UB
steps up graduate recruitment
New Web site latest in series of strategies to
bolster enrollment at graduate level
By SUE
WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
With
a long-term goal of increasing graduate enrollment to 9,500 students
by 2004—700 more students than UB ever has enrolled in a fall semester—the
university needed a different and more intensive approach to campus-wide
student recruitment efforts, says Sean Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment
and planning.
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New
Web site to assist prospective students. |
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That
approach took shape last spring with the creation of a unit within the
provost's office designed to serve as a "catalyst" for the implementation
of strategic recruitment and admissions practices in those units that
in the past had not had a tradition of focusing on student recruitment.
While
the undergraduate recruitment/admissions process at UB is overseen on
a university-wide basis by the Office of Admissions, the process at
the graduate level is handled by the individual departments and schools.
Until
the appointment of Katherine G. Ferguson to head the Graduate Student
Recruitment Services unit last February, there hadn't been a "concentrated
and coordinated approach to graduate recruitment at the university,"
Sullivan says. "We needed a real pro to come in and work with the deans
to develop their own recruitment programs at the graduate level," he
says, praising Ferguson's work in her previous post as administrative
director of UB's MBA program.
During
the past year, Ferguson—who holds the title of associate vice provost
for graduate student recruitment services—and her staff have implemented
a number of strategies designed to bolster graduate student enrollment
at the university, which is an integral part of UB's long-term, overall
enrollment plans.
Perhaps
the most visible initiative under way is the new Web site, launched
Feb. 1, aimed at assisting prospective students in learning about graduate
school at UB and navigating the admissions process.
The
site, accessible at www.buffalo.edu/grad/admissions,
features:
- A searchable
index of graduate programs that allows users to find programs based
on keywords
- Information
about factors to consider when selecting a graduate program
- A quick
glance of the lifetime financial rewards of graduate education
- Comprehensive
information about combined degree programs
- Guidelines
for applying to graduate school and an application timeline, including
a quick link to UB's online application system
- Information
about sources of funding and costs of attendance
- A "Did
You Know" element—new each time the page is refreshed—that
highlights distinctive features of individual graduate programs
Nearly
3,000 people visited the site between Feb. 20-28, "so it already has
become an important destination for people surfing the UB network,"
Ferguson said.
One
of Ferguson's first tasks in her new role as associate vice provost
was to create the Council of Graduate Student Recruitment Officers (COGSRO),
which pulled together the distributed campus staff and faculty—about
75 people—involved in graduate recruitment at the departmental/unit
level. "COGSRO has given us the mechanism to share important information
with the campus, but also to gather information from the members about
their recruitment practices," Ferguson said. The council's regular meetings
cover such topics as GrAdMit, the online graduate application system
that serves all programs except medicine, dentistry and pharmacy; using
services provided by the Office of Career Planning and Placement; results
of questionnaires of admitted students; the rollout of MyUB for graduate
students; updates on combined-degree programs; integrating print marketing
programs; managing inquiries and applications from prospective international
students, and using commercial graduate program Web sites.
Ferguson
and members of her staff also meet with individual department representatives
to discuss ways to improve their recruitment efforts.
In
a recent MyUB MyOpinion survey, 46 percent of the responding undergraduates
wanted UB to actively share more information about the university's
graduate program, Ferguson said. As a result, Graduate Student Recruitment
Services has initiated outreach activities to better educate UB undergraduates—and
those who advise them—about graduate school admissions and graduate
programs offered by UB. These efforts include working closely with academic
and career advisors on campus to ensure they have the latest information
regarding admission to graduate programs at UB, special opportunities
for UB undergraduates and combined-degree programs.
Graduate
Student Recruitment Services also will participant in the upcoming CareerFEST
2002, a university-wide employment and internship fair for all UB majors
featuring local and national employers. Activities will include conducting
a survey of students attending the fair to gauge their interest in graduate
school, staffing information tables and displaying the new Web site.
Cynthia
Shore, associate director of graduate student recruitment services,
who joined the staff in October after six years as the director of the
School of Management's Career Resource Center, spearheads these outreach
efforts, Ferguson said. In addition, Shore is heading up an initiative
to assist academic units in conducting more informed enrollment planning
by providing them with data about student demand for programs and labor
market opportunities for graduates, she said. Ferguson noted that her
office commissioned a market research project to gather data about how
new graduate students went about identifying potential graduate schools,
why they were attending graduate school and what factors most heavily
influenced their decision to enroll. The project surveyed new graduate
students, as well as those who were accepted but declined to enroll
in UB. The results were shared with the deans, she said, in order to
better focus recruitment efforts.
After
several years of declining enrollments, the numbers of graduate students
at UB has been on the upswing lately, and appears well on its way toward
the goal of 9,500 students. UB posted the third-highest graduate enrollment
in the history of the university—8,548—for the Fall 2001 semester,
a increase of 5 percent over the Fall 2000 figure of 8,147.
Ferguson
attributed the overall growth in graduate enrollment to several factors,
including:
- Record
enrollments in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as the result of
an outstanding international job market in that field.
- The
addition of degree and certificate programs in Japanese education
and educational technology in the Graduate School of Education. The
school also has achieved growth in a number of core areas, including
elementary education, reading education, school counseling and higher
education administration.
- The
enrollment of the first class of students in the Doctor of Physical
Therapy (DPT) program in the School of Health Related Professions.
- Steady
improvement in the School of Informatics' enrollment due to increasing
appeal of the library field as a career option for people interested
in the application of information technology.
- The
phase-in of the Pharm.D. program in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical
Sciences and the corresponding phase-out of the bachelor's program.
- Increasing
market demand for practitioners with graduate-level training in the
health and human services fields. UB offers the premier master of
social work program in the region and has expanded its geographic
reach through off-campus programs in other regions of New York State.
