STRATEGIC PLANNING
ENROLLMENT
Co-Chairs:
Advisor: Dr. Mary Ellen Caro
Enrollment Aspirations
1.) Image - to become the leaders of a multiple brand strategic
approach that will cater to our diverse niches
• Revise NEC’s Optimal Enrollment Plan to overall higher
goals, while at the same time taking into account year to year
factors as well as complex demographic trends, including (not
an exhaustive list):
a) Increase proportion of minorities in bachelor’s degree
programs
b) Increase numbers of adult learners interested in
baccalaureate completion programs
c) Respond to changes in growing occupations, employment
growth by types of occupations, and replacement rates (10
year outlook)
d) Emerging fields at the graduate level (for example: health
information management, sustainability) that can also be
sources of undergraduate education
• Organize a marketing intelligence knowledge group and
externally-driven standards to assess programs. This group
will:
e) Establish target enrollments per program and recommend
investment resources for each
f) Design a method to reinforce the overarching brand for the
school, while at the same time making sure that there is no
disconnect among business units and the College’s brand
g) Determine the extent to which there is a need to rethink or
modify the college-level brand, since different target
populations will need somewhat different messages
h) Design an overall strategy that is grounded in growth
areas, non-traditional populations, online and distance
learning delivery formats; under the assumption that while
there is room for growth, we will not see this growth in the
traditional undergraduate day program
• Create innovative approaches to Military, Veterans, Alumni,
International, and other groups formerly known as
“non-traditional:”
i) Develop specific recruitment plans for military students and
veterans
j) Develop marketing and recruitment materials specifically
designed for minority groups (for example, other institutions
produce these materials in different languages, such as
Spanish)
• Broadcast who we are, what we do, and the perceived value
for each of our niches
k) Design marketing tools (from brochures to a presence in
the WWW) that respond to the specific identity of each
program, while at the same time maintaining and
strengthening the overall College brand
l) Publicize the achievements of students, alumni, faculty and|
staff that reflect how the College community thrives in
achieving its mission and goals
• Work on our internal image: a “college fair” at NEC
m) Since how the organization sees itself internally is at least
as important as how our external stakeholders see it from the
outside, we have identified the need to create initiatives that
will disseminate information about all that we currently do in
the College to fulfill our mission. A “college fair” will be a
series of events targeted to the internal NEC community, to
showcase the work that each department does to serve our
stakeholders.
n) We propose to the College President to hold a series of
Q&A sessionsto discuss with the internal NEC community
the latest initiatives and events. This will contribute to create a
better sense among faculty and staff that they are informed
and have the chance to ask questions and express opinions
about matters that are important to the college community.
2) Knowledge: To be known in the world because of our expertise and knowledge, both theoretical and applied, in disciplines and fields that improve society and nature
A) Build strong programs: with high enrollment, that lead into
career success, successful alumni
• Determine a series of assumptions to design the
expectations on each academic and training program offered at
the College, in order to specify margin requirements,
contributions by program, and enrollment expectations;
implement an evaluation system to determine the behavior of
each program and inform strategic decisions about longevity,
curriculum innovation, contributions to the college’s mission,
and other factors deemed relevant to determine the future of
programs
• Establish, for all programs, systems of assessment that
include the observations of alumni over given periods (right at
graduation, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years after graduation) so that
the College can learn from our alumni’s experiences,
successes and failures
• With the same system, and also for every program in the
College, carry out a matrix analysis to compare the contents
and skills offered in the program with the contents and skills
alumni find have been crucial to their professional
advancement
• Design mechanisms for program design and implementation
that are market-and externally-driven, taking into account labor
and educational trends as well as changes in the workplace
B) Strengthen the relevance of liberal arts contents in applied
undergraduate majors and graduate concentrations
• Ensure that all undergraduate majors are making the best
use possible of innovative approaches to the incorporation of
liberal arts contents into the fabric of the program’s learning
outcomes and course objectives
• Revise, improve, consolidate and where appropriate create
programs that enhance writing skills and promote independent
and critical thinking among graduate and undergraduate
students
C) Design and implement innovative institutional and
community partnerships for programs
• Develop partnership with community colleges, professional
associations, other colleges and universities, and specialized
associations to establish explicit connections between the
programs and what is happening in the “real world of work.”
• Aggressively seek accreditation, or continue the efforts at
continued accreditation, of all programs that can be accredited
with institutions that are feasible for the College to complete
the process successfully, in such fields as business, mental
health counseling, informatics, human resource management,
project management, education, and others
• Create Advisory Boards for key programs or topics, for
example an Advisory Board for Management programs,
including graduate and undergraduate programs; these
Boards need to have a strong presence of external
stakeholders (employers, alumni, key adjunct faculty)
D) Becoming a leader in entrepreneurship and
intrapreneurship in the design and implementation of learning
programs
• Entrepreneurship generally refers to the ability to produce
innovations that translate into new businesses and markets.
Intrapreneurship refers to the organization’s ability to develop
the same innovative spirit and practice when it comes to its
internal processes. This concept translates into actual
behavior of employees (faculty and staff): an intrapreneur acts
as an entrepreneur within the organization, using the same
business building techniques to create, market, and sell
innovative new programs and services. In return for increased
pay, benefits, and the freedom to pursue new ventures, the
intrapreneur and his/her team must consistently create
products that are embraced by the market and become a major
revenue source for the organization.
