The Case for a Chief Enrollment Management Officer in Higher Education

[Music] Welcome to Changing Higher Ed, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host Dr. Drum McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at ChangingHierEd.com. And now here's your host, Drum McNaughton. [Music] Thank you David. My guest today is Dan Predale, Assistant Dean of Extended Learning and Director of the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College, California's largest community college. Dan has led record-breaking enrollment growth, expanded non-credit to credit pathways, and strengthened alignment with labor market needs through holistic enrollment management, what he calls the Chief Enrollment Management Officer. Dan centered his 20-year career at the intersection of enrollment academic student services, and in his role at Saddleback, he demonstrates how this enrollment strategy, academic innovation, and equity-driven leadership can transform institutions and the students they serve. Seemo, Chief Enrollment Management Officer, is a position and concept that most higher education institutions haven't embraced as yet. Dan joins us to discuss how your institution might benefit by taking this holistic view of marketing enrollment, student support, and alumni services that will enable you to grow enrollment, retention, and graduation. Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Drum. I'm so happy to be here with you today. I'm glad you're here as well. I think we're going to have a great conversation about the importance for Chief Enrollment Management Officers in higher education. But before we get into that, please tell my listeners a little bit about you. What's your background? What really makes you excited every day? Well, again, thank you so much. That's a beautiful day here in Southern California, so that is one of the things that gets me up every day. But I've had the opportunity to be in higher education for 20 years, both inside and outside of the classroom serving in enrollment management, co-curricular activities, and here in academic administration. So I've had the chance to work in private higher ed, public higher ed, and the community college system as well. And I'm really looking forward to chatting with you and your listeners today about that Chief Enrollment Management Officer position as it relates to California Community College Enrollment, but also its translation and parallelism with the four year university system as well. Well, here at Saddleback College right now, which is one of the biggest community colleges, let on California in the country. Yeah, Saddleback College was actually just named as one of the top 10 community colleges in the country and the number one community college in Orange County based both on transfers and also wage gain earns after graduation. Wow. So we're talking now about 28,000 individual students here at Saddleback. We have an amazing cornucopia of programs both on the credit side and on the non credit side. And it's in the non credit side where I work right now running California's largest older adult education program called the Ameritis Institute. Wow. So with that, you're seeing a lot of different things. You're seeing the regular community college perspective. You've seen the private and public areas for four year and comprehensive. And now you're seeing it from senior learners. What are some of the differences that you've observed, especially from an enrollment perspective? Sure, each institution obviously has its own culture and I know we'll talk a little bit later about potentially what that ideal student at the institution looks like or who they are. But it is always so fascinating to talk about the different, if you will, types of students and reasons why students come to the community college system. Like I said right now, we've talked and we hear in the news and inside high red and the chronicle we talk about the enrollment cliff happening and even here in Southern California, a decrease in the number of high school students graduating and then going to the community colleges or for your institutions. And while there have also been that there is that fear, we also know that a lot of institutions around the country have also pivoted to focusing on that young middle aged adult, if you will, that 30 to 45 year old, seen them as a potentially growing market. And at the same time in places like Southern California or other, if you will, high wealth, retiree locations, we also as a community college want to serve the other parts of the community, which includes in this case older adults. The average age here is 71 and so each of those segments provide an opportunity to really niche out and parse out your enrollment management strategies. It is so important. And when I take a look at the purpose for community colleges or what their typical demographics are, you're educating people in the trades, your feeders for four year colleges or comprehensive. Although there are more and more community colleges putting in to do three year bachelor's degrees and even four year bachelor's degree, but those are the minority and then the continuous learning for seniors. We've got friends of ours who love to go back and take courses or go on something called the Rhodes Scholar R O A D S instead of our H O D E S for trips, but there's always an educational component on it. Exactly. Yeah, I was just going to say when we talk about older adult lifelong learning here in the California community colleges, the saddleback emeritus program amongst many of them, we really promote the academic rigor of the program. These are free non credit full semester classes yet it actually levels the educational playing field. We have older adult immigrants who may not have attended higher education for whatever reason. And yet they are also getting the chance to sit in the classroom with those who have terminal degrees also wanting to pursue their hobby or their educational experience, doing oil painting, going in theater classes, learning how to improve their investments. The purpose of education really extends beyond just that