A President’s Perspective: Supporting Students From Prospect Through Enrollee

In many institutions, there is a disconnect between the student pre-enrollment and recruitment process and the enrollment and onboarding process. A lack of unified systems across the student lifecycle can cause aggravations like communication gaps, a need for data re-entry, nonexistent or inaccurate reporting, and other inefficiencies that needlessly take up staff’s time. For the past 18 months, McDowell Tech has worked to eliminate this gap, expanding its student services to seamlessly support students from the prospect stage through enrollment. In this live webinar, Alex Leader, Chief Impact Officer at Watermark, interviews McDowell Tech’s President, Dr. Brian Merritt, about how they changed their approach to prospective and student engagement, and the early results they are seeing from their efforts. They will discuss how smaller institutions can effectively incorporate a continuous, connected student experience from prospect through enrollee. You’ll also hear Dr. Merritt’s perspectives on: - How McDowell Technical College partnered with Watermark to address a fundamental need in higher education for student support across the student lifecycle from prospect to degree attainment. - How current circumstances like affordability, inflation, and pending job losses have affected higher ed and the school’s initiatives. - Managing difficulties stemming from the “great resignation” such as the shifting responsibilities of staff members. - Future hopes for higher education, particularly for two-year institutions facing similar challenges.