends on students answering surveys. In this region, students will take almost any job so they don’t have to move from the area. They’ll take a job that doesn’t even apply to their major. This tendency makes it difficult to calculate outcomes. (SPSmith)
Faculty write recommendation letters so we should be able to provide some of the information about outcomes (BGaddy).
Can we make that a task of someone here, to bring back outcome data?
TASK:
SPSmith: will speak with Beth Tiedemann about outcome data that has been collected thus far.
Beth is looking at proportion of grads placed within jobs related to majors and programs.
RFogle confirmed that a 10-year study is ongoing that includes some of this information. 2007 has been entered; working on 2008.
Workforce Investment Board manages CareerLink database. Our programs are to be entered into their database so we can receive Trade Act monies. When our information on our students is entered into this database, it merges with the IRS database. We will be able to see, by aggregate, how much our students are making. NOTE: This will not be individual, personal information.
Speculation that more recent graduates will be filing taxes as an individual rather than a household.
Income may not be a relevant criteria since some students may choose a major even though they will end up in a career that makes less money than another major.
How many students were placed in careers related to their majors within six months of graduation and what was their average income?
We’d rather have more information than less. We may choose not to base our decisions on some of this information, but it is good to have the information.
We’ve had some interesting results in the past. The program with the highest proportion of employed graduates was the Writing Program. They had a higher rate of employment than the other programs. Could be because other programs are sending more students on to graduate school?
Things to look at:
· Percentage of graduates employed
· Percentage of graduates employed in a career related to their majors
· Percent of graduates going on to graduate school
· Percentage of graduates going to law school
One of the problems with any of our data is that we have such small numbers that, from a statistical point of view, you are unable to identify trends and patterns. We have to look at several years to get a better sense of what is happening. The job search for someone graduating in 2007 was very different from someone graduating in 2009, so are other things influencing the pattern that is identified. (SPSmith)
It’s helpful to identify job titles that relate back to the different majors, especially in math. This helps students to know how they can use their degree after graduation and in what career areas.
Question to ask: Did they get a job in the field where they are using the skills they developed in their major? (BGaddy)
Other things to look at:
· First generation college students
· Income level of the family
· Where they come from (geographical/high school)
· Where they go if they don’t come here
· Male to female ratio (2009 incoming class had fewer females than males, typically it’s about 50-50 or 49-51)
· Is a family member a Pitt alumnus RE: legacy application (relates to how much they want the brand) (is this on the application?)
· What they want to study
· Top five programs that have grown over the past 10 years
· Top five programs that have decreased over the past 10 years
· Can we identify something that happened here that increased/decreased enrollment so that we can recreate the effect?
· Enrollment patterns of our competitors (environmental scan)
· High School grade point average of applicants
· Number of degrees by major
· Age
· Recruitment from high schools: how many do we get from a single high school per year; have we identified feeder schools?
· Decreasing number of veterans matriculating over the years; are we seeing an increase in applications from veterans because of the Yellow Ribbon/GI Bill.
TASK:
Dean: Will provide enrollment by majors.
We’ve discovered that data by major isn’t very accurate. We are working to fix that by collecting major among the graduates. They might be a biology major but listed as undecided or a natural science major.
Joel: We’re working on identifying who is misidentified and changing that.
If the faculty who advises students would help to identify this, it would really help out. (DNelson)
Collect the majors from graduates, which would be identifying what was produced. Then show the career in which they are working. (SPSmith)
Program History (PP6):
Will it be helpful to look at the history of our programs, what has come, what has gone in order to have a sense of where we are?
What was documented? Dean can use the database to access when program plan was created. Doesn’t mean that’s when the program started.
Suggestion: Find proportion of students taking classes because it fulfills a general requirement vs. a requirement for a major. Some programs are easy to identify as being taken by majors; others aren’t. For example, if we look at total enrollment in history classes, can we tell which are general education and which are advanced? What is required and what is used for major/minor? Will this fulfill SS requirements?
Faculty generally know how many majors they have and the history of their major. Most faculty would know when the major began. (BGaddy)
Strategy for getting this data: If Dean Nelson produces the data, can faculty produce the “story” to accompany the data? Data is the outline of the story, so that everyone would provide similar information. Dean will only go back 10 years. They can say, it started in 1983 and then jump up to the year 2000.
Compare SAT data against majors and programs to see which programs are attracting the higher level student.
Residency History (PP7):
RFogel: not sure how many years back we would have data. Not sure what this information would tell you to compare the residency numbers over years.
