By Newsoul Deus
Introduction: A Quote That Reframed My Thinking
Some interviews give you information. Others rearrange the way you think.
In my conversation with Jody Gordon, a longtime higher education administrator and strategic enrollment management (SEM) consultant for AACRAO Consulting whose career spans student affairs, advising, registrar functions, and SEM planning, one moment stood out more than any statistic or framework. Jody recalled being asked, back in 2001, to step into a registrar role—and being confused by it. She told her president, “I don’t really know why I am being asked to be a registrar… I don’t have that background.” His response was direct: “That’s exactly why we wanted you to be the registrar. We need a change.”
That quote landed for me because it challenges a belief many of us carry quietly: that we should only take on roles when we feel perfectly prepared for them. Jody’s story reframed readiness as something that can be cultivated inside a position—especially when an institution is seeking transformation.
What began as an interview about multi-campus enrollment strategy quickly became something broader: a lesson about identity, intentional governance, and how regional campuses can be positioned as strategic assets rather than treated like smaller versions of the main campus—or worse, overlooked until enrollment starts to dip.
This article captures my key takeaways from the interview and reflects on how multi-campus institutions can strengthen SEM outcomes by clarifying campus purpose (“the why”), building integration without forcing uniformity, and leaning into what Jody described as the most urgent trends in SEM right now: career readiness and experiential learning, especially through a validated Learning and Employment Record (LER) approach.
Who Is Jody Gordon and Why Her Perspective Matters
Jody’s SEM mindset did not emerge from a single “SEM job title.” Like many of us, she fell into the work organically and then grew into it intentionally. She began as a student worker—first as a resident assistant and later as a peer advisor—drawn initially by practical needs like financial support and tuition benefits. But she stayed because she loved advising and saw its impact.
She described early advising work in a time before degree audits, when you had to manually interpret learner records and program requirements, and help learners navigate their path. That learner-facing foundation later expanded into leadership roles, including being asked to serve as a registrar during a time when the registrar function was shifting from a gatekeeping posture to a service model. As she put it, “the concept of a registrar was less gatekeeper oriented, and more service focused… I came at it absolutely from the service focus.”
The deeper SEM connection became clearer to her when she began to see how registrar functions, academic policy, teaching, learner success, and institutional priorities all connect. She described realizing the registrar’s office operates “in partnership with the academic community,” and later encountering SEM thought leadership that affirmed what she already sensed: learner success is an institutional enterprise, not the responsibility of a single unit.
Over time, that perspective expanded into consulting and SEM planning work—helping institutions design plans that are institution-wide yet still responsive to campus realities.
That blend—learner-centered service roots, operational understanding, and strategic planning experience—is exactly why her insights on multi-campus SEM felt both practical and grounded.
The Multi-Campus Reality: Enrollment Strategy Under Pressure
Multi-campus institutions carry a unique tension: one name, one mission, but different campus contexts. Regional campuses often serve different learner populations, operate in different labor markets, and face different constraints—sometimes including physical capacity and program limitations. Yet many multi-campus strategies implicitly assume consistency in inputs and outcomes.
At the same time, the broader higher education environment has little patience for inefficiency. In my professional space, I’ve sat in meetings where institutions are told, essentially, “there is no additional funding—but you need to teach more, serve more, and grow anyway.” Jody affirmed that pressure, adding her own international context. She noted that in Canada, budget shortfalls and policy shifts (including caps on international enrollment growth) have contributed to regional campus closures, and she raised a concern that I share: when small campuses close, it’s not only an institutional decision—it’s a community decision with long-term impact.
Jody’s warning was not abstract. She emphasized the “draining” effect on smaller communities when learners are forced to relocate for education and then struggle to return. When regional campuses are closed without replacement systems—housing, transit, alternative delivery models—the community loses more than a campus. It loses an access point.
This is why multi-campus SEM cannot be reduced to recruitment tactics alone. The strategy must consider mission, mobility, access, outcomes, and sustainability together.
Regional Campus Identity: Re-establishing the “Why”
One of Jody’s clearest and most repeatable principles is that institutions must regularly return to a fundamental question:
Why were these regional campuses created?
In her consulting work, when she joins an institution with multiple campuses, she asks leaders to explain the history. As she said, “Let’s go back in time and tell me the history… There’s always some purpose; there was a need in that community that we were going to fulfill.”
That “why” (Sinek 2009) matters because it anchors strategy. If you know why a campus exists, you can determine what it should protect, how it should evolve, and what it should become. Jody also acknowledged that campuses can lose the why—not from negligence, but from change. Leadership shifts. Economic shifts. Community needs shift. Programs expand or contract. Over time, a campus can drift into an identity that is more reactive than intentional.
Jody framed this as normal and fixable. It is okay for a campus purpose to shift. The danger is when the purpose shifts without being named, understood, and connected back to institutional planning.
