AACRAO Annual Meeting 2025 Session Overview – Enhancing Enrollment through Community Engagement in Rural and Marginalized Communities

In this multi-part series, we speak with professionals who presented at the AACRAO Annual Meeting and discuss the key points of their presentation in case you missed it at the conference. These will help you move forward as you plan for the next recruitment cycle.

This episode features Alicia Kalka, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, and Summer Boggess, Director of Admissions, from Fairmont State University, who led a fantastic session on Enhancing Enrollment through Community Engagement in Rural and Marginalized Communities. This episode highlights how community engagement events have connected underserved communities in West Virginia with opportunities in higher education. We dive into how these initiatives were implemented and the impact they've had on post-secondary enrollment.

Host:

Dr. Alex Fronduto
Faculty Lead, M.Ed in Higher Education Administration & Associate Teaching Professor, Northeastern University

Guests:

Alicia Kalka, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, Fairmont State University

Summer Boggess, Director of Admissions, Fairmont State University

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to a special live edition about it. I'm Alex Fardudo, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University, and we're coming to you from the 2025 ACro annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. This episode is part of our conference conversation series where we sit down with presenters to dive deeper into their sessions and insights. Joining me today is Alicia Calca, associate vice president for enrollment management, and Summer Bogus, director of admissions, both from Fairmont State University. They led an insightful session on enhancing enrollment through community engagement in rural and marginalized communities. I'm excited to hear more about their work and their key takeaways from their session. Well, thank you both so much for being here. Alex, thank you for having us.-- Thank-- you. We're excited to be here. Well, I know so many people are gonna want to listen to this topic, whether they were in your session, they were not at the conference, but just to give them a little bit of idea who you both are, can you both just introduce yourselves? Sure, I'm Summer August. I'm the director of admissions at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, West Virginia. And my name is Alicia Cala. I'm the associate vice president for enrollment management at Fairmont State University. So tell me a little bit about how you thought about this session. So, obviously Acro did a call for session proposals. What made you be like, we need to present? Um, well, honestly, a lot of this for us started probably about 4 years ago. Summer and I have been working closely together in the enrollment management field, um, and honestly, it came from a conversation that she and I were having about how can we increase access into higher education. What do we need to do, um, to help move the needle in the state of West Virginia with college attainability. So we know that a lot of our students are coming from rural and marginalized communities, again predominantly from within the state of West Virginia. We have the 3rd largest market share. So when we're trying to increase access and increase uh college attainability and helping students understand that process. We knew that the best way to do that was to go out into the communities and actually meet the students where they are. Yeah, so we've, um, we've worked with our admissions counselors and looking at our data and this has become important to us because we want to cut barriers for students and we know that sometimes expecting them to come to us from predominantly first generation backgrounds, um, that's a big expectation to say you don't know what the process is, you don't know, um, the cost, you don't know how you're gonna handle this, but come to us and then we'll give you information so we wanted to flip that and we've been doing it for a few years and it's been very successful for us and we just decided it would be great for us to share this with other people. I love that. I love two pieces, right? Obviously the attainability and you're saying meeting them where they are, especially for those that aren't as aware of West Virginia, can you give any demographics information like you were saying in terms of college attainment and things like that? So prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, uh, our college attainability rate in the state of West Virginia, it was a little over 50%. And um that was something that we were proud of. Again, I still think that there's a lot of opportunity there for growth, but we were proud of that because it was still growing. Since COVID-19 though, our college attainability rate in the state of West Virginia had dropped about 4 or 5% points, which for us, that's huge, OK, and again, you have to put all this into perspective that, you know, our state has had a declining population and We have had fewer high school graduates going to college. So the positive news for us and again even on a statewide level is that, you know, our higher education policy commission has launched lots of state initiatives to also help encourage college attainability uh so now it is again increasing, um, and going back in the right direction. I appreciate you sharing kind of all the different initiatives as well, you know, it is that partnership at times it's really important. And so talk to me a little bit about where you started and I'm sure this was probably where you start in your presentation, like, where did you start? How did you get the buy-in? Yeah, so we actually initiated an event, um, that we host around the state of West Virginia about 10 years ago. It's called our so scholarship event. We're the Falcons, so we soar, um, and this was an initiative, uh, it was twofold. It was first off, um, we wanted to offer scholarship, so it's an event where