EMAS Pro Case Study:
Texas A & M - Commerce

Shared by: Assistant Director of Freshman Admissions

Texas A&M - Commerce is a regional university in eastern Texas, approximately 60 miles east of Dallas. Formerly East Texas State University, the university became part of The Texas A&M University System in 1996. Students are drawn primarily from the Dallas and northeast Texas area. Texas A&M - Commerce considers itself a small, "nurturing" university with 4800 undergraduates among the 8000 students. The student to teacher ratio is 19/1, with class sizes averaging 25 per class. One hundred different majors are available. The population is approximately 43% male to 57% female.

Academically, the largest focus for Texas A&M - Commerce is the College of Education, where 60% of the undergraduates plan to become teachers. The university also includes a College of Business and Technology, ranked in the top 10% of business schools in the nation, and accredited through the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). The College of Arts and Sciences includes a new degree program in "New Media," with a focus on the film industry. Texas A&M - Commerce has won major regional college art competitions in 14 of 17 years in the "One Act" competition.

Enrollment Management Concerns before EMAS Pro

"Although our graduate school growth has increased 20% each year since 1996, undergraduate enrollments had been declining until two years ago. We had used two different programs for enrollment management in previous years, but numbers still continued to decline. In recruitment, if a student indicated that they no longer wished to be contacted, there was no way to remove the student from the list. Postage and phone calls numbers were unmanageable as a result. Information was difficult to extract from the database previously in use. The recruitment module of the previous software package was 'not good.'

"With the previous software, targeting and list extraction were difficult. Exporting data was a project requiring systems programmers, so data was not readily accessible. Records were on paper, difficult to track, passed around among several people, and not standardized.

"Phone-a-athons were difficult to hold because there was no easy way to track and coordinate the results.

Solutions Provided with EMAS Pro

"Due to recommendations of a new vice president who had used EMAS Pro at previous schools, we dropped our previous program after seeing another school with EMAS Pro in operation. EMAS Recruitment Pro (including Telecounseling Pro) was purchased four years ago. Coupled with an aggressive marketing campaign at the same time, enrollments have increased.

"EMAS Pro provides the ability to cancel a student - a huge capability. We save on calls, postage, and time as a result.

"EMAS Pro makes writing queries easy, so targeted lists of potential students can be extracted using schools, zip or area codes, geographic areas and other criteria. Recruiters use EMAS Pro to drill down to extract the students they wish to contact, so systems programmers are no longer needed to develop lists.

"Phone-a-athons are feasible on a constant basis because EMAS Pro makes list management easy. The 'Calls Due' feature is wonderful.

Results

"We've grown to appreciate the many capabilities we have with EMAS Pro. One recent example of its practical results came when we used EMAS to contact students who needed to register for orientation. In one month, the regular process only netted 114 registrants. After an e-mail sent using EMAS, 121 students registered in one week.

"Six thousand prospect records that were in the Student Information System have been easy to manage using EMAS Pro. It's also made the counselors' tasks much easier, as they can see scheduled calls and callbacks, view previous calls and correspondence, record notes, and track every contact with every student. Phone-a-athons have become constant events.

"In conjunction with EMAS Pro, a Noel-Levitz product ('Forecast Plus') is able to take an inquiry and build a very useful statistical model to predict the likelihood of a student's eventual enrollment. We can target hot prospects, saving resources for this targeting that will bring results and future enrolled students.

What's Life Really Like with EMAS Pro?

"Prior to EMAS Pro, I truly hated phone-a-thons. My experience with EMAS Pro has been wonderful. Implementation was easy, assisted by another EMAS Pro user. The entire Education Systems experience has been extremely positive. I've worked closely with the very professional staff including technical support. Any time we have an issue, they are very helpful. They can usually answer right off the top of their heads, but if they don't know, they research the answer. They respond promptly by phone, e-mail, or dial up.

"We probably only use about one-half of EMAS Pro capabilities, but so much is built into it that we are finding new ways to help us with productivity. Contact histories are so wonderful! We are figuring out how to work with other offices on campus to help them meet their needs as well."

• Back to public schools
• See feedback from EMAS Pro clients