Hitting a Homerun with the Enrollment Process

• When: 1:30-2:15 PM, Thursday, June 18
• Where: Room 107, Oechsle Center for Global Education
• Presenter: Erin Cassell, Director of IT Project Management, Sewanee: The University of the South

Today’s student requires us to be efficient and mindful about and why we communicate with them, and they are right. In 2014, Sewanee embarked on an ambitious project to redefine the way we worked with our incoming students through streamlined data collection and a unified communication plan.

In this presentation, I’ll show you how, in less than two months, we built a new model for working with our incoming students with no new system investments. Through a cross-functional, institutional group we built a replicable plan to ensure accurate and timeline collection of required information. We experienced an average on-time return rate of greater than 85% for all required forms and phased out redundant and manual processes. More importantly, our students experienced a single, consistent voice of communication and clear expectations for a successful transition over the summer into the fall.

I’ll also share the important lessons learned, and how we are further improving the process for our incoming class of 2015 using the same systems: Technolutions Slate, Google Drive, and EPM 11.

About the Presenter

Erin Cassell is the Director IT Project Management at Sewanee where she oversees all new IT initiatives. Erin has fifteen years of IT experience including time in the pharmaceutical industry, with two small software companies supporting higher education, and as an independent consultant in higher education. She has B.A. from the University of the South in German and Mathematics and an M.S. from Ball State University in Computer Science.