November 17, 2021 Minutes

Steering Committee Minutes

Committee Members Present:

  • Stephen Benson – Vice President, Finance & Administration (Co-Chair)
  • Kim Patterson – Executive Director, Foundation/Institutional Advancement (Co-Chair)
  • Meredith Brown – Program Director/Assoc. Professor, Radiologic Technology
  • Londa Carriveau – Director, High School Pathways
  • Karen Clark – Director, Admissions & Recruitment
  • Lisa Elliott – Director, Marketing & Communication
  • Frank Graves – Dean, Workforce & Public Service
  • Fred Hills – Vice President, Instruction & Student Engagement
  • Paul Hoffman – Director, Student Development
  • Sandi Jones - Director, Financial Aid
  • Johnette McKown – President of McLennan Community College
  • Kim Patterson – Executive Director, Foundation/Institutional Advancement (Co-Chair)
  • Phil Rhodes – Vice President, Research, Effectiveness & Information Technology
  • Lise Uhl – Division Chair, Visual & Performing Arts
  • Laura Wichman – Director, Institutional Research
Committee Members Absent:
  • Daelynn Copeland – Asst. Professor/Facility Director, Child Studies & Education

Meeting began: 2:02 p.m.

Kim Patterson opened by welcoming everyone. She shared that the President’s Council met last week and during the meeting, everyone went into a breakout session and did a walkthrough of the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan. They were asked two basic questions about what they see as the most important initiatives. The groups also discussed if there was anything we were missing and the results were compiled into three main categories.

  1. Marketing & Recruitment / Outreach
  2. Innovation / New Programs
  3. Technology / Process Issues 
  • Several comments were made about our website and how we tell our story.
  • Positive support for the Faculty Staff Outreach.
    • Seeking more information
    • More training and more activity on and ongoing
    • Reach out to connect early with families and children in early childhood education to put them on a college bound trajectory.
    • Integrate more with public school partners in getting the teachers to become advocates for us on a regular
    • Calling Campaign 
  • Marketing & Recruitment
    • Marketing the Rising Star opportunity more aggressively
    • Billboards are popular
    • Facebook ads are active
    • Open Houses
  • Innovation
    • Training through Industry (Tuition Remission Programs)
    • Working with GED students in getting them enrolled as regular college
  • Technology & Process
    • The difficulty in getting students to login into their student accounts once
    • Expand Slate
  •  Follow-up on Website Updates: Lisa Elliott
    • A new software was purchased that can assist as we are revising MCC’s website.
    • The software gives analytics for advertising It also finds broken links, in which we have found that our site has a lot of broken links.
    • Candice has been working on a project in which the software finds misspelled words throughout the website and correct them.
    • We have several duplicated pages.
    • MCC’s website should be focused on student use and recruiting students
    • Revisit interest in purchasing the Intranet Software for employees to separate our site from student use.
    • It will be easier to bring down the website and start from scratch rather than continuing to edit each area.
  • Slate – Kim requested a demo in how to use Slate for the committee to Karen agreed.
  • Process Improvement: Dr. Benson
    • A Task Force was developed from each department to help review the reports from the survey and how it talks about their areas.
    • Task Force includes the following departments:
      • Business Office
      • Admissions
      • Marketing
      • Financial Aid
      • Records (Registration) 
    • The Minutes regarding the recommendations from each committee will be posted to the website
  • Enrollment Plan Update:
    • Website is updated every
    • Benson plans to change the format of website to present new initiatives as time allows.
    • Lisa has a Marketing plan & Karen has a Recruitment plan

 Slate:

  • Purchased solely for student recruitment.
  • Software is not managed by ISS Department.
  • Rolling it out campus wide would be a bit of a challenge.
  • Could easily become clustered with information like our website and no one is managing it.

 Chat BOT: 

  • New software purchased where MAC-T Highlander will automatically answer questions on our website.
  • Company has thousands of questions that are specific to Community Colleges that are programmed in the Chat Bot. Staff from MARCOM are going through and answering the questions now before it becomes active.
  • Some questions may need to be answered by an Those questions will be sent by email or the employee can chat live.
  • It has a texting feature but main purpose is to chat with persons on website.
  • It also collects the individual’s information so we list them as a prospective student.
  • The goal is to have it up and running by the winter break.

Committee Reports: 

Admissions & Marketing: Lisa Elliott & Karen Clark

  • Developed a course description for Highlander Ambassadors.
  • Course will be offered to employees during Onboarding and Professional Development.
  • Couse includes social media marketing strategies.
  • Goal is offer class to Onboarding on 4, 2022. 

Finance: Sandi Jones

  • No updates 

Research & Growth: Laura Wichman 

  • The committee reviewed the Community Survey and discussed items they wanted to review in the Spring.
    • Which programs are successful for our students?
    • When we find success image, which ones are allowing people to get employed?
    • Where are we under saturating or over saturating our market?
    • An EMSI Report will be available before Spring Break that will show the next five years of the economic development and how they are expecting our area to grow.
    • Need to focus the EMSI Report onto the high schools and home schools to help increase the FDIC Enrollment
    • Met with Joe Hinojosa to discuss outreach to Hispanic Communities.

Retention Group: Paul Hoffman 

  • Sub-committee hasn’t met recently.
  • Paul and Jessica had a discussion regarding Pilot Program in asking Faculty members to opt out of the Pilot Program due to inactivity.
  • Students’ aren’t responding 

Dr. Benson gave the current Enrollment Report

Restart Program:

  • Will reinstate the calling
  • Request for volunteers to assist with calling campaign will be sent out to employees
  • Advertising for transients for the minimester
The Rising Star Scholarship Event
  • 20 student recipients
  • Total of 55 attended the event (with guests)
  • Total of 250 student names to receive scholarships 

Meeting Adjourned: 3:02 p.m.