basically you attend and you get a $500 scholarship, easiest scholarship they're ever gonna get, um, and we take this to our communities and we said several years ago, you know, we want to connect with students and their support system and what better way to do it than to go. Go to where they are because it is an investment of time and money for them to come to us so we've been doing this for a long time where we take a roadshow basically from Fairmont State we take um financial aid and housing representatives from all of our academic colleges and we go to our communities. So that's kind of what started um our community engagement events. Yeah, I would say I agree with everything some are saying a lot of, a lot of um the work that we're doing with our community engagement events and what makes us so unique. It's again like we're taking all of these different office representatives or experts in their area to the students and in their community. So Summer talks a lot about, we have a particular community that we focus, that we've been focusing on even in our presentation and then. Um, it's a story about a community engagement event that we had in Elkins, West Virginia, which most people across the nation may not know where Elkins, West Virginia is, but we started there and we went there again because one of our recruiters had mentioned to us, hey, I think we should focus on this area because we've been going a lot to Charleston and Charleston is our capital city. And once we went there, And again, if being familiar with Elkins, there are 3 neighboring high schools there. Um, we had many students attend and their families, and again, we were able to make those connections and ultimately we had students walking away with not just a, not just an application to go to Fairmont State but also even completing their housing applications. So, again, anytime you have food and you're in a relaxed environment. And whether or not you're eating chicken wings or you're having some chips and queso, I think it when someone talks about breaking barriers, one way in which we do that is by eating, eating food together, right? Enjoying. Enjoying a meal,-- breaking-- bread, yeah, so our, our store scholarship events are much more formal in nature, and what I was just describing is we just call it a community engagement event. We need to come up with a name for it, but we go to these restaurants and it's very casual, so we, we want it to be comfortable. We want it to be casual. We want to break as many barriers as we can in that connection. You stole the next question. I was wondering because you started talking about school, so I was like, do you go to the school but is that really just like a college visits. So it seems like definitely like you're saying more informal at a restaurant. Are you doing like presentations or are you kind of making it more casual kind of talk to me about kind of how is it set up for a typical event. So we typically just set up a small admissions table. We recruit, um, we invite students, anybody who's in our system from that geographic area, so that could be prospects, inquiries, applicants, anybody. So a lots of different points in the funnel, um, and we just have internal partners, usually at least 3 of us go sometimes up to 6 or 7, and we just mingle and so we normally order like appetizer trays and just have, um, students and families come in and just grab some food and. And we just start talking to them and we talk about, you know, uh, just their interests and it ultimately turns into what they see their barriers are and what's keeping them from going to college or what they're nervous about. And 9 times out of 10 we can in a simple conversation because we've established a connection with them we can take care of those things or we can lighten some of those burdens for them. So it is very casual, yeah. It's not a physical barrier, but the same idea when you have like a presentation or it's an open house, you know, there is that wall it's something and so you're trying to break that down as well, which I think clearly has been helping, I, yeah, um, talk to me about the buy in. So obviously you said there are other offices involved. Are they all overseen by enrollment management or some of them other departments in in the college? Like how did you get everyone to say like this is important. How do we,-- how do we-- move forward? Well, I think a lot of that again, uh, you know, starts at the top. So our president, uh, which is Doctor Mike Davis, um, he's highly supportive of our enrollment management efforts and We also have a vice president of enrollment management, uh, George Wolf, who's worked in enrollment management for 30 years. I, I, I start there because again, when you have supportive leadership at the top of your university who believes in enrollment, who understands enrollment, believes in the work that your recruiters do, then I think that that will resonate across the university. The second piece for me, uh, I talk about this a lot, it's relationship building. So I've worked at the university now for 11 years. I've been in higher ed for 21. And so for me, a lot of the people that are coming with us, they're more than just a colleague, they're a friend, you know, they're someone who I've worked with and I've known for over a decade in some cases. Also, I would say that a lot of our, a lot of our colleagues and friends at the university. They want us to be successful. So they're going to buy in because they know that if we're successful, ultimately it helps them. This isn't, I know when people hear about the work that we're doing as it pertains to community engagement. And they, they get concerned about how much time commitment it is. And that's something that I keep trying to relate to folks that it really is how you reshape and re-shift the time because for us, this has become one of our priorities. It's not the only priority that we have, of course, as far as enrollment strategy. But it is a priority for us to make sure that as we continue to grow our market share even out of state that we continue to go to