By Lian Bunny
Co- Photo Editor
St. Bonaventure University’s enrollment dipped from about 435 freshmen in the 2014-2015 academic year to about 390 freshmen in the 2015-2016 academic year. However, the enrollment trend is on the rise.
This year, Bernie Valento, vice president of enrollment, said there are about 430 freshmen.
“Like many colleges and universities throughout this region, we’ve been declining for several years,” he said. “The good news is this year we did see … an increase of more than 10 percent in terms of our freshman class. We’re really pleased with that.”
Douglas Brady, director of recruitment, agreed.
“We have some challenges, but we’re working really hard to meet those challenges,” Brady said.
Valento said the size of the freshman class will be final on the last day to withdraw from the university, the third Monday of the semester.
Overall new student numbers, including transfers, have improved as well. According to Valento, last year about 600 students enrolled at St. Bonaventure University, whereas about 730 enrolled this year.
He credits much of the recruitment success with a more collaborative and collective strategy. Valento said academic affairs, student affairs, intercollegiate athletics and many other units are working together.
The communication enhances efforts to recruit students, he added. It prevents multiple people from contacting a student on the same day, stumbling over each other rather than helping.
“[The enrollment team], on a regular basis, meets with the deans, with the chairs of the department,” he said.
This collaboration has been successful, especially for athletics, he said. Generally, the university enrolls about 75 freshmen recruited specifically for athletics. This year, approximately 100 were recruited.
“Not only is the tactic collaborative, it’s aggressive,” Valento said.“We’re doing everything from texting students to maximizing our effectiveness with social media.
We meet the students wherever they’re at, whether that’s print – we still do a lot of print material – we do electronic communications as in email, website, outreach, all these efforts [and] all these forms of media are very important.”
According to Valento, more than 100 people across the campus have contributed to a 29-page strategic recruitment plan. The board of trustees will vote on the plan during its meetings this weekend.
If approved, the plan will outline the university’s enrollment strategy for the next five years.
“It’s a living document, so it’s something that we’re constantly adding to,” he said. “It also has our on-campus events. So it outlines our on-campus and off-campus events, the dates and times we need to send communications inviting students, when we’ll send out email reminders [and] when we’ll be doing follow-up calls to students to be sure that we maximize the attendance at our events.”
Although this year’s enrollment numbers increased, Valento said it’s important to remember the size of the graduating classes. About 480 seniors graduated in the spring of 2016, so this year’s number of freshmen will not improve overall enrollment numbers.
“Now the good thing, if you keep the trend and continue to bring in more and more students, eventually your overall enrollment will continue to grow substantially,” he said.
According to Valento and Brady, the strategic recruitment plan should do just that – improve enrollment numbers.
“When you talk about the education you get here, the opportunities that you’re going to have as an undergraduate student, the opportunities you’ll have when you graduate at the price we offer it at, I think that’s what makes us one of the best values in the entire state and really in the entire country,” Brady said.
bunnyla13@bonaventure.edu
