For a schedule-at-a-glance, visit our Schedule webpage.
A Real-Time Look at How to Navigate AI’s Impact on Program-Level Visibility
This session explores a crucial shift: moving strategies away from siloed tactics and toward integrated, AI-informed marketing ecosystems built on a foundation of strong content. Presenters will walk you through how Saint Joseph’s University is grappling with this shift in real time, beginning with an assessment of their AI footprint and moving to how that work is leading to a more integrated content, web, AI search, and advertising strategy. Attendees will leave with a framework for approaching SEO and generative engine audits, restructuring digital experiences around AI-powered tactics, and repurposing high-performing organic content across channels.
Apprenticeship Training and Higher Education: A Braided Model of Simultaneous Achievement
Through an innovative New Jersey partnership, Thomas Edison State University recruits and graduates apprentices to build an adaptable workforce. This initiative leverages state funding that cover’s 100% of the cost of attendance for an associate degree and 50% for a bachelor's degree, paired with Thomas Edison’s meaningful credit-for-prior-learning programs. In collaboration with non-profit coaching leaders InsideTrack, students receive personalized success coaching to ensure persistence and completion. Discover how this collaborative model integrates financial support, academic flexibility, and professional coaching to empower students and strengthen the regional economy.
Beyond Enrollment: Building a Connected Online Student Experience Through Orientation, Liaison Support, and Student Success
Online learners often experience higher education as fragmented and isolating. The University of Arkansas addresses this by creating a coordinated, relationship‑driven support ecosystem spanning the Online Student Liaison Office (OSLO), Online Orientation, and a proactive Student Support Specialist team. Together, these units guide students from application through persistence, offering advocacy, clear expectations, early connection, and individualized outreach. This session highlights scalable communication workflows, centralized support structures, and community‑building strategies that strengthen engagement and retention. Participants will gain adaptable practices for designing student‑centered online support models that improve belonging, satisfaction, and long‑term success across diverse institutional contexts.
Beyond SEO: Winning Visibility in AI-Powered Search
Beyond the Degree: Creating and Marketing a New Micro-Credential Ecosystem
How do you successfully launch and enroll students into a brand-new educational offering? This session explores how Penn State College of Engineering and its marketing agency, Creative Springs, partnered to create “Beyond Engineering,” a micro-credential brand built for working engineers. Attendees will learn how audience research informed the brand strategy, website experience, and enrollment funnel, as well as how campaign testing and iterative optimization improved engagement and conversion. The session provides practical insights into cross-functional collaboration between marketing, enrollment, and academic stakeholders to support successful program launches and measurable enrollment growth.
Beyond the Funnel: Building Cross-Functional Strategies for Graduate Enrollment Success
Building a Non-Degree Marketing Engine Without Chasing Silver Bullets
How do you build a scalable marketing engine for non-degree programs? This session explores a practical, real-world approach grounded in the experience of the Price Executive Academy at the University of Oklahoma. Speakers will share how to move from ad hoc outreach to a repeatable model that integrates audience targeting, creative, and automation, while navigating limited staff, imperfect data, and early-stage program launches. Attendees will leave with a clear framework and a realistic understanding of how to balance quick wins with the time and iteration required to build momentum.
Moderator: Kaitlin Dumont, Huron Consulting Group
Building Sustainable Marketing Teams for Online Institutions: A Systems Approach Using the Tools You Already Have
This session presents a live case study of a fully automated marketing operations system built and deployed at a fully online institution using tools already in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Participants will see the real workflow architecture, map their own operational ecosystems, and leave with governance frameworks, workflow templates, and a technology evaluation guide they can adapt immediately. The session also addresses how AI capabilities embedded in existing platforms can be activated to scale personalization without adding new tools or vendor complexity. Every resource shared is practical, tested, and ready to implement.
Building Workforce Pathways: Aligning Employer Partnerships, Student Success, and Institutional Growth
Data as a Superpower: How SFU and CSM Grew Enrollment, Not Spend
Saint Francis University and College of Saint Mary used data as a superpower to grow enrollment without simply growing spend. In this applied session, SFU, CSM, and Collegis Education will show how enabled data helped both institutions make sharper decisions across marketing and enrollment. SFU expanded channels, exceeded inquiry goals, improved efficiency, and optimized media, SEO, creative, and website strategy on flat paid media spend. CSM connected funnel data, strengthened Salesforce discipline, improved speed-to-lead, and paired insights with enrollment consulting to grow total undergraduate enrollment year over year.
