May 22, 2025 Meeting

Agenda

Information/Discussion:

Introductions:
- Rashitta Brown Elize
Approval of Minutes:
- Minutes for meeting held April 24, 2025
SEM Plan Review/Discussion:

Committee members look through their submitted documents from last semester/last year and decide:
1. which documents will be added to the SEM plan as-is
2. which should be added but with updated numbers
3. which could be summarized but still added
4. which are no longer relevant or accurate and should not be added
5. other options?
Every addition should be noted as:
1. add to the main body of the SEM plan narrative and in which section
2. add as an appendix with a brief explanation or "point to" reference, and in which section
Committee members decide what information from the Education Master Plan should be added to the SEM plan, or if the EMP should just be referenced (that is, "go see the EMP for information xyz...").

Other

Minutes

Information/Discussion:

Welcome

Leslie introduced the new interim VP of Student Services, Dr. Rashitta Elize.

Approval of Minutes

Minutes for April 24, 2025 were approved.

Meeting Overview

The SEMCOM committee discussed the development of a strategic enrollment management plan. Key points included the need to integrate the plan with the Educational Master Plan, update recruitment and retention strategies, and address demographic trends. The committee emphasized the importance of targeted enrollment growth, particularly focusing on male students and online programs. They also highlighted the need for a streamlined process to update the college's website with new programs and events, and suggested forming a team to manage these updates. The goal is to finalize the plan over the summer for faculty review.

