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July 3, 2024
Faculty and staff,
Thank you to all of you who joined this 6-week look at enrollment. I so appreciate
every person who is leaning into enrollment. Enrollment is all of our jobs. Teddy
Roosevelt said that the greatest gift in life is the opportunity to work at work worth
doing. This, my friends, is work worth doing!听
As a recap, I started this series laying out the problem we need to solve; university
enrollment in Alaska and the nation is shrinking overall. A college or university
closes its doors every week in America. At the same time, enrollment is critical to
UAF鈥檚 vibrancy, our financial stability and the economic future of Alaska. In an increasingly
challenging enrollment landscape, we (all of us) need to act now to continuously improve
our approach to university education and advance our sustainable enrollment and retention
strategies. We can do something, but we can鈥檛 do everything. So our efforts need to
be based on sound fundamentals - return on investment, greatest impact, and transformation.
Following my introductory message five weeks ago were four more installments identifying
some different paths we could take to address the enrollment and retention challenge
ahead of us. I shared thinking on how to focus our recruitment efforts, streamline
our matriculation process, modernize our academic offerings, and improve the student
experience. The beautiful thing about these strategies is that we have the ability
to do them now. Oh, and the other beautiful thing is that they are not mutually exclusive.
We can do them all.听
The Board of Regents continues to be supportive of efforts to increase enrollment
and retention. In the face of projected enrollment challenges, we have the opportunity
to act. It鈥檚 an exciting prospect! In the coming months, it will be our task to communicate
more broadly about the opportunities available to us.听
In my second enrollment message, I floated an idea of how to increase our retention
rate by creating separate enrollment tracks. In this model, students who meet a certain
high school (or transfer) GPA that is 鈥�4-year degree ready鈥� will matriculate into
the UAF Troth Yeddha鈥� 黑料吃瓜网. Meanwhile, students that need to take college classes
to get to that 鈥�4-year degree ready鈥� level will enroll at CTC and earn certificates,
associate degrees and microcredentials on their way to a lucrative spot in the workforce
or on to a rewarding 4-year degree.听
For UAF to make this change in our admissions process, it will require faculty, staff
and administration to come together to update our student support services and academic
programming. But it鈥檚 something that we, as UAF, have the agency to do. With the expertise
of our faculty and abilities of our staff, we could transform the structure of UAF鈥檚
enrollment and retention landscape. What an amazing opportunity!听
In subsequent messages, I wrote about how modernizing our facilities and our academic
programs have the potential to completely transform the student experience at UAF
and make a big impact on our ability to recruit and retain students. These messages
have come in a few installments, but the reality is these strategies to modernize
our processes, facilities, and academic offerings are connected and mutually dependent.
We can鈥檛 pick just one, because they all rely on the other to be successful. In order
to recruit new students to UAF, we need modern facilities and top-tier academic programs.
In order to retain them, we need efficient processes and student support services.
Then, in order to ensure they successfully graduate and apply their degree, we need
robust academic offerings. Students need all of these things in order to have a positive
experience at UAF.听
In order to get there, we need to each lean into enrollment in our own part of the
UAF enterprise. Everyone at this university has the opportunity to affect the future
of enrollment at UAF. I look forward to continuing this conversation over the summer
and into the fall.听
Thanks for choosing UAF.听
鈥擠an White, chancellor
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