Friday Focus: Modernizing the enrollment experience

July 15, 2022

— Owen Guthrie, vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management

In the early 1990s, I worked with a field research team in Egypt. Among many wonderful experiences, one of the things I marveled at was the arcane nature of the Egyptian department store retail model. Each element of the customer experience was owned by a separate person behind a separate service counter. For example, if you wanted to buy a cooking pot, you went to the cooking pot counter and worked with the cooking pot professional to select the pot you wanted. Once you made your selection, the pot professional scribbled a note on a small slip of paper. You then took this slip of paper across the shop, and sometimes to another floor, to the cashier. You paid the cashier, got your slip of paper stamped, sometimes with an actual lick-and-stick stamp, and then you went back to the pot professional where you exchanged your stamped slip for the pot. The pot professional was surrounded by stacks of these stamped slips for some hidden purpose. This process was daunting at first, but kind of fun once you got the hang of it – assuming you had the time. However, outfitting a research camp for the summer was quite the challenge; it involved a couple of days of becoming familiar with each service counter professional, lots of conversations, lots of slips of paper, and much running back and forth, upstairs and downstairs in order to acquire my checklist of supplies for the season.

As an outsider, it was a neat cultural experience. From a retail perspective, from a consumer perspective, and likely from an economic perspective, the model was painfully constraining. Unfortunately, in higher education, we still do something quite similar. We externalize many of our internal processes and silos onto our students. We ask them to negotiate our arcane systems, often without a guide. Their odyssey begins the moment they decide they want to attend our institution. Along the way, they tell their story many times, meet many of our staff and faculty, and do a fair amount of shuffling slips of paper here and there. The path to their seemingly simple goal of enrolling in classes can be long, unclear, and arduous. 

Our strongest higher education competitors are already revising and modernizing this journey by focusing more on the student experience. We are all familiar with retail models where one walks into a store and someone asks, ‘can I help you,’ and that service person is empowered to serve and support you through your entire experience until you walk out the door with your shopping bags in hand. The focus for that staff member is on serving your needs. Internal corporate departments, silos, structures, and processes are hidden from the consumer. In the most progressive higher education institutions, this service person is referred to as an enrollment counselor. They serve as guides for students from inquiry through matriculation; from the moment they raise their hand and say they’re interested in attending until they sit in class on the first day. 

Last week, a team of Enrollment Management superheroes gathered at UAF with a common goal: to modernize the enrollment experience of our students. Here are a few highlights. 

Ashley Munro, our new director of financial aid, has contracted with the National Association of Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) for a top-to-bottom review of our financial aid systems and processes with the goals of modernization and process improvement. We are also doing a financial aid student satisfaction survey for the first time in more than a decade. Here’s one cool thing about Ashley; she has already been doing this work with NASFAA for years with other institutions. She is a national leader in this space. Ashley is also working with the heroic Financial Aid staff to help each person adjust their positions to better align with their strengths and interests. Ashley and team are implementing many improvements in Financial Aid! 

Holly McDonald, acting registrar, has been working with the sage-like staff of the Registrar’s Office to reorganize and redefine staff roles, improve employee spaces, and digitize processes and systems to modernize and simplify services. Our Registrar experts are also working on the very heavy lifts related to Banner SIS improvements. Holly and the team are doing amazing work. 

Among other things, Anna Gagne-Hawes, director of admissions, is working daily with Ariel Novak, transfer credit manager, and the Transfer Credit Team to improve the journey for those who come to UAF with prior higher education experience. They are in the process of acquiring and implementing EAB Transfer Portal, the leading transfer credit solution in the industry. Anna’s team is pulling hard to move us forward. 

Tom Hough, director of the department of military and veterans services (DMVS), and his team are eliminating paper processes. The staff out at Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base now greet interested service members with a tablet and capture their contact information digitally in the same Salesforce CRM used by Admissions. Sometimes our staff members out there are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of interested visitors. Monday we had over 100 soldiers and spouses visit during New Soldier Orientation. Tom and the team innovated a QR code allowing those waiting to fill out a UAF Request for Information on their smartphones. The form feeds directly into the same Salesforce CRM. These are just a few of the digital transformation improvements that Tom and his team are shouldering. 

Here’s another cool thing. Jennifer Tilbury, the new associate vice provost for student success is also at the table. Jen is a great collaborator, and in her role as leader of the Student Success Center and First Year Advising (FYA), her presence is critical in helping us improve the student journey over the long haul. Jen is working with her teams to create the new FYA model and improve processes. We want to make sure the efforts of our awesome Advising teams mesh perfectly with our other efforts to provide a more seamless student experience.

Even more important than the strides each of these strong leaders is taking with their own teams, they are meeting together regularly in pursuit of common goals. They are shortening and improving the student journey, representing their respective teams at the table, and searching for ways to improve the continuity of care. They are integrating our siloed systems to create a more student-centered, more modern student experience. They are improving our model. 

This is what progress looks like. Some of this work is incredibly difficult. It can be tedious and frustrating. It can also be breathtakingly exciting. We don’t use lick-and-stick stamps (do we?), but we have plenty of room ahead of us for improvement. It is great for our students and great for UAF. A huge thank you to each member of these teams for all your work – and a huge thank you to all the other teams and individuals moving us forward. Thank you! 

Oh, and Jenn Pedersen, interim executive director over at eCampus, just opened a new position for a hybrid recruiter and advisor. It is called an Enrollment Counselor. Look out!

Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF's leadership team every week.