initial I need to go to college to get a job. This gives people the opportunity to engage in those educational passions that they may not have pursued in their career. And that is a market of students that higher education seems to forget a lot about, but there are potential enrollment ramifications that excluding those people can actually continue to leave out a bunch of potential enrollment and increase your fiscal solvency. Absolutely and it's nice that it's free there in California, but it is also your potential revenue stream. See, continuous learning is one of those things that colleges and Michael Crow at ASU has talked about continuous learning when you sell somebody and I hate to use it term cell, but frankly that's what the enrollment pieces and admissions is you're selling somebody on your college. And why it's the best fit for them. If you do that once, it's a heck of a lot easier to do it for a master's degree, continuous education certificates. And again, Michael Crow has really champion this at ASU. ASU's program has been one of those programs that has been the slow, steady and integrative lifelong learning programs that has infiltrated higher education and really shown what great customer service looks like, what great external partnerships looks like. And keep students coming to the institution. It is one of those great success stories of you don't obviously just need an on campus presence. ASU online has been a fantastic feeder for adults across the country to continue in traditional undergrad graduate and even those lifelong learning education programs. So it's a great success story, which brings me to the chief enrollment management officer. This is something that you're very familiar with. You did your dissertation on it as applying it to the California community colleges, but many institutions are starting to wake up to the need for a seamal. That's correct. I know that in previous episodes of your podcast, you've talked about what is enrollment management and what is the purpose and what that looks like again is basically living out and accomplishing the brand promise of your institution, both for the students success, whatever that is defined as. And also to ensure that the institution's fiscal stability is maintained or even strengthened. And yet many institutions outside of that four-year institutional bracket are now, as you say, waking up to this position saying, "Oh, we have this enrollment cliff coming. Oh, our demographics are changing. I don't know what we're going to do, but I'm looking around at my cabinet and saying, "I don't know, necessarily, if we have the right people for all of the enrollment management challenges that are coming up for us, hence enter the potential chief enrollment management officer." And that makes perfect sense as somebody who's cabinet level who has a good understanding and grasp of marketing, enrollment, admissions. Somebody who can balance both the internal and external perspectives of the institution. Exactly. It is a unique, maybe almost unicorn type of person who can sit in that chief enrollment management officer role. Because when we think about what that role actually entails, it sits outside of those traditional governance verticals that we think of, instruction, student service, administration, and finance. And it actually is the role of the cabinet that thinks about the priorities of each of those different governance verticals and streamlines across them, the way that the strategy of the institution comes to life to ensure that students are experiencing the brand promise, experiencing the educational outcomes that the institution is saying that they will get and ensures that instruction, service, administration, and finance are all aligned for the benefit of the whole institution. So it's this wildly unique position and is extremely powerful because it touches everything in the institution, but by itself, it can't do anything without the partnerships internally with administration, staff, and faculty. And you bring up a really interesting point digging back in my own gray cells for a long period of time. When we do strategic planning, you have strategies that go across the institution. It's almost like, I don't know if you remember from your childhood, but you go to the beach and you've got these webbed chairs that you sit on. Yeah. You've got strategies that go across all the different, quote, silos or departments. A seamal has to do that, but there's got to be one key piece with that. It's more than just admissions. You've got to look at it. It's a holistic approach focused on the student. Does that make sense? It absolutely does. When I interviewed 16 California Community College presidents for my dissertation, many of them said, well, I don't know about this role because I've never heard of it. Or well, we don't have one. And so my role as the president is to think or to act like the chief enrollment management officer. And yet an individual sitting in the presidency also has larger priorities and may not be able to get a little bit more in the weeds like a chief enrollment management officer does. Certainly a C-suite position is higher level and isn't in that daily interaction with students. But it is that individual who weaves through each of those other governance areas and thinks, how do I make sure that our admissions, our marketing, our external communication, our internal retention communication, our alumni are all woven through to ensure that our career outcomes are guaranteed as much as we can. And next year's budget comes in with knowing that we're going to be able to have all of our employees have jobs and continue to grow enrollment, hopefully, to continue the impact on the world that such and such institution really wants to have. So I think it's a great analogy that woven share. I haven't thought about those since a while, but it's a great analogy. I should have used that in the dissertation. Well, you can always go back and revise it, but I don't know anybody who wants to do that. Follow on research. Right. It's interesting because I just had a conversation with Colleen Lee, who