Matt Harmon: On this episode of Monmouth weekly, we talk about enrollment in the future class of mu. We welcome into the podcast university, vice president for enrollment management, Dr. Robert MC MCCA with university president Patrick Lehe. This is faculty member, Matt Horman it's time for episode number 29 of Monmouth weekly. Thanks to Zoes for listening. Matt Harmon: It is a beautiful spring-like morning as we record towards the end part of the semester finals wrapped up, and now it's all gravy, as they say for the next couple of weeks graduation on tap. But the work has essentially just started for our guest today. That is vice president for enrollment and man management at Monmouth, uh, Dr. Robert MC MCCA. He will join us in just a second. I wanna say good morning to university president Patrick Lehe. We've got so much to talk about with, uh, vice president MC MCCA, um, president Lehe, but, but first and foremost, I want you to essentially, you know, if there's a moment to pound your chest, this is it on the dashboard right now, zero cases on campus with the pandemic. Patrick Leahy: Yeah, good morning, Matt. Uh, you know, we started this podcast, uh, what, 15 months ago, or 14 months ago in part to keep the greater Monmouth university community as updated as possible around the pandemic. And one of the commitments we made from the very start was that we would be as transparent as possible around, uh, you know, case counts and, and other kind of COVID activity on campus. I mean, very proud to say we were one of the first to put a, a dashboard together. That's, you know, very user friendly. We committed immediately to that transparency. We've committed to updating it every single business day, uh, to try to keep the campus community as informed as possible. And over the course of the last 14 months, we've been following that dashboard very carefully. And there are some weeks where we've had to report really bad news, as you just pointed out. Uh, can't tell you how proud I am that, uh, today for the first time in 14 months, that dashboard is sporting a zero. We have, uh, no active cases on campus right now. We only have one person I think, in quarantine, uh, as a result of, uh, you know, uh, an exposure. So, um, I am knocking on wood of course, because you just don't know how that could change, but I'm so proud of the work of our entire campus community to, uh, to drive those numbers down, uh, today all the way, way to Matt Harmon: Zero seven hundred and thirty five confirmed cases during the course of 2020 now into 20 21, 2 74, residential 3 87, non residential, 74 employees, president Lehe, before we, we bring in, uh, Bob MCCA, 2 74, residential 3 87 non, is that about what maybe, uh, the task force would've thought in terms of where the numbers would lie between essentially on campus and off campus students? Patrick Leahy: I think so. I don't, I don't think we went into it with any, uh, clairvoyance around, you know, how this might play out, but, you know, if you think about it, we have about half the number of students in residence, uh, that we normally have a little, little more than half, but, uh, so that, that, that number of residential students is down over a typical year. And then we always knew that it was tougher to sort of control the, the activity off campus than on campus. So I don't think it surprises any of us to know that, uh, a little bit higher case count in the, uh, off campus, residential students Matt Harmon: We'll get through some, uh, graduation, commencement updates. We'll do a quick little segment on athletics coming up as well, but don't wanna waste any more time and bringing in, uh, as we said, the VP for enrollment management at Monmouth, and he's probably been one of the hardest working people on campus all during the course of what has been an extremely challenging year in the world of academia. Um, Bob, first of all, good morning, you know, over now, 15 years at Monmouth, have you ever seen anything in terms of challenges for higher education like this? You, Bob Mc Caig: No, Matt, I I've been on the, uh, administrative side of, uh, higher ed for this is my 25th year in enrollment. And, uh, I I've seen the enrollment impacts of, uh, the terrorist attacks in 2001. I've seen the, uh, the impact of the global, uh, great re recession or the American great recession in 2008. I've seen the more localized, natural disaster of, of super storm Sandy in 2012. But in terms of enrollment, I've, I've, I've never, uh, gone through a cycle with this level of, uh, of uncertainty. Um, as president Lehe knows, my, my primary skill is worrying and that skill was tested this year, Matt Harmon: You know, interesting. And I'll say, and I say interesting because when, when we talked last year, it was about, I would say, um, you know, putting a thumb in the dam and making sure that things didn't explode at some point. And, and now that now that Monmouth has essentially navigated the 20, 20, 20, 21 academic year, um, I, I I'll just say what's the outlook now moving forward into the next academic year, because I know, I know for you and, and for, for your office, essentially one year just rolls into the next because, okay. We we've locked one class in, and now we have to start essentially recruiting for the next class. Um, knowing the 20, 20, 21 was so difficult. How different now