Enrollment Management has been viewing prospective student interest at SRU, visitors to campus having increased by more than 10 percent in comparison to the same time in August of last year.
Over 1,100 future students have visited the campus this fall, even with the demographic declines and enrollment declines within the state system. Despite that, the interest and enrollment at Slippery Rock is still growing.
Amanda Yale, associate provost for enrollment services said SRU is growing in many ways by working with the graduate programs over the past years, including adding new ones.
“By adding the graduate programs, that has increased our enrollment in both the graduate and undergraduate programs,” Yale said.
SRU has many new undergraduate programs connected to the graduate programs. Some of these programs include Health Information Management (M.S.), Athletic Training (M.S.), and Occupational Therapy (O.T.D). The undergraduate programs allow students to get their baccalaureate degree and then their master’s degree and doctorate degree all at one institution.
The university has conducted a survey that has shown that over two-thirds of the students don’t see themselves stopping at the baccalaureate program and that they see themselves getting a master’s degree or greater.
SRU continues to attract students to the graduate and undergraduate program.
“It’s different in how we attract and recruit undergraduate and graduate programs,” Yale said. “We are very programmatic in how we market for the graduate program because at that point students already know what they are interested in. They are interested in PA programs, OT programs MBA programs. They pretty much know the route they are taking.”
In undergraduate recruitment, SRU has a lot of high school visits, or those who visit at college fairs.
“When we are marketing and recruiting for undergraduate programs I like to think of it as we are doing a clustering of programs,” Yale said. ” It isn’t just marketing for Slippery Rock University but marketing [for instance] for our education programs so that we have elementary education, early childhood education, secondary education, physical education, and these are all areas students can be certified in.”