is the assistant dean for enrollment management student success at the Craig Newman Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Small school, and you see this at small schools, they've integrated their admissions, student services, career services, and alumni services. This is kind of a good model for what a SEMO should be doing. I agree. When we think about those verticals again, we also know that a lot of the time for lack of a better word, they are working in their own priorities. We'll use the word silo simply because when you are focused on just your work, everybody else's work isn't on top of mind. And so when we consider centralizing either the most important offices about enrollment management or the tangential ones that are like, okay, career center, maybe not always about enrollment management, but as soon as you bring that area onto the enrollment management team, all of a sudden career readiness, career and workforce placement, internships, apprenticeships, all become aspects of your brand promise that you have a lot more control over and actually get to sell the institution to use your words again, even better. And it creates those partnerships with outside organizations to say, hey, look, we are preparing our students for you by our own internal organization. Conversely, in many of our California community colleges and frankly community colleges across the country, most institutions are still open access institutions. We are still focused on getting everybody in the door. And so one of those fears, one of the pain points about even considering a chief enrollment management officer in a community college is the fact of, hey, we've got thousands of students coming in who don't necessarily fit into any one type of cohort. How in the world could we centralize, let alone have individual marketing communication trails for the types of students we have? It's first come and all served. So that is one of the challenges with incorporating the chief enrollment management officer here, yet at the same time, it's vital because we also see enrollment in community colleges, even here in California, continuing to decline. So these two things can't exist at the same time. There has to be a choice made. Do we want to continue down the enrollment declining? Or are we willing to say, what do we actually want to do even if it changes our whole organizational structure? And I come back to the holistic approach that we're talking about. I remember having a conversation with AVP for admissions and his comment was, it's my job to bring him in the door after that it's everybody else's problem. And I'm going, oh my gosh, this is not smart. One, there are very few functions that cut across an entire higher ed institution. Finance is one of them. And enrollment management should be the other. As you talked about, fulfillment of the brand promise. But you're selling the students, getting them in the door. Once they're in, are you going to be able to keep them? That's the retention piece. And that student services, that's academics, it could be mentoring. I spoke to one president today who has developed AI tools that can indicate when a student may start struggling so they can reach out. They assign students mentors. These are all things that can go into and be part of enrollment management. If you've got your enrollment up, if you've got your persistence up, your graduation rate is going to improve. I mean, this school that I spoke to this morning, they're looking at 92% graduation rate in six years. And this is a high tech school. It's ranked in the top 50 in the country for education opportunities. They're doing it right. Exactly. I think that position, as you already mentioned, has to consider that individual student journey as the parallel to how the institution actually functions. Because again, if you are just handing off a student from one area to another, without any warm handoff or any easily transitioned comprehensive movement from admissions to orientation to enrollment, two sitting in the classroom to ensuring the co-curricular is aligned to ensure tutoring is coalescing with all the other aspects to ensure that the alumni from that major are reconnecting back with the brand new students. If everything isn't in lockstep, we have this disjointedness that unfortunately higher ed is also somewhat known for. Really? Surprise! You would think we are a well-oiled machine but well-oiled in the way of how we not necessarily always help our students and I'm not picking on any one institution but I think that is a typical critique of well we got a student in the door even for community colleges but there's too many students. I talked to this one counselor who didn't help me but this other counselor told me something different and I've been at ex-college for 10 years. That isn't a service to students even if it keeps our head count up but the goal here is to ensure every aspect of that institution is aligned to ensure the student is served. Because I'll tell you this and this is a phrase I came up with a couple months ago and it's resonated with some folks it's that students aren't coming to our place of work we are coming to a place where the students dreams are trying to become a reality. And so it is in with that frame where we have to change our mindset and the chief enrollment management officer can do just that. And that's the culture change that's needed. It's focusing on what the student needs making sure that he or she has that and getting him across the finish line and beyond that finish line making sure that they have good jobs when they get out. Now many folks will say that's not higher as responsibility but if you're educating them with what they need to be successful not only in life but also in the workplace then you've done your job. I agree. The fact of the matter is the student outcome isn't always our first priority. We come to work to ensure that we can pay our mortgage or rent or our car payment and we can put food on the table for our families and yet the individual whether they are on a Pell Grant going to a four-year institution or on a promise program