students and where they are. We know that many families right now cannot afford even to come to our campus because they can't afford to take off work. I mean, taking off an entire day of work to come to a campus and visit and tour for many of our families is not feasible. And again, that's not just in the state of West Virginia. So everything that we're doing in our initiative, it's completely transferable to other areas across the United States. And when we started our more casual events, we had a history of doing our short scholarship events. So our academic colleges really see that as a recruitment tool for them. And they love those. They love to go and be the expert over their field and to talk to students and so we already had some buy-in as we changed and shift gears and went to a more casual so they understand that it's not quite as big as a scholarship event, uh, but when we invite them and we're selective as to who we invite and when just based on how many students have signed up, um, because we wanna make sure that we're cognizant of everybody's time. Um, so they already understand what we're doing and um we typically take somebody from housing or financial aid student affairs, um, just so we have a mix of representation on campus, but it wasn't hard to get buy in because they already saw the benefit of us going to these communities with this scholarship event. I love that. I mean, I think that hurdle and sometimes can be more difficult, so it seems like that wasn't the case, you know, aligning your whole institution to the mission and understanding enrollment is so crucial and so. I, I appreciate you sharing that. Do you feel like, if there was, like, how would you be gone through that? Like, if there's people listening right now and they're like, I can't get faculty to do anything, like, how do I go across that hurdle? Like, is there a certain advice you would give? Yeah, so we always take 3 people from my office. So the event coordinator who does a fantastic job planning all of these, she goes, uh, the territory admissions counselor and then one of the leaders in our office, myself, my associate. Director or my assistant director, so there's always at least 3 people we know enough high level of the entire university that we can do it by ourselves, um, but then we just like to share stories with campus partners and we've done it for a long enough time that we have stories of students who are current students. Um, we talked about one of our students yesterday that she decided to come to Fairmot state because of this event and at this event she told me that she walked. The door leaning towards another institution she had already visited campus at that point and she came with her mom and dad and she left with a completed housing application and she said, I committed to Fairmont State that night. So I think sometimes sharing those stories of hey we're doing things that are affecting our current students. um, these students are coming to us because of these events. I think we've built that history, um, but I, I would say start with. Do you have in your office, uh, take pictures and share stories of conversations that you have, um, because I think that will speak for itself. Yeah,-- and-- I think from a data standpoint, right? Like you're saying like if you have to show to say we did it, you know, this person obviously ended up depositing and enrolling. And we talked a bit about, you know, when, when we, again, we talk about data a lot and higher education and You know, especially as an enrollment leader, making sure that the top of your funnel was healthy and growing applications and there's always such a. A draw for that. Um, and one of the, the pieces of data that we covered yesterday, of course, is that there is impact, there is ROI to our community engagement events. So from our students who attended our community engagement events, um, there was nearly like a 35-40%, um, you know, likelihood that they would be filling out or they would have a class registration, OK, for the upcoming term. So, And again, maybe for some universities they might think, well, that's not a lot though but that grows, of course, right that continues to grow. It catches on and what I mean by saying that it catches on because now in the state of West Virginia, Fairmont State is known, uh, to be out in our communities and again, not even in just West Virginia, it's also in Ohio. We're also in Pennsylvania. Um, so I, I lean a lot on sharing data with other stakeholders across the university as it pertains to the impact of these events because I think once folks hear that students who come to our events are more likely to register for an upcoming term, that in and of itself shows the impact of the event. And we're very intentional at these events too about getting something out of it so it's not just about having a fun time and eating wings at, you know, Buffalo Wild Wings. It's, uh, I mean that's kind of it, um, but I mean I love a wings as much as anybody, but, um, it's we want to leave having done next steps with students and again cutting those barriers and saying, you know, you don't know what the process is, but we do and I have access to help you. Right now I can, I can help you register to sign up to send that transcript. I can help you sign up for that new student orientation, um, and so when we leave these events we have interacted with all of the students, both of us have, and we have walked them through. So I would say if you're trying this, you know, take, keep record of the next steps that you're doing, um, that wouldn't have been done if you weren't at that event with that student. And you know, we're talking a lot about enrollment and obviously that is a goal, but I know even as you're highlighting the idea of like marginalized communities and pieces like that just like the impact in terms of the state where we kind of started this conversation. I'm curious, other. I hate to go back to data, but it's a different type of data, right? Like, so in terms of like diversity profiles or anything like that, like, have you, how has that