New emphasis on 'enrolment management'

A new phrase is coming to campus: “total enrolment management”.

Provost Feridun Hamdullahpur told the university’s board of governors that enrolment was a major topic of discussion at the executive council “K-Bay” retreat in late May. Here’s how he summarized the issues in a written report to the board:

“While there was consensus among the EC members that enrolment management at UW has been successfully undertaken over the past many years, various challenges including the increased competition for students, more than ever reliance on domestic and international tuition necessitated a thorough discussion of the merit of total (central) enrolment management. 

“It was agreed to proceed with the planning of TEM for the following reasons:

• A greater capacity to respond to budgetary challenges through enrollment; improved fiscal position for the institution
• Enrolment management units given greater access to internal resources — institutional visibility
• Enrolment management units better able to recognize and align their interests with the collective needs of the institution
• Ease of communication/sharing of data among units
• Faculty engagement
• Accountability
• Effectively utilize personnel resources where needed and broaden personnel knowledge of EM units to improve student service and engagement leading to enhanced retention
• Increased capacity for alumni fundraising
• With a multi-year budgeting plan there also needs to be a multi-year enrolment plan with targets indicating how each Faculty is going to contribute to reaching the 2017 goals.

“It was agreed to establish an Enrolment Management Committee consisting of the Vice-President Academic and Provost or delegate (Chair), Deans of each Faculty, and Director, Institutional Analysis & Planning and others (e.g. Registrar, Executive Director of Co-op) as needed. The Committee will determine whether the 2017 goals for enrolment are aspirational or feasible. If they are still viewed as optimum enrolment numbers how do we get there by 2016-17?

“There needs to be annual targets set re: number and quality of incoming students — undergraduate, graduate and international students.”

Enrolment management can include marketing, recruitment and admissions, but also programs in such areas as “engagement” (keeping students interested), “student success” (from tutoring to choosing the right technology), financial aid, residences and so on. There are also the mathematical arts of setting enrolment targets faculty by faculty or program by program, and figuring out how not to be either under or over.

To quote an article published when the concept began to surface in the United States two decades ago: “Enrollment management is an attempt by institutions of higher education to control the size of enrollments through 1) a better understanding of the factors that influence enrollment patterns, and 2) the establishment of structures and procedures to contact more potential students, influence their decisions concerning college attendance and college choice, and retain those students who enroll. In addition to controlling size, institutions are attempting to control the shape of their academic programs by identifying strengths and weaknesses and matching programs to student and community needs.

“Finally, enrollment management is being used as a means of exercising control over the character and mission of individual institutions.”

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Tipi marks home of Aboriginal Services

It's "the newest UW Aboriginal Services arrival to the St. Paul's University College campus," says the program's manager, Emerance Baker. "The 18-foot [six-metre] cedar pole tipi is set up on the green space by the college's main entrance. It will be utilized as a teaching tipi during orientation week, the UW Powwow and our UW Directions conferences."

The program's web site explains that "the services provided by University of Waterloo's Aboriginal Services are premised on understanding, respect, and trust as well as a recognition of and sensitivity to the different cultural values and rights of Aboriginal Peoples and cultures.

"We provide culturally relevant information, facilitate the sharing of Indigenous Knowledges, and provide support services for all members of the UW community including Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students, staff, and faculty. We also work in partnership with other KW region Aboriginal community services and organizations."

Baker and her colleagues are currently celebrating National Aboriginal Awareness Month, and will be on hand in Kitchener's Victoria Park as part of National Aboriginal Day celebrations on June 26 and 27. Various organizations will be offering crafts and food for visitors during both days.

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How pestering the boss paid off for student

by Karina Graf, from the Inside Sco-op newsletter for co-op students

Data entry. These two words conjure up thoughts of brain-frazzled zombie workers — a nightmare that can strike fear deep into the heart of most co-op students. When math/business student Mike Thompson started his first co-op term at Gordon Food Service he sat in front of a computer entering data five days a week, eight hours a day. Instead of moaning about performing boring, unskilled labour, he worked his tail off. Thanks to his hard work, four co-op terms later he still works for GFS — no longer doing data entry — and his flexible job has taken him around the country.

Starting his first co-op term, he didn’t know what to expect. “I would get stacks with hundreds of pages to enter a day and I would type them into Excel sheets,” he remembered, “It was basically pure data entry for weeks.” As he became more familiar with Excel, he standardized the process, which allowed him to finish the job in half the time. Instead of surfing favourite websites or chatting with friends (not that any UW co-op student would ever do such things), he was hungry for more work. “I kept getting stuff done and having extra time,” he explained, “I was motivated. Whenever I’d have free time I wouldn’t just sit around; I’d keep asking for projects to do.”

The pestering paid off. Thompson’s boss gave him a huge project: to create a new scheduling tool for the company. GFS is a food distribution company. They gather inventory – chips, pop, meat, napkins – from third party suppliers and distribute it to restaurants like Turtle Jacks, East Side Mario’s and Applebee’s. Several times a week, GFS trucks distribute inventory to each restaurant. The routes, inventory for each route and drivers often change.

The existing scheduling tool was archaic. He created a program in Microsoft Access that allows managers to assign drivers to routes, view route history and make intelligent decisions — an interactive transportation labour scheduler called the People Plan. The new program was implemented at the Milton GFS centre.

Thompson’s hard work was noticed by other managers, who hired him for a second, third and fourth work term. His fourth co-op at GFS National was his best term yet. “I travelled the country and worked on national projects,” he says. “I took the People Plan and brought it throughout Canada. I travelled to Vancouver, Calgary twice, Edmonton twice, Winnipeg, Montréal, Yorkton. I probably spent about a third of the time out on the road.” Even though he’s back in school now, Thompson still works part time for GFS.

Another perk of that fourth term job was the flexibility it offered. Thompson worked from home much of the time. “A lot of times everybody at a company thinks the co-op student works for them,” he said. “So everybody dumps stuff onto the student because they’re the lowest person in the company. It can be very time consuming if you’re doing other people’s work that you really shouldn’t be doing. But it’s just not your place to say no. Working from home, I avoided a lot of that.”

Thompson grins as he explains how he was able to turn an entry-level work term into a fantastic job. “It’s what you do with what you’ve got,” he said. “I’ve been at GFS so long I’ve seen a lot of co-op students come through in the data entry position. You get a lot of people who come in and they do the data entry and they don’t do anything else. They’re angry they have to do all this data entry. But I was just doing my job, and then I was motivated to use my spare time to do more stuff instead of socializing with people and taking long lunch breaks.”

Part of his motivation was his desire to make a difference. “I think you’ve got to make a lasting impact,” he says. “When you’re done your job, if no one remembers you, no one’s going to care if you’re not there any more. You’ve got to be motivated and accomplish things.”

CAR

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