In an effort to maintain our enrollment at last year’s level, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management staff began calling students this week who are eligible to register for spring but who have not yet done so. This calling campaign provides an opportunity for SAEM staff to volunteer in a university-wide effort to help our students achieve their academic goals.
So how does this work? Registration started last week for Crimson Scholars: students who have not yet registered are being contacted this week as a proactive intervention. There are many reasons why students wait to register; through this intervention, we are seeking to help students avoid this delay and address any concerns they might have. In the course of calling, staff volunteers might recommend that a student meet with his or her advisor, identify a hold on the student’s account that prevents registration, or suggest other strategies that will help ensure that the student sign up for courses and continue to make progress toward graduation.
This might sound complicated, but Terry Cook from the Office of Student Engagement and Student Information Management (SIM) have collaborated to make this a smooth operation. To help staff call students, SIM created a secure website that lists students who are eligible to be contacted. In addition to contact information, the site lists academic advisors, registration holds, majors, and other relevant information. The staff member calling can document student concerns and recommendations in a comment field; these comments will assist us in understanding what challenges our students face at registration time. Terry has also assembled information on registration holds and advisors so callers know where to refer students to resolve issues.
Besides helping students register for courses needed for graduation, this intervention will help NMSU plan earlier where to add course sections to meet student demand. Further, to maintain the same year-long enrollment numbers as last year, we will need to increase our enrollment by at least 5,877 credit hours over last spring’s enrollment.
For more information, or to volunteer to call students, please contact Terry Cook at tcook@nmsu.edu.