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Article Type

Professional Proficiency

Article Abstract

Related Issue:

Enrollment management (EM) has been a focus of higher education since the 1970s. There is a large base of empirical research on EM, a coordinated effort to support undergraduate students from admission to graduation that has been widely researched. However, there is limited academic research on graduate enrollment management (GEM). What is missing is grounding GEM in literature and viewing the graduate student lifecycle with a cohesive lens. This article provides an academic foundation for GEM while discussing future research areas and encouraging GEM professionals to adopt a scholar-practitioner lens. The authors lay the foundation for the GEM concept, synthesize related literature, and discuss future research directions.

Author(s)

balayan-a--smAriana Balayan is the Assistant Dean of Admissions and Recruiting at UMass Chan Medical School. She holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership from Nova Southeastern University and has collaborated to develop the
first formal model for graduate enrollment management.

connor-c--smChristopher Connor is the Assistant Dean and Chief Enrollment Officer, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY). With more than 20 years of experience in higher education,
Connor’s experience includes serving in leadership roles in undergraduate and graduate education both from an institutional and academic unit perspective. In his current role, he focuses strategically on all aspects of the student lifecycle.
During his tenure in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, graduate enrollment has risen 47 percent to the highest in school history, which includes a 28 percent increase in international enrollment and a 155 percent increase in
domestic enrollment levels. Connor was recently awarded the 2019 Chancellor’s Award for Professional Service by the State University of New York (SUNY) system, and the operations under his direction were awarded the 2020 IELTS USA Best Practices
Award in International Enrollment Management.

lafave-j--smJoshua LaFave is the Director of Graduate Business Programs in the David D. Reh School of Business at Clarkson University and holds an M.B.A. He has been in graduate enrollment management for sixteen years and has collaborated on the creation of
the first formal model for graduate enrollment management. LaFave oversees the entire student lifecycle of graduate students in business programs for both residential and online students.

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