2023 Summer Institute Presentations

Keynote Address: Dr. Monica Powell - PPT Slides

Summer Institute Sessions & PPT Slides

Pre-Conference Sessions Day 1:

Title: Using Statistics in Your Every-Day Job - PPT Slides

Presenter: Victor F Lopez

Statistics play a pivotal role in higher education administration, assisting us in making data-driven decisions and implementing effective strategies. In our everyday jobs, we utilize statistics to analyze enrollment trends, student demographics, and retention rates, enabling us to identify areas of improvement and develop targeted interventions. Statistical techniques help us assess the effectiveness of recruitment and admission strategies, allowing us to optimize enrollment processes and attract a diverse student population. Moreover, we employ statistics to evaluate the performance of academic programs, assess faculty productivity, and measure institutional outcomes. By analyzing survey data and conducting statistical research, we gain insights into student satisfaction, engagement levels, and learning outcomes, which inform our efforts to enhance the overall educational experience. Furthermore, statistics aid us in financial planning and resource allocation, ensuring that we optimize our resources to meet the needs of our institution. Statistics empower higher education administrators to make evidence-based decisions, improve institutional performance, and drive positive change.

Title: Create a Developmental Network Focused on Career Development and Success

Presenters: Dana Mordecai & Shaunte’ Alvarez-Minor

Having a professional network is an important tool for graduate enrollment professionals that provides benefits for career development and success, knowledge sharing and even social relationships. Hear from two professionals who share their experiences in a learning collaboration. Participate in this engaging and interactive session to determine how you can walk away with tools and tips on creating your developmental network. This is an ideal session for new professionals to GEM or for those looking to expand their networks.

Title: Do You Know Your Audience?

Presenter: Dale Turner, ETS

We’ve all heard the phrase, “know your audience,” but how can we better know applicants we haven’t yet met? Join us to hear about market research from ETS focused on prospective applicants’ motivations, values and social media habits. Through the sharing of data and key takeaways, you’ll leave with some ideas for how to better tailor your communications to improve engagement.

Students expect that communications are relevant and targeted toward their needs and interests. To better understand its audience’s interests, opinions and activities, ETS conducted a market research study of 3800+ prospective graduate students. An ETS representative will share this data with the TXGAP audience and open the floor for graduate schools to discuss how graduate programs can use the data to better engage prospective applicants.

Breakout Sessions Day 2

Title: But What About Me? Thoughts on Advancing Your Career as We Help Others Further Theirs

Presenters: Gabriel Crosby

As we work to help others achieve their professional and personal goals, we sometimes forget to invest time in considering our own career and educational goals. To grow and develop as higher ed professionals, we must make time to consider the advice we provide to our students. At some point, you might have even asked yourself questions such as ‘How can I get better at what I do?’ ‘What professional organizations are out there for me?’ ‘Should I pursue my doctorate?’ In this session, the presenter will share his experiences from a nearly 20-year career as a higher education professional and leader. Attendees will be encouraged to share their own experiences with colleagues and gain insight, advice, and encouragement from others on moving their careers forward.

Title: Tapping Into Your Own Undergrad Market: Taking Advantage of Student Orgs on Your Campus

Presenter: Frazier Johnson & Leslie Brilliant

We all know our own undergraduates are our best feeder source. But if it’s difficult to step foot in the classroom, what other options are there for reaching your current undergraduates? Hear from two different institutions that have created their own resource and outreach programming to find larger groups of student audiences. This presentation educates GEM professionals on how to make their presence known to their university’s current undergraduate populations. Learn how to build adaptable 10–30-minute presentations that can be used in a wide variety of settings, including student organization meetings, senior seminars, and other academic groups.

Title: Low GPA Students: Is This Your Next Recruitment Target?

Presenter: Dana Mordecai

Even with a holistic admissions review, some applicants will not qualify for admission. Is there hope? Some programs have embraced a pathway program to offer a helping hand which allows for enrollment increases that they may not have realized with stricter admission requirements, especially for students from diverse populations. Attendees will be able to participate in case study discussions to determine new or unique pathways for low-GPA students to gain admission to advanced degrees. GEM professionals, from directors to new recruiters, will be able to take away program ideas, communication strategies, and a community to share future discussions on low GPA students.

Title: Empowering Academia with Artificial Intelligence Language Models (ChatGPT) - PPT Slides

Presenter: Myra Gonzalez

ChatGPT and artificial intelligence has dominated the news in recent months. Come learn what ChatGPT is and is not and how you or your students might use it.

Title: Adapting Through Times of Uncertainty: Ideas for Surviving Institutional Change

Presenter: Adelaide Caudle

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the College of Graduate Studies at Tarleton State University has experienced staff turnover and major changes in the campus environment and leadership. These changes are due to external pressures like the evolution of post-pandemic work-life balance and institutional factors such as the university’s transition to NCAA Division I. As a result, the impact on staff, processes, and enrollment has been tremendous. To overcome these compounding challenges, the college has had to quickly adapt to support its team, students, and the university's goals for the future. In this presentation, we will discuss our experience regarding the importance of communication, streamlining processes, increasing buy-in, and focusing on the development of our team.

Title: Protecting Your Digital Self

Presenter: Tyson Reddic

This session will address issues in today's digital society as it becomes increasingly challenging to keep ourselves safe from hackers, scammers, and criminals.