has it been with 21, 22, right, right on the, the, the starting point essentially. Bob Mc Caig: Well, you're, you're exactly right. Matt, we're always recruiting two classes at the same time. So, uh, let me, let me talk about the class first, that's coming in, in fall 21, and, and just do a little bit of, of a, a rewind, um, you know, our, to recruit this class. Um, you have to keep in mind that our, that our, our world is relationships and modeling, and we couldn't build relationships with our prospective students and, and their families. We couldn't earn their trust and show them in a genuine way who we are and, and who this, uh, who, who this university is like. We typically do, you know, we're, I would argue among the best at programming. We are really good at offering programs that allow prospective students and their families to find out in an authentic way who we were. We couldn't do that in our typical way. This year, we had to reinvent it in a virtual format. And then secondly, our world is built on modeling. You know, we model out a class based on three and five year analytics, and all those analytics were essentially, um, useless this year, not just because of the impact of the pandemic, but collateral impacts of the pandemic, such as having to move to test optional for our admission evaluation and our scholarship, uh, awarding. Um, so our two fundamental, uh, the, the rubrics of what we do were both completely changed this year. Um, it was, you know, from a professional perspective, it was, you know, it was terrifying. You know, you, you had every, were both science and art and art is a euphemistic way of say, we have to guess, well, and it was much more art this year than, than it was science. And it would not have been surprising, uh, if we were off by a hundred or more students for this freshman class. Um, but, uh, that that's not what happened. Uh, thankfully, um, we, as you know, May 1st is a really important day in our world. That's, what's called the national candidates response deadline, where students all around the country are asked to make their decision about going to college. And I want to be absolutely clear Matt and president Lehe that our work is not done just because that deadline is passed. Our work is not done, but in terms of this falls fall 20 ones class, it looks like if all things are equal to the last normal year we had in 2019, that we will meet or exceed our enrollment target of 925 freshmen students, not sure how many, how many colleges and universities across the country are able to say that right now. And that, that itself is just a, a huge, uh, moral victory, I think, for, for our team and for the university. But on top of that, if things hold, we will have the most academically prepared class in the university's history on top of hitting that number, we will have more out of state students than last year. We will have more ethnically and racially diverse students than last year. We, we will have more students going into our five year program than we've had in seven years. Uh, it, it looks amazingly like a very strong class. So I, I think, uh, I'm very proud of our, of our team. You know, a lot of enrollment management operations worked very hard this year. You had to, if you were in enrollment management, anywhere in the world, you had to work hard. But I think what I'm particularly proud of is that our team worked resourcefully and made a lot of important decisions like the right partner for our virtual open house, like scheduling many different opportunities for virtual conversations with our students, with our alumni, with our faculty, with our, with our department shares, um, with our admission counselors, with president Lehe, many constant virtual opportunities. And I think perhaps the, the most important decision they made, which you can imagine was tough. They decided to work seven days a week, giving campus tours to, uh, students who were clamoring clamoring to get on campus. And we had to do a lot of tours because we had to, as you know, to meet safety protocols, limit them nine. So I'm just, uh, very proud of what our team and, and the university colleagues across the country, including the faculty who, who showed up to help us with these virtual engagements did to bring in what seems to be a very strong class for fall 21. And we're also right now, as you mentioned, doing events for fall 22 right now, which we hope, um, uh, will also be a strong class, sorry, for the long answer, Matt. Patrick Leahy: Yeah, let me just, uh, add a couple things. If I could, you know, the the idea that, uh, we are constantly recruiting, um, is something that we were getting used to over the last few years. And, uh, this year, uh, has just accelerated that, you know, we're gonna have to keep working from now till September 7th, which I think is our first day of classes, uh, the day after labor day to, uh, keep the class that we think we have right now committed to Monmouth, for sure. At the same time we have to start the process, which we already have. I was joking with, uh, Bob Matt, the other day. This is like the transfer portal in, in NCAA athletics. Now, like you, it's not enough to spend all your time recruiting them here. We've got to continually find ways to engage students when we have 'em here, keep them deeply committed to Monmouth so that, uh, we