This is sort of related to what David81 said, but Athletics has seen a surge in supporters and donors since Powell was hired. The Athletics dept as it stands has better marketing strategies and outreach programs than the academics from the looks of it! I think that the academics side needs to do better with outreach and marketing if they want to see some returns. Sitting in your office with your feet kicked back on your desk isnt going to solve this problem. You need to be out in the community, not just doing a world tour to find alumni. Get back into HS's do some service work around Valpo and Northern Indiana.
Athletics has seen a surge in supporters and donors since Powell was hired.
unless you work at the university, I don’t see any way to prove that.
@kreitzerstl Its what I've heard from people close to the basketball dept. Only way I personally can prove that is by looking at how many people are wearing officially licensed NIL merch, and it is a considerable amount of people
@rezynezy My faculty friends tell me that donors are down across the board. If that’s not the case, the administration should be sharing that message more transparently.
It is good to see Valpo winning games in my Google Alerts. The school needs good news, and it needs to share that news internally and externally.
How do get the majority of faculty to go the extra mile when they are compensated 20% below market value? Someone will need an excellent strategy and pep talk to get engagement.
Pay gap notwithstanding, why are faculty responsible for recruitment? Doesn’t the university have a dedicated admissions division?
Faculty should be active and helpful partners in recruitment work, but their primary responsibility (and training) is in delivering a quality education. Asking them to run point on recruitment is like asking the finance office to also do fundraising work.
KreitzerSTL - I see your points to a degree, but also think your reliance on Admissions may be unrealistic. To get a student to come to your university, you need to sell them on the university AND the college. It is Admissions job to sell the university and to get them interested and on campus...but I do not believe they can effectively sell a College like the faculty and senior staff in the College can. You are right that that selling the College is primarily done once the prospective student is on campus with his/her family - but you also need to close the deal which likely happens beyond the visit. Follow-up calls, correspondence, etc. are necessary from the College, since it is the College that really needs to establish the relationship. You can say "we're paid a lot less than the market rate, so why should we do this?", but at the same time the alternative is likely further declines in enrollment.
Relatedly, I think (from my somewhat distant perspective) that the university has not rallied the Colleges to be a major part of recruiting. As with any mid to small sized firm or organization, this is likely needed for an effective turnaround strategy. That said, the Colleges can also take a much more aggressive stance with Admissions...telling them that this is what we are going to do to increase enrollment in our College (still as partners with Admissions, but creating and driving the College-specific strategy far more than Admissions). This is what my College has done at my university and it has been very successful for our College.
Regarding faculty doing more for recruitment...When Padilla came to VU he mentioned more than once that we need a "all hands on deck" approach to save this place and it made sense. Problem is, when you absolutely fail to take minimum care of the human factor and destroy whatever morsel of morale was left, those "hands on deck" will be too weak to provide much "rowing power".
The only thing that still amazes me is how bad this leadership is at people relation. Our people that is...Every single time when faculty, mildly and politely would raise some valid objections the immediate reaction was on the line of: "I'm not gonna tell you what you want to hear", " I disagree (without providing counterarguments)", "I don't HAVE to tell you what I will do (so expect surprises)" , "I can eliminate entire departments if I want to (read the fine print in the handbook next time)" etc... And these types of answers were for fundamental BASIC questions such as: can you show how this or that brings or save money, does not hurt more than it helps, can you do this instead of that, etc...
I completely understand that the crisis may require the most draconian measures imaginable. Yet I still in my naivety expect a leader to be able to have a different relationship with the subalterns. I see none of that here. Meanwhile, while the tone during behind the doors meetings is such as above, we regularly get campus wide emails with words like these:
" Celebration: Let’s continue highlighting and sharing our successes—so they can be celebrated more broadly. Most importantly, let’s keep finding time to be in community together."
With successes like these, who needs failures?
I am far removed from the VU campus (though I am a professor at another well-known university.)
