Wes­ley Wel­comes the Largest Fresh­man Class to Date

By Les­ley Louder ’05

In August Wes­ley will wel­come to their new home the class of 2013, one of the largest groups of incom­ing fresh­men in the his­tory of the Col­lege. As part of the annual rou­tine lead­ing up to the new stu­dent matric­u­la­tion, the Wes­ley admin­is­tra­tion and the var­i­ous cam­pus depart­ments set a goal — to help the Wes­ley com­mu­nity grow with the enroll­ment of a sub­stan­tial fresh­man class.

Like a fam­ily orga­niz­ing for a sum­mer vaca­tion, the plan­ning begins early. Tra­di­tion­ally, once the fall semes­ter starts, Col­lege admin­is­tra­tors and the Office of Admis­sions deter­mine a desired num­ber of appli­ca­tions and admit­ted stu­dents to ulti­mately meet a real­is­tic enroll­ment objec­tive for the fol­low­ing year. As Wes­ley is a heav­ily tuition-driven insti­tu­tion, there are many vari­ables to assess, includ­ing tuition dol­lars and other rev­enue ver­sus the var­i­ous costs of edu­ca­tion and stu­dent sup­port as well as avail­abil­ity of cam­pus hous­ing and the ratio of fac­ulty and aca­d­e­mic sup­port staff to students.

The plan­ning phase does not end there, how­ever. Instead, a year-long jour­ney is just begin­ning. Sev­eral steps are put into place and car­ried out over the next 12 months in order to ensure that enroll­ment goals will be met.

Despite the uncer­tain­ties of our nation’s econ­omy, Wesley’s Office of Admis­sions has inten­si­fied recruit­ment efforts within the past year. In fact, the usual steps taken to attain enroll­ment goals were taken to a whole new level. Three new admis­sions coun­selors were hired as of Sep­tem­ber 1, 2008. The two sea­soned coun­selors invested valu­able time and energy to pre­pare the incom­ing staff for the recruit­ment process. “Travel to high schools as well as col­lege and trans­fer fairs was increased, allow­ing our office to expand its recruit­ment efforts and to mar­ket Wes­ley Col­lege directly and more per­son­ally to stu­dents, par­ents and high school coun­selors where they live,” explained Direc­tor of Under­grad­u­ate Admis­sions Arthur Jacobs. The Office of Admis­sions also used resources such as the Col­lege Board to iden­tify appli­cant prospects among high school juniors and seniors. Cer­tain cri­te­ria, such as stu­dents’ geo­graphic area, grade point aver­age, test scores, poten­tial aca­d­e­mic inter­ests and indi­cated pref­er­ences for col­lege type and loca­tion, helped hone the search process in order to ulti­mately find ideal matches between stu­dents and Wes­ley College.

Many prospec­tive appli­cants were then mailed intro­duc­tory infor­ma­tion and a brand new visitor’s guide to learn more about Wes­ley. “Before these stu­dents began their senior year, we had sent out infor­ma­tion to five thou­sand of them,” informed Dean of Enroll­ment Man­age­ment Bill Fir­man. Admis­sions staff mem­bers put in count­less hours in the evenings and on week­ends to con­tact stu­dents, answer ques­tions, set up cam­pus vis­its and con­duct inter­views in order to effec­tively make that per­sonal con­nec­tion between the Col­lege and the prospec­tive stu­dent and his or her family.

The results of the Admis­sions team’s dili­gent efforts were already evi­dent at Wesley’s very first open house on Octo­ber 4, 2008. A record num­ber of prospec­tive stu­dents and their fam­i­lies attended this and the next two open house events that fol­lowed. In addi­tion, a record num­ber of stu­dents, with their par­ents, made per­sonal cam­pus vis­its dur­ing the school year.

For many college-bound stu­dents, the tour of the cam­pus and expo­sure to the col­lege atmos­phere is a crit­i­cal step in deter­min­ing if a school will be a good fit for them. That means there is all the more rea­son for the Wes­ley fam­ily to make a good first impres­sion. The College’s Pres­i­dent, Dr. William John­ston, stated, “It is our duty to invite prospec­tive stu­dents to the door. The rest of the cam­pus has to invite them in to be a part of the community.”

