1. Increased Enrollment
Expand enrollment to over 1,400 students at our Fairfield campus by 2015.
1. Increase recruiting of new US and international standard program students by 50 per year for each of the next five years through additional investment in dynamic, creative, and constantly improving marketing efforts.
2. Improve retention to 75% for first-year undergraduate students through continuous improvement of their University experience.
3. Increase recruiting of the COOP professionals training programs to 125 per entry to support a steady-state on-campus student population of 250.
4. Develop and advertise new degree offerings to attract additional students and strengthen existing programs where there is immediate growth potential.
5. Promote Consciousness-Based education through select collaborative agreements with existing institutions worldwide, emphasizing those opportunities which have a positive return on investment along with improved recruiting possibilities.
6. Increase referrals by MIU students and alumni through continual improvement of all aspects of the student experience.
Expand enrollment to over 1,400 students at our Fairfield campus by 2015.
1. Increase recruiting of new US and international standard program students by 50 per year for each of the next five years through additional investment in dynamic, creative, and constantly improving marketing efforts.
The past few years have been a time of rebuilding and renovation in the marketing arena. Previously we had a single webmaster who could publish to a mostly static website. The site was largely structured as an online recruiting brochure. It did not fully utilize web usability best practices, and it poorly served internal audiences either in terms of intranet functions and as a news outlet.
To address all of this the marketing director and other technical personnel conducted a search and evaluation of web content management system (CMS) vendors that target the education industry, eventually choosing a vendor that offered a good mix of user interface and database compatibility.
After a long process of department level usability studies, design approvals and content migration from the existing 1500 page+ site, the new site launched in November of 2012.
The new site now serves student prospects as well as 7 other stakeholder groups, including curent students, alumni, faculty/staff, donors, etc.
We view the site as a product improvement, for example, in the case of existing students who (soon) will be able to view grades and class schedules online. We believe that will increase student satisfaction and improve word of mouth effects.
In addition, we are implementing and utilizing the state of the art Omniture web analytics package to enable proper campaign tracking and optimization.
We are currently expanding our ad presence on Google and other media since we now feel that we have a web presence and analytics schema that can effectively and measurably convert ad dollars into inquiries.
– Paul Stokstad, Marketing Director
2. Improve retention to 75% for first-year undergraduate students through continuous improvement of their University experience.
We have implemented a complement of strategies to improve retention, with the result that fall-to-fall undergraduate retention for first-time undergraduates has increased for four consecutive years, most recently from 75.5% in 2011 to 77.3% in 2012.
Strategies have included more careful screening of applicants and increased support for students through the Student Life department, coupled with ongoing focus on continuous improvement of students’ academic experience.
– Craig Pearson, Executive Vice President
3. Increase recruiting of the COOP professionals training programs to 125 per entry to support a steady-state on-campus student population of 250.
New enrollment in the Computer Professionals program declined in the wake of the recession of 2008-2009 to a low of 38 in May 2010, but has risen steadily since then to over 60 per entry in spring 2013.
This is about a year behind the schedule projected in the strategic plan. The increase has been the result of an improving economy, giving prospective students greater confidence that they can fulfill the practical training portion of the program, and new recruiting initiatives including increased networking among existing and prospective students in the United States and increased on-the-ground presence overseas through agents, agreements with overseas institutions, and the University’s own recruiters.
The University has also undertaken to better educate visa-issuing authorities about the Professionals program and prospective foreign students about the visa-issuing process. As a result of these efforts, demand for the program is expected to continue to increase, but at a pace which will reach our objective two to three years later than projected.
– Michael Spivak, Treasurer
4. Develop and advertise new degree offerings to attract additional students and strengthen existing programs where there is immediate growth potential.
There are several new degree and certificate programs under development:
MA in Media and Communications with a specialization in filmmaking, to start in Fall 2013, with MFA and specialization in Creative Writing and other areas to follow.
MVS will start online MA in February 2013, has proposal to start certificate in Fall 2013.
Sustainable Living is working steadily on master’s degree to start Fall 2014. Computer Science has online courses and master’s degree ready to go.
Management Department has added MIS certificate and is planning HRM track.
Physiology and Health is preparing two online programs, Health Professional Masters Program and Wellness Consultant Certificate Program; they have taped on-campus classes for these programs already.
These programs will be advertised using the new website launched last fall; the website has Content Management System (CMS) technology and the Adobe Omniture web analytics tool.
– Catherine Gorini, Dean of Faculty
5. Promote Consciousness-Based education through select collaborative agreements with existing institutions worldwide, emphasizing those opportunities which have a positive return on investment along with improved recruiting possibilities.
– Bill Goldstein, Legal Counsel
6. Increase referrals by MIU students and alumni through continual improvement of all aspects of the student experience.
Regarding alumni we of course have an active alumni group, but from a marketing perspective we have created a new web portal for them but have yet to fully integrate them into the mix. That development should be completed by May 1, 2013.
Current students and student life are now centrally featured on or website as newsmakers, and we feel that the emerging toolsets that will launch this spring (personal web portals, online grades, resume toolsets, etc.) will as stated before result in positive feedback and referral support.
– Paul Stokstad, Marketing Director
The trend of referrals has been consistent the last two years representing 57% of total applications. As the number of applications have increased, the number of referrals have increased too even if the percentage is the same.
– Brad Mylett, Dean of Admissions