Beyond Silos: Aligning Admissions, Registrar, and Student Success to Transform the Student Experience

In this special live episode of Admit It, recorded at the AACRAO Annual Meeting 2026, host Dr. Alex Fronduto sits down with three leaders from University of Cincinnati to discuss their conference session, “Beyond Silos: Aligning Admissions, Registrar, and Student Success to Transform the Student Experience.”

Joining the conversation are Dr. DeRecco Lynch, Tara Warden, and Molly McDermott, who share how senior-level collaboration across Admissions, the Registrar’s Office, and Student Success helped the University of Cincinnati break down traditional departmental silos and create a more seamless student experience.

Together, they discuss how aligning goals, responsibilities, and communication across these critical areas reduced barriers for students and reframed retention as a shared institutional responsibility rather than the work of a single office. The episode highlights the power of cross-functional leadership and offers practical strategies for institutions seeking to strengthen collaboration and improve student outcomes.

Whether you work in admissions, registration, advising, or student success, this conversation provides actionable insights on how integrated enrollment and student success efforts can lead to meaningful institutional change.

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

Guests:
Dr. DeRecco Lynch, Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Enrollment Management, University of Cincinnati

Tara Warden,  Associate Vice Provost for Student Success, University of Cincinnati

Molly McDermott, Assistant Vice Provost and University Registrar, University of Cincinnati

