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Happy May! It is graduation season, and I have thoroughly enjoyed observing our students prepare for this monumental lifetime achievement. Watching them take graduation pictures and celebrating with their families has been very gratifying. These experiences continue to reinforce why our work is so important and how impactful it can be on the lives of others. Our team has contributed to the Mason experience of these graduates in many ways; whether you spoke to them about Mason at an event, answered their questions by phone or email, reviewed their applications, or offered them a comforting smile while they were walking across campus. All of these interactions matter, and you should feel good about the role you played on their journey to earning a degree. Congratulations on a job well done!
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Thank you for all of your hard work this semester. We are heading into the summer in great position to make our fall class because of your efforts. Our deposits for fall 2022 are up across the board, and we are on pace to meet or exceed our enrollment targets for freshmen, transfers, and graduate students. Of course, we still have a ton of work ahead of us this summer to generate additional student interest and combat melt. However, I am excited about where we are today as well as where we are headed.
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With summer quickly approaching, it is time for us to start planning for the next recruitment cycle. We will begin our recruitment planning and strategy meetings for spring 2022 and fall 2023 in June. We will also set the agendas for summer training and professional development. I want to thank all of you who have volunteered to serve on these committees because your contributions are vital to our success.
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Again, thank you for everything that you do. I look forward to being able to celebrate all of your accomplishments soon.
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WELCOME TO OUR TEAM
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Administrative Specialist
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Team: Dean/Personnel Management
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COMING SOON
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Graduate Admissions Specialist
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Location: SUB1 Admissions
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Special Features in this Edition
OneTeam Spotlight on Tasneem Amrou and Laura Super
BABY NEWS! Susan Foltz is expecting a baby girl, Ruby Lane, in JULY
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HR & Finance
The Professional Development Committee has scheduled StrengthsFinder Team Building on Tuesday, May 31. To prepare for the event be sure to take your StrengthsFinder assessment at: https://masonwbu.gallup.com/signin/default.aspx. Please note it says “Student Experience” but it should still work for employees (despite mentioning a code is needed for fac/staff).
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Travel reimbursements for this fiscal year need to be submitted and approved by Wednesday, June 8. Any reimbursements submitted after that date will not be processed until July 1.
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Faculty-Staff Enrichment Day (originally scheduled for May 25) has been postponed until the summer. Please visit the FSED website for the most up-to-date information.
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Mason is changing to a new Chart of Accounts on July 1. What does that mean for you? All of our org numbers are changing! I will send out new organization numbers as we get closer to the date and update our cheat sheets to help with the transition. If you are interested in learning more about this HUGE project, visit https://coa.gmu.edu/.
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Relationship Management
May 1st is in the rear-view mirror, and it feels good to say we are on track once again to enroll the largest freshmen class in university history! Despite being down in applications and admits for Fall 2022 freshmen, we have record yield. Congrats to the RM team, and all of the teams in Admissions and Enrollment Management that helped support this incredible, collective team effort. This is no small feat given the climate in higher education today, shifting demographics and a highly competitive, crowded market. Many schools are not positioned with large enrollment as we are, nor have they been in the position we have been in the last several years. We should be proud of our significant accomplishments towards our aggressive enrollment goals!
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With summer nearly here, we will be working to mitigate losing deposited freshmen and transfer students for the fall. We will also help support whatever is needed to yield more transfer students. We are considering holding a small handful (between 1 and 3) Summer Send Off events in key markets in VA and MD. We will also begin planning for the next recruitment cycle, including beginning our research for travel this fall. Finally, we will be supporting the Washington Scholars Program and the Envision Conferences, which are incredible opportunities to recruit more future Patriots. We hope and plan to have some rest and rejuvenation this summer, which is a very important part of the process as we leave a busy and successful spring behind us. We hope you have a fabulous start to summer!
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Admissions Outreach & Partnerships
We are preparing for 950 high school students this summer and really need your help. You received an email about arrival day support, and I ask that you please consider taking at least one Sunday this summer to help us check students in.
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Please let Elena or Melissa Moore know if you have any questions.
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Operations
Congratulations to each of you on a very successful year as we all continue to finish up the recruitment cycle and reduce the melt for our fall 2022 class. It's amazing to see what great teamwork can do!
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The graduate team has been working hard through an increased application volume with less staff throughout the spring term. We are incredibly proud of the work they accomplished this year through their dedication to Mason and our graduate students. With this, we are excited to welcome Noreen Sait as our newest Graduate Admissions Specialist. Noreen has worked with OGA since January as a part-time employee and we are happy to have her now on a full-time basis. We are not yet fully staffed but are working hard to get there. Big thanks to all of the staff who have and continue to serve on our hiring committees!
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At this time, things have generally slowed down with the exception to our international transcript evaluations. Those should be wrapping up in the next month and then all members of the team will have a few moments to breathe before we jump into the transcript audit. As summer begins, we are full steam ahead with annual updates in the graduate space. We are excited about some of the big projects we are doing in that space for the Fall 2023 application and the website!