Designing Belonging for Military-Connected Online Learners
This session explores a student success–centered model that integrates enrollment and marketing practices to support military-connected learners across the full lifecycle, from recruitment through reenrollment. Using UF Online as a case example, it highlights how coordinated, cross-functional systems can reduce barriers, foster belonging, and support persistence for a highly mobile population balancing academic and military commitments. Attendees will gain practical strategies for designing proactive outreach, onboarding, advising, and reentry pathways that anticipate disruption and promote continuity for military-connected students.
Designing Sustainable Vendor Partnerships for Online Growth: Frameworks for Governance, Operational Alignment, and Scale
As colleges and universities face increasing pressure to grow enrollment and expand online offerings with limited resources, many are reevaluating traditional partnership and operational models. This workshop explores practical frameworks for designing scalable university partnerships that support enrollment growth, operational alignment, and student success without overwhelming institutional teams. Leaders from Edgewood University and upGrad will share lessons learned from an active partnership supporting online growth, enrollment operations, and student support initiatives. Participants will engage in operational alignment exercises and leave with adaptable planning tools, governance frameworks, and partnership evaluation models applicable across a variety of institutional environments.
Equipping Faculty with AI: Scalable Hyper-Personalization
Discover how Axio enables hyper personalized learning at scale through Interactive Learning Experiences, a faculty driven Socratic dialogue that personalizes instruction in real time based on demonstrated understanding. We highlight a groundbreaking partnership with Belhaven University, which utilized Axio to challenge traditional online delivery by replacing passive content consumption with adaptive dialogues. Participants will examine pilot data regarding student and faculty satisfaction, look at unexpected boosts in human rapport, and learn how to launch successful AI student success innovations.
Moderator: Cecil Banham, Axio.AI
Finding Enrollment Growth: Diagnosing Barriers and Measuring What Matters
From Activity Tracking to Learner Experience: Building Cross-System Analytics in Higher Education
As institutions expand professional, continuing, undergraduate, and graduate learning pathways, the need for learner-centered analytics has become increasingly complex. This session shares the American University of Beirut’s experience building a cross-system Learner Experience (LX) analytics initiative across Moodle and Moodle X ecosystems. Attendees will explore challenges related to defining engagement metrics, validating learner data, supporting diverse learning models, and building sustainable infrastructure for scalable analytics. The session highlights how learner analytics can evolve from isolated reporting into broader institutional intelligence supporting student success and data-informed decision-making.
Moderator: Lina Kadi, American University of Beirut
From Backburner to Breakthrough: A Strategic Email Campaign Overhaul
How do you revive a critical marketing asset after years on the backburner? Discover how UF marketers and automation specialists successfully overhauled UF Online’s welcome email drip campaigns for the first time in nearly a decade. This session explores the project step by step, from strategic planning and stakeholder alignment to Salesforce implementation and early performance insights. Presenters will share lessons learned in cross-department collaboration, personalization strategy, technical execution, and campaign optimization while inviting attendees to discuss their own challenges modernizing recruitment communications.
From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: Transforming a Small Marketing Team
Many marketing teams find themselves trapped in reactive work, juggling competing priorities while struggling to deliver consistent results and never quite getting out of fight or flight mode. This session explores how one team transformed its operations by implementing standardized sprint planning, clearer prioritization, and a centralized project management approach. Attendees will learn practical strategies for reducing bottlenecks, improving collaboration, increasing visibility across teams, and creating more capacity without adding headcount. Walk away with actionable ideas to help your team work more efficiently, produce more high-quality content, and shift from constant firefighting to strategic execution.
From Enrollment to Completion: Designing a Cross-Functional Retention Ecosystem
Retention starts before enrollment. This session explores how institutions can align marketing, enrollment, and student success teams around shared lifecycle metrics and cross-functional accountability. Learn practical strategies to use admissions and engagement data for earlier intervention, improve the yield-to-persistence transition, and build a more connected student experience from inquiry through completion.
From Lead Metrics to Portfolio Intelligence: A Strategic Framework for Online Enrollment Decision Making
Many institutions struggle to move beyond disconnected enrollment and marketing metrics toward a more strategic understanding of portfolio performance. This session explores how the University of Cincinnati Online developed a portfolio intelligence framework to connect enrollment trends, funnel performance, operational realities, market conditions, and institutional priorities across more than 100 online programs. Attendees will learn how cross-functional collaboration between analytics and marketing strategy improved reporting alignment, portfolio visibility, and resource prioritization while gaining adaptable ideas for building more actionable enrollment reporting and portfolio planning frameworks.
