A Multiple Case Study of Four-Year Public, Non-flagship Universities: Meeting Common Institutional Goals of Increased Enrollment and Academic Profile

In this live episode of Admit It!, host Dr. Alex Fronduto sits down with Dr. Alicia Kornowa, Director of Admissions at Western Michigan University, to discuss her insightful SEM Conference presentation: “A Multiple Case Study of Four-Year Public, Non-flagship Universities: Meeting Common Institutional Goals of Increased Enrollment and Academic Profile.”

Dr. Kornowa shares findings from her multi-institution case study, highlighting the strategies, challenges, and shared themes among public non-flagship universities striving to grow enrollment while strengthening academic profile. The conversation explores what differentiates successful institutions, how leadership and organizational culture shape outcomes, and which data-driven approaches are proving most effective in today’s competitive landscape.

Host:

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

Guests:

Dr. Alicia Kornowa, Director of Admissions, Western Michigan University

Transcript

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Welcome to the Acro Admitted podcast, the podcast where we dive into the people, ideas, and strategies shaping the future of enrollment management. I'm your host, Doctor Alex Frandudo, the faculty lead of Higher Education Administration at Northeastern University. And today we're talking about the strategic enrollment Management conference that ACR held back in November 2025. I'll be interviewing a variety of presenters so we can discuss their findings from anything that they shared at the conference, for those that did not get to go to their session, or for those that weren't able to take time to go to the conference at all. I hope you enjoy hearing all of these different stories over the next coming months, and as always, if you'd like to be on the podcast, don't hesitate to reach out. Hello and welcome to the Admitted podcast. This is Doctor Alex Frangito, the host. I'm joined by Alicia Cornola, who did a presentation at our SEM conference called A Multiple Case Study of Four-year Public non-flagship universities, Meeting Common Institutional goals of Increased enrollment and academic profile. Well, thanks so much for being here, Alicia. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Well, thank you. So, Again, I'm doing a lot of different podcast recordings from a variety of different presenters, and I would love first for you to just introduce yourself so people know who you are, and then we can kind of dig into what you presented about. OK, thank you. Um, well, as you said, my name's Alicia. Uh, I serve as the director of admissions at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Um, that is my alma mater, all three of my degrees. Um, I started my career there and I'm now currently there for the past 7 years, but in between, I left and in total I've worked at 5 different universities in 4 different states, um, viewed mostly large public, um, but, um, a private institution also in New York, as well as then, um, served at institutions in Florida. In Ohio. And so there's been varying degrees of selectivity and, you know, missions and, you know, viewpoints that all of these institutions have had. So it really has brought me to, you know, a pretty well rounded viewpoint of admissions and enrollment management. I was going to say the exact same thing. I said that's that's a very marketable resume. Congratulations on having those experiences. And so. What drew you to even submit a proposal for this? Like, why, why were you like, yeah, I want to present this? Well, um, this is my dissertation research. I recently finished my, um, PhD, yes, um, at Western Michigan University, but I am a practitioner, you know, at, at heart. And so, of course, my topic was something that I can use. In my, uh, you know, using my day to day, um, world, so to speak, but, um, you know, throughout all of these, um, experiences, you see how students make college decisions and, you know, and you just start to kind of take some, get some lenses and kind of come up with your own like mini theories of sorts of what, how to position your university and what might attract students and all of that. And so, um, I wanted to kind of. Look through that lens. And ultimately, as I said, I'm at my alma mater. It is a 4 year public non-flagship institution. Um, and in for it's, it's not an easy go of it right now for to meet classes. And so I wanted to look at things through that practitioner lens, through the experiences that I've had, but then also kind of say like, OK, what about us? What about, you know, the, the universities that don't always have the name. And how can we be successful too? OK, OK, so I'm putting my dissertation chair and on as I do this as a living. Oh great, I swear I will. I know, I know you dispense. I swear, no, um, but tell me, so what was kind of your ultimate research question? Like who were your participants? Kind of dig in a little bit so people have context for the data. So it was a multiple case study, um. So, and it was an exploratory case study. And so what I did is really just asked out. So I identified public four-year non-flagships, and I do use that, that string of words very purposefully. Um, you know, people have asked, why don't you use regional, why don't you use comprehensive, all different kinds of things. And there's a lot of connotation that can come with that, right? There are many public four-year non-flagships that are national universities and. Recognized as research universities and so I just wanted to make sure that it was really clear and we weren't really having any kind of, you know, connotation that went with with terminology that's already out there. So it's also good qualifications when you're trying to really think about which schools you were probably looking at as your case study. Yeah, so, uh, we all know the enrollment cliff is here and it has been here for the Midwest and the Northeast for some time. So I did focus on. Um, institutions in those geographical areas that have already been navigating what we're probably going to see on a national level. Um, and so, um, I figured if they're successful there, they must be doing something right. And so I look at iPad's data to identify which public four-year non-flagships, um, had grown enrollment, and I just started with overall enrollment to begin with. And then I used the common data set or other. Of publicly available data, uh, usually on the institutional websites to identify the average GPA of their incoming first year class, um, at the start of the time period I was looking at, um, I looked at the most recent, um, 10 decade, 10 years, um, that's available