An Enrollment Director's Job Description
About five years ago, the Catholic High Schools of a local Diocese were given a directive to hire admissions directors. While it seemed a bold step at the time, especially since such a position may not have been budgeted for, it was carried out - and for the past several years, those high schools have shown an increase in enrollment! It was just one of the steps that schools were directed to carry out as a plan to increase enrollment in the school.
Some of these steps are verbatim, just because the wording is excellent. Others are paraphrases of the steps that were offered:
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Promote a strong Catholic identity and offer a superior academic program.
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Adopt or affirm a clear “identity,” “image” or “brand.”
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Identify a unique quality of the school – a program of study, a special course, an unusual opportunity – and market it.
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Employ a full-time or part-time Director of Enrollment Admissions with background/training in the field, and develop specific goals for which that person is accountable.
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Form an Enrollment Task Force, with membership to include the Enrollment Director, a member of the Administration, Alumni, Current parents, Former parents, and Students. Also, Create a plan to involve the following in enrollment building: President, Principal, Faculty, Students, Parents.
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Set up an enrollment calendar in advance of each school year, consulting with elementary schools to avoid conflicts. The calendar will include all enrollment building activities, be part of the overall school calendar to avoid conflicts, and will be sent well in advance to each feeder elementary school
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Abide by established "Partner
School" guidelines. High school representatives may visit or participate in enrollment events only of their partner schools; and may send mailings only to principals and students in their designated partner schools;
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Build positive relationships with principals and teachers in partner schools and with local pastors by inviting elementary principals and pastors to school events, and offering small gifts at appropriate times.
You'll see that many of these activities are not just enrollment-based, but are rooted in marketing (finding a "remarkable" quality of your school) as well as development (building relationships). However, the challenge is how elementary schools can do the same thing.
A simple solution might be to provide the same type of format, but replace "Partner Schools" with "Partner Parishes." Reach out to parishes that send children to your school, and develop those relationships.
© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2010 (Original publication date: 20051010)
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