can keep our retention and graduation rates, uh, higher, which is a, an ambition that we have. But when you bring in, as Bob has, and his team has the most academically prepared class in our history, that's gonna aid our ability to re retain and graduate students, uh, in a timely manner. And as you know, that is a one fundamental measure of, uh, academic quality. Um, if all things hold and, and I know there's a long way to go, and I, I'm careful about saying this too prematurely, but it's safe to say if all things hold, this is the finest incoming class that we've ever had at Monmouth. And to be able to say that with the challenging year that we've had is, um, a really a remarkable achievement. Matt Harmon: Bob, let me follow up and, and give you, uh, an opportunity to comment on that last, um, statement from president Lehe in, in terms of getting the most prepared academic class in to Monmouth. You also in your last answer, talked about the lack of maybe standardized testing this year and how that whole situation has changed. S a T um, as opposed to just looking at grades, what what's the what's maybe the, the immediate future, I mean, is the, is the S a T kind of on its way out, has, has the, the change that's taken place over the course of the last 18 months? Is it something that's here to stay now for colleges in terms of enrollment? Bob Mc Caig: Uh, that's a great and important question, Matt. Uh, we, we have faculty approval to do a three year pilot of test optional. This is the first year of, of that pilot. Um, and we're gonna really study this to make the decision after those three years, whether we continue test optional, go back to require test or go to what's called test blind, which is no test, no standardized test welcome at all. There's a, there's a range of options this year. Most institutions had to move to test optional. It wasn't a philosophical or ideological decision, more than 300,000 students couldn't take test. They couldn't actually take a, an, an S a T or, or a C T or other form of standardized test. So those who have moved, and I will say increasingly to test optional over the last five to eight years, studied it for an average of three years before they actually moved into that year. Those of us that got forced into test optional this year didn't have that luxury. So, you know, we, for instance, we went through nine different models to proxy for the S a T. It was extremely intensive and, and at times very frustrating, but it turns out we, we, we guessed, right, and we have a model that's brought in a, a solid class academically, more than solid class academically. And the other risk when you move to optional, uh, S a T and a C T is your scholarship. If you don't have the right proxy in terms of financial aid for merit, you could over award and, you know, bankrupt the university to be, uh, hyperbolic about it. Um, and, and it looks like we didn't do that. So, so we so far test optional has worked. I will tell you, 73.6% of this class elected to be it, to be evaluated without standardized test, more than the 50 50, we thought, and of those who were, um, uh, who elected to go test optional. There were more New Jersey students than outta state. There were more, uh, minority students than majority students, and there were more female students than male students. And that is pretty consonant with, with the, with the, with the literature. Um, the, the more you test are, are, are notoriously, uh, unfavorable or unfair to, um, uh, minority students and, uh, to some degree to, to females. And we saw that born out in our very small subset of Monmouth university, uh, one year data. Uh, I would not be surprised if this, this university stayed with test optional, uh, beyond the three years, but we have to really study the impact in terms of class preparedness. And in terms of scholarship before we can more formally make that decision, Matt, Matt Harmon: Well, listen, Bob, I'm, I'm not gonna speak for president Lehe, but he's got a couple of kids that still need to get in. And through college, I have two as well. I mean, if I tell these, if I tell my, my almost sophomore in high school and my almost sixth grader going into middle school, Hey, don't worry about that. S a T thing that they've talked about, you might have two of the happiest kids ever. I mean, presently, I can't speak for you with your two boys, but I know mine would be off the charts, excited having, having one who's in Monmouth right now gone through that whole process. And on top of it, I I'd like a Mulligan because my S a T score was nothing to write home about. I mean, if, if I didn't need it to go to Monmouth, I feel like I, I, I could have, you know, gotten much more in terms of financial aid. I'd, I'd like to go back and kind of review the, the process if I can. Bob Mc Caig: We'd welcome you back as a, as a graduate student, a second. Master's Matt. Patrick Leahy: Yeah. I I'd like to go back 30 years and make mine test optional. Thank you very much. Uh, Bob Mc Caig: Matt, can I, I'm sorry, go ahead, pat. I Patrick Leahy: Was just gonna say, I, I agree with you, the anxiety that those standardized tests create for families, uh, is, is, is really significant. And, you know, there's been some, some real serious consideration to, um, the, the, the equity, uh, in the S a T and the a C T for, for years now. I