played as you've also kind of done these events? So again, I was in the state of West Virginia and again that uh whenever you think about what I would call basic needs and access, right? Many of our, there are so many areas of our state that Our students are still struggling with even having what I would call basic internet access. So for us, when we go out to these communities and we're having an event at a BW3 or an Applebee's or Um, even, even going to a park, we've had picnics, then our recruiters bring their cell phones and establish a hotspot and make sure that again we can provide nearly like a one-stop shop for the entire admissions process for these students and I would say that again, that's not just in West Virginia. You look at so many areas of the nation where there are rural areas that don't have basic needs that are being met, um, and when you go to them and you give them these opportunities and you sit and you talk with them, then they realize that college can be attainable. I think that for us, we'll continue to increase. And grow our diversity profile over the next several years as we continue to grow in the ways in which we are increasing access. So I think a lot of it goes back to when you're looking at how to grow your profile at the university, which of course, you know, we're always looking for ways to do that. I've been talking a lot about our international student recruitment and you know, ways in which we need to grow that, um. And that takes time. It does. It takes time, it takes partnerships, and it takes, uh, you know, even talking about your university and things of that nature. And I like that you mentioned, right, the diff different types of students as well. You, you mentioned international. I'm curious, even from the beginning, as you were saying, it takes time, there needs to be momentum. It seems like you've hit that momentum, you're known for it. And so I feel like another piece of advice is also to not stop right, right away, right? Like you can't, if you have one unsuccessful event, that doesn't mean that you should stop doing that piece. Absolutely. I mean, we've we've had some that May not have been the most successful um and that's gonna happen and we've tweaked and we're continuing to tweak how we do this and to make it cost effective and effective for the students and for our internal partners so we're continuing to learn how to do it and how to reach our our students and our goals in doing this um are to cut barriers to build connections and then give information and so if we keep that in mind and just keep tweaking it um we're improving in that and we actually kind of like a. Small attendance because typically students are gonna bring two guests with them. So if you have 6 or 7 students, I mean that's upwards of, you know, 2025 people, um, and you wanna make sure that you're giving a lot of attention to them. So we define success differently than we used to, you know, when we first started this, we said a successful event is like a short scholarship event where we have 100 people. Well, that's not, that's not the picture of success now and that's gonna continue to evolve and change. I love that you said that it could be measured differently, and I think that's important. Also, sometimes everyone thinks things have to be at a grand scale. It has to be your open house size. It has to do that. So I think, you know, that question of ROI comes back right and thinking about that, and I think it's important, like you said, to Differentiate and tell the right story, even if it's not fully data driven, right? Like, obviously we love data, but I appreciate you sharing that. This is definitely something, you know, this, this type of initiative does require momentum and it does require that you stay with it. Um, you know, we always talk about how, um, any good recruitment strategy, you need to give it at least 3 to 5 years. So whether or not that's pursuing uh uh uh Again, a different, a different application that you're gonna be using or or whether or not it's a different recruitment strategy or you're looking at a different. Uh, market segment, trying something for just a year is not enough, um, because again, sometimes things take a little while before they actually stick. I would say for us though, they stuck, they stuck pretty quickly. Um, so the first, the first year that we started doing this, um, I think we were both amazed at how many students and families. wanted to come out and talk to us, but they again found it more convenient than coming to the campus in many ways because we were all there. We were in their backyard. In many cases, we were only 1520 minutes away from their house. So, we made it much more accessible and then they could talk to us about anything. You know, I shared with folks yesterday when we go to these events, we don't look like this, you know, we're not all buttoned up. We're, we're casual, you know, so students and families feel comfortable talking to us, um, as administrators in the university. I think it's, it's so exciting to look back on the 3 years that we've been doing this because now we have connections with current students and we see them on campus and we established those connections again over wings or, you know, pretzel sticks or whatever, um, and again casual, but it's, it's exciting to look back and say, hey, I met you at an Applebee's and now you work as a student ambassador in my office, uh, because we built a connection and so that it's just a. Exciting to be able to look back and see that, but um there's no other time even in our on campus open house events that a student can have a meaningful conversation for half an hour or 45 minutes with an associate vice president or the director of admissions or a housing representative, let alone all three of those, that's not gonna happen because there's so many other things going on at those events so it really means something to our students and their families to say, hey, I, I got to spend time. With Alicia. I got to talk to someone who has influence and and power at the university, and that's