Trustees focus on improving recruitment

Recruiting and retaining recent high school graduates is a process Utah State University administrators hope they are one step ahead on in comparison to Utah’s other higher education institutions.

With enrollment numbers on a downward spiral throughout the state, members of USU’s enrollment management team presented a strategic plan Friday to members of the Board of Trustees. The plan would implement innovative ideas for attracting more students.

“We can no longer be pretty good at what we do, we have to be very good at what we do,” Jimmy Moore, director of admissions, said. “Hopefully, this will pay dividends for us in 2006.”

The specifics of the plan include sending small incentives to new students during each step of the application process. For example, when students apply to the university, an Aggie wristband is sent to them in the mail as confirmation. Once they are accepted into the university, they will receive a USU lip balm. Then, in subsequent months after their acceptance, they will receive postcards in the mail highlighting different positive aspects of the university, Moore said.

The team’s plan is to enroll 2,600 new freshmen at the university for fall semester 2006, Interim Provost Noelle Cockett said.

“What we are seeing is nine institutions who are competing for available high school students,” Cockett said.

To obtain those freshmen, the university is contacting 80,000 potential students through mail or by other means, called enrollment funneling.

“We start with a high volume of students and that number goes down to actually enrolling 2,600 freshmen,” Moore said.

Other efforts are also being made to increase freshmen enrollment.

Through September, university administrators visited high schools in neighboring cities in Idaho.

“We heard over and over and over that these students want to go to Utah State,” Cockett said.

Efforts are being made to offset the effects of House Bill 331, which requires out-of-state college students to earn 60 credits in a Utah higher education institution before being granted in-state tuition.

USU President Stan Albrecht is working on legislation that would potentially increase the number of nonresident tuition waivers beginning fall semester 2006, Cockett said.

In the meantime, the university is trying to retain its continuing undergraduate students once they are enrolled. From 2004 to 2005, the university lost 10.9 percent of its sophomores and 9 percent of its juniors, Cockett said.

“It’s never going to be 100 percent retention for our students,” Cockett said.

However, she hopes with this new plan students will have more incentive to stay at USU for the remainder of their college careers.

-mmackay@cc.usu.edu