Student Affairs & Enrollment Management

Aggie Kindness Day

By Bernadette Montoya | Published January 20, 2012

Here’s a way to warm up the February cold: start planning now for Aggie Kindness Day, on Thursday, February 9.

You can act as a group, a whole office, or alone, in a little way or a big way. Julie Weber, Director of Housing and Residential Life, had suggestions: an office can take up a collection and buy coffee for the first 25 students at Einstein’s. They can show up at Taos and clear tables for diners. The ideas are endless: collect canned goods for a food bank. Buy a lottery ticket for a stranger. Start a scholarship collection. Pick up trash around campus.

Housing and Residential Life started Aggie Kindness to honor Emily Lein, an NMSU student who died in November. Lein was an Aggie “superfan” who showed kindness and enthusiasm to everyone she encountered.

“Emily’s death was a reminder to a lot of people that our opportunities to be kind come in many forms,” said Michelle Bernstein, Assistant Director of Residential Education and Assessment. “We wanted to give students the opportunity to spread kindness throughout NMSU and the community.”

Participants are requested to submit photos, quotes, and feedback from their Aggie Kindness Day experience on the Housing and Residential Life Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/NMSUHousing.

Contact Michelle Bernstein (6-5590 or michbern@ad.nmsu.edu) for more information, including how to get Aggie Kindness Day buttons.

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What's hot for the new year?

By Bernadette Montoya | Published January 4, 2012

All of us hit the ground running on our return from the holiday break. I wanted to give you a brief update on some of the things that are currently at the forefront for our area:

  • Enrollment: We are still working on our campaign to call students who are not registered for classes for spring term. Volunteers have made hundreds of calls, but enrollment numbers suggest that students could use some help in signing up for classes.
  • Loan default: Following last fall’s news about NMSU’s loan default rate, we will continue to work on how to best address this issue and decrease the number of our students who default on their loans.  We are exploring options for getting some outside assitance in this effort.
  • Recruitment and retention (HED Funding Formula): The state has changed how money for universities is distributed from the former model, which emphasized student credit hours. This change is expected to shift more focus toward  recruitment, retention and graduation.  This is also part of the Building the Vision Goal for NMSU!
  • Legislative Session: This year’s Legislative Session starts January 17 and will last for 30 days. The Legislative Session can seem like a remote event, but decisions made in the Legislature can have a tremendous effect on our students and their access to higher education, as well as how we might approach the work we do.
  • Transfer Students:  There will be a lot of focus in the coming year in recruiting of transfer students to NMSU, both from within our NMSU system Community Colleges as well as from other two-year institutions in our State.  Our Transfer Center is now open, and we will share more details about that office with you soon!

Because of our role in serving students, every employee in SAEM is a part of these efforts, especially those involving  recruitment, retention and graduation. Our emphasis on  serving student helps make NMSU a welcoming place to learn.  I know that each of you will do your utmost best to ensure the highest level of service!

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Default Management News

By Bernadette Montoya | Published December 1, 2011

I want to take this opportunity to share some information with our Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Staff related to recent news articles related to our student loan default rates.  Please be aware that NMSU is not at risk of any financial aid penalty, nor are we are risk of losing Title IV funding because of our default rate. Our default rate of 9.9% is a concern, and we are addressing this through a variety of means. The November 28 article in the Albuquerque Journal has led to some concerns on this account.

Default Rate Calculation

Our official default rate of 9.9% was calculated under a set of rules that expired on October 1, 2011 and represents the 2-year repayment history for students who left NMSU or graduated in 2009. The new calculation will represent a 3-year payment history; students have more opportunities to default in three years than in 2, and so we expect numbers to increase under the new calculation rules. The Department of Education increased the threshold for penalties to 15%, which offsets the expected increase in the cohort rate.

Under the new rules, our 3-year trial default rate is 13.7% (called a trial rate because this calculation is not the official one yet). The penalty mentioned by the Journal article requires that we delay loan disbursements for first-time borrowers (not freshmen, as stated in the article) for 30 days after the semester starts. The threshold for losing funding is 30%.

