“I would say my identity is somewhat bifurcated at the moment.”
When Carolyn Noll Sorg and I sat down for an interview earlier this spring, she wasn’t describing uncertainty so much as transition. Weeks away from assuming the presidency of John Carroll University, she was living in two professional realities at once—leading enrollment through its most critical season while gradually stepping into a role that will soon redefine how others see her.
The shift has been less about authority than identity: learning how to inhabit a role that others already see clearly, even as she is still growing accustomed to saying it out loud herself. “We’d be going around the room doing introductions,” she told me. “And I’m introducing myself as the enrollment marketing person…because it still feels a little self-promoting to say, ‘I’ll be the president.’”
This in-between space—part humility, part habit, part discernment—offers a revealing glimpse into a leadership transition that is, in many ways, atypical. Noll Sorg does not come from the traditional academic pathway to the presidency. Her background is in enrollment management.
And yet, as institutions navigate increasing complexity—demographic pressures, questions of value, shifting student expectations—it is worth considering how enrollment leaders, who are shaped at the intersection of mission, market, and student experience, may be uniquely prepared for what comes next.
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
If there is a phrase that captures Noll Sorg’s approach to this transition, it is one familiar to enrollment leaders everywhere: keep the main thing the main thing. “For me, what the institution needs most through this period is to make sure that we hit our enrollment goal and that that doesn’t get lost in the shuffle,” she said.
Even as she prepares to step into the presidency, she has remained deeply focused on the work she was hired to do. Invitations and symbolic obligations have already begun arriving, but she and outgoing president Alan Miciak established boundaries early. “We tried to identify the things where the decision being made would be impactful during my time in leadership,” she explained. “Or there was a key opportunity to meet someone that I would need to have a relationship with, and it wasn’t going to come around again soon.”
Everything else, at least temporarily, had to wait. That has included learning how to decline opportunities without damaging relationships, another familiar leadership exercise for enrollment professionals. “How do I say ‘no’ while also signaling that I care and that you’re important to me, but I just can’t right now?” she recalled asking herself.
One response she has used captures both clarity and care: “Please don’t take this as any indication of my desire to build a long and sustaining relationship with you,” she said. “This is simply a function of time and priority on enrollment right now.”
It is a small example, but an instructive one. Enrollment leaders spend years balancing institutional priorities with deeply personal relationships. The presidency simply expands the scale.
A Call More Than an Ambition
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Noll Sorg’s story is that she never spent her career aspiring to become president. “Maybe like ten to twelve years ago, my boss at the time said, ‘You could be a university president someday,’” she recalled. “And I thought, ‘I’m not sure I would ever want that job.’”
Even during the presidential search process at John Carroll, as the possibility became more tangible, her orientation toward the role was less ambition than discernment. “There were many times where people were like, ‘Do you really want this job?’” she said. “And I thought, ‘I feel called to do this job. It’s deeper than wanting.’”
That distinction matters.
Noll Sorg repeatedly returned during our conversation to the Jesuit concept of discernment: paying attention, listening carefully, noticing patterns and invitations that emerge over time. “I think sometimes if you just pay attention to what the messages are… that offered me some clarity in that discernment process of trying to figure out, ‘Is this something I really want to take on?’”
That process became especially vivid after she learned she had been selected. Just days later, she left for a six-day silent Ignatian retreat in Gloucester, Massachusetts. “What a gift to [have that time],” she said, pausing before continuing. “I felt like I came back so at peace with what was ahead.”
Each morning, she walked along the ocean, met with a spiritual director, and reflected on the transition before her. “I spent a lot of time reflecting on gratitude,” she said.
A Different Kind of Presidential Preparation
Noll Sorg is quick to acknowledge that she entered the search process as “a non-traditional candidate.”
“I’m coming out of enrollment. My terminal degree is an M.F.A., and I’ll be leading a university without fine arts programs,” she said, adding, “I’m the first woman, and only the third lay person [to lead John Carroll].”
And yet many of the very qualities once viewed as unconventional increasingly feel relevant to the modern presidency.
Enrollment leaders live in a world where mission, finances, student behavior, institutional politics, and external market forces converge daily. They are required to synthesize information quickly, communicate transparently, and make decisions amid ambiguity.
Noll Sorg saw evidence during the search process that those instincts translated.
“The faculty reacted positively because…they appreciated the way that I brought evidence to decision-making and was transparent about why we were doing what we were doing,” she said.
She believes enrollment leaders are often “wired to think a little differently.”
That difference increasingly matters.
Mission, Market, and the Whole Student
Throughout our conversation, Noll Sorg returned repeatedly to a central idea: institutions must understand both who they are and whether that identity resonates with the students they hope to serve. “You have to understand your mission and who you are,” she said. “You have to know what you do, and what you do best.”
At John Carroll, that work became deeply tied to research and strategy. Rather than moving toward generic positioning, the institution focused on testing whether its Jesuit values genuinely resonated with prospective students. “We’re not going to mission creep toward somebody else,” she said. “We want to be who we are, but we want to make sure that who we are also resonates with who we need to join us here.”
The research suggested those values mattered.
“We talked about social justice and… being able to see things from multiple perspectives and learn to communicate, especially across difference, and to serve others,” she said. “And that really resonated.”
That work reflects another hallmark of enrollment leadership: the tendency to think not just about recruitment, but about the full student experience. “How do we nurture people along—not just from app to admit to deposit, but then to enrollment, to their major choice?” she asked. “How do we accompany students all the way through and beyond?”
That framing—accompaniment rather than transaction—feels distinctly Jesuit. But it also reflects a broader evolution in enrollment management itself: away from narrow funnel metrics and toward a more integrated understanding of student success. “It’s the full lifecycle that enrollment managers do think about,” she said.
It’s a perspective many enrollment leaders develop by necessity, and one that may be increasingly essential for institutional leadership.
The Role—and the Person
As the transition has unfolded, Noll Sorg has also become increasingly aware of the distinction between the role of president and the person occupying it. “I’ve already seen that and felt that,” she said.
That tension surfaced as conversations began around her inauguration and public visibility. “I think inauguration could be a full week,” she said. “We could have lectures and discussions along with celebrations, because the president being a woman is a historic marker that people care about.”
Then came the distinction she has had to remind herself of repeatedly: “Carolyn, the person, doesn’t care about this,” she said. “[She] doesn’t need a week devoted to her.”
Instead, she sees the moment as belonging to something larger. “This is a historic moment for the institution,” she said.
The public response reinforced that realization. Women from the John Carroll community—particularly some of the university’s earliest alumnae—reached out after the announcement. “Friends from the past would reach out and say, ‘I just watched your video with my daughter so they could see what was possible for them,’” she said. “That’s when I realized it was bigger than me.”
Do Good—and Do It Well
Near the end of our conversation, Noll Sorg reflected on a recent visit to Lima, Peru, where she toured Jesuit ministries as part of the Ignatian Colleagues Program. At one school serving a deeply impoverished community, she watched an Irish nun named Patricia greet students with visible affection and care. “She would call them mi amor,” Noll Sorg recalled. “She loves these people. She loves what she’s doing. She has built this [school] out of nothing, and it’s always been just about her love of the work and love of the mission.”
That encounter sharpened something she already knew about herself and about leadership. “Is your heart in it?” she asked.
Before we ended, she shared a phrase associated with the school: “Do good and do it well.”
It’s a fitting description of the work enrollment leaders have long been called to do—work that, increasingly, may prepare them for leadership far beyond enrollment itself.
share