From my perspective, this is where many regional enrollment challenges begin. Not because a campus lacks good people or good intentions, but because it is operating without a clearly articulated identity inside the system. When the “why” is unclear, priorities become unclear. When priorities become unclear, resource decisions and enrollment outcomes often follow.
Two SEM Approaches—and How Institutions Accidentally Create the Wrong One
Jody described two primary “camps” (or buckets) in how multi-campus institutions approach SEM:
Approach 1: One Institutional SEM Plan, Campus-Specific Tactics (Preferred)
In the first—and preferred—approach, the institution sets goals at the institutional level, then allows each campus to contribute through localized tactics and, when appropriate, sub-targets. Jody explained that you stay unified at the top, but variation is expected in implementation:
“Institutionally, this is our focus, but how we’ll get there is going to vary by campus.”
This approach allows a multi-campus system to remain harmonized while still acknowledging reality. A regional campus may not be able to contribute at the same scale as the main campus, but it can contribute meaningfully. Jody offered a practical example: if the university’s retention goal is 3–4 percent, a campus might set a 2 percent improvement target. That is not a failure—it is strategy rooted in context.
Approach 2: Fragmented Planning That Creates Competition or Disconnection
The second approach shows up in multiple forms. Sometimes it’s explicit—separate plans for the main campus and regional campuses. But Jody also pointed to a deeper issue: even when plans are separate, someone must ensure they roll up together. She warned against duplication and competition, especially when campuses might pursue the same program growth and unintentionally compete for the same learners:
“Someone’s got to come along and say, wait a minute… These look like they’re not working in harmony.”
Here’s where I want to add a critical refinement from my own reflection: Some institutions end up in “Approach 2” conditions without ever creating a separate SEM plan.
Sometimes the problem is not that a second plan exists. The problem is that the institution never built the intentional infrastructure required for Approach 1: a clear regional campus identity, clear integration points, and governance that actively protects the “why.” Without that intentionality, regional campuses can operate as if they’re competing, or as if they’re disconnected, even when no one intended competition. Then leadership wonders why enrollment is suffering.
In my view, this is one of the most overlooked enrollment dynamics in multi-campus systems: absence of intentionality can produce the same outcomes as bad intentionality.
“Landlocked” Isn’t Always About Space: The Learner Mobility Insight
One of the most valuable parts of the interview was how Jody made “landlocked” practical.
When regional campuses struggle, institutions often attribute it to program limitations or geography. Jody agreed that those factors matter, but she also shared a strategic lens: landlocked conditions can sometimes be solved—not by adding new programs immediately, but by addressing learner mobility or contextual issues alike.
She gave a powerful example from an institution with four campuses spread across a large region, where learners were spending money on long-distance travel to access programs. The institution partnered with the student union, secured a fee referendum, and built a campus-to-campus transit system. The result wasn’t only convenience—it created new academic and enrollment possibilities.
As Jody put it, once transit existed, “suddenly we didn’t feel like those campuses were so landlocked.” The institution could relocate or expand a flagship program (she used nursing as an example), leverage available space at a regional campus, and connect learners to clinical placements in different cities. It also supported faculty mobility and improved scheduling, helping fill course seats across campuses.
What stood out to me was her framing: this was a tactical move with SEM-level impact. “It wasn’t defined in the plan,” she said, “but it sure changed how we did SEM after that.”
That is a major lesson for multi-campus SEM: sometimes enrollment strategy lives in operational decisions—transit, scheduling, access—not just recruitment and retention campaigns.
What’s “Hottest” in SEM Right Now: Career Readiness and Validated Experiential Learning
When I asked Jody what trends institutions should pay attention to—regardless of campus model—she didn’t hesitate.
She pointed to the growing influence of career outcomes and the expanding role of career services and career education in SEM. In her view, institutions will increasingly be evaluated (and funded) based on post-graduation outcomes. But she went beyond the usual “career readiness matters” talking point. She connected it to data infrastructure, learner demand, and credibility.
She described consulting work using labor-market and graduate outcome analytics (including a partnership with the Burning Glass Institute) and how it helped institutions locate graduates, identify roles, and understand income patterns. But her most compelling argument was about what needs to happen inside institutions earlier—not just after graduation.
Then she introduced what I consider the most actionable—and future-facing—framework in the entire interview: validated experiential learning through a Learning and Employment Record (LER).
Jody broke it down step-by-step, and I’m including her language because the precision matters:
Define experiential learning (what counts?)
Collect it (how do we gather it?)
Record it (where does it live?)
Validate it against learning outcomes (what did the student actually learn?)
Distribute it—like a transcript (how does the learner use it?)
As she explained, “We do all of that now in courses… We don’t do it for the experiential learning, and yet it represents more learning than the classroom.”
That statement is heavy. It challenges the structure of how institutions define learning—and what they choose to credential.
Jody’s view is that learners should graduate with two records:
the traditional academic record, and
a validated record of experiential learning.
