Agenda

Registration fee includes: Full access to all conference sessions and materials, breakfast, lunch, and access to the networking reception on Monday, breakfast and lunch on Tuesday, breakfast on Wednesday, as well as refreshments and snacks throughout the conference.

Creating a Campus-Wide Commitment

This opening session will provide an overview of relevant data surrounding the large-scale demographic shifts happening in the United States, as well as data on the opportunity gaps facing low-income, first-generation, and/or students of color. You will be asked to weigh this information against both mission and financial realities at your institution, which are often at odds with one another.

During this block of working time, you will be asked to complete Section I in a provided workbook, which will help you establish a baseline lens for the conference by asking you to:

• Identify the goals and institutional priorities driving your diversity recruitment initiative;
• Specify which segments of students you are already successfully serving, and which you need to do a better job engaging and recruiting; and
• Rate the various “buckets” of recruitment tactics you are using to reach underrepresented students from strongest to weakest.

Many institutions connect with prospective underrepresented students while they are still in middle school or high school by offering educational sessions around financial aid and the college search/application process. These sessions both increase college-going literacy for low-income, first-generation, and/or students of color and help the institution build brand affinity and awareness early on. You will learn how one institution has successfully incorporated these educational sessions and a “coaching mindset” into its outreach strategy and how it is staying connected to these students as they approach the college-going age.

This two-part session will strengthen your understanding of how grit and other non-cognitive variables can unmask the potential for first-generation and low-income students in the admissions process. During Part 1, we will examine the typical challenges and strengths of these students and how these variables influence their college-going behavior. Next, we will look at how grit and other non-cognitive variables can be assessed on the administrator side.

We will engage in a comprehensive exercise wherein you will look over a selection of college applications and make observations about how they are or are not assessing for non-cognitive variables. You will end day 1 with a better understanding of, and potential rubrics for, how you might assess non-cognitive variables in your own admissions process.

Recruitment Tactics and Partnerships

Now that you have identified the segments of students need to do a better job of engaging and recruiting, it is critical to identify and build trusting relationships within the community that can be leveraged as pipelines to your institution. Community-based organizations such as nonprofits and faith-based organizations can be instrumental in building engagement in diverse communities, but—for lack of experience doing so—many institutions struggle to forge these external partnerships. This session will feature a case study from an institution that has formed several relationships with external community-based entities to help facilitate access and strengthen the recruitment pipeline for diverse groups of students. You will learn best practices for approaching these partnerships and tips for how to identify and build relationships with community-based partners in your own area.

Building upon the previous session, you will engage in a hands-on activity that will help you identify and plan for potential external partnerships in your own area. Using a laptop, you will be asked to research and identify one to three potential community-based partners in your area and will develop a mini action-plan for how you will go about connecting with these partners when you return to campus. At the end of the activity, you will be asked to share your findings with the rest of the group.

Many institutions are using fly-in programs or other specialized on-campus events as a yield strategy to help their admitted underrepresented students get acquainted with campus and hopefully decide to deposit and enroll. This session is a closer look into recruitment events strategies that different institutions are using specifically for their admitted underrepresented student populations.

This block of working time will be focused on idea-sharing around recruitment events for underrepresented students. You will be given a brief worksheet to fill out, detailing the finer points of your own recruitment events strategy, and will then be divided into smaller groups based on institutional size to discuss and share ideas with others.

The final session of Day 2 will focus on the all-important impact of financial aid packaging and merit scholarships for both the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students. Our presenter will share data and details about how their institution’s thought process and strategy evolved to reflect the institutional commitment to recruiting and supporting more underrepresented students. Our expert will also offer lessons learned and tips for those looking to advance this conversation on their own campuses.

Bringing it All Together

Research has shown that summer melt occurs at much higher rates among first-generation and low-income students than among other student populations. We will provide data and statistics around this phenomenon and showcase different strategies that institutions are using to help combat summer melt among incoming underrepresented students.

You will be asked to look critically at and workshop your own anti-summer melt strategy as it pertains specifically to your incoming underrepresented student populations. We will discuss and share ideas as a larger group at the end of the activity.

In this closing session, you will reflect on your major takeaways from the conference and create an action plan for your return to campus.