BMartin: Can we think about what questions we’d like to have answered and identify data needed to answer. The big thing we don’t have is the why students from Westmoreland and Allegheny Counties might have chosen another school. Some information might be anecdotal. Guess-timate the top 10 reasons why students from Hempfield don’t come here.
Dean’s vision: Take a look at where we are and then start asking questions. Many of the questions are about the environment in southwestern Pennsylvania. When we have a question for which we don’t have data, we look at how to get the data.
Students who apply, are admitted, and don’t come, get a survey get a survey, but this doesn’t get to the students who don’t apply. These questions might be asked through a market survey. We could ask the marketing committee to design some sort of inquiry to identify these reasons.
Students who don’t apply, how can we find out why they didn’t apply?
Maguire (?) will do a broad survey of junior high school students to see why people don’t apply to a certain school. This is an enormously expensive survey to do. The issue to set forth the goal to become geographically diverse because this region is not making enough people. How many of the people who reside on campus reside in Westmoreland County and Allegheny County. Those from outside the area who come here, how did they find out about us?
Why do we want to know the numbers previously: If we look at the breakdown of numbers of freshmen and upperclassmen to see how those numbers change over time? It gives us a sense of decision-making and the environment. Do we expect it to change and why does it change? If we didn’t know it changed, how would we know what to expect?
How does the number of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors change from year to year and why does this change?
The decision to reside on campus can be a proxy for the family income and the quality of student. Students with more options, because of financial means or academic quality providing a financial aid package, may choose to reside on campus for a fuller experience.
What is the cumulative GPA of students who reside on campus vs. commuters for retention purposes?
Historically, commuters have had a little higher GPAs than students residing on campus, which goes against the national trends.
Review trends in occupations to see what occupations are growing, and interface our majors so that we are providing skills that are marketable? If students realize that these are occupations that are marketable, they may be more likely to enroll.
This ties into academic assessment: are we doing the right thing and are we really doing it. Faculty should have an ongoing assessment of what they’re doing and do they represent the field.
Faculty/Staff History (PP8):
Is it worth doing anything here and what do we record? Should we leave this category go until we need it?
Things to look at:
· Terminal degrees of faculty as a means of assessment. Speaks to educational expertise or quality. Number of faculty
· Number of staff
· Male/Female breakout
· Diversity of faculty/staff
· How do faculty/staff interact with students (are they accessible, do they solve problems, do they show care for the students)
· Educational expertise
This information becomes part of the common data set, so it may not be necessary to gather this. (WJamison)
Facilities (PP9):
We do have a history of our facilities. Isn’t kind of imbedded in our 1750 FTE, we’re full? But then programmatic changes may be dependent on the facilities.
What impact have the sports teams have on enrollment? We didn’t always have sports. Did we see an increase in enrollment when we added sports? Is the quality better because of sports? Do they stay?
How many students play sports? This data is kept. There is on average 180 students who wouldn’t be here without sports. That’s why they’re a tactic for enrollment.
The athletic GPA has been higher than the overall student body’s.
Sports has been on campus for about 15 years. Became part of the NCAA in 2000.
TASK:
Rick Fogle will gather athletic information for the past 10 years.
Enrollment prediction model and Housing prediction model that apply historical retention rates and project into the future. These can be used to create what-if scenarios. What impact would a large class have? What impact would an increased retention rate have? These will be placed on the ACE web site for access by the committee.
Mission Statement:
Handout 1: Mission of the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg (Frank Cassell, 2004)
Handout 2: Mission Statement of the university of Pittsburgh and About Pitt/Pittsburgh (from web site) – see the third paragraph that talks about academic values.
Current mission statement is too long. If we are striving to attract a different mix of students, then we may want to revisit who we are. Generally, people do revisit their mission statements periodically. General concept that we are undiscovered, people don’t know we are here. How do we describe what is special about it? How do we describe ourselves? Maybe there is a sharper, more inspiring way to describe ourselves.
Pitt’s main concern is to become a top 25 research university in the country.
Penn State has a more comprehensive emphasis on the undergraduate.
Pitt owned the part of the state education system that has a graduate emphasis.
The challenge is to show we’re the best of the best and make it our own version of the best of the best. An honors college without calling it that. We’re getting the superb student who will have a unique experience. Think deeper and stronger about who we are and what we do that is really special. Make sure that every piece of the pie relates to that and reflects that.
BGaddy: Association of American Colleges and Universities: info on building a mission statement. What’s the use of a mission statement (2006 article). She’ll send the link to everyone.
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