"Managing enrollments in a community college is like managing heating and air conditioning with all of the doors and windows welded open." Dolence

The Strategic Enrollment Planning Committee is charged with developing and monitoring a strategic enrollment plan for Santa Rosa Junior College. By the close of the Spring 2002 term, we need to have developed a draft of that plan for dissemination. The Accreditation Self Study and the General Obligation Bond are both influences and resources to this process.

In our earlier actions, we determined that the plan should include activities in four areas:

• Schedule development data
• Fiscal data
• Outcomes data
• Marketing

To date, we have given substantial consideration to the schedule development data elements culminating in the recent demonstration of the data mining tool developed by Computing Services. That program, operating along with the previously developed Program Evaluation and Planning process, provide a department-driven base for strategic enrollment planning.

The effort to address the need for standard fiscal data elements for annual monitoring has been based in the SRJC Board of Trustee Fiscal Solvency Report of Spring 2001. That report establishes a wealth of data elements that can be tracked over time to assess the fiscal health of the institution. Together with the Budget Advisory Committee, the StEP Committee needs to finalize the specific data elements that will comprise the fiscal data report.

The examination of outcomes data has been limited to two external requirements: the Partnership for Excellence accountability requirements and the Accreditation Self-Study. In addition, the institution annually reports outcomes data to meet the requirements of categorical programs. The plan will require that a list of current reported outcomes be compiled and a proposal developed for annual monitoring of certain of those elements as an aspect of assessing institutional effectiveness. [These outcomes, along with the schedule development data elements and the fiscal data elements, should provide a valuable assessment of the institution.]

The effort to address marketing has been the least focused of the four efforts. While there are several marketing efforts throughout SRJC, the primary effort is to engage in brand marketing of the institution as a whole with limited efforts toward specific aspects of the college and its offerings. The program and/or location specific marketing efforts are decentralized and at times overlap. Overall, few departments know how to approach marketing of their programs. A recent request to department chairs to describe their marketing activities resulted in only four responses, all from occupational departments or the telecourse program. While there are certainly more marketing efforts underway, there is a lack of clarity within the institution regarding the responsibility for marketing, the resources available to do so, and the overall need for marketing.

The Cross Component Goals for 2001-2002 call for development of a Strategic Enrollment Plan by the end of the Spring 2002. To that end, please consider the following proposal:

The Strategic Enrollment Plan should be designed on the model of the accreditation self-study with sections addressing each of the four focus areas described above. Like the self-study, the plan should contain a description, analysis, and a plan for each of the four areas. The description will include detail regarding the current status of the area, and the analysis will include an assessment of the adequacy of those efforts. (This analysis will require involvement of staff beyond the StEP Committee.) The plan section should follow from the description and analysis and be designed to address short-term goals as the plan will be re-examined annually.

Since the StEP Committee is an advisory group reporting jointly to the President (through IPC) and the Academic Senate, the report must be reviewed by Academic Affairs and Student Services prior to reaching status of a final draft. Then, the report must be presented to the Academic Senate and IPC for review and eventual acceptance. On acceptance, it should be distributed widely to increase college awareness of strategic enrollment planning issues.

The StEP Committee should form four sub-committees to address the four sub-areas of the strategic enrollment planning process. Following the model of the accreditation self-study, these sub-committees will develop a description of the current status and interview appropriate parties to develop the analysis and plan sections of the report. The StEP Committee will serve as the review body for the sections and determine how best to integrate them to a single report. To ensure that the plan is completed by the end of the Spring 2002 term, we should establish a deadline of early March for the section drafts with the goal of distributing a draft plan in April, for revision and acceptance in May.