on iPad, so 2013 to 2022, um, and then, um, so where were they at the start of that time period? Where were they at the end of that time period, um, and then kind of. Settled it down, making sure there were some commonalities between institutions, size, that they weren't highly selective, you know, that they were, um, they were residential place-based, you know, a very traditional type of campus experience. And when all is said and done, there were only 6 campuses, you know what it's funny that you say that because I was like, wow, I mean, there's a lot. Uh, the specification, which is good, right? You don't want to choose from 100, but even I was going to ask just alone, just thinking about increasing academic profile and enrollment right there is probably already going to limit and then trying to look at like a homogeneous mix is going to also, yeah, now there may have been more before the pandemic,-- so that's kind of a unique thing about my-- study, yeah, perfect to mention. But, um, but when all is said and done, I could verify 6. And I got 4 of them in my study. Wow, OK. I mean, that's pretty good too, just to be able to do that. And I think I have one question before we move on just because I think it will be important for people to understand. How did you define the increase in academic profile? So you said you looked at GPA, but if it was like 0.01 increase, did you just count that as increase,-- or was there was-- an increase? OK, so I was curious. So basically what I wanted to do is, um. I I didn't want anyone to assume that they grew just because they increased, or, you know, they just opened the floodgates and admitted everyone, right? No,-- and that's a good clarification-- because people could do that, right? Um, but that's also going to really impact, yes, your average GPA of your class, probably, um, but it's going to impact retention and graduation rates and all, and, you know, perhaps other things as well. And so I really wanted to make sure that, um, that we, I was looking at institutions that hadn't just This may not be fair, but you know, kind of taking the easy way to grow enrollment, right? And it doesn't mean that they're, you could then define it as like, are they increasing their tuition revenues like you said, if the retention isn't there, you know, I, I was also gonna wonder, did you look at anything, again, not all of this is publicly available, but you know, it's less common with public, so I think. I think I know your answer, but like people increasing their discount rates or getting additional aid, like that could be another way just to increase. Um, I didn't even know everything that was available publicly average debt, all of that. Yes, yes, exactly. You know, iPads is just a wealth of information, and I truly hope that, you know, that continues to be valuable. To us, um, so, but then you can find a lot. I mean, there are public, there are sunshine laws or whatever you call it, you know, um, transparency laws, and so you can find a lot when you really start to dig on institutional websites. So awesome. And so ultimately you did your study, obviously this is you disseminating your research, which is amazing. So for people that were here, right, you're definitely at a practitioner type of conference where, again, plenty of people obviously have also gotten their doctrine and things, but I assume that your presentation was catering towards the, what can you do with the information that I can share with you from my research? And so, what, what was some of that advice or takeaway strategy? if I'm like, OK, well, I want to increase my enrollment and academic profile, like, what did you do? Well, um, I do need to make sure, you know, I'm having my dissertation chair in the back of my head right now. But, you know, qualitative research isn't meant to be prescriptive. There we go. I love that.-- Thank-- you. So, you know, it's, um, and But it can be a guide, right? It can, um, it can be looked to, to say, well, if they did it, you know, and we're just like them, then perhaps we would see the same thing. Um, so, you know, the, the, the key takeaway is they practice SEM strategic enrollment, like, which sounds really obvious at a conference like this, but, you know, one of the things that is so unique, and I really didn't think about this until I started to do my research, but you know, we are so practitioner driven in Strategic enrollment management. And there's plenty of articles, there's probably thousands of articles written about strategic enrollment management, but I maybe found two articles that actually were in academic journals and peer reviewed journals that said they did this thing, and this is what they saw, right? So there's really not a lot out there that's kind of outcomes based, like, you know, um, which, so my research really supported the concepts. Of strategic enrollment management, um, and behind the scenes, um, beyond STEM, SEM is an example of systems theory, systems thinking, that's one of my theoretical foundations, um, as well as then, um, the concept of positive deviance, meaning you can do different things in honorable ways, um, you know, go against the norm for honorable intentions. And so those were kind of the theoretical references. So the takeaway, you know, at the highest level is STEM works. If you do it and put the time into it, right. Um, and there's not, uh, you know, these four campuses, there were absolutely themes that they all did, but those themes, how they fulfilled those themes didn't necessarily look identical. Um, you know, it was all based on their particular situations. Um, but the takeaway is STEM works, um, that this is a study that hopefully contributes to literature, giving some credibility as an Academic area, um, and discipline, something to research, um, within the academic enterprise, um, so perhaps having something like this faculty will start to, to, to give it more credibility, you know, what have you, um, but at the end, um, I'm really hoping that this can also be used, um, by enrollment management leaders to educate campus about strategic enrollment management and what it entails, um, but also I hope that it is. A high enough level where people can eat that don't practice them and it isn't their, you know, their day to day can start to understand how things are really interconnected, um, and how everyone at campus-wide really needs to focus on enrollment if there's going to be success. It sounds like something we want to hand a lot of university presidents.