Credentialing Your Campus: Building a Culture of Learning Within Your Enrollment Team

In this live episode of Admit It!, host Dr. Alex Fronduto sits down with Dr. Shannon Fuhrman, Director of Training & Development at Regent University, to discuss her engaging SEM Conference presentation: “Credentialing Your Campus: Building a Culture of Learning Within Your Enrollment Team.”

Shannon shares how Regent University has developed a structured credentialing model to strengthen professional growth, elevate staff expertise, and foster a culture of continuous learning within enrollment management. The conversation explores why credentialing matters, how it improves team performance and morale, and what it takes to implement a scalable, sustainable learning framework on campus.

Host:

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

Guests:

Dr. Shannon Fuhrman, Director of Training & Development, Regent University

Transcript

0:09

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 Ferdudo live at the SEM conference. Excited to be joined by Doctor Shannon Furman from Regent University, and her session at the SEM conference was credentialing your campus, building a culture of learning within your enrollment team. Well, thank you, Shannon, so much for being here. Thanks. So first off, just again, people may have not gone to your session, may have no. Idea who you are. So could you give just a quick intro to your background? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, um, as you mentioned, Doctor Shannon Furman, um, most of my students just call me Doctor F. Doctor F, OK. I also am Doctor F, so this could be confusing. Yes, yeah, we just won't be that at the same time, um, but I think for, um, just like my institutional profile, I work at a nonprofit. A private institution with about 13,000 students, but the majority are online. Um, I've been in higher education for about 13 years, uh, collectively and everything from recruitment all the way now to senior director of training and development, um, but my session is really focused on understanding staff retention and how we can utilize professional development tools to really focus on. How staff retention can really boost student retention long term. So the idea of happy staff, happy students, ideally, yes, right, if they're happy to be there, they're going to provide quality services to students and so. Talk to me first about the background. What brought you to try to do this? Is it stemmed from like COVID, great resignation, redefining work values? Like, is it all of that kind of piece built in, or is it just generally you've always wanted to obviously retain more staff? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think for me, Um, I think it's important to know that like as a leader now, you know, being able to have that perspective, I've been in both roles, you know, so I've been on the front side where you're maybe not as valued or feel that valued, and as a leader I now have that, um, really intense responsibility of ensuring that my team and by extension the staff that we serve mutually together also have that same opportunity. Um, also, a lot of my research is centered around employee relations. al health, psychology, and support, um, and so it's just something that really is important to me. I think we need to spend more time focusing on staff development because it really is the heart of our institutions is how our staff serve students to create better lasting relationships and connections. OK. And so without digging too much into the data world, but obviously you're consistently thinking about staff retention. Every institution is probably thinking about this. And so talk to me a little bit about what brought on this specific piece. So clearly you're thinking about credentialing professional development. In general, Many institutions, not on the credentialing side, but professional development are always thinking like this is the solving problem. We, we will upscale our staff and they're going to be happy. And so I'm curious about kind of what was the route you got to this point, like what brought it on. Yeah, so in March of 2024. Our internal enrollment management department, which is almost close to 300 employees in total, um, experienced a pretty intense leadership shift, and after that took place, we sort of internally as a leadership regrouped and we realized, you know, maybe we need to think about like is our workplace, is our workplace culture in general a place where employees feel valued and could be developed further to support retention. So, you know, we had to take that long look in the mirror to figure out, you know, are, are we really doing things right? So we conducted something called a stay interview project, um, which is an ongoing retention initiative where we meet on a six-month cycle with our staff. Um, we pull them at random and we do interview transcripts to ask them questions about how they feel valued. Um, do they enjoy who they work with, you know, what are things that maybe could make them feel like they're not as valued within our organization or what would cause them to leave? And so we use that data as leverage to create and shape staff policy changes, um, as well as developing support programs to figure out what is it that employees really want. OK. And so this is gonna be a side question just because you said it. Doing it, obviously, as you kind of psychological safety is something that you even mentioned is something you're interested in in workplace culture. How are you building a sense of belonging to the point, at least that people feel like they could be sharing this type of