Enrollment Management Strategic Plan

About Enrollment Management

The Office of Enrollment Management is committed to providing outstanding student service, ensuring equitable opportunities and removing barriers to access and success through five organizational departments that include: The Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Student Aid, the Office of the University Registrar, EM Data Analytics and Strategic Insights and Enrollment Management Marketing and Communications. The Office of Enrollment Management at Penn State seeks to be a service, research, collaboration, partnership, and constituency-based organization. In our organization, the core principles of who we are and the role we play in the life of the University are best described in the “student life cycle”. The student life cycle represents the key steps in students’ interaction with the University and each step must include successful service and consistency of message. It is our goal to not only meet, but exceed, student expectations by performing our key functions effectively at each step of the life cycle.

By utilizing a series of highly integrated information systems and a robust reporting environment, Enrollment Management provides ongoing analysis of the characteristics and behaviors of future, current and former students to improve and enhance Penn State’s competitive market position and prominence in order to increase our capacity to achieve strategic enrollment goals related to quantity, quality, access, and success.

Core functions, focus and scope of Enrollment Management:

• Outreach
• Marketing
• Recruitment
• Retention
• Service

Vision Statement

The Office of Enrollment Management will work creatively and diligently to attain optimal enrollments, support the academic mission and units of the institution and enhance student success and development. We will operate interdependently with others, sharing information of value to the institution as a whole, and working with our colleagues to achieve cohesive, supportive, and seamless systems for students from the date of first inquiry through graduation and beyond. We aspire to become a service leader on campus and a national model for quality enrollment, student services, and system support within the university, the state and the nation.

Mission Statement

The Office of Enrollment Management will use a systematic set of activities and programming efforts to coordinate undergraduate student recruitment and retention initiatives at Penn State. These activities and efforts include:

• Attracting, admitting, enrolling, retaining and graduating eligible students for the UP and Commonwealth Campus’s in accordance with academic policies, initiatives and campus priorities.
• Creating and managing a campus schedule of course offerings, to register students, maintain faculty’s record of student academic performance, issue transcripts, grades, certifications and diplomas.
• Developing data-informed, compelling and engaging marketing messages and accompanying collateral designed to increase conversion rates at each stage of the funnel.
• Administering state, federal and institutional financial aid and scholarship programs and evaluating the efficacy of those programs on achievement of key enrollment outcomes.
• Counseling students and families in order to ensure access, choice and a diverse student body that is representative of the citizens of the State of Pennsylvania.
• Facilitating the development, implementation and monitoring of academic policies, practices and procedures and to assist the academic units in implementing such policies in order to meet goals related to student progression, performance, retention and graduation.
• Facilitating student transition to Penn State that leads to positive adjustment, academic success and persistence to degree.
• Promoting Penn State University and the pursuit of higher education.
• Playing a leadership role in the development, implementation, maintenance, and assessment of effectiveness/efficiency of student information systems and enrollment technologies.

Service Goals

The Office of Enrollment Management is committed to having a clearly defined purpose for everything we do and executing it well. We intend to assess and measure the effectiveness of all initiatives and eliminate, refine, or replace less effective strategies. By providing an exemplary level of quality, our service goals are:

• To provide accurate, accessible information
• To reduce student runaround
• To reduce or eliminate institutional red tape
• To improve student satisfaction with services
• To facilitate student learning