grant that pays for an individual's tuition here to California Community College. That person that student is actually trying to get to the same place that you are in your own fiscal and life stability. And frankly how dare we say that our institutions can't change because we're comfortable when that same individual is actually wanting to find stability and comfort. Like how dare we get in their way for our own workplace comfort. We have to ensure that our institution is actually aligned to think about that student in the end. Not just did I have a good day at work or not. Yeah you're so right. One of the typical things that I see is course development and course development new courses, new programs frequently are based on the faculty expertise which in many respects is very good but it's in some way short-sighted. Again I go back to the conversation that I have with this university president earlier today. They have a program to where they bring in the experts in industry and tell them what it is that they need as employers. They get that input from the community from the employers. This is critical for getting the students the skills that they need to be successful when they graduate. We have across many California Community Colleges and beyond directors of economic and workforce development. You are creating those partnerships with current industries saying what do you need from our students. But going back to the thesis of our conversation here too, that chief enrollment management officer has to be working with our current faculty to think yes you are an expert in this right now but where do you think your field will be in the next 10 years and how can we work backwards to make sure that our product the education that you so well deliver will actually meet that nine-year-olds career goals when they're here in nine years. How do we ensure that we do not remain stagnant? And so that chief enrollment management officer has to have such trust in will has to be trusted by the faculty to say I'm not here to make your lives any more difficult. You are in the trenches every day working with students to ensure that their lives are improving through the curriculum and outside of the curriculum through your mentorship and at the same time that CMO is on the streets working with those industries saying we're preparing for the next 10 years. What kind of programs should we see? What kinds of faculty members should we be hiring? Who in your organization could come and serve as a professional expert with our faculty so that we're in partnership with you? So it's not just thinking about admissions right now but it's not just about the retention right now it's that strategic long-term planning that the chief enrollment management officer actually guides. Not everything is enrollment management not everything is about enrollment but it touches almost every aspect of the university or college and therefore that is also the reason why even in the community colleges it needs to be at the executive level not a director of enrollment services just overseeing admissions but a position that can actually shape and affect current culture and long-term strategy. And it's even more critical now with as many first-gen students that we have when I think about myself my father was a ship driver in a pilot and he had a couple of years of college but it was focused primarily on sea going and ships etc. My mom was a teacher she went to Framingham State Teachers College which has been absorbed by another institution years ago but they taught us how to study they taught us the value of a higher education etc. Many of these first-gen students have never had that experience so under the enrollment management if you've got student services things along those lines you've got mentors to help them you've got trip wires when somebody looks like they're starting to fall off the good path you need all of these things to help students. And I would say within the AI age that we are in now aspects of student performance indicators that can lead to potential declining of success metrics are even easier to incorporate now just based off of the amount of data that we do have about how students progress through classes and what those early warning signs are. Early warning systems for students success have been around for a while but even now we have the opportunity to improve those and to ensure that hey this marker just got hit yes our CRM is capable of pinging that student but is it also saying and do you want to chat about that right now with our University or College built AI agent if you will let's talk about it and then further on even connect with a real-world person. So there are lots of possibilities out there but I would say this too as we talk about the types of students that are coming to our institutions I also go back to what types of resources is the institution even willing to spend money on. When I talk with other higher education leaders especially thinking about enrollment management I often pose this question which says here in an open admission institution like a community college let's be real and humble for a moment is there a student that walks through our doors that you still believe is the ideal community college student or is there one that you when they walk through the door you're like oh great another one of those whatever that is student and if that internal dialogue happens knowingly or unknowingly consciously or unconsciously there has to be a response that says oh is our institution not serving a specific group of students and therefore I am having frustrations when it is coming to working with any student in our community because if there really is in say an open admission institution like a community college groups of students that you wish weren't coming here then that is actually another call for a culture change or at least a culture review to say where perhaps on our admission side or on our student services side, slash retention. Are we missing the boat in terms of student services, technology, counselors, personnel, or even just printed resources or website resources where