Transcript

0:09

Hello and welcome to the Admitted podcast. This is Doctor Alex Branduo, your host, and I'm here live at the Acro annual meeting in 2026, and I have the pleasure to be joined by three great individuals from the University of Cincinnati. I have Doctor Derica Lynch, Molly McDermott Fallon, and Tara Soel Warden, and they all presented Beyond Silos, aligning admissions, registrar, and Student Success to transform the student experience. Thanks to you all for being here. Absolutely,-- thank you for having-- us. I love that. So, first and foremost, obviously there are people that probably didn't come to the conference. So would love first for each of you to introduce yourselves since they maybe didn't go to your session. A little bit about yourself, and then we can dive into what you presented on. Absolutely. So I'll hop in. I am Doctor Derico Lynch, the Assistant vice provost for enrollment Management at the University of Cincinnati, and in that capacity. City, I am responsible for all things new student recruitment across undergraduate transfer and graduate populations for on-campus programs across our three campuses. Nice. And I'm Molly McDermott Fallon, Assistant vice provost and university registrar, and I handle all the recordkeeping, our degree certification, you know, all the things you normally associate with the register. And rounding us out, I'm Tara Stel Warden, and I have responsibility for a suite of academic student success initiatives at the university that include things like academic advising, orientation, some of our advising tools and technology, and then some interesting work with our College Credit Plus. Or dual enrollment and our uh Cincinnati Public Schools Strong initiatives. So those are interesting and, and exciting and relatively unique in the world of student successfuls. Awesome. Well, thank you all, and I love that there's a breath of different types of positions, especially for ACR. We love to have so many people involved. So, again, there may have been people that didn't go to your session, couldn't go to the conference.-- So what's a quick snippet of an overview of what you presented-- on? Yeah, so essentially, we presented on how 3 AVPs came together, um, and disarmed whatever we felt and said, hey, how can we make the student experience better? Um, and essentially, we got in, we did the healing, we did the talking, we had the tough conversations, but more importantly, we got to the work. Um, and so essentially, that session is going to Talk about problems that came up in each of our areas, but then how the other AVP, while it might not have been their area, they jump in to support, whether that was a partnership agreement, whether that was exploring new technology, but we are not of the mindset of stay in your lane. We're like, these are all of our lanes, but how do we just drive together? Oh, I love that. Again, that collaboration is key. Like you said, it's gonna take all of us to do that, right? So two things were really interesting. So if you use the term disarm. So specifically, what were you looking to do? So what was your problem at hand that you were trying to achieve? Yeah, accomplish? I think it was just alignment. Um, when I first started, Molly is new in her role. I was new in my role, and all of us were just coming to the table saying, how can we not be the typical enrollment management division, but how can we be different and how we align, how we talk about each other's work, but also how do we divide and conquer because Molly is in spaces that me and Tara. Not same thing and vice versa. We need to know enough about each other's work to be dangerous in the spaces that we're not in. So it was really just, let's drive alignment so that further down the road, we're not hitting these hiccups. And anything you all would add to that? I would. I, you also used the word healing earlier, and I think it's important to surface that sometimes, especially at a very large decentralized institution we're a, we're, uh, an institution of very nearly 54,000 students in a large, uh, public urban research extensive setting. And the healing part was real. They were both newer to their roles. Uh, when Derico first proposed this, he said, OK, what were the strategies? And I laughed. I think, I think it was the fact that we hired two new people, but that can't be everybody. You're like, yeah. But I, so I do want to give a shout out because I've been at the university for, for over a couple of decades, and the, the, the misalignment previously was partly because of what De Rico shared that, you know, we often in enrollment management. kind of stay in our own lanes, but the healing piece of what he mentioned was really necessary too because that um structure and that model tends to lead to disconnect. It tends to lead to friction. It tends to lead to differences of philosophy and approach around what we're all trying to accomplish. So they've both brought exceptional leadership lens to the work that we get to do together and that leadership lens is really especially surfaced values around transparency and partnership. And student-centeredness and we've come together with some real alignment around what, what our goals and values are that are not just enrollment specific but also how we wanna go about our work together. And I would just add that I have been at the university for a very long time and I've been in the registrar's office a long time, but I wasn't registrar, so I think I had a back seat to like the big picture, but I wasn't in the conversations and that we had an opportunity with De Rico of me having registrar with Tara to actually. Have the conversations and drive it forward. I love that. And so when you're talking about problems, do you have a at least there might have been multiple. We all know there are so many problems that we want to fix. But is there kind of one that kind of stuck out that people can kind of then connect with and say, OK, this is how all of them were involved because of this piece that we found. Yeah, so I would probably say, and you all can chime in, it was our data. Oh Molly, and again, because we have a, a good because we have a good relationship, you know, Molly came to me literally and was just like, hey, something's wrong because by the time the data gets to us, like there is something that's happening with transcript processing, the way we're entering data, how can we do this faster and better? And she was like, I've already met with a vendor that does transcript processing, um. So we should look at Raptor. I'll put it together. And you know, essentially any other admissions person would have been like, why is this person looking at technology that's related to admissions? Why are they even in my pocket? And I was like, Hell yeah, if you've already found the technology to do that thing, you don't have to go do the leg work. I don't have to do the legwork. Um, so that was one that I just thought was really good, and that was led by the registrar's office, even though it was an admissions. Initiative that was completely in partnership with Molly and her team leading us through that implementation, but it was important because the data starts with admissions that then trickles through all of their areas, um, so that was one that I just thought was beneficial for everyone across the board and then even for the students, what used to take 5 days to get a response, students are now getting decisions within 48 hours. And I would also add to that unique scenario is. Tara had credit evaluation in her shop and then it moved-- to the registrar's office-- because it should have been there anyway, correct? So then I got it and we, you know, we had an opportunity to look at it with fresh eyes and keep asking what's happening, what's going on, and then it was like, well, right now we're at about a couple of weeks processing time to get transcripts, and I'm going, I'm sorry, can we, can we back that up? Are we OK? With the-- as it should-- be, we have a good working relationship with one of our vendors. We were talking about it. We found that we were doing this thing and it was like, OK, I got credit evaluation from Terra. It works directly with admissions. Let's do this partnership and let's try to solve this problem. Yeah, and Molly is one of our key lead data owners, was the registrar's office. I don't have to explain to the acro community why it's. That that live in the registrar's office, but she also has a, a, a fundamentally forward thinking look about what we are doing at the University of Cincinnati. She's a registrar that is especially focused on student successes and outcome. It's not just, uh, records management and records keeping, and I think that, you know, and De Rico's lens too is exceptionally, uh, visionary, I would say, and forward thinking and, and, um, in ways. That are pushing boundaries for us as an institution. So those were phenomenal. One of the things between student success and and admissions that had been a little bit of a challenge, but not because anybody was doing the wrong thing