From Missed Calls to Managed Handoffs: Operationalizing a Coordinated Enrollment Support Model
This session examines how ODUGlobal redesigned its student support operations following a comprehensive review of the student inquiry and onboarding experience. Presenters will share lessons learned from reorganizing enrollment and advising responsibilities, redesigning workflows, implementing coordinated routing and warm handoffs, and improving continuity of support from inquiry through retention. The session will highlight operational decision-making, cross-functional collaboration, and implementation lessons that institutions can adapt to strengthen coordination across enrollment, onboarding, and student success teams.
From Overload to Opportunity: How Southeastern University Scaled Enrollment with AI Agents
Southeastern University's Chief Enrollment Officer Sarah Clark shares how her team used AI agents to improve responsiveness, personalize communication at scale, and consolidate a fragmented tech stack—saving nearly 1,000 workdays of staff effort in their first months of deployment. Attendees will learn practical approaches to launching an AI agent pilot, improving conversion and yield, and building institutional confidence in AI as a true enrollment teammate.
From Overwhelm to Oriented: Acceptance Calls as a Student Success Strategy
Traditional onboarding processes can feel cold and transactional, especially for online and nontraditional learners navigating a major life transition. This session explores how the College of Graduate Health Studies transformed the new student acceptance call into a high-impact onboarding and student success strategy that reduces overwhelm, removes technical barriers, and builds connection before classes begin. Through personalized outreach and collaborative admissions-advising workflows, CGHS created a more intentional, relationship-driven experience that strengthens belonging, improves readiness, and supports retention. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for designing onboarding experiences that increase student confidence, enrollment conversion, and persistence from day one.
From Silos to Strategy: Developing an Internal Student Success Conference That Aligns Campus Partners
In support of institutional retention goals tied to a university strategic plan, an internal student success conference was designed to strengthen collaboration across student service departments and improve the student experience. Led by academic advising staff and informed by student feedback and service-awareness data, the initiative created a sustainable professional development model centered on shared responsibility for student success. This session will highlight the planning process, partnership structure, implementation strategies, and assessment methods used to increase staff engagement and institutional alignment. Attendees will leave with adaptable templates and practical strategies for building similar student success initiatives at their own institutions.
From Silos to Synergy: Building Community Across Hybrid Matrix Teams
A unified Program Success Team at UNC Charlotte brought five units together but revealed silos, uneven communication, and low trust in a hybrid environment. Using Brené Brown’s techniques, a staff‑led Community Working Group implemented low‑cost, scalable strategies—hybrid team time, structured Slack engagement, and shared‑interest virtual spaces—to strengthen connection. Internal survey data aligned with Covey’s Trust Tax/Dividend showed measurable gains in trust and effectiveness. This session offers adaptable tools for hybrid community‑building across enrollment and professional education teams.
From Zero to Online: An 8-month Institutional Transformation
How do you launch online programs in less than eight months with limited staff, legacy systems, and no prior online infrastructure? Maine College of Art & Design shares its transformation from a campus-based institution to an emerging provider of online graduate education through cross-functional collaboration across marketing, enrollment, academic affairs, and student support. This interactive session explores process mapping, outsourcing decisions, scalable staffing models, student success integration, and operational planning strategies designed for small teams. Participants will engage in facilitated small-group discussions to identify practical approaches for building sustainable, student-centered online operations at their own institutions.
How Universities Are Meeting Students Where They Are
This session will outline how institutions can support re-enrolling adult students at-scale without creating significant administrative burden. Panelists will describe the choices adults are making in regard to re-enrolling today as well as their options for study. They will also provide an overview of how traditional student-serving service offices can be incorporated into a re-enrollment process. The more than 44 million adults who started but did not complete their degree studies represents a viable market to stimulate enrollment and tuition revenue growth.