At an institution like VU, the quality of the faculty and how much they care about student success is absolutely vital. Although essential, high quality teaching is only part of student success. At a big state school, I would have been a nameless face - at VU I was known and I knew many faculty outside of my major. The fact that I had professors at VU from other disciplines who knew me personally was a big deal - those faculty who stepped in with a word of encouragement, a hint on homework for classes they were NOT teaching, or other guidance made a major impact.
When I visited campus, I met with a professor for a tour - although it was in engineering, he was from a different major than mine. Still, he knew my intended program, and gave a great tour. I also met with the Dean of Christ College (and went to morning chapel with him.) In both cases, it was clear that these professors knew and cared about their students, and it made a major impact on my decision to attend VU. The bottom line here is that the faculty make a huge difference and it is not just when they are in the classroom.
More turnover in enrollment: Jill Sifuentes Schur is leaving as the Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing. A new national search will begin soon.
I'm baffled by this conversation about faculty and recruiting.
Obviously, in a normal university setting, it is good and effective for faculty to be highly involved in recruiting and promoting their programs. I agree with voices here saying faculty (if we're really 'student centered') ought to have some involvement in the bringing-in and sending-off of students, taking an interest in cultivating a pipeline to come to campus and in seeing that students do have paths to professional success afterwards...
But how can anybody in good conscience do that right now? Pres. Padilla and even Provost Johnson have repeatedly made it clear that no program is safe, and there will be ongoing reviews and cuts to come. There is still zero indication that VUs financial and curricular situation is going to improve, and plenty of reason to think it's just going to get worse (with all the threats and whatnot from Padilla). I know some administrators and chairs (even of depts/programs actively up for discontinuance!) have pressure on faculty to promote their programs to high school students. But I really don't know how that is ethical. How do you look a young 17 or 18 year old in the eye and tell them 'we're a great program, we'll take care of you' when you have zero confidence that this is actually going to be the case? At what point are we actively lying to prospective students, telling them they'll have a stable four years when there's little reason to trust that the programs/required courses/faculty are still going to be here in 2029?
Maybe if you are faculty in CONHP it is possible to recruit with integrity (since I think Nursing would be the last to get cut and I still don't believe the entire university will go under within 4 years). But beyond that, if you are in CLAS, Engineering, or Business, then I really think individual faculty have to make sure they can recruit with integrity. Most faculty wouldn't even send their own kids to VU these days with everything so unstable and austerity-focused. And even if it's other people's kids, come on, we're still dealing with pretty young and vulnerable teenagers when it comes to recruitment. We all gotta face God (or at least the mirror) at the end of the day.
More turnover in enrollment: Jill Sifuentes Schur is leaving as the Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing. A new national search will begin soon.
Hmm, so the new person would be the fifth VP of Enrollment at VU over 14 years? (history here from August)
https://www.valpofanzone.com/community/university-discussion/enrollment/paged/9/#post-2702
I appreciate the points raised in the thoughtful posts by VUIndiana, valpo95, and DejaVU. I also went back and read the Torch article about the no confidence vote last November. From a leadership perspective, this is a bad situation in which the senior leadership tactics are poor (I guess I am stating the obvious). It seems that the University administration's response to critical enrollment and financial situations is to create greater distance from faculty and staff. I am not saying that hard decisions regarding programs aren't necessary, but effective leadership in this situation requires far greater personal interaction with faculty and staff (not emails or web postings, but in-person interactions). This is especially true of the provost, since managing faculty and the educational operation is his job. It seems that the administration has fallen into the trap of isolating itself in a difficult situation, with the confidence that the board is fully behind them.
Nonetheless (and I realize how difficult this is), it is in the Colleges' best interest to get more students (of course, good qualified students). It creates power relative to the administration and creates sustainability for the College (in many cases this is aided by accreditation standards). While I understand the concerns about selling a bill of goods, my guess is that students are still getting a good experience and a valuable degree (at least that is my strong impression from the Colleges in which I am more engaged).
Do we know if Sifuentes Schur is leaving for another job already in hand, or was this mutual?
@valpo95 — your math checks out. More disturbingly, this will be President Padilla’s fourth VP of admissions in as many years.
