Action Teams

Goal: Understand curricular and program needs based on student and market demand.

Key Accomplishments:

• Completed the Academic Advising LEAN project and Educause’s Data Strategy Institute for Advising, leveraging results as valuable resources to enhance student outcomes through transformational advising.
   
• Engaged in persona and journey activities to gather insights from students and advisors, leading to the development of future student advising action plans.

Key Accomplishments

• Audited technologies and centralized support: Assessed current technologies for recruitment and retention, evaluating usage, functionality, ROI and the student experience, while establishing a centralized team to support tech implementations and consistency across the University.
   
• Streamlined student communications: Introduced case management software and launched the Slate admissions application, CRM and applicant portal, consolidating interactions into a single stream and significantly improving communication, event registration and the overall application process.
   
• Improved quality and access to data: Created new curriculum codes, recoded programs, updated university systems and established a data literacy program to enhance our data’s quality, while implementing a data lake and admissions dashboard to easily track student behavior.

Key Accomplishments

• Personalized student communications: Created unified marketing plans, segmented communication strategies, established toolkits and employed new technologies and data to create targeted communications, tackle barriers and align all departments.
   
• Unified recruitment strategy: Worked with Regional Campuses to create a cohesive recruitment plan for NE Ohio, highlighting a student’s diverse options throughout the University system. 
   
• Enhanced Transfer Credit Assessment: Introduced Flash Credit Estimator to help students quickly assess transfer credits and match with majors. 

Key Accomplishments

• Eliminated Scholarship Barriers: Launched an extensive review across the eight-campus system to remove obstacles and improve access to scholarships.
   
• Simplified Scholarship Search: Introduced Scholarship Universe, an easy-to-use website that matches students with internal and external scholarship opportunities.
   
• Standardized Financial Aid Processes: Seamlessly integrated financial aid awarding processes and software across the university.

Key Accomplishments

• Analyzed Brand Perceptions: Conducted a study to analyze brand attitudes and awareness among segmented audiences to identify growth opportunities and evaluate market position.
   
• Boosted Website Performance: Elevated Kent State websites through external assessments, regular audits, data integration, artificial intelligence implementation and page redesigns to improve website operations, search engine optimization, user experience and accuracy.
   
• Aligned Content Strategy: Developed a brand positioning and messaging map, created audience personas and built a central content calendar, while establishing processes to improve consistent evaluation of marketing strategies and optimize messaging across digital platforms.

Key Accomplishments

• Redefined Academic Advising: Evaluated advising systems, gathered insights from students and advisors through persona and journey activities and developed action plans to redefine the role of advisors and enhance student outcomes through transformational advising.
   
• Evaluated Student Service Experience: Conducted a benchmark analysis of the One Stop for Student Services compared to other universities and enlisted a consultant for an external assessment.
   
• Revamped Student Service Model: Transformed the One Stop for Student Services into the Financial, Billing, and Enrollment Center, featuring a new, simplified website, chatbot and updated on-campus location to streamline critical student services.