Leslie explained we did not want finalize the plan until we saw what the Ed Master Plan looks like.
Subgroups of the committee worked on separate pieces of the elements that need to go into the plan, so we want to look at those and see what are still relevant. Som things may need to be removed or updated.
Vicki went over the subgroups’ work in the shared drive and discussed the information that was worked on. She stated this is some of the data that should go into the plan.
Leslie hands over the gavel to Vicki to take the lead to get the committee going on the discussion of what to include in the plan.
The committee was trying to find a copy of the drafted plan Sharyn Eveland distributed at one of the meetings. Vicki stated the committee was not too happy that all the work the subgroups did were not even integrated into the draft plan Sharyn distributed.
Leslie said the intention of the one distributed was to be a skeletal plan that we append the pieces into to form a complete plan.
Lelsie suggested looking at the pieces that the subgroups worked on to see if they’re still relevant to our larger plan.
In addition, anything the committee does has to relate to the educational master plan that just got approved by the board.
Vicki stated the first subgroup after the introduction is “institutional and situational assessment” and most of that information is just demographic or enrollment trends so a lot of that will just be copy and paste. We can also look at the Educational Master Plan and see what we want to copy and paste as well.
Shelley asked if our competitors changed? CVC exchange, is that affecting us? Are they taking our students away? It was suggested to put CVC OEI on the list.
How do we want this plan to look like? A report? Do we want an introduction and says who we are, background information and goals.
Leslie stated she would like it to have a narrative and this summary page and the narrative say who we are.
Vicki suggest it come directly from the Educational Master Plan. Leslie suggests it be summarized and not exactly the same.
Vicki stated the front of our catalog has a nice historical background of who we are. Leslie stated it comes from our self-study so that is another source.
Do we want just want to include bits and pieces and reference back to the EMP and SEM or a detailed long report?
Leslie stated this also needs to be an independent living document.
Jaime stated based on what the outline that we had drafted last year, we have something to work of. We can pull that information from there into here as it applies, and then include a link to for more comprehensive view of all the details, looking back to the EMP.
Vicki stated so a short narrative about ½ page and then ½ page of where we’re at currently. Possibly state we're at this many total enrollment, headcount for the last three years, a breakdown by semester. Do we want to break it down? Face to face, hybrid online? The degrees that we offer are, what's the age of our student population? How many are getting financial aid? Gender, ethnicities, etc. This breakdown needs to be included. We need to establish our baseline.
Then we need to discuss some of the strategies such as developing that pipeline. Vicki stated we have a really good pipeline. Outreach is really good. We have a very good pipeline with TUHS. We do it through the TC Promise program. We have our Cougar days. We have those kinds of events. So the real question is how are we going to grow by 21%. How do we grow by 21%?
Vicki stated we need more students. How can we get more students? We could have increase transferable course success rates, choose equity gaps in courses, increase online courses. She stated we need to decide are we going after such as male students. Vicki suggested go after the displaced oilfield workers. That may be a targeted demographic that we want to go after. In addition, we want to increase our online student population.
Leslie questioned if we really do since at already 54%. Vicki stated the only way that this campus is going to grow is online.
Vicki stated we capture a good percentage of all of those students that are graduating with our feeder high school, Almost 70% of the graduating group end up coming here.
Vicki also asked are people going to drive out from Bakersfield to come to Taft College? Unless we offer something that's different and is not being provided by the Arvin Center and southwest campus of Bakersfield College, they're going to go to Bakersfield College.
Leslie stated putting classes online is not a strategy.
Vicki stated students are looking at what degrees they can get solely online right now. They can do business administration, totally online and transfer. She stated we should market that idea.
Leslie stated we should look at marketing majors as a strategy to get online such as Business.
Greg stated we currently sit empty in the summer. English, Com, Ethnic Studies, Math, Physics, and Chemistry. We could add all those classes in person which would tip the scales on what’s here. Those are things that we can absolutely steal enrollment from everybody else around us. Creating summer face-to-face classes is one place to fill in the gaps.
Leslie stated we can talk about our plans and goals for increasing our allied health offerings, but we cannot talk about nursing. The medical assistant program is something we can soon promote.
Leslie stated there can be a section in goals and plans about increasing our offerings or programs.
Vicki suggested now that we are discussing strategies, she would suggest that we really look through what Bakersfield College offers during the summertime in person and see where their gaps are to try to fill in those.
Vicki stated that evening and in-person classes during the summer and evening classes during the fall and spring semesters have fallen considerably. Night in-person classes were successful. This targeted working adults. For some reason, we stopped offering evening classes. TC should look into bringing back evening classes to increase enrollment.
Vicki stated that somehow we need to take the work that's been done here and all the other plans that we have and merge them together.
Vicki stated there's a lot of really good ideas that show how we're going to strategically move forward. We're going to look at more evening class offerings, more face to face classes during the summertime, and look at better utilization of our facilities to maximize offerings.
Vicki suggested another piece that all the faculty should be a part of is that if we could get every single one of our part-time students to take one additional class that this would increase our enrollment considerably.
Xiaohong stated we need to encourage the students to attend full time instead of part time.
Vicki stated that the more classes you take the more financial aid you get. The more you work the less financial aid you get. They need to see that they’re getting paid to go to school.
Leslie stated once the new Pell Grant requirements come out, we will lose our students who are committed to part time, so we need to market 15-finish.
Jaime suggested marketing a possible 15-finish campaign to get the message out to students. It was suggested to utilize canvas and social media.
Shelley suggested inviting Susan Groveman to the meeting when we discuss the charter.
Vicki stated one of our issues is our website. All our new degrees are not on the website because no one knows how to put them on the website. Degrees like computer science and sports management are not listed. She also stated the scrolling issue creates static for students and keeps them from seeing this information.
Vicki stated something has to happen in the curriculum process when we roll out a new program. No accountability afterwards to get information out to the students and/or on the website. Instruction needs to push out new programs to IT whenever a new one comes out.
Vicki stated there needs to be a process for getting things to the website. There are things on the website such as personnel no longer with us and outdated information.
The website does not provide accurate and good information. Not enough people trained to update the website and no consistent training.
Leslie stated that Jason in Instruction can work with Jason in IT to get out the information regarding new programs and course. Romeo can also work with IT Jason to get out athletic information. Departments need to provide updated information to IT Jason as well otherwise information will remain outdated.
The development of a process for who creates the contend and who is responsible for keeping the website updated and current can be a goal in the plan.
Leslie stated the committee now has some things to think about over the summer and work that can be done while faculty are gone.

Action Items

Review the work done by the subgroups and determine which pieces are still relevant to include in the strategic enrollment management plan.
Identify where in the strategic enrollment management plan the subgroup work should be incorporated (as a main feature or as an appendix).
Develop a short narrative introduction for the strategic enrollment management plan that provides background on the college.
Incorporate relevant data and information from the Educational Master Plan into the strategic enrollment management plan.
Establish a process to ensure new programs and event information are promptly updated on the college website.
Connect with Susan in Marketing to coordinate website updates and marketing efforts.

NEXT MEETING: TBD