Measuring What Matters: Driving Better Marketing Performance
Many institutions struggle not only to use data effectively, but to consistently collect and centralize it. Fragmented systems and inconsistent tracking often limit insight and decision-making. This session explores how the University of Vermont’s Professional and Continuing Education team built a structured process to improve data collection, centralization, and analysis, creating a unified foundation for better marketing and web performance insights and actions. By bringing together multiple data sources into a cohesive framework, we moved from siloed reporting to actionable understanding. We will share how this approach improved campaign targeting and performance as well as website optimization, and how a stronger data foundation enables more consistent, insight-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
Meeting Adult Learners Where They Are Through Collaboration and Student-Centered Communication
This session explores how collaboration across marketing, enrollment management, advising, and student success teams can create more personalized and relationship-driven experiences for adult learners. Participants will discuss strategies for improving communication across the student lifecycle, leveraging authentic storytelling to strengthen engagement, and supporting recruitment and retention efforts within small teams and limited-resource environments. Attendees will leave with practical ideas and peer-driven insights that can be adapted to continuing, online, and adult-serving education settings.
Mind the Gap: Aligning Online Learner Expectations with Enrollment Strategy
Today’s online learners quickly filter for relevance, clarity, and credibility, yet many institutions still address them as a single broad audience. Drawing on Carnegie Research’s national study of 10,500+ prospective online learners and 145+ online leaders, this session explores gaps between student needs and institutional priorities around trust, support, communication, search, and decision-making. Through the lens of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communication’s Division of Distance Education, attendees will see how audience insight can strengthen messaging, help institutions reduce friction and make prospective students feel understood earlier, ultimately driving stronger enrollment and program growth.
One Funnel, Two Teams: Aligning Marketing & Enrollment for ROI
Behind every enrollment funnel is a messy reality: competing priorities, unclear ownership, and missed opportunities between marketing and enrollment teams. This session goes beyond the idea of a “shared funnel” to explore how large and small teams can work together to impact leads and conversions. Through real-world examples, panelists will unpack how structure, communication, and accountability shape outcomes—and where things tend to break down. Attendees will leave with practical ideas to reduce friction, strengthen collaboration, and turn disconnected efforts into a more coordinated, effective approach to driving enrollment results.
Moderator: Stacy Snow, Kennedy & Company
Our Continuing Education Learners Want What? Shifting Operations, Offerings, and Opportunities to Align with Research-Informed Data
How can continuing education units respond to growing learner demand for flexible and stackable programming? This session explores how the University of Alberta Continuing Education used learner survey data to inform and redesign its programming strategy through a new programming framework focused on online-first, stackable credential pathways. Attendees will learn how learner insights informed portfolio planning, enrollment strategy, and stackable credential development, while exploring lessons learned from implementation and early learner feedback.
Outside In, Inside Out: Two Lenses, One Enrollment Problem
Adult learner enrollment is more competitive than ever, and even small breakdowns in the student experience can impact conversion and enrollment performance. This session introduces a practical diagnostic framework built around two lenses: 1) outside in – evaluating what prospective students actually experience during the inquiry process; and 2) inside out – examining the processes, systems, staff consistency, and accountability structures driving those outcomes. Using Excelsior University as a case study, presenters share how mystery shopping and operational analysis revealed hidden enrollment gaps and drove practical improvements within existing structures and budgets. Attendees leave with an actionable framework they can apply at their own institutions.
Rebranding for Relevance: Revitalizing a University Non-Degree Program
Discover how a university program transformed its non-degree program identity to better connect with today’s students and career goals. This session explores how a strategic name change, bold visual redesign, and outcome-driven messaging reshaped the non-degree program. Learn how aligning every touchpoint around student success led to stronger engagement, increased inquiries, and a measurable lift in perception. Join us for a practical look at turning insights into a cohesive, compelling program that resonates.
Rebuilding Summer: Enrollment Growth Through Institutional Alignment
Southeast Missouri State University transformed its summer term through a cross-functional enrollment strategy focused on improving yield, expanding access, and strengthening enrollment growth. By redesigning parts of term, revising policies, launching a summer bridge initiative, and separating summer reporting from fall enrollment metrics, the institution repositioned summer as a strategic enrollment opportunity rather than a standalone term. This session will share lessons learned, early outcomes, and practical strategies for enrollment leaders seeking to use summer planning to improve conversion, support student success, and drive institutional growth.
Scaling Video for Enrollment Growth: From Authentic Stories to Multi-Channel Impact
Moderator: Lindi Ragsdale, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Scaling What Works: From Department Campaign to Institutional Strategy
This case study examines how teams at the University of Missouri leveraged early success from a department-funded marketing campaign for its Bachelor of Science in Veterinary Technology program to identify a broader institutional opportunity for a centrally coordinated strategy. Presenters will share how marketing, academic leadership, program coordinators, and recruitment teams aligned to scale growth, improve operational efficiency, and refine cross-campus workflows. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for identifying when centralized support makes sense, building cross-campus buy-in, and creating sustainable recruitment processes for high-growth programs.
