Wheaton College

Amy Becker Karl

As summer fades into fall, one of the most common questions I hear as an enrollment professional is, “How was your summer? Did things slow down for you?”. There was a time once, long ago, that I could answer with a simple “yes”. Summer once felt like a pause, a brief change to regroup our team and refocus our strategy before the rush of fall travel and impending admissions deadlines, but higher education has changed. The pace no longer slows as market shifts, policy changes and financial pressures arrive in a consistent flow of waves. And all the while, my colleagues across campus are sharpening important tools in AI and data analytics, one tool that we can’t overlook in yet another unprecedented time is change management.

The crisp autumn air and changing leaves are an important reminder that change is constant and understanding how to embrace this change is especially vital for enrollment teams. Admissions departments are often the first to feel the ripple effects of change, precisely placed between working with prospective students and alumni, current students and faculty, recruitment and retention. We are at the precipice of feeling it all. One of the best things we can do is create a culture that embraces this unique seat to help lead our campuses into this new landscape.

At its heart, change management isn’t about processes. It is about people. It is about building trust with students, faculty and staff. We know from our own lives how difficult change can be, how routines anchor us and how uncertainty stirs resistance. And just as autumn turns into winter, you can expect to see resistance. That’s why involving stakeholders early, listening carefully to concerns, framing decisions in a broader context and backing ideas with data are essential steps for bringing people together.

“Change management isn’t about processes. It is about people. It is about building trust with students, faculty and staff.”

I’ve seen this play out in our own recruitment events when we shifted strategy to include online recruitment efforts. We didn’t launch a massive overhaul introducing a new strategy overnight. Starting small, piloting new recruitment events with just our admissions counselors, then inviting a few faculty members and eventually expanding across the institution. At every stage, data told the story of the impact of increased yield, more engaged applicants and lower overhead costs. As we celebrated the results of each stage of implementation, we created a wider buy-in with our stakeholders as we fully adopted a new recruitment strategy in an institution that once prided itself on its brick and mortar.

Making it through the resistance and into the season of spring, the most powerful catalyst that supported this change management was the power of story. Beyond the data and reports, the personal stories of newly accepted and confirmed students sharing how these new online events supported them in their graduate school search process or meeting with faculty “sealed the deal” for them, helped to make the case of why this new strategy mattered. Humanizing the data to focus on the end goal of both our institutions and enrollment offices to support and educate students.

Change management like this doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes not even an academic year is long enough to fully implement. Starting from the ground up and expanding from our own admissions offices outward, it takes trust building, data-driven storytelling and intentional piloting to implement. All three pieces must be in place and aligned in unison for success and if we can get this just right, our admissions offices can be the place to lead our institutions into the future.