The office of the president announced that enrollment management will be moved from student affairs to academic affairs, in an email sent at 9:41 a.m. Feb. 16.
This means the office of enrollment management will now report to Provost Kim Schatzel.
Bernice Lindke,vice president of student affairs, oversaw enrollment management until this decision was made. She said this change will affect
students by increasing the administration’s efficiency and accountability.
“I think it will streamline processes,” Lindke said. “This reorganization will enable us to answer students’ questions more quickly. There will be an easier way to collaborate and coordinate services now with all of them being together. I’m very much in favor of that. I think it’s all about making processes more efficient for students.”
Kevin Kucera, associate vice president of enrollment management, said that the shift will enable him to communicate more directly with academic administrators like deans and department heads. He said this will ultimately increase his ability to influence student success.
“Basically it’s shifting enrollment management resources underneath the leadership of the provost. That’s a very significant shift. The message
is that we really want to influence our student enrollment but also influence their success when they’re here,” Kucera said. “The types of students that we’re going to be recruiting are students that we feel should be a good fit for Eastern Michigan University. They should be future
graduates of Eastern Michigan. I’m not just recruiting a freshman class of 2012, but a graduating class of 2016.”
Kucera said that this organizational restructuring is part of university’s strategy to increase its graduation rates.
“I know the university would like to emphasize is to really improve our graduation rate, to move that four-year graduation rate up higher, to move that six-year graduation rate up higher. So what I’d like to try to do is to work with our academic affairs folks to have our messaging, particularly to incoming freshman, that we want them to get done in four years. We want them to take 15 credit hours each semester they’re with us,” he said.
“So many of our students don’t realize the positive impact of graduating in four years. This puts us in a stronger position, under the umbrella of academic affairs, to really emphasize that four years.”
Lindke said having enrollment management under academic affairs is one of the most common organizational models for public universities.
“If you look around the nation at other universities, this is a typical placement of enrollment management, underneath the academic affairs division.”
Lindke explained that enrollment management began as “enrollment services” in 1996. Then “enrollment services” became enrollment management in 2007. It was moved under her stewardship in student affairs in 2009.