Moderator: Sarah Whorton, University of Missouri
Sealing the Cracks: Improving Student Persistence Through Better Collaboration
This presentation explores proactive, student-centered strategies that connect advising, enrollment, and timely outreach to support learners at key points in their academic journey. It highlights how coordinated communication, consistent follow-up, and technology-driven engagement can improve persistence, strengthen relationships, and foster belonging—especially for online students.
Moderator: Auris Calvino, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Starting Strong: Collaborative Summer Enrollment Strategies for Incoming Students
Summer online courses can help incoming students build momentum before their first semester, but creating successful programs requires coordinated campus partnerships. This session highlights how marketing, enrollment management, admissions, athletics, orientation, and academic departments collaborate to recruit and support incoming first-year and transfer students. Attendees will learn how student success data can inform course development, outreach strategies, and program evaluation, creating a model that advances both enrollment goals and student outcomes.
Still Unwritten: Making Online Education Visible Through Storytelling Strategy
Online education is important to student outcomes, but the work is largely invisible across institutional systems. In the first year of leadership after taking over the nation’s #1 online bachelor’s program, this session explores how one R1 institution used strategic communication, brand alignment, storytelling, and institutional activation to strengthen visibility and engagement for online learning during a period of organizational change. Through a four-phase framework consisting of communication infrastructure, brand integration, narrative storytelling, and strategic activation, the presentation offers practical approaches for increasing institutional alignment and stakeholder understanding. Attendees will gain adaptable strategies for using storytelling and communication design to transform online education from fragmented messaging into a cohesive institutional experience that strengthens collaboration, trust, and student success.
Stop Outsourcing Your Voice: Building an AI-Assisted Content Engine In-House
After transitioning away from a longstanding OPM partnership, our institution rebuilt key marketing functions internally and developed an AI-assisted content strategy that expanded digital marketing capacity without increasing team size. This session shares practical workflows for creating SEO-aligned content that drives traffic, strengthens institutional voice, and supports multi-channel campaigns. Presenters will demonstrate how AI supports content development within a structured human review process focused on accuracy, accessibility, ethics, and brand integrity. Attendees will leave with scalable frameworks, governance strategies, and operational lessons for building sustainable in-house marketing capacity.
Moderator: Meghan Vaughan, Villanova University
The "Intent" Revolution: Using Predictive Intent to Find Your Next Adult Learners
The millions of adults with "Some College, No Degree" (SCND) are higher education's biggest opportunity, but how do you find the ones ready to return? Traditional demographic targeting isn’t enough. In this session, discover how Colleges & Universities move past broad data buckets and target the SCND population using person-level "Intent to Enroll" predictive modeling. Learn how they eliminate "broad stroke" marketing, optimize digital ad spend, and deploy an actionable, CRM-ready blueprint to identify high-intent stopped-out adults and drive them toward re-enrollment.
The Death of Attribution: Enrollment Marketing in an AI-Driven, Zero-Click World
As AI-generated search summaries, zero-click experiences, and AI agents reshape how prospective students discover institutions, traditional enrollment attribution models are becoming less reliable. This interactive roundtable explores the growing gap between measurable engagement and actual marketing influence. Presenters will share emerging examples and facilitate discussion on how AI-mediated discovery is changing enrollment measurement. Participants will compare institutional observations, discuss evolving KPIs, and explore new approaches to reporting and decision-making. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of attribution challenges and practical, peer-informed ideas for adapting enrollment marketing strategies in an increasingly invisible funnel.
The Discovery Gap: How to Be Discoverable, Trusted, and Chosen in an AI-Mediated Journey
Students are making decisions before many institutions ever see them. In an AI-mediated discovery environment, being visible is no longer enough. Institutions must build the signals that make them discoverable, trusted and chosen across search, AI, social, video, peer validation and owned content. This session will explore how the discovery environment is changing, why the traditional funnel often starts too late and how higher education leaders can rethink discoverability as a growth strategy. Attendees will leave with insight on identifying visibility gaps, strengthening trust signals, and connecting discovery to enrollment momentum.
Moderator: Bethany Moran, EducationDynamics
The Modern Learner Decision Journey: What Drives Action Now
Modern Learners are researching earlier, comparing longer and expecting institutions to clearly prove value before they engage. This session explores what learners actually respond to today, including messaging, channel performance, application intent signals, and