just, that's a big deal for them. Yeah, I can hear like that value piece, right? Like you took the time to be here and come to us, right? Like you're saying, I think that that value is a huge piece. I'm curious, this is kind of an aside. But obviously it's great to go to them. So the question is, we know that it's hard for them to go to you. So do you find that some of these students are still going to visit, or do you feel like they are trying to make this decision just based off this event? I'm curious like that next piece, right? Like getting them through, especially if it's just like an app conversion at the event, let's say. Yeah. So we always want them to to visit campus and we have some things in place, um, we have campus visitors every day from around the state and from our region, so we're. are coming to campus. We have some um plans in place with our high schools in the area that we pay for bussing and for lunches to bring school groups. So we're doing everything we can to get them on campus. And the student that I mentioned earlier, she had already visited campus prior to coming to this event at an Applebee's. So she had seen us and so it's kind of compounding on itself and so we like to plan these events to where we're always promoting the next thing, the next engagement, whether it's an individual campus visit or one of these scholarship events or our on campus, um, open house, we're always pushing. The next time that we can see them because the connection that we have with them, it doesn't stop over a plate of wings it potentially starts there or it's potentially being carried over from a time that we met them before and we have another student who works in our office that we initially met her at one of these scholarship events, um, and then she came a couple weeks later to one of these events and, and now she's a student with us and high level student, um, could have picked any institution in the state and qualified actually for one of our top tier scholarships and she chose us I think because we built that connection. So we're always promoting them to come to campus and we do provide opportunities for that as well. Yeah, I, I think it's great to hear about like the buses and piece because that was kind of what I was getting. Of course we want people to visit, of course, you know, we know that campus visits, you know, helps with yields, but I was curious about that piece, right? If we know that it's going to be harder for them to get to campus and so it's great that, you know, you've been able to put those resources and budget to help that as well. And we also see that sometimes once students and families spend time with us and they see that we're real people and we share our stories about being first gen students as well and our, our struggle that um. It's worth the investment then, so they don't mind taking the day off of work after they've connected with us, so it builds on itself. It goes back to the relationship, you know, again, once you establish the relationship with the student and the family, then they're gonna be more likely to take that. Yeah, I think that's a really crucial point. And I think for those that are listening, right, understanding that piece, right, because if you go to them first, right, instead of expecting that first, it's going to hopefully help you with, you know, increasing your visitors on campus anyways. And so, you know, we covered a lot, but I always like to kind of end is there anything in your session or what we're talking about today that we didn't cover, you know, or any advice to anyone that you want to share before we end today? I just think that as we're all talking about the enrollment cliff, uh, that is on the horizon and higher education that we still have to be, um, willing and courageous in how we're recruiting students. So it's being bold and trying new strategies. In some ways it's going back to what I call grassroots efforts and it's truly meeting students where they are. You know, one of the one of the biggest. Takeaways for me over the last 3 or 4 years of doing these and going to students and going across um the region is that I'm learning more and more about who we're recruiting. So that's a takeaway for any enrollment leader. In order to grow your enrollment, and in order to see the success that you're wanting to see, then you truly need to understand who it is that you're enrolling and recruiting. And I think once you know that, you will see success. Fairmont State for the first time in many years, just saw to total enrollment increase for the spring 25 semester, and I would say that these events, along with many other initiatives, this was not the only thing and I'm transparent about that. Obviously again between our president. And leadership at the university, there has been a lot of opportunity for us to launch many initiatives that have helped us grow enrollment, but Once you develop something and you stick with it, then you will start to see, you know, the fruits of your success. So we live in this high tech world now, um, and you know AI and chat GPT are taking over, uh, but I read an article last week that said that uh face to face recruitment is still the most effective way to do it and so I think just combining the two worlds, you know, being high tech and high touch and so I would just encourage you to think of how can you maximize both and for us going to them and then using that technology to uh invite them to come but also while we're there and after um combining the two has been very effective for us. So I would just say just. You know, don't lose that face to face connection and rely too heavily on technology. Exactly right? We say that it's like a shift in work. If anything, it's allowing especially recruiters, boots on the ground to do more of that relationship building if you can streamline other processes or other things they're doing in the background and so I appreciate that that is have always been my belief and still is now as we go into the Gen AI. Well, thank you both so much for coming on the podcast. I so appreciate it. Thank you, Alex.