Several items will help us stay under the 15% default rate:

  • Counseling for students before they receive a loan each year (federal regulations require this only for first-time borrowers).
  • Counseling by NSLP for students who are in their grace period before entering repayment and for students who are delinquent and at risk of defaulting.
  • New Department of Education Income Borrower Repayment Plans that limit some students to loan payments that will not exceed 10% of their disposable income.

NMSU has been working with an outside firm, NSLP, on this issue. Preliminary results from NSLP indicate that students who withdraw from NMSU early in their college education have default rates higher than students who earn a degree or even students who withdraw later. Consistent with this data, NMSU community colleges have higher default rates than the Las Cruces campus. Overall, default data mirrors retention data in that students with the lowest family incomes, test scores, and GPAs have the highest default rates, just as they have the highest drop-out rates.

How can you help?  Each of you can help by supporting retention efforts for all of our students.  In addition, you are encouraged to refer students to the Financial Aid Office so that students can benefit from the expertise of the staff who are versed in the loan rules and regulations. 

Thank you!

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Spring registration calling campaign

By Bernadette Montoya | Published November 17, 2011

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.

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SAEM help needed with enrollment efforts

By Bernadette Montoya | Published November 3, 2011

To get posters for your offices, email Melody at melodym@nmsu.edu. Poster by P. Johnson.

Between now and the December holidays, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Staff will be working on two efforts to help student retention and enrollment, and all staff can help.

First, we are encouraging all NMSU students to update their contact information in my.nmsu.edu. As students visit your offices between now and the end of the year, encourage them to update this information, and help them with directions if necessary. It is critical that NMSU be able to contact students to keep them up-to-date with important campus deadlines and events. If you want materials such as flyers and posters with this message, contact Melody Munson-McGee at 6-3572 or melodym@nmsu.edu.

And second, headed by Terry Cook and the Office of Student Engagement and at the request of President Couture, NMSU staff will be calling students starting in about a week who are eligible to register but have not yet done so. More details on how you might be able to help will be available soon!

Both of these efforts can help NMSU’s enrollment numbers, so thank you for your assistance.

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SAEM Staff BBQ and Homecoming Events!

By Bernadette Montoya | Published October 28, 2011

Thanks to everyone who helped to make our SAEM Staff BBQ such a successful event!  A special thanks to Ann Nieto, Melody Munson-McGee, Dacia Sedillo, Phillip Johnson, Ann Landmark and to our Enrollment Management student staff members for their work on all the details involved in the planning, implementation and clean up!  Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time, and the weather cooperated beautifully.

It was wonderful to see so many of you in attendance at our BBQ.  Serving as an employee in such a large area, it gave all of us an opportunity to meet new people, to visit with colleagues and to make new friends.  For me, it was especially nice to have an opportunity to meet a few new people myself, and to spend some time visiting; something we don’t often get the chance to do.  In addition, I had a wonderful opportunity to meet several student employees!

I appreciate those of you who took the time to engage in our community building portion.  We had over 100 employees participate by filling out the information cards.  I have taken the time time to read through all of them this afternoon, and was pleased with many of the comments.  Here are just a few that I enjoyed:

“I didn’t realize that SAEM has staff located in a total of 14 buildings across campus.”

“Career services hosts an Etiquette Dinner.”

“There’s a lot of good attitudes and school spirit in this group.”

“Outdoor recreational sports does lots of really cool outreach.”

“We have a design team that run the Twitter and Facebook for SAEM.”

“Didn’t realize how large our division truly was.”

“We are all tied together for the purpose of providing student services.”

Congratulations to the winners of our prize drawings.

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Student Affairs and Enrollment Management reorganization and personnel changes

By Bernadette Montoya | Published October 26, 2011

Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Staff:

To meet a recent need for funding reallocation within the University system, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management was asked to consider a reorganization to help meet that need. While the choices we have had to make have been challenging, this reorganization is the best way we had to ensure that all offices remained in tact, and that we were still able to meet the needs of our students and the NMSU community.