• As an example of the above, create more explicit connections
between graduate and undergraduate programs; graduate
programs are often unknown to students
• Produce innovative pedagogical techniques and approaches
• So far much of the discussion in this document has referred
to content: topics and skills that are important for NEC
graduates. Another element that is of at least equal strategic
value is the delivery formats for all our programs. Innovation in
this area should be focused on the concepts of experiential
learning and engaged learning, around which the College will
develop a regional and national reputation in 5 years with
presence in the media, presentations in regional and national
conferences, and papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
• Make all classrooms state of the art in technology. With most
high school graduates familiar with such technologies as the
SmartBoard, as they have used it extensively in private and
public high schools, the College needs to make sure all its
classroom spaces have the latest technology that the College
is able to afford, and then some.
3) Technology - To become cutting edge in innovative learning
technologies and information management
A) Increase the use of existing technology and adopting new
tools
• Adopt new learning technologies, such as the upcoming
upgrade in our Blackboard learning platform to the latest
version (9.1., to be implemented in December 2010
• Examine the need to acquire new Blackboard Modules,
especially the “Community” module (which the College
currently has not purchased) as a mechanism to promote a
more widespread electronic environment for all college
activities, inside and outside the traditional classroom (cost of
this Module is around $40K annually)
• Increase the amount and quality (i.e. customized) training
offered to all employees for using Banner and Intelliworks, as
well as any other software currently in use
• In a slow but progressive movement, start a transformation
process of all those transactions and other document
processing mechanisms to promote a “green” environment for
data processing (first steps towards this goal are taking place
on a pilot test basis in the Fall of 2010)
B) Develop all faculty for state of the art technology in
pedagogical pursuits, in all delivery formats and all programs
and curriculum content
• Adopting the latest learning platforms will simply not suffice if
we do not develop the capacity in our key personnel (faculty and
staff, especially those in academic advising functions),
therefore it will be imperative to develop a series of training
modules that eventually should become mandatory; the first,
optional version of these trainings will take place in November
2010)
• Create an Instructional Technology Advisory Board, with
members from different college constituencies (including
external stakeholders) to promote a better understanding of
technology and the adoption of all new technologies that the
College is able to adopt and that will better serve the needs of
students and the learning processes that need to take place in
the college
• Find out and apply new mechanisms for the use of technology
in engaged learning and in experiential learning
C) Use technology for student advising and involvement
• As soon as possible with the adoption of Blackboard’s
version 9.1., train all advisors to make an intensive use of all its
available features for the monitoring of students’ academic
performance and communication with students at risk
• Explore the possibility of incorporating other technologies
included in the section above so that advisors (both from the
faculty and the staff) will be able to communicate with students
in all the means that are available to them, and that students
are already used to before they come to college
D) Become a tech-savvy institution: proficient in the use of
technology and knowledge management for college-wide
strategic decision making
• The Instructional Technology Advisory Board can also serve
as a Knowledge Management Advisory Board that will help the
College transform itself in how it uses information to make
strategic decisions
• Transforming the college’s Web page—not only for marketing
but as an internal information management and community
building tool
4) Mentoring and traditions: aspirations
To preserve and expand the sense of community and
identification with the college among our diverse populations of
students and alumni
A) Strengthen and expand our existing traditions
• The College already has significant traditions, which
undergraduate full time students have most access to. Any
future plans must include the strengthening of such traditions,
rituals, and symbols.
B) Identify the different niches of our student and alumni
populations and being proactive and intentional about how we
promote the sense and practice of belonging for each one
• The diversity of the College’s student population is very deep
and runs the gamut from demographic differences (for
example, programs where the average age of students is 37,
contrasted with programs for traditional 18-year old
undergraduate freshmen) to professional interests and
disciplines (for instance, an MFA in Poetry side by side with a
Master of Science in Project Management). Because of this, we
need to create traditions that respond to each group’s specific
circumstances. Online students, for example, or commuting
students are often expected to have little connection with the
college; this translates into nothing other than a self-fulfilled
prophecy.
C) Knowing what our diverse students expect, need, and would
like to see; experimenting in terms of their connection with the
college
• Develop systematic mechanisms to gather continuously
information about students, their interests, their concerns, and
their opinions about the College and its programs; use this
information to inform decisions in terms of policies and
initiatives to support retention
• Other institutions have “played around” with such ideas as
adopting iPads to enhance the learning process of students,
and to keep them connected with the college (Chen 2010).
D) Deepening our practices and disseminating information
about our unique mentoring as a pillar of NEC’s identity
• Develop a uniquely NEC mentoring approach, for instance by
identifying ways in which mentoring can be expanded to
include, for example, mentoring of undergraduate students by
graduate students in the same field, and mentoring of graduate
and undergraduate students by alumni
• Connecting mentoring and close faculty relationships to
experiential learning and engaged learning—two concepts the
College needs to define and implement more widely and
clearly in the next 5 years.
Please click to view our Strategic Planning - Enrollment blog.
