Dr. Dan Jones, president of Texas A&M University-Commerce, is planning to implement a strategic enrollment committee involved in creating a plan to assist in student recruitment and retention. The committee would give more specific plans to tie in with the University’s strategic overview.
The strategic plan is a vision of where the University would like to be in a number of years; however, a committee will be formed to determine what benchmarks will be needed to achieve those goals. Jones has not yet clarified who will make up the committee.
“The President is still working on the commission that he is going to give to this group, he hasn’t yet decided exactly what it is he wants to do and how. Dr. Johnson has not gotten the charge as to what the focus of the committee is going to be,” Ricia Montgomery, administrative assistant to the vice president for academic and student affairs said.
Interim Associate Vice President for Academics and Student Affairs, Dr. Sharon Johnson, will be the committee chair to pull the group together. Her duties will include scheduling meetings, facilitating discussions, making sure goals are set and putting a plan into place.
The committee will likely consist of a grass-roots group of nominated directors from the various departments that would be affected by the enrollment and retention plan.
“What this [committee] is really intended to do is to help us have a long-term plan that clearly ties in to the goals of the university. We don’t want to get distracted and this should keep us focused on the goals,” Johnson, said.
One of the first issues the committee will look into is freshman success. They will evaluate the freshman success seminar, and how it is upholding its goals of helping freshman connect with resources that are available on campus, understand how to study, learn how to communicate with professors, help create a community amongst other freshman and foster social activities.
The committee will also look at identifying new students that are not attending class and doing poorly with their grades, and attempt to find out what is causing them to not be successful.
“If we can intervene in the first segment of classes, then it’s not too late for them to turn those grades around. Maybe they need counseling. So, those kinds of issues we’re trying to get started,” Johnson said.
For recruitment, the committee will identify what kinds of students they would like to see on campus, possibly focusing on certain groups, like the Honors College. They will be asking what can be done to enhance the students that have different needs.
“We have large groups that do commute. We have large groups that are transfer students, and we have a lot of resident students. All three of those areas will be the focus,” Johnson said.