A new pro­gram struc­ture for Wes­ley open houses recently imple­mented by the Office of Admis­sions has proven to be an effec­tive vehi­cle to attract prospec­tive stu­dents to Wes­ley. Fir­man com­mented, “The mes­sage stu­dents got through tours and open houses was that we are an inter­ac­tive col­lege and have a pos­i­tive energy.” Pres­i­dent John­ston also noted the out­stand­ing efforts put forth by the entire Wes­ley com­mu­nity. “The cam­pus as a whole — fac­ulty, staff, main­te­nance, food ser­vices — has gone out of their way to engage and wel­come prospec­tive fam­i­lies,” he commended.

As any col­lege or uni­ver­sity typ­i­cally expe­ri­ences what could be called the “sum­mer melt” in which con­firmed stu­dents make last minute changes to their col­lege plans before the fall semes­ter begins, Wes­ley hopes to min­i­mize this effect. One way is to con­tinue out­reach to stu­dents regard­ing finan­cial aid pack­ages and schol­ar­ship opportunities.

In addi­tion, a strong New Stu­dent Ori­en­ta­tion pro­gram coor­di­nated by the Office of Stu­dent Life has helped fur­ther famil­iar­ize incom­ing stu­dents and their par­ents with the Wes­ley com­mu­nity. From an insti­tu­tional stand­point, the effec­tive­ness of Ori­en­ta­tion has helped solid­ify stu­dents’ deci­sions to enroll at Wes­ley and boosted enthu­si­asm for their new home-away-from-home.

“The New Stu­dent Ori­en­ta­tion pro­gram is pur­pose­ful in that the one­day June ses­sions pre­pare incom­ing stu­dents (both fresh­men and trans­fers) and par­ents to arrive in August,” said Beth Fisher, direc­tor of stu­dent activ­i­ties. This pro­gram not only aims to make the some­times over­whelm­ing first-year expe­ri­ence a bit more man­age­able, but also allows new stu­dents to build mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with mem­bers of the cam­pus com­mu­nity. Before the firstyear stu­dents offi­cially begin their Wes­ley course­work, they also will engage in a five-day sum­mer pro­gram August 19–23. Activ­i­ties for this Con­tin­u­ing Ori­en­ta­tion pro­gram­ming will be geared towards
the theme of per­se­ver­ance, respect, integrity, ded­i­ca­tion and excel­lence (PRIDE).

Par­tic­i­pants have been enthu­si­as­tic about the Ori­en­ta­tion pro­gram­ming they have expe­ri­enced thus far. Exit sur­veys showed that 98% of the stu­dents rated the June Ori­en­ta­tion day as Good or Excel­lent (63.1%Excellent/34.9% Good). Fisher com­mented, “The pro­gram has been received very highly from par­ents and stu­dents who have attended. It has been a team effort from many offices and depart­ments across cam­pus and we could not have been suc­cess­ful with­out the ded­i­ca­tion of the numer­ous fac­ulty and staff mem­bers here at Wes­ley Col­lege. They have made all the dif­fer­ence in this experience!”

At the same time, the Col­lege feels con­fi­dent that the pro­gram­ming will effec­tively help stu­dents inte­grate into cam­pus life and ulti­mately, will have many pos­i­tive ben­e­fits for the cam­pus com­mu­nity as a whole. “We believe that Ori­en­ta­tion engages stu­dents in the Wes­ley Col­lege expe­ri­ence and it pro­vides a foun­da­tion to become suc­cess­ful grad­u­ates,” said Mary-Alice Oze­choski, dean of students.

As for the College’s enroll­ment goals and the inter­ests of the incom­ing class, the out­look is very pos­i­tive. The pre­vi­ously set mile­stone of 615 fresh­men will most likely be sur­passed this fall. “The Col­lege is ready to go to the next level and we are just thrilled,” Fir­man expressed. Due to the united efforts and con­tri­bu­tions across the Wes­ley cam­pus, the Col­lege eagerly awaits the forth­com­ing frenzy of activ­ity in late August and will embrace with open arms the newest mem­bers of the fam­ily. W