was, um, as a very, very large institution that is everything from internationally competitive to access oriented, you know, we have our own community college campuses, we have and, and with our urban core. Uh, um, alignment or rather placement we have a lot of opportunity to admit students that may or may not yet be eligible to move into the programs if they want some of our more competitive programs and that's really important to creating access for our city and opening up opportunity for students so we all had a shared vision that these students were very important, the higher ed and, and our including our decentralized faculty governed university. Certainly set up and designed for these students, um, we would have students come in that need that were referred to another program because maybe they wanted to get into nursing or maybe they wanted to get into engineering and they just needed a little bit more in the, in the, um, preparation area around some of the coursework that they're doing. Uh, however, we, what we were finding and what we are are finding and the problem we're working to solve is that those students are not. Attaining very well because in many cases, uh, you know, from a student success lens which we all share, right, this, this retention admissions is retention, right? So the whole pipeline, these students were being admitted into programs being told that they would be able to get the assistance of our Center for Exploratory studies to transition and after a year, many were finding that they would not be able to get into those programs because they were so competitive and perhaps. Three quarters of those students were not going to make it into that program. So part of what we started to realize is these students need not just an admissions letter that tells them what's possible in the future, but really, um, we also, they also need a personal touch on the very front end. And, and what we were hearing actually, in fact, also from our Cincinnati public schools community was that uh that their students as they were leaving high school and before they were leaving high school were very. Very much needing the support of someone who could help them choose which path and which direction, which major they were going into. So admissions and our, uh, center for, uh, transferred uh transition advising, pardon me, let me say this clearly. My team that is listening right now, it's our transition advising center, uh, started reaching out to all of those students upon offer. So as soon as they would receive their admissions. They also now are getting a very personal outreach from an individual advisor that's saying, hey there, I see that you were hoping to get into this program. You've been admitted as an exploratory student. I would be very happy to talk with you and determine, you know, help you identify what your options are. Now, the good thing and the bad thing, and I would tell you to be very quiet, don't tell our bosses, but the truth is, he, he's very much supportive of the strategies in some cases. if a student really, really wants to be a nurse, but based on what they're bringing to the table at the point of admission, they're very unlikely to be able to transition after only 1 year. We're being clear with them about what, how to accomplish their goals, whether or not it's at the University of Cincinnati, and I think that's been really important because the students are seeing that their goals are more important to us than necessarily just making the enrollment. And making sure when I say making the enrollment, you know, making our numbers, right, of course, making sure that you're getting them in the,-- and-- it doesn't help if they're not being retained anyways, right? Like at this point you've actually spent more money recruiting them and then when you're losing them. So exactly right, and I think part of what I hear you saying as well is like being realistic with the student as well, right? They need to make an informed decision. It's not, it's not fair to the student to say, hey, look at all of these great options that may or may not. exist, right? And that and that's OK, right? Like they need to understand so they can make a decision and decide what's going to be the best fit for them, like you said, exactly. And we know, you know, there are, there are 4 Cs that we take, you know, that we really focus on, especially within the advising community, and that's clarity, comfort, care, and connection. And if we've helped the student to accomplish that, we have a bear cat for life, whether they come to UC initially or not, because many of those students will start at. Community college, whether it's one of UC's to, to your colleges or the other big one down the hill from us, um, and then they will come back to UC because they know that we care for them and we're, and we're here to take care of them. And I think that's really important is thinking the long term aspect of that, right? So if they had a bad experience initially, the likelihood, as you know, that they're going to transfer back to you anyways, you know, would be less likely. So I love that you're thinking about it holistically in that sense. And so you. You started to obviously all three of you are well connected.-- You're laughing and having fun-- here. We, we do like each other. It's important. I mean that is very important. So what's next, right? So you've done this work. You've done obviously some shared work together.-- Kind of what is your next-- step? Yeah, so I'll share a couple of things and you all can chime in, but we have seen growth, um, for 20 years, and now we are finally at the place where the whole campus is saying. OK, we've grown, but for the next 100 years, what is going to be our promise to the students? What is going to be our academic identity, um, moving forward? But who is the bear cat? Um, who are our bear cats and what are those identities within the ecosystem? I think for a lot of years, it's been Uptown Campus, Blue Ash, Claremont, and online, and now we're having the conversation that you see is an ecosystem, whether you're doing microcredentialing, skilling up, retiring. Going back, um, I, we want to create UC fans and we want the world to experience whatever pathways that UC has, but that hasn't been our infrastructure, that hasn't been our design. So I would say over the next year, a lot of that work of having those conversations with the colleges and with the academic deans around what is our academic, what is our academic identity and what type of student, not do we want to serve, but that we can. Sir, with the current infrastructure that we have in place, yes, very important delineation, right? Yeah, because it has to be both, and we have to be able to do it well. I think the, the challenge we're having now is we want to be all things to all people, and nobody can do that well across the board. And so we want to make sure that we're positioned to be able to do that well, both for the sake of the student and for the sake of the people. There's value in giving people doable jobs, and we want to make sure that we're doing both. And Molly, uh, I was gonna say Molly has also been working with our, uh, central IT because we're having conversations around a digital transformation and technology.-- So I'll throw it to Molly-- to, yeah, I mean, De Rico hit it on the head when he said we're trying to build an ecos an ecosystem. It's a word we're using a lot at UC is the ecosystem of we have students coming to us in high school. We're gonna bring them into UC, but we also wanna continue them in their lifelong learning. Professional studies and we need to be prepared to do that and so we've been working with central IT on building an infrastructure to support we have, you know, we are so decentralized that we have things just piecemeal that we're trying to bring it into the same bubble and we wanna make sure that student experience is seamless and that we tell their story the way it should be told and it's demonstrating the skills that they've learned at UC that go off into the workforce to be successful and that the workforce wants to.-- with us because we can show we deliver what they've asked for-- and I think, you know, to end, I feel like that's what you need to do, right? That's what institutions are needing to do with the, you know, potential declining enrollments, the change of students' wants, desires, you know, I always phrase it as having different on and off ramps, right? Like even thinking the traditional like four-year bachelor's has kind of gone out the window in a lot of ways, and many institutions are not structured. Way to think through how does that look. Could someone come in, like you said, upscale, do something quick, then come back later to finish? Like, is that doable? And at most institutions right now, the answer is no. So I can't wait to hear how you all solve it. other institutions can do that. But thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for presenting and sharing all of your knowledge, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.