Dear SEM Colleagues,

As we prepare to come together at our 32nd annual Strategic Enrollment Management Conference in Toronto, we face serious enrollment challenges and accept the paramount role that enrollment management strategy, practice, and initiatives will play in meeting the challenges of today’s higher education landscape. Research on the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education worldwide has just begun to produce some initial insights into the level of disruption and the level of opportunity those impacts created. Online teaching took a leap forward from interesting and supportive to essential and mainstream. We are seeing community college enrollments, which had been gradually sliding since 2011, take a sharp downward turn this year. And the looming “enrollment cliff” has many of us concerned about the future of higher education. We certainly live in challenging times!

This special edition of SEM Quarterly pulls from the past year’s articles to present conference participants a wide array of topics and issues. Many, if not all, of these will be covered in plenaries, workshops, and sessions. As you turn your attention from matters on campus to this opportunity to learn and reflect on the trends, opportunities, and challenges in enrollment, we hope that these articles will be thought-provoking for you, as well, and that you will find yourself starting SEM 2022 with some background and frames of reference to guide you through the conference experience.

It would be impossible to present this special issue of SEMQ without the talents and hard work of Managing Editor Heather Zimar. Many thanks, Heather, for your insights and dedication. Thanks, too, to our many authors whose research and writing skills you will witness in reading their works.

See you in Toronto!


Clayton Smith, Ed.D.
Editor-in-Chief  

Research:

Postsecondary Intentions of Hispanic and African American students in Tennessee: Considerations for Strategic Enrollment Management by Lorianne D. Mitchell, Edith Seier, and Michael H. Small

International:

Canadian Enrollment Leaders’ Reflections on the Effectiveness of SEM by Clayton Smith, Susan Gottheil and Aliyah King

Recruitment:

Factors Influencing Student Veterans’ College Choices by Tara Horner

Retention:

Success Coaching Impact on Retention for Community College Students by Derek V. Price, Jessa L. Valentine, and Alexander Leader

Community College:

Collaborative Decision Making and Shared Responsibility Leadership by Heidi Nicholas and Tim Dorsey

Data: 

Machine Learning Methods for Course Enrollment Prediction by Lucy Shao, Martin Leong, Richard. A. Levine, Jeanne Stronach, and Juanjuan Fan  

Graduate:

The Evolution of Graduate Enrollment Management by Ariana Balayan, Christopher Connor, and Joshua LaFave