Growing Enrollment with Dr. Dewey Clark | Changing Higher Ed 008
Dr. Dewey Clark is a very special university president.\xa0 Unlike most of his contemporaries, his undergraduate degree is from the school he is now leading, and following graduation, was invited to work on staff in admissions which he did for nine years before going off for a 24-year career in business. This experience has conditioned his thinking about higher ed. He understands that a university or college must be run like a business, and he brings that mentality and work ethic to his job.
He also understands that college should be both an education and an experience and that the culture of any institution starts with the top. He takes this very seriously \u2013 interviewing EVERY person who is hired at North Carolina Wesleyan. Thus, he ensures all new people see and buy into his vision, one that a college is an amazing place where young people can go and develop in the way that he did.
Dr. Clark has been in the president role for 4 \xbd years now and has put his imprimatur on the college. When he took over, enrollment was at 575, and it is more than doubled to over 1100. He did this by applying business principles to the college.
They first examined their market and positioning. Their previous approach was scattergun, attempting to recruit up and down the East Coast, but after doing market research, they found the majority of their alumni and current students were from Eastern North Carolina and Southeast Virginia \u2013 75 percent \u2013 and the remaining 25 percent from 40 different foreign countries.\xa0 They contracted their market area to Eastern North Carolina and Southeast Virginia, and it started paying immediate dividends.\xa0
Second, they examined their messaging and found their approach wasn\u2019t effective, especially from a marketing dollars perspective.\xa0 They swapped their marketing foci to doing radio and billboards in their target areas, which also paid dividends.\xa0
They also examined their enrollment processes to ensure that each potential student received the personal touch.\xa0 This includes including Skype and telephone calls and emails, etc., and for the campus visit, they roll out the red carpet \u2013 everything is choreographed down to the littlest detail such as who they eat lunch with.\xa0
They knew that recruiting has changed in the past 35 years, from handwriting letters to prospective students with a lot of phone calls, to the 21st-century social media of Facebook and Instagram, but the personal touch is still important.\xa0 Today\u2019s students are technology driven, so you have to meet them where they are. Email is almost a thing of the past, except that you have to be aware that you are also recruiting the parents \u2013 the decision to attend is going to be made on the way home from the campus visit, and they need to feel good about the place their daughters and sons might be going.\xa0
In some ways, there are two or three different messages that need to go out \u2013 one to the students, one to the parents, and one to the business community. For example, students generally are not concerned about things like security, but their parents certainly are. Your business community, those who will be hiring your graduates, want to know that your curriculum is up to date and it is meeting their needs.\xa0
One of the areas of foci for the college is enhancing its career services area.\xa0 NC Wesleyan starts helping students think about their career from the day they step foot on campus, e.g., what does your resume look like, are you prepared to do an interview, do you understand what a cover letter is or etiquette dinners, job fairs, etc.\xa0 It has made a big difference as companies who are hiring their graduates are starting to take notice.
One of the things that make NC Wesleyan special is their freshman orientation, which they call Rock the Mount. They include three things that are not typical to a traditional orientation.
- First, they bring in outside speakers to motivate the new students, including a graduate from 30 years ago who talks about the college from their perspective and how it prepared them for the world.\xa0
- Second, the new freshmen line up and go through a tunnel where Dr. Clark shakes their hand with current students cheering them on. This makes it a very exciting time for them.
- Lastly, they invite current students and vendors from the town to get students connected to their fellow students and community \u2013 this year they had well over 100 organizations there, including student organizations who participated. For many, this is their first time away from home, and NC Wesleyan helps them find their \u201cnew family\u201d to help them through the process.\xa0
One of Dr. Clark\u2019s biggest challenges was getting the town to embrace the college, and how he is done it through programs such as Rock the Mount has been ingenious. Through things like that, he has added over $110 million to the economy of the local town.\xa0
Dr. Clark leveraged his deep business background to change NC Wesleyan\u2019s culture. Prior to coming back to Wesleyan, he worked at MBM, a food distribution company that grew from $100 million in annual revenues when he first started to a $7 billion company that was bought by Warren Buffett in 2012.\xa0 His role was to put together the organization\u2019s strategic plans and budgets, and he leveraged these skills to be successful in the presidency. \xa0 \xa0
Dr. Clark is very numbers driven, very analytical, and his leadership style reflects this. This is not exclusive of people \u2013 Wesleyan is a high touch place \u2013 but he wants his key managers to be focused on numbers and try to improve them. For example, he will send out a picture of something that shows an improvement with a message \u201cgood quality\u201d to celebrate the good things that they have done.\xa0 Conversely, if there\u2019s something that needs to be improved, he will write \u201cbad quality\u201d with the picture.\xa0 He wants everyone to think that when they leave campus on a daily basis, they think \u201cit is better than when we came here this morning.\u201d\xa0
He believes strongly that if everybody has that mindset, they will become a very special place. And it is.\xa0
In the most recent US News and World Report that had regional rankings, North Carolina Wesleyan was ranked 37 in the Southeast.\xa0 Three years ago they were 63.\xa0
There are three secrets to making this work.\xa0
- First, the role of planning and the budgeting;
- Second, creating a culture of continuous improvement
- Lastly, Ensuring your hiring practices are in line with your culture.