She emphasized this isn’t just about listing “I was a peer advisor” on a resume. It’s about the institution confirming what that experience means—communication, teamwork, leadership, applied problem-solving—so employers can trust it and learners can leverage it. In her words, the record should communicate what the student “really knows how to do.”
To me, that idea is not just a learner success initiative. It’s an SEM strategy—because it strengthens the value proposition of college, especially for first-generation and low-income learners who are making high-stakes decisions about cost, payoff, and opportunity.
Why This Matters for Regional Campuses
One of the best moments in the interview was when Jody brought the conversation full circle back to multi-campus institutions. She argued that career readiness and experiential learning aren’t only system-wide trends—they are also a way for regional campuses to develop identity.
Regional campuses often have deep community connections—local employers, nonprofits, civic organizations, schools, and public agencies. Those partnerships can become structured experiential learning pipelines. Jody described signing MOUs with community organizations to place learners in meaningful roles, while creating mutual benefit: the community gains capacity, learners gain experience, and the institution builds outcomes.
She emphasized that experiences at a regional campus can differ from those at the main campus because they reflect the region. That difference isn’t a disadvantage—it’s a strategic feature.
She also clarified an important point: this approach is not meant to replace co-operative education or internships that are already tied to curriculum and academic records. This is about the wide universe of learning that sits outside formal credit-bearing structures—often unpaid, often invisible, and often left to the learner to “sell” on a resume.
That distinction matters. If institutions only credential the experiences that certain learners can access, then equity gaps widen. The LER approach is a way to validate broader learning so more learners can benefit—not only those in formal pipelines.
Major Maps and Learner-Facing Value: The Queen’s University Example
Jody shared a concrete example of how institutions can help learners connect majors to careers early: Queen’s University’s major maps. What I appreciated is that the model doesn’t wait until senior year to discuss career pathways. It engages learners in year one—experience, community engagement, global learning, and career readiness.
This aligns closely with what I’ve observed in TRIO contexts, such as at institutions like Northeastern, where experiential learning and career preparation feel embedded in the campus identity. For first-generation learners, that kind of structure isn’t just “nice”—it’s clarity. It reduces uncertainty and increases confidence in the return on investment.
As I reflect on my own institutional experience, I’ve seen major maps built around curricular sequences and milestones, but not always linked to career trajectories and real-world outcomes. Jody’s point—supported by examples like Queen’s—suggests that making the pathway visible is part of a retention strategy, not separate from it.
Governance, Intentionality, and the Risk of Losing the “Why”
When I asked Jody whether campus identity should be “created” by leadership or allowed to grow organically, she returned to the history question again. She also acknowledged something I’ve seen repeatedly: campuses can lose their why over time. She described it as something that happens when the purpose shifts and leadership doesn’t fully process what changed.
What was helpful was that she connected this to governance structures. She noted that governing boards often include members from different regions, and those voices can help protect the purpose of regional campuses—not as a political favor, but as strategic stewardship.
She also offered a balanced caution: institutions should not try to force regional campuses to become miniature main campuses. But they also must remember they are one institution. The art is blending unity with localized delivery.
That’s exactly what an effective SEM plan should do: align with institutional goals and strategies that speak to all campuses, and provide tactical space for regional campuses to implement in ways that reflect their learners and communities.
Conclusion: The Strategy Is Not to Shrink Regional Campuses, But to Sharpen Them
This interview left me with a clearer view of what multi-campus institutions must do if they want regional campuses to thrive:
Re-establish and protect the why of each campus.
Build integration through shared goals, but avoid uniformity in tactics.
Recognize that “Model 2” can happen by accident—through lack of intentional governance and unclear identity.
Treat mobility, scheduling, and operational design as SEM levers.
Take career readiness seriously—not as messaging, but as infrastructure and outcomes.
And most importantly, expand experiential learning from “something learners do” into “something institutions validate.”
Jody’s message wasn’t simply that regional campuses should be appreciated. Her message was strategic: regional campuses can become powerful assets when their uniqueness is intentionally nurtured and when the institution builds systems that translate learning into opportunity.
At a time when higher education is being pressured to prove its value, multi-campus institutions won’t win by flattening regional identity. They will win by sharpening it—strategically, equitably, and intentionally.
References
Sinek, S. 2009. Start with why—How great leaders inspire action. TEDx Talk. September 28, Puget Sound, OR.
About the Author
Newsoul Deus, Ph.D., serves as the Program Manager of TRIO Upward Bound Math-Science (UBMS) at Florida International University (FIU). In this role, she leverages her extensive experience in enrollment management and services to support the access and success of UBMS students. Additionally, she is an adjunct lecturer at the FIU Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs. Deus holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from FIU. She is deeply passionate about creating pathways for first-generation and low-income students and using her research background to better understand the role that higher education and its professionals play in promoting college access and the success of disadvantaged students.
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