information, right? There's this idea that like maybe I'm not gonna share negative feedback in terms of retaliation, retribution. So how are you overcoming that because I think that would Probably be a hard thing to try to do. 0, 100%, um, and I will never sit here and tell you that it's been perfect, sunshine and rainbows the whole time, um, but I think a lot of how we have structured this program is by creating trained facilitators that are not core supervisors of staff. So we've really eliminated that hierarchical structure that provides that. Kind of added internal cultural pressure and what we've done is we've given them the option to participate or not. So just because somebody's selected and we sit down and we have a conversation, they have the opportunity to pull out at any time. What I find is that most employees are more than willing to give unsolicited feedback at any point, um, which of course comes with its own set of unique challenges, OK. Um, and so this then led into obviously this idea of credentialing and so talk to me a little bit about what that looks like. What, what are you talking about in your session? Yeah, so, um, we talked a little bit about the state interview structure, but ultimately that state interview research led us to really figure out, well, how do we practically solve for these issues, you know, one of the big things that came up was pay disparity among our employees, you know, and while I Unfortunately don't have control over all of our staff budgets as much as I would love to, um, and we work for a nonprofit institution naturally that's gonna be kind of in conflict with, um, talking about, um, staff pay negotiation, tiered pay, um, but that is something that we're working towards. We're creating advocacy opportunities with our HR staff to figure out how can we support employees with either incentivizing, not necessarily enrollment, but their development. As a whole that can kind of offset some of those other costs, um, so that's kind of its own separate issue, but one of the other things that has come up was a real need for understanding professional growth pathways, you know, a lot of people desired, um, wanting to grow but had no idea where to start, and that was like 87% of our staff that were surveyed. And so with that we said, well, why don't we start maybe a mentorship program and see how that goes, um, so. We created something called like a three-tiered mentorship program. We have a peer partner which is at the peer to peer level. Um, as soon as a new employee isn't onboarding, that peer partnership lasts 60 to 90 days. Um, we also have a traditional mentor which is where a staff member is employed, um, paired with somebody that's at least, you know, 2 to 3 levels above them for career mentorship. They set goals and that's usually like a 6 to 8 month. Relationship and then the last one is our career coaches, folks that are trained, um, they happen to be my direct staff that I oversee, um, but they provide career resume workshop skills, um, discussions on creating annual goals for perform like performance reviews, um, and everything in between. So, um, the last thing would be the actual credential model which is that development program pathway. So we took a look at what were the core competencies. That a lot of our staff are looking to kind of grow as young professionals and even advanced professionals. We cater to over, you know, 5 different generations, um, across our staff, which is huge and frankly, um, really big problem, um, in that it's, it's a lot of different people, different opinions to serve, and different interests and values. So we created a series of programs that sort of picked up on. Um, meeting people where they are, so we developed baseline leadership level programs. Uh, an example of that is our managers toolkit program. Um, so it's like a six-week program that's led internally by our staff, um, specifically our associate directors and up that volunteer their time. We also have another program that is a simple, like 90 minute workshop where, um, anybody can earn like a student emotional. Intelligence badge. Um, so you know, you have to get kind of creative to figure out like what are the competencies that people are looking for, but also they feel like develop them as professionals, and we survey for that, but in a nutshell, that's really what our session focuses on. And the buy-in, so I, I guess one, how is it being adopted, and two, from the manager standpoint, right, there's always this friction of, oh. My employee is spending time doing these things instead of what they would deem their responsibilities for sure. And so like, how are you balancing those two because like part of it, one is like intrinsic motivation on the employee, and the one is kind of the extrinsic in terms of like, do they get the support from their supervisor. Yeah, and That's such a fair point. Um, when we started this program, I ultimately was like, I'm gonna have to hunt people down, right, to, to try to, to be in these programs. But what I was really surprised by was that I actually ended up being so overwhelmed by the level of interest we had to create waiting lists. Wow, um, I think the truth is, is that employees at any level are starved for development and attention. They brave recognition in any form that they can get it and um you know we can provide that in a variety of different options but it has to be unique to the culture in which we work in so everybody's situation is gonna look very different whether it's your office or my office um but I think from a managerial perspective what we really had to focus on was balancing, you know, the, the business timeline