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It’s no question that the class sizes at Elizabethtown College are declining. This follows a national trend for small schools and does not set the College out of the norm for schools of similar sizes. One thing that does set Etown apart from some of the other schools is that Etown’s admissions and enrollment staff are really starting to do something about it.

Etown welcomed two new major players to the admissions and enrollment teams: Vice President for Enrollment Management John F. Champoli and Senior Director of Admissions Adam Smith. Both Champoli and Smith come from Husson University in Maine; Champoli had been there for four years and Smith for 10. They helped Husson see some of their largest classes ever.

Champoli has also worked at The State University of New York, Lycoming College and Green Mountain College. He has worked many different admissions-related jobs, including a counselor and a director of international recruitment.

He says that he has seen the most success in schools that are willing to change and keep an open mind. He believes that Etown is very open to changes that have been proposed so far and the senior leadership team has been working very hard with assessing the programs that the school has or could have and setting the College up to succeed in every possible way.

One of the first issues that Champoli has been directly addressing is the lack of recruiters at Etown. The College has been trying to solve the problem of how to get more reach and have worked to solve this problem by hiring two part-time recruiters who will attend college fairs in the evenings in Maryland, Virginia, New York (specifically Long Island) and New Jersey. This will expose more high schoolers to Etown, therefore expanding the reach.

The College is able to obtain data from the College Board that helps to create a dialogue in each student’s “language,” as Champoli explained. For example, this may ask students something like “What freaks you out about college?” so that colleges can target students with answers that would try to make them feel better. The main goal behind this practice is to give students what they care about, which is usually only about five percent of a college’s statement.

Instead of overwhelming incoming students with information, the College only wants to include what is relevant to students as well as being transparent about student worries and fears.

Another issue that is being tackled by the admissions department is how to get high school students to come to and be interested in Etown. One of the main things that is going to be used to work with this are the programs that admissions runs such as Open Houses, Accepted Student Days, Jay for a Day visits and more. There has been a revamp to many of these programs as well as some changes made to the campus tours in general.

According to Champoli, the Open House Sept. 14 went very well, and there were many comments from parents about how great the energy was. Parents were also commenting that the tour guides and the Open House schedule were “better than other schools.”

Because the Open House went so well, this year there will be an extra Open House Nov. 9. Champoli said that while the September Open House was well attended and was a generally positive experience, it was at the very beginning of what he calls “travel season.” If Etown only had one Open House after that, it would not give much of an option to those high school students who travel later in the semester.

Smith and Director of Admissions and Coordinator of International Recruitment Lauren Deibler have been working to organize and strategize to make improvements to admissions and admissions events. Another change is that the “Jaywalkers” are going to be renamed and will be getting more professional uniforms.

These changes, as well as many of the other updates and the new tour route, were announced to the tour guides at a meeting Sept. 8. Associate Director & Coordinator of Multicultural Recruitment David Stewart will be helping with diversity through both current and prospective students.