mean, um, you know, it breaks down, you know, uh, hard on socioeconomic lines, you know, do you have the, the resources to take the test prep classes? Do you have the resources to get a private tutor? Do you have other kind of resources that allow you to better prepare for this? What is supposed to be a standardized test? Well, it's not really standardized if some of the people taking it have all these additional advantages and privileges to prepare for it, and then the lower socioeconomic students and their families don't have any of those advantages. So, um, there's some equity that we need to figure out in the S a T anyway, I think the pandemic has foisted that on us, as Bob mentioned, uh, all of us in higher ed, uh, as Bob mentioned, and I think, um, we'll, we'll be able to explore in the next year or two years, three years, um, how that played out, and it might influence our thinking around, uh, around standardized tests. Uh, so I think there's a, there's a serious component to, to this. Um, as well as of course, the, the fun component around, uh, reducing anxiety in some of our households, Bob Mc Caig: Matt, let, let me just, uh, append to that. If I may, you know, you began your line of questioning with, uh, you know, my world in terms of bringing in a class and, and let's just turn the attention to the other side of the coin for a second. And, and the students and that anxiety just think about the world. These students, this, this incoming class has lived through. They had a end of their junior year. That was as scary as you can get. Most of them had a senior year that was primarily virtual, much more difficult to walk into a, a guidance counselor's office and look at Naviance and talk about college choice. They missed their proms. Many are gonna miss an in person graduation. They had to do a college search process in the middle of a pandemic, mostly virtually, and then think of any big investment. We've made a new house, a car, imagine with a car, for instance, that you could see pictures of the car. You could talk to people who've driven the car. You could do research on consumer reports about the car, but you couldn't test drive the car. You couldn't feel comfortable. The seats were, you couldn't feel what happened when you hit the accelerator. And that's what we asked our students to do. We asked them to buy, sorry, my faculty, friends for the commodity analog here, but we asked them to buy a car without driving it. Talk about stress and anxiety. I mean, these, these young people have really been through the ringer this past year, Matt Harmon: Bob Bob, if, if it's okay, I wanna follow right up on that and say, I, if you are excited as president Lehe is as well, if you're excited about this incoming class on so many levels, um, from outta state to academically, ready to diversity, um, what is it that makes Monmouth that easier sell that you didn't have to worry about people coming to test drive and just knowing, okay, essentially, I'm going to put my trust into that new automobile and drive it for the next four or five years Bob Mc Caig: At the risk of, of seeming self congratulatory. Matt, I, I, I just go back to the fact that we were very resourceful, our message didn't change. We're still the, the, the, the hidden gem, the jewel of Monmouth university. We've got a remarkable institution here that that message did not change, but the way we delivered it had to change. You know, I, I believe we did a better virtual open house than, than other institutions may have done. I had, we, I think we had more opportunities for virtual engagement with more diverse stakeholders at the university from recreation. And Urals to being able to talk with a Dean throughout, from, from September through through now. But I think what tipped the scales was the seven day a week tours. I think people were desperate to have a touchpoint that was in person and we offered it. And a whole lot of other folks didn't offer it at the, um, at the same level. So I, I, I, we have a lot to sell. We're gonna have even more to sell as president LA I'm sure can comment through the imple implementation of the strategic plan over the next five years. But, uh, I don't think our message changed. I think we found we were resourceful in how to engage with interested students on that message. Patrick Leahy: Can I just add Matt? You know, the, I totally agree with Bob and support everything that he and his team did to, to get our message out in this, uh, you know, unique way and to the point where they were adding events at the very end here, because they were trying to get a sense for, you know, those families wanting desperately to come to campus. We had a, a great new event on national, uh, I signing day, if you will. And, uh, that was a hugely successful event, which brought students and their families to our campus to actually sign up and to, to get a feel for that place that would become their home for the next four or five years. But the great thing about Monmouth is our value proposition throughout all this did not change. And what I constantly talk about is we offer the opportunities of a large university in the culture of a small college, on an incredible campus, in a great location. And it's a combination of those four things which produce incredible outcomes for our students. And that is a strong message, whether we