Fostering a Culture of Care for a Student Ready Institution

Lisa Perry, Ed.D., is the Director of UC Merced’s Students
First Center (SFC). She has been with the SFC since the campus opened in Fall
2005 and is a key player in the development and implementation of the
department, which primarily serves the Offices of Admissions, Financial and
Scholarships, and Registration. She and her team strive to encourage student
self-sufficiency and success through the use of social media and technology.
As a driving force behind the SFC’s growth, she championed a transformative
enrollment management-wide organizational culture initiative. Through this
endeavor, her visionary leadership cultivated an environment dedicated to
enhancing the student experience.

Perry has shared her expertise on one-stop development and student service
technologies with colleges and universities throughout the United States and
Canada. In her role, she also routinely works with the UC Office of the
President to increase the number of online course offerings across all ten UC
campuses. Perry is a graduate of California State University, Chico, and
California State University, Stanislaus, and has worked in all three tiers of
California’s higher education system. Her authorship includes a chapter titled
“What was it like? Being in the Pioneer Class at UC Merced,” featured in
New Directions for Higher Education Special Issue: From Rangeland to
Research University: The Birth of University of California, Merced and an
article titled “The Relationship Between One-Stop Support and New Student
Enrollment,” published in AACRAO’s SEM Quarterly. She conducted
groundbreaking research through her dissertation titled “One Stop Enrollment
Management Service: An Evaluation of The Relationship Between Centralized
Services and New Student Enrollment.” Using a quantitative analysis, she
uncovered compelling evidence that the one-stop service model implemented at
UC Merced is significantly contributing to increased new student enrollment,
particularly among historically-marginalized populations, offering promising
solutions to address student melt in higher education.

Erin Webb, Ed.D., has served the University of California,
Merced for sixteen years and is currently the University Registrar. Dr. Webb
has been actively involved in university registrar work for the past 20 years
and attends and presents regularly at national and regional conferences.

Her experience within the registrar’s office dates back to her days as an
undergraduate at Azusa Pacific University working as a student assistant.
After completing her undergraduate and master’s degrees, she joined Fullerton
College as part of their admissions and records team. When the opportunity
came to work at the University of California, Merced—a new research university
that opened in 2005—she jumped at the chance to make a difference in the lives
of students in her hometown, all while getting to work at a start-up
institution. During her tenure at the University of California, Merced, Webb
has served as the principal project manager on numerous successful
implementations, including degree audit software, a general education revamp,
cohort-based tuition, and the exclusive use of students’ lived names. Because
of these successes, the Office of the Registrar is widely viewed as a model
for how to effectively leverage technology and partnerships—particularly in
resource constrained environments—and to do so while maintaining a commitment
to customer service.

Webb earned a B.S. in accounting from Azusa Pacific University and went on to
pursue an M.Ed. in college student affairs. Her passion for the community
college student experience is never far from her heart, so as she began work
on her doctoral degree, her research focused on the experiences of transfer
students who attended the California public education system but never
completed a bachelor’s degree. She earned her Ed.D. in educational leadership
from California State University, Stanislaus in 2016.