Effective November 1, the following changes will occur:

  • Career Services will report to Tony Marin in the Office of Student Engagement. Tony will retain his current title as Director, Student Affairs.  Veterans Affairs will move under the leadership of the Registrar’s Office, and report to Jacobo Varela, Assistant Registrar. These changes affect only reporting lines: the office functions will continue to operate out of the same space and with the same staff as prior to this reorganization.
  • Agustin Diaz will join the administrative team in the Office of Institutional Equity.  Agustin will be focusing on Title IX compliance and other related OIE issues. 
  • Maria Hernandez will transfer from Career Services to the Financial Aid and Scholarship Services Office as the Administrative Assistant. 

Effective January 2012, Testing Services will move from NMSU to Dona Ana Community College – East Mesa. Final details regarding this transition are still being worked out.

This reorganization reflects resources that have been reallocated within the University. To absorb this loss, we will not be filling the following positions:  Career Services Director, All Things Military Coordinator, International Transcript Evaluator, and Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management. The Dean of Students Position will also change from a level 14 to a level 12 position, and will be posted soon.

As part of this process, I would like to announce that the following positions will become available for posting within the coming months:

  • Dean of Students
  • Director of Financial Aid
  • Aggie Welcome & Orientation Coordinator
  • WAVE Student Program Coordinator
  • Career Services Administrative Assistant
  • Student Resources Coordinator for Career Services
  • Senior Admissions Advisor
  • Student Diversity and Outreach Administrative Assistant

As always, I appreciate and value your support.  I know you will help our colleagues in new and changing roles to be successful, and to make Student Affairs and Enrollment Management the great unit that it is!

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Millennial students as leaders at NMSU

By Bernadette Montoya | Published September 1, 2011

With the start of the semester, I have had the opportunity to meet student leaders at several evening events over the past few weeks. These students all share in various leadership roles in groups ranging from American Indian and Black programs, our GLBTQA community, Chicano programs, to the Greek system and ASNMSU, our student government. They can expect to pick up valuable skills and experience though their leadership service.  It has been a pleasure getting to know the students and to spend time with them, and I have appreciated the opportunity to interact with them.

During a recent evening event with student leaders, I shared with them a few thoughts on the unique insights and qualities of their generation.  Many of the students who are part of our campus community now are Millennials, and some additional understanding about them may help us serve them better.

These students, for the most part, share in being Millennial students, who were born after 1981 (much of the following information was taken from a report by California State University at Long Beach shared by Terry Cook). The current population of the US is made up of:

  • Traditionalists: These are people who were born by the end of World War II and who have seen great changes in technology during their lifetime. Older Traditionalists were influenced by the Great Depression and World War II, younger ones by the Cold War.
  • Baby Boomers: Born after World War II, Boomers grew up with television. This technology brought them news of the assassinations of the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Women’s Rights movement, the Space Race and Watergate.
  • Generation X’ers: this was the first generation of latchkey kids with working mothers. They were influenced by single parent homes, news about violence, AIDS and child kidnappings, and the Gulf War. Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers make up the majority of college employees.
  • Millennials: born after 1981, Millennials are the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history. Technology is very important to this generation, including laptop computers, iPods and MP3 players, gaming systems, and especially smartphones.
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Game Day shirts

By Bernadette Montoya | Published August 19, 2011

To support our NMSU student athletes, all Student Affairs and Enrollment Management staff will receive a Game Day t-shirt and a few Aggie tattoos to wear. It’s a great shirt to also wear on Crimson Fridays. Let’s show our support for the Aggies!

These shirts were purchased with personal monetary donations from your colleagues in Student Affairs and Enrollment Management.  Thanks to our students from University Admissions for modeling our shirts.

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Reading recommendations from staff

By Bernadette Montoya | Published August 17, 2011

At the Executive Leadership retreat, we all read and discussed Seven lessons for leading in a crisis by Bill George. During our discussion, the following books were also recommended as good reading in the management and personal growth arena.

If you have read any of these or have others to add, please leave your comments below.

Author Title
Kerry Patterson Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high
Richard E Boyatzis Resonant Leadership: Renewing yourseld and connecting with others through mindfulness, hope, and compassion
Seth Godin Tribes: We need you to lead us
Tony Dungy Quiet Strength: The principles, practices, and priorities of a winning life
Robert D Putnam Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community
John David Mann The Go-Giver: A little story about a powerful business idea
Daniel H Pink A Whole New Mind: Why right brainers will rule the future
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