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Mason INTO Mason is still going strong and we appreciate their work. This week is INTO Mason's Summer 2022 Orientation week. The INTO team will begin the Official Document Collection process for our new Summer 2022 students in the next few weeks. The team continues to work diligently through the increasing number of evaluations and cascades for Fall 2022.
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The high-volume summer season is upon us. The credeval team is working hard evaluating the first influx of end-of-semester transcripts from NVCC, which, of course without any degrees listed so another batch will come later. With this, our one-day turn around has slowed to two-days. Thanks to senior management, NVCC will reinstate EDI automation for the summer and we hope to stay as close to a one- or two-day turnaround as possible. The team recently added RECR 130 Marksmanship (1 credit) to the existing transfer credits for US military service bringing the total up to 9 hours. We will also start awarding general credit for South Korean military service, details coming soon. In addition, the team is working to develop equivalencies for the BTEC Higher National exams given in over 60 countries. In addition, the team now awards transfer credit to any student, current or future, for courses taken at an institution not declared in their application. We expect this to increase appeals received as current students request formerly denied credit.
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The Doc Center received a scanner upgrade! We have new scanners that are faster, more intuitive, and produce better output than what we have been using for years. It's going to make training a lot easier going forward and the whole team is happy with the change.! New scanning software has allowed us to have a digital copy of each document that we scan to retain for our records.
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The team is excited for summer, but it also means that we're losing some student wage team members who are graduating. Everyone at the Doc Center is going to have to work a little harder to keep up the momentum we have going in terms of processing but I know they're up for the task! The workload is pretty high right now with a lot of transfer applicants sending transcripts with Spring 22 grades from their institutions; I'm looking forward to getting over this hump so I can have the team work on some projects to improve our filing and tracking protocol as well as making sure the Doc Center team is trained properly on all the process changes. Final HS transcripts will start showing up in about a month and will continue for a couple of weeks. Other than that, we expect a steady stream of documents over the summer as Fall 22 applicants get their requirements squared away.
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The transfer team is processing nearly 10% ahead after some changes to their processing procedures. We will continue to see applications come in over the summer and we're excited to see students be able to sign-up for and participate in Orientation earlier than in years past. The Domicile team is fully trained and doing amazing work keeping the application volume in check and processing within good timelines. There is an open search for a part-time non-wage Admissions Assistant for undergraduate Non-Degree.
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Operations is just finishing up undergraduate annual application update submissions for the internal applications and the Common Application, the first round of program updates, and the annual dates and deadlines. We are finishing up changes on the Undergraduate Review Tool and are in the middle of User Acceptance testing now. We are excited to move on to some other major projects like TES implementation and a Transfer Credit Working group over the summer.
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International
It feels great being past May 1! Our international student numbers look great, and I am so excited to see what happens over the summer. Our next goal is to make sure that they are all able to get I-20s as soon as possible. Depending on the country, visa appointments are still hard to get for some students.
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In early May, Kushala, our recruiter from India, was able to visit campus and get a sense of what campus life is like here in Fairfax. She was even here when the benches were getting painted by the student groups, what great timing! When she was here she was able to meet with current students from India as well as programs like Computer Science, Economics, Schar, CVPA, and Business. It was a successful trip and now she is able to use this great information during her recruitment efforts in India.
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As a reminder, if you are getting questions from Afghan students or Ukrainian students about funding or flexibilities around applying to Mason, please send them to me. We are still using the funding request form for both Afghan and Ukrainian students https://www.gmu.edu/campaigns/refugee-students, but we have received so many requests that we may close the form soon. Please check to see if it is still live before sending this link to anyone. We are still looking for other ways to support both of these groups so I am hopeful that we will still be able to help them one way or another.
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As always, any questions from international students feel free to send them to [email protected] and we would be happy to work with the students.
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Military Services
The Office of Military Services has been working with Janette Muir in a new working group titled, Veterans Opportunities Group. With help from Ryan Barnett and Bobbi Nelson, we are pleased to announce additional transfer credit for veterans and active duty. Veterans now will receive 9 credits for the following, MLSC L400 (3), MLSC L402 (3), ATEP 120 (2) and RECR (1).
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I would also like to use this opportunity to remind staff the Board of Visitors have an approved Military Activation Policy. We have found that both freshman and transfer students may be eligible for events like Basic Training or extend duty beyond 30 days. Students are still required to complete a Leave of Absence form, but are eligible for a more flexible refund policy for tuition/room & board. In addition, active duty are allowed to defer admissions up to two consecutive semesters. Please visit https://military.gmu.edu/military-mason/military-activation-policy.
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Admissions Technology
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Did you know that our very own JC conference room equipment works with Zoom meetings? If you’re interested in using the conference room for an upcoming virtual meeting, contact Matt Scott for a tutorial and demonstration. Matt is also available to assist with any technical concerns at the time of meetings.
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We are shining the spotlight on two amazing colleagues!
Check out these fun facts about Tasneem Amrou and Laura Super
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The Office of Admissions publishes a quarterly newsletter. An archive of past newsletters can be found at Admissions Newsletters. If you have questions, comments, complaints or would like to unsubscribe, email the Editor at [email protected].
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