are able to walk people around the campus and tell them that, or whether we have to share that with them virtually. And as Bob said, uh, and I hope we'll have a chance to talk about this at a future podcast. Every one of those five areas is gonna get enhanced in the next five years. Every single one of them is gonna get enhanced in the next five years, uh, through our new, uh, uh, strategic plan, which we call excellence, access and ambition. So, uh, I look forward to talking through how the underlying value proposition will change irrespective of how we get that message out Matt Harmon: Vice president of enrollment management in Monmouth university, uh, Dr. Robert McKay, joining university, president Patrick Lehe, faculty member, Matt Harmon. This is our Monmouth weekly podcast series. We do it all during the course of the year. This is our 29th, uh, episode Bob, a couple of more before we, before we wrap up, um, did wanna spend just a minute on, um, the other side of it, the, the graduate programs that exist at Monmouth and the summer enrollment, because I know, okay. We, we, we think always in terms of fall semester, spring semester and more on the undergrad, but that's not the only piece of enrollment management. Bob Mc Caig: Exactly Matt and summer and grad are critically important, uh, aspects of our enrollment portfolio. And, uh, I, I I'm, I'm proud to say that that four out of five of our pieces of our enrollment portfolio right now look really good. The biggest of which of course is the freshman enrollment. The one that is not so good just in full disclosure is summer. Um, right now, as you know, we move from 128 credits to 120 for graduation from undergraduate degrees. And this is the first summer that that change is manifesting. So that's hurt our summer enrollments a little. Um, secondly, our, our, our class size over the last five years has narrowed. We've gone from a class of 1128 in 2015 to last year, class of 9, 21 more upper division students take summer classes than lower division. So that number is coming down and you have a less volume of students this summer to actually take classes. And then lastly and less quantifiably, but perhaps most importantly, students are tired. They're zoomed out, they're exhausted. We're hearing students all the time say, yeah, I know I should, but I, I just can't take another zoom class this summer. And, uh, we think fatigue is part of it. And right now we're, we're about 400 credits short of where we were last summer. Um, and, uh, you know, we're, we're, we're not given up. They're still, even though classes are starting, uh, very soon, we still have a whole second half of summer, what we call session E to recruit for. And we will, uh, stay the course, but I am a little concerned that summer enrollments will not be as strong as, as last year if I'm being fully transparent graduate on the other hand is, is it's early for graduate students and transfer students is very early, but a third through the cycle, we couldn't ask for more, every part of the funnel from prospects to accepts to registrations, uh, applications, everything is healthy. We're 22.4% up in registrations, and that doesn't count the 24 new students we have for our brand new doctorate and occupational therapy program, which itself is a, is a, is a terrific success. We have two new pipeline programs into those graduate programs, a three plus three for that O T D program and a four plus two for our speech language pathology program. Both of those have double digit enrollments for freshmen who say, I wanna do all six years, undergrad and grad, whether it's a masters or a doctorate at Mammouth university. So grad right now is looking very strong. That should not be a terrific surprise to us. Historically, as economies have been challenged, graduate enrollments have gone up, and we're seeing that if I can make one other comment on the last part of our portfolio, Matt it's retention, and in, from full to spring, very counterintuitively because these students had such, uh, a different experience and such pressure and, and anxiety. We had more students retain more freshman retained from the first semester to second semester than we've had in 10 years. And we've just run our first analytics on projected first year retention for the full year. That is the students freshmen from last year who come back in September and the analytics suggests we'll be higher with first year retention by a little bit than last year. So that part of our portfolio two is, is a good story. If I could have signed up for four outta five parts of our enrollment portfolio, being strong at any point of the pandemic cycle, I would've done it. It's a really good story to tell Matt Harmon: President, you wanna jump in there with a, with a quick comment on, on that whole answer, a lot to, lot to digest right there. Patrick Leahy: Uh, just, I'll just wrap up our enrollment summary with something Bob hinted at, which is in this past year, there were plenty of excuses, legitimate excuses. If we, um, had only achieved one of those five, uh, you know, categories, plenty of excuses. Um, and I would've gotten the backs of Bob I would've and all of his teammates and said, look, it's just a tough year and unprecedented year, uh, unforeseen challenges everywhere. Um, but you can tell from the report today that we didn't have to