of the work that we do in higher education with the staff development. Peace. So for example, um, we've negotiated with all of our managers and supervisors that we don't run classes during our blackout season, for example. So, um, that's our peak performance season for those of us that aren't familiar with the term, um, as well, like nobody takes vacation, we're all just kind of like hunkered down focused on enrollment goals, um, but you know we're talking maybe 4 to 6 weeks twice a year. That's a really small amount of time. The reality is, we've structured our program so that they're really not away from their desks or away from productivity for more than 90 minutes at a time, at any given time or, you know, no more than maybe 6 to 8 weeks at a time. So we've designed programs specifically that are not meant to interrupt the workflow so that there's really no argument on the part of the manager. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't still arguments.-- I was gonna say it's not perfect-- always, but I. I think it's about encouraging our leaders to really self-reflect as well and understand that, you know, we share this burden of responsibility to develop our staff together. This isn't just a, you know, Shannon's team versus them. It's really a, a collaborative team effort. And, you know, if they understand the need for leadership from their perspective and how they can, you know, create that buy-in and show value of their employees, then the odds are that their employees are gonna be twice as successful because they sense that. I guess element of camaraderie and and having that shared value system, so I, I appreciate you sharing that and that, you know, there's this interest and, you know, there is that buy-in. Um, so with that, as you were saying, people are doing it, which is great, it's, you know, kind of self-selection, you know, potentially. Then when you're thinking about the leadership standpoint. Are these being built into like annual goals? Like, do people have to do them at any point? Like, is it part of their goal to say like, you will do one of these in the year, or is it if the employee decides they want to do it? Like where is that kind of selection? Yeah, so, you know, the truth is it's both. Um, so in our particular department we have built in a professional development requirement for staff, um, because we want to see them succeed and we recognize that not everybody is gonna be long term higher education professionals, even if I would love that for everyone, um, being the nerd that I am, but I think, you know, um, you know, having that structure is really. Helpful so it at least sets them up for success to do at least one thing right throughout the year, but the rest of our programs are 100% optional. I only want staff that want to be there, right? So we make sure that there's opportunity available. OK, that, I mean, and that makes sense. I mean, again, like we said, the key is retention here, right, especially again we know that could lead to also. Student outcomes, which we obviously acknowledge, but I would hope that all the managers too want their staff to be retained. And we know, especially as you speak specifically about like enrollment teams, we know the turnover, especially in like entry level, right? You hear the joke always, it's like 3 or 15 or something. So, you know, I, I, I encourage everyone as well to think about that. Right, if you are not trying to do these types of techniques to build your staff, they're not just gonna, especially nowadays, as again with COVID and redefining work, just want to be there to work. Yeah, definitely, um, so I appreciate you sharing that, um, you know, as you reflect on all of this, you know, if there was one key takeaway for people that didn't go to your session, like what would you tell them? Yeah, I think one of the hard truths that we don't like to face in leadership and enrollment management is that we spend more time recruiting students than we do quality staff, hands down, right? I need a body, yeah, and, and does it, as long as they're breathing, you have a pulse, we're right now, and I understand that mindset from a business perspective, right? Like we need people to do the work, but Think about how much more value added that brings to our campuses and to the relationships with our students when we have people that genuinely want to be there and thrive, right,-- and-- it's only going to be better, and that's the purpose of development, right? And so if I could share anything, I would say like be intentional about that, be committed to that because that's really what's gonna help drive our universities forward for successful student affairs engagement. And overall student connection and retention. I mean, can't agree more. I mean, people also don't understand, even though there's tons of research out there about the cost of onboarding and and doing new employees. People don't really like, you don't see the numbers really, and, but people don't realize that like it is actually a cost savings to retain people too, 100%, which is again ultimately nowadays what people are thinking about. Yeah, and, and in my current position, that's. What I do is the majority of my work. I recruit staff and then I also onboard them and then I also see them through the exit process as well. So you know, I know the ROI, um, it's just showing that tangibly and you know, getting everybody on board to see like, hey, like this is worth your time and attention. Oh, well, I can't thank you enough for sharing all of this. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for being on it. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.