students can get the information that we think they should already have, but it's actually incumbent on us to be the communicators. And speaking about open access, it's got to be within the mission of the college. You can't be expecting folks to go outside of that mission just because somebody wants to be in the trades, doesn't mean that you're going to do all the trades. Right. Yes, it is not possible for an institution to be everything for everyone. And a community college does or any institution has to be very decisive about what their curriculum portfolio will be. Not every institution offers every single associate or bachelor's programs. And each obviously has its programs that are most popular or even the ones that they really highlight. So again, at the same time, we can't be every curricular dream for every single person, but a student coming here knowing that they're going to take the major that we offer, we can't afford to lose them, and they can't afford to be lost by us. One last comment, and then we'll jump on to our takeaways as we always do. All of these systems that we've talked about, they need a central point of contact to make sure that they get integrated. A SEMO is a wonderful place to do it. Provost could be that as well. It's not really the role of the president, although many community college presidents end up doing this, there needs to be somebody who can make sure all of these web things for your lawn chair, your beach chair, cross, and they don't fray or even break. I agree. The outcome here of hiring a chief enrollment management officer has to be built on the fact that it already exists in some areas. Community colleges have to take the risk to say, "I may not know the ROI right now, but before I put those funds into a new position instead of new faculty or new staff, but I believe in the concepts and in the theories and in the other outcomes that are quantifiable about strategic enrollment management and say, "My students deserve somebody who will weave all parts of the institution together for that student's ultimate life and career success." So the risk of not having it is status quo, potentially losing out on funding based off of tuition or not meeting market needs, and not having somebody at the helm who is looking out for all of those other governance verticals to ensure the institution is aligned with those strategic goals that we started off our conversation with. Full circle, I love it. Dan, thank you. This has been fascinating conversation. Obviously, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. So as we say goodbye today, three takeaways for President's and boards, not only community college, but four-year and comprehensive, what are the benefits of having a SEMO? I would say one of the first benefits is breaking the fallacy that enrollment management is everyone's job, so it can't be one person's job. We're not all trained to be faculty members. We're not all trained to be admissions counselors. We're not trained necessarily to do the intricate jobs of all of the various employees. So why should we also think that everyone is trained to be an expert in enrollment management? It actually begs the question of why don't we have that role? So I would say yes, living out and ensuring that the brand promises fulfilled in your scope of work is your responsibility, but to ensure alignment of enrollment management strategies across the college is the role of a SEMO. I would also say this too, the institutions that want to ensure equity gaps are closed need to consider the fact that equity really begins at student inquiry, meaning that student who is inquiring about if their life is going to be better by attending your institution, that SEMO, that institution, is ensuring that best practices are in place for the types of students who they typically market to, to ensure that success rates among black students, among queer students, are actually at or higher than majority students who are also attending the institution. And then finally, I would say this, enrollment management is never a silver bullet. You work with the employees that you have. And at the same time, enrollment management through a chief enrollment management officer will make a difference in the student's lives. And again, it's a risk that boards and presidents should be willing to take. Thank you. Great takeaways. Appreciate those. What's next for you? I am continuing to work here at Saddleback College, and at the same time, I am looking to be the first vice president of enrollment management, chief enrollment management officer in the California Community Colleges. Obviously, it's unique to have somebody who has worked across all the different sectors of higher ed. But regardless of that, I love talking about strategic enrollment management. And I'm always happy to chat with anybody interested in this role or other aspects of higher ed. Well, I'm glad you chose to talk with us today. I want to thank you for being on the show, and we should the best of luck in all this. Thanks so much for having me, Dr. Amit's always a pleasure, and look forward to it next time. Likewise, take care. Thanks for listening today, and a special thank you to my guest, Dan Predale, Assistant Dean of Extended Learning and Director of the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College. Dan, it was a pleasure having you on the show. I enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk about this very important topic. To my listeners, thanks again for joining in. I hope this was a good conversation for you. I look forward to seeing you next week. Changing higher ed is a production of The Change Later, a consultancy committed to transforming higher ed institutions. Find more information about this topic, along with show notes on this episode at changinghireed.com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show. We would also value your honest rating and review. Email any questions, comments, or recommendations for topics or guests to podcast at changinghireed.com. Changing higher ed is produced and hosted by Dr. Drummick Norton, post-production by David L. White.