utilize any of those excuses, because despite all of that, uh, our enrollment picture looks very, very strong. And, uh, I just can't tell you how grateful I am to Bob personally, but, but for everyone who's involved in our enrollment effort. And it does extend, as Bob mentioned beyond just our enrollment staff members, who did the lion share the work, but to other staff and faculty members who showed up repeatedly at those, uh, accepted student days and, and other opportunities to engage with students, it it's a university wide effort. And, and why not? I mean, we're trying to build a community here at Mammouth. So we wanna get as many of our sort of current members of that community involved in bringing in the, the next generation into that community. And I think that's how we create that special culture here. Matt Harmon: Let's, uh, let's, let's finish president El with just a couple of quick comments graduation moving forward. We'll start next week. Um, the first day, May 12th, May 13th, the 19th and the 20th, uh, ceremony spread out. I know you're excited to have another opportunity to say goodbye to the class of 2021. Patrick Leahy: Yeah. And to do it as, as close to the full experience as possible. It's a great thing. You know, every student, uh, gets four tickets to the, uh, to, you know, to distribute to their family members and friends. Uh, it's gonna be, you know, four, four long days, but, uh, everybody here is very enthusiastic about it just quickly. I'll say, you know, I was reading recently cuz there's still some institutions that have feel like they have no choice, but to go deliver a virtual, uh, ceremony. Um, I think I've mentioned in the case of one of my kids, they get to have the students themselves get to have an in-person ceremony, but no family members are allowed to come. So that , that's like the bare minimum of the, uh, of the experience. Um, and so there's been a lot of chatter about this. I I'm just so proud of our record, you know, uh, a lot of people this year see a pathway to doing the in person ceremonies for last year's class. And I keep saying like, where were you last year? We, we did in person ceremonies for the class of 2020, guess what? In 2020 . So, so I'm really proud that, uh, here in 2021, we'll, we'll be able to do that same, uh, offer that same in person experience for our, our students and their families. It's a milestone event, not only for the students, but their, their families. I always say, I think graduation, frankly, as much for the parents as it is for the students Matt Harmon: And then let's finish with, and, and we talk about it, you know, on a little bit of a, um, separate track, um, softball, moving into the Mac tournament, baseball, getting set to move into the Mac tournament. Men's lacrosse will play in the final of the Mac tournament, uh, tennis and opportunity later on today to be part of the NCAA men's soccer, winning a game in the NCAA tournament before getting knocked out by pit. Um, I, I, I know you like to always mention some of the athletic programs in the student athletes, some teams done, but as I just mentioned, there are still four teams up and running in it, not including, uh, some individual athletes with track and field. Patrick Leahy: I mean, top to bottom, top to bottom all across the program, uh, excellence, uh, on the field of play this year. Um, I, I welcome someone showing me, uh, a division one athletics program that as strong is as strong as we are this spring. I welcome it. So if anybody out there has a, has a, has a, has a university that is competing across every single sport, as well as we are, I'd be open to open to hearing it. Um, I don't know if it's out there, but even more important than the field of play is, uh, how our athletes are killing it in the classroom. I mean, this is the time of year where many of those, uh, teams are recognized or many of those athletes are recognized for their academic efforts as well. And, uh, as Bob knows, you know, our, our athletes, uh, are retained and graduated at higher rates. And, uh, this is evidence of excellence, uh, both, uh, in the classroom and on the field of play. And just, I'm so proud of them. I can't tell you Matt Harmon: And no disrespect to the coaches that work extremely hard in the athletic department, but maybe the best recruiter on campus is our guest today. That is vice president for enrollment management, Bob MC MCCA. Bob, thanks for coming on, giving us some time. Uh, I I'd say don't worry about things, but I just don't think it's in your nature, right? I mean, it's just not how you put your head on the pillow every night is it Bob Mc Caig: Don't take my one skill away, Matt, please. Patrick Leahy: I think Bob though has met his match or pretty close to it in me. So we, we both say that is our job is to worry. Matt Harmon: We will be back, uh, in a couple of weeks with, uh, what will be, uh, crazy enough to say episode 30 of our mammoth weekly podcast. We'll talk a bit more about graduation that time set you up for, uh, the summer as well. Great episode here today, Bob. Thanks again. That's uh, vice president of enrollment management, Dr. Robert McKay with university president Patrick Lehe. I'm Matt Harmon. Thanks as always for giving us part of your day, keeping you up to date on everything that involves Mammouth university on Monmouth weekly.