Enrollment Management forges an identity within university

As the semester winds to a close, professors soon will begin electronically entering grades through the online e-grading system. Thousands of student records will be processed in the Integrated Student Information System (ISIS) ahead of commencement ceremonies. A new crop of families from around the country is visiting campus, picking up Admissions view books and wondering about everything from financial aid to class availability.

All of these activities and hundreds more are quietly coordinated by the new Division of Enrollment Management. Created in the wake of the November Student Affairs reorganization, the division is responsible for the Offices of Undergraduate Admissions, Student Financial Services, the Registrar and ISIS.

A semester after the division’s creation, Joanne Berg, registrar and associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, says that she and other administrators have been working to develop an identity by promoting collaborations among the units of Enrollment Management and the wider campus.

“We provide the infrastructure behind so many functions that people sometimes take for granted,” she says. “We provide services to students, along with faculty, advisers and departmental staff — those key things that make the whole university work for students. We serve just about everyone.”

Like the back office of any bank or major corporation, the functions of the division often take place behind the scenes, without fanfare or attention. However, the consistency and efficiency of those services play a critical role in the day-to-day functioning of the university.

Although “enrollment management” may sound like an attempt to increase or limit the number of students attending the university, it actually has a broader meaning, Berg says.

It refers to managing academic and student services by integrating information and decision-making processes along the entire continuum of students’ careers, from prospective students through alumni.

“As students progress through the continuum, staff members in the division should be cooperating with each other and with staff, faculty and students throughout the university to facilitate successful transitions throughout the admissions process, the financial aid process, and throughout enrollment, degree granting and commencement,” she says.

There frequently are misconceptions that the division is a keeper of bureaucratic red tape that fails to quickly address individual needs. In reality, Berg says her goal is to maintain a high level of effectiveness of the offices, while also reaching out to the campus community to create additional collaborations that will make life easier.

“Our ultimate goal is student success,” she says. “We want to increase efficiency for departments, so they can spend more time on serving students.”

One example of a recent successful collaboration was among the registrar’s office, the Division of Information Technology and faculty and staff to launch the e-grading system.

With faculty and instructional staff using an online method to record grades each semester, students receive grades more quickly, faculty and staff save time, and the university is better able to track the information and saves the cost of printing reams of paper grade lists each term.

After the upcoming ISIS upgrade (see story on Page 3), the division hopes to be involved in developing a new, interactive Web site for prospective students, working to package financial aid support for low income prospective students and creating an online “storefront” for ordering official transcripts.

In addition, financial aid will continue to be an important priority. There are 43,000 annual aid applicants and 22,000 recipients. The university is working to find additional money that can help provide $20 million for students with unmet needs.

“This is where we are headed,” Berg says. “I’m asking for input from the campus on how we can work better together.” To provide feedback or ideas on future improvement or collaboration to improve student, staff, faculty and advising services provided by the unit of the Division of Enrollment Management, e-mail Joanne.Berg@mail.rgstr.wisc.edu.