You have to have a group of \u201cgame changers,\u201d people who will go that extra mile to make sure that the college and everything it is working right.\xa0
Creating a sustainable institution is a challenge.\xa0 You can\u2019t cut your way to sustainability \u2013 you have to make money, because at the end of the day if you don\u2019t make money you\u2019re out of business.
You must quantify all the big decisions that you make, whether it is a new major or program or sport, and then you have to hold yourself accountable to make sure that you're hitting those targets. There frequently is a \u201cgrowth curve\u201d in introducing new programs, and there must be a path for them to get to a point where they are profitable.\xa0 However, there are some things that will never be profitable, so you must look at the whole basket of what you're doing and determine if there is a value added to keep them.
This concept of sustainability is critical. For example, NC Wesleyan\u2019s target from day one has been 100 new students a year and he\u2019s averaged about 95 over the last three years.\xa0 He understands that growth costs money, but it is easier to grow to become sustainable than to stay flat or decline.
You try to qualify as many things as can, but it's hard to quantify everything.\xa0 For example, you can attempt to quantify culture through retention which isn\u2019t the best metric (there may not be one), but you know it\u2019s the right thing to do and so you do it.\xa0 Another example is career services \u2013 providing these services to students is the right thing to do, but it is difficult to quantify.\xa0
The first hundred days of the president's tenure is critical \u2013 in some ways, new presidents feel like they are drinking water out of a fire hose and are torn in multiple directions.\xa0 Some of the key things that new presidents must do include:
- Carve out time for yourself and your family and who you are, simple things like reading a book or taking time for vacations or getting a good night sleep. You cannot do this job with the sprinter\u2019s mentality \u2013 you must look at this as a marathon.\xa0
- Celebrate successes. NC Wesleyan had lots of successes early on and sometimes they stopped celebrate and sometimes he pushed everybody to the next level when they should have stopped and celebrated.\xa0 Celebrate every new milestone.\xa0
- Have a list of what you want to improve and make it time bound.\xa0 Every year at graduation, he tells his team to come up with a list of 100 things that they want to improve before the students come back in the fall, and they publish it and get it down.\xa0
- Keep your list at 100 things, and include in that list what you doing for yourself personally, what you doing for yourself professionally, what you doing for the college.\xa0
- Management by walking about still works, but know there is a fine line between micromanaging and not showing interest at all.\xa0 People need to feel that you care about them.\xa0
Bullet Points: Drill down on key points of the interview:
- College should be both an education and an experience
- The culture of any institution starts with the top.
- If you want to grow, you should start by examining your positioning and branding.\xa0 Where are your markets? Where do your students come from? Who hires them? Market research is the key.
- Market messaging must be current and go to where your prospective students are.
- Students STILL want the personal touch in recruiting.
- Higher ed has more than one customer. You must market to parents and businesses also.
- Quantify as much as you can to get continuous improvement.\xa0 There are some things that are difficult to quantify but do your best.\xa0 You get what you measure.
- Planning and budgeting are critical. A plan without a budget is a pipe dream.
- Ensure your student orientation is special.\xa0 This is the first time many of your students have been away from home, and finding their \u201cnew family\u201d is critical for them.
- Have game changers in every department \u2013 people who go the extra mile to make the college special.
- You cannot cut your way to sustainability \u2013 you have to grow.
- As a new president, ensure you carve time out for yourself and your family.\xa0 It\u2019s a marathon, not a sprint.
Links to Articles, Apps, or websites mentioned during the interview:
North Carolina Wesleyan College
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