Morning Huddle

Enrollment fluctuates by the minute this time of year. Students are still applying to some colleges and universities and yet others are waiting for the all important admission decision. Simultaneously, enrollment leaders are managing their classes and attempting to craft the best class possible for the upcoming fall. Daily, numbers change. One day #enrollment is running ahead and the next day it can be running behind. There are several ways to create a class and hopefully, there are substantial applicants to evoke a selective admitted pool and after countless events on campus, hopefully, the best students will ultimately send in their deposit by May 1st to hold their place and signal that they want to be a student at your #university. This is really how it is supposed to work; however, there are lots of obstacles that can get in the way, from things as tumultous as weather to government shut-downs. Anything, can cause a delay in the daily deposits, but nothing is really a worthy excuse for a #college president.

In the absence of all of the #strategic moves that you can make involving #social media and multi-channel communications, #financial aid leveraging, creative tours and visit days, receptions and efficient processing, I came upon one more little, small, maybe even trivial idea to engage a team in the daily ups and downs of enrollment. I call it the morning huddle. Just like in a newsroom, we huddle together with our coffee and plan or next move, our next ad campaign, our next batch of admission decisions, our next committee review, and on and on the huddle goes. But, it creates a synergy amongst the team where they are all connected to the strategy and the decisions so much so that they think about it all day, and they seem to long for the huddle. It comes in handy when the team is running all over the campus in various directions all to create one more relationship with that last family that visited. Seems like a small thing, but sometimes small things become big things.....gains in enrollment. It is that time of year, and I wish you luck with all things, but most of all your enrollment.