Title: Successfully Recruiting Underrepresented Minority Populations to Grad School

Presenter: Shaunte Alvarez-Minor

Participants will learn about the statistics of underrepresented populations pursuing graduate degrees. We will talk about the buzz words of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and how it is being implemented in our institutions, and how it applies to graduate school. Examples will be given on identifying the needs of minoritized underrepresented students, discussing procedures necessary to implement in the recruiting process, and how to successfully recruit these students into graduate programs.

Title: What You Learn Analyzing 200 Million Higher Ed Website Visits

Presenter: Cameron Tolman

Halda has constructed an anonymized database of over 200 Million website visits from over 100 universities across the United States. In this hands-on workshop, we will review the key drivers of website conversions among this pool of prospective students on university websites. Insights were gleaned from the database leveraging expert analysis and brand-new Artificial Intelligence technologies. This session will feature expert-led slides and tactical exercises for attendees to immediately apply what they learn.

Attendees will come away with actionable tips and free tools to improve their website's lead conversion potential using industry benchmarks and cutting-edge generative AI tactics.

As the higher education industry becomes more competitive, universities are looking for innovative ways to differentiate themselves and improve enrollment numbers. Halda, the leading technology company focused on website personalization and AI-driven conversion rate optimization, has constructed an anonymized database of over 200 million website visits from over 100 universities across the United States. Through their analysis of this massive proprietary dataset, Halda has gained valuable insights into what drives website conversions for prospective students on university websites.

In this hands-on workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to learn from two of Halda’s co-founders: Dallin Palmer (President & COO) and Spencer Peterson (CTO). Dallin has worked in the field of lead generation and marketing technology since 2012, and Spencer has built core technologies at Amazon, One Click Retail, Podium, and now Halda. Spencer and Dallin have prepared a jam-packed session with insights, free tools, and over 20 years of experience so that attendees of this educational working session can immediately apply what they learn.

Through their extensive work with universities, Halda has identified key drivers of website conversions.

Title: Watch How You Talk to Me! Using Ethical Theoretical Frameworks for Marketing and Communicating to Prospective Students

Presenter: Brandon Sermon

Attendees will learn about the importance of using communication theoretical frameworks in developing campaigns and messages to prospective graduate students. The attendees will leave this session with simple practice approaches to implement basic concepts and components of various theoretical frameworks.

Title: All Aboard! Onboarding and Training for New Graduate Recruiters

Presenters: Ellen Klimpel and Precious Azobor

As anyone who has worked in the field of graduate recruitment for any period of time knows, recruiters are responsible for gaining and maintaining a vast amount of information regarding a university’s academic programs, resources, and admissions process. That expectation can be daunting for a new graduate recruiter, especially if they are new professionals or coming to higher education after pivoting careers. Using our own onboarding experiences as a reference, we will discuss some of the hurdles present when entering “the recruiting station.” Designed with both supervisors and new recruiters in mind, our presentation will explore the challenging realities of onboarding and ways to improve the training process, including sharing templates of a newly developed onboarding process. Our main objective is to help set graduate recruiters up for success so that we can ultimately set our students up for success.

Title: Challenging Times: Pitfalls in International Graduate Recruitment - Discussion Panel

Presenters: Nyetta Meaux and Gabriel Crosby

A discussion panel on the topic of international graduate recruitment.

Title: It Starts With Me: Self-Care for the GEM Professional

Presenter: Shaniece Miller

Self-care has become a great buzzword. There seems to be a growing movement where higher ed professionals are focusing on activities that are personally satisfying and not related to their general stressors like work, school, home life, etc. When you think about self-care, what does that look like for you? What kind of impact are you looking for? How do you plan to improve your self-care behaviors? This discussion will focus primarily on providing a pathway to creating self-care habits within the context you need it most and provide an opportunity to identify the next steps for creating these habits.

Title: Planning, Co-hosting, and Maximizing Your Own Institution's Grad Fair

Presenter: Austin Allen

Most recruiters have their own tips and tricks for maximizing results while tabling at other Universities. However, a recruiting team should not overlook the potential of the grad fair being hosted at the very institution they work at. But how can you best plan, co-host, and implement a grad far? How do you ensure there is a good student turnout? This panel will offer practical advice for creating a successful recruiting event at your own institution!

Title: All Hands on Deck! Incorporating Mental Health Awareness and Well-being in Graduate Programs - A Multi-Step Approach

Presenter: Nyetta Meaux

Attendees will learn different strategies for incorporating mental health awareness and well-being within their graduate programs. In addition, attendees will learn how to partner with their institution's Well-being and Counseling office to educate students, faculty, and staff about the wide variety of resources available.

Title: Leveraging Alumni to Increase Student Success and Meet the Needs of the College

Presenter: Lisa Hollinger

Strategic alumni outreach leading to engagement across the college can increase the ability to meet the goals of the college. In this session, a mentoring program will be highlighted along with other ways to engage alumni, and specific results achieved by the college will be shared. At UNT’s College of Information, we ask alumni to become involved in many aspects at the college level, including directly mentoring our current students and recent graduates, joining our college leadership board to provide assistance and advice to the college on reaching our goals and attending events where they get the chance to interact with scholarship winners and be recognized for their engagement with students. After only 18 months of effort in these areas, all of which interconnect, results can be seen leading to increased alumni engagement, better industry relations, a boost in fundraising for scholarships, and activities leading to increased student engagement as well. Of course, all of these outcomes then have an impact on recruiting.