-- It-- seems I think there could be, I, I, I think there would be some, some, uh, it a, um, and then also one of the things that came out beyond the. Themes is it just, once I did the data analysis and figured out the themes, there was just this natural emergent framework that came out. So there's kind of a model that's based on systems theory that also can be used because, you know, sometimes the visual is easier for people to understand. So right, and as you said, like it might not be prescriptive, but a step by step, whatever you put within those steps could be different. But if you follow the steps, right, I mean, that's also STEM in general, right? Like you're making the plan, you're making, you know, you have a Strategic priorities of your institution and then how does that follow into your strategic enrollment management plan? I mean, I think that all seems to connect really well and I'm glad that your research also is showcasing that. So that's great to hear. Yeah, there were some interesting things that came out of it. Some of them for us here are kind of like, well, duh, you know,-- but-- you have to keep saying it. Like you said, there's not as many people saying it. Um, yeah, but there's some new things that came out of it too, not just the emergent framework. Um, there was the concepts of, um, Of investment as a kind of standalone look that has to be considered, not just an assumption that you have to spend money, but really that enrollment management's an investment, right? Um, the concept of setting goals and priorities and having those needing to be adopted, um, either set or adopted by the president, um, the highest levels of senior leadership, um, but then. There's some new things such as um a term I'm coining, enrollment management voice, um, if you have a better term, I'm, I'm very open to it, but really what it was is these four campuses, they positioned enrollment management to truly be experts and they relied on them for their professional knowledge and expertise and experience. And you know, that doesn't happen everywhere. And so they were like, politically and structurally given authority to, um, to really educate and, and, and hold people accountable and to educate, you know, so there's all kinds, that was kind of unique, and it really surfaced that people um We're really relied on for their expertise, um, you know, you theoretically you have to think people get hired for reasons, right? But there's so often the, the pet projects or whatever that can make their way into, right? I mean, I feel like what you're saying is that they're being, you know, that conductor of the train, you know, using as an analogy, they're being able to do that rather than listening to someone else that is navigating that train, right, which we know, again, you know, we are. I said this joke earlier, but right, certain people will navigate and think that they know what the strategic priority should be without the expertise. And, and that doesn't just apply to STEM, right? That applies to like anything in the world, right? And so I, I appreciate that. And again, I can't say it's, you know, causation, but it is interesting to hear that that was a theme. And again, your study was increased enrollment and academic profile. So, right, That kind of theme could play a role if people really listen to that and think like, OK, let me reflect at my institution is my enrollment management office, you know, leading the train? Are they the experts, um, so I appreciate you sharing that because I think that's helpful for anyone to kind of think about. Yeah, there were definitely cultural elements, although my study didn't focus on it. It, it, it's almost inevitable, but it came out, right, of course. You're going to be looking for one thing and then you're going to see everything else in your research. And so what's next? And you know, that's the biggest thing you just finished, it seems. So obviously breathing is, you know, definitely applicable. You've already disseminating because you're presenting, so that's awesome. That is myself as my dissertation chair to all my students. I say the same thing. Like, what are you going to do with this now? Um, so do you have plans? Like what do you think the next step is? Well, I I'm really hopeful that this can contribute to a profession that I just really Appreciate so much, right, um, and so yes, I'm presenting here, um, I have given myself a little break after, you know, um, and, um, but I will be taking my findings and writing a couple articles and we'll see, um, I, you know, already shared my background. I'm not at the beginning of my career. I'm towards the end and so I, um, did not end like tomorrow, but you know, um. You know, the back half of it at least, um, and so, you know, we'll, we'll see, um, I, yeah, who knows what tomorrow will bring. I love that. Um, I've been asking everyone this question just again, we're at the SEM conference right now. We're sitting in someone's presentation room actually recording this. You've been to SEM before. I see your badge. So thinking about people that maybe couldn't come this year, um, potentially on the fence, you know, even this year or other experiences. Just how has STEM been, how important is it, you know, if people are thinking about, is this something that I should be going to? Yeah, um, I really appreciate this conference. Um, it is a smaller conference compared to, you know, some of the larger national, uh, organizations, but what I find, especially at this point in my career, is that when I go to those national conferences, they're still wonderful. Um, you, you connect with colleagues and you learn some new things and Um, but really here, this is how the day to day, like when you're a leader within enrollment management, you have to stay ahead of what your team is doing, right? You have to stay ahead of what your campus is asking. And this conference really allows you to kind of get insight into what is next. Um, and especially for those who are on the recruitment, financial aid, or an enrollment management as a whole. Um, I just think this conference is really invaluable because you do get some higher level sessions, um, that aren't necessarily available at other conferences. I love that. Has there been any key takeaway that you've had so far? It's been about a day and a half. Anything that you're like, Wow, why you're really putting me on the spot, you know, I was curious. No, I always enjoy the ones where there's new research and insights. No surprise as a researcher, yeah, um, I don't know. I quite call myself that you are interesting. But yeah, so, um, I always enjoy those, um, and then the, like I said, the what, what's new and different, um, so yeah, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for doing this research again. Like you said, there is a gap. People are not always as willing to kind of share this information. So I wish you all the best. Congrats again. Thank you and thanks for being on the podcast. I appreciate you having me.