Highline and CampusWorks are working together to implement Highline’s Strategic Enrollment Management plan.

Enrollment at Highline has been in decline for several years, and the pandemic hasn’t helped in that regard. To counteract this, Highline has teamed up with CampusWorks to “improve institutional effectiveness and enhance the student experience,” as said on their website’s About Us page.

“We want to address barriers students face in the enrollment process, such as communications and systems to improve the student experience,” said Josh Gerstman, Highline’s vice principle of Institutional Advancement and part of the Strategic Enrollment Management Team. 

The Strategic Enrollment Management plan is how the two organizations have decided to improve the Highline experience. The plan consists of three phases, two of which have been completed.

“Highline College engaged CampusWorks to assist us in developing our strategic enrollment management plan,” Gerstman said. 

“Our overall plan has a number of items that we’ll focus on such as increasing direct enrollment from local high schools, to increasing enrollment of adult learners, and working with business and industry to assure our programs align with workforce needs,” he said.

Phase one, the discovery phase, took place in March and April 2022. This phase involved data analysis, enrollment assessment, and planning that would give more immediate results.

“CampusWorks met with staff, faculty and students from across the college as well as community stakeholders such as representatives of Highline Public Schools. During this phase, several focus groups with students were held which helped form a student experience statement that serves as a guide and touchpoint for our planning. 

“They also did a review of what peer colleges in Washington and the West Coast were doing with regards to enrollment and how enrollment is throughout the region,” Gerstman said. 

Phase two was the development phase and took place from May 2022 until August 2022. This phase sought to improve enrollment based on student priorities. 

“Staff and faculty met with CampusWorks in big and small groups, through a series of workshops and working committee meetings. During this phase groups worked on six big focus areas, and on action plans for each area,” Gerstman said. 

“From this work, Executive Leadership identified four priorities that are being worked on this fall and other areas will be added as we achieve our initial objectives,” he said. 

Phase three is the implementation phase, which began in September 2022 and will run through June 2023. 

“Our focus this quarter is to improve our website, financial aid awarding and communications, direct enrollment from local high schools, and identifying and launching a CRM, a technology tool to support communication and tracking of prospective students,” said Gerstman. 

“Time is our challenge. We need to balance what we can do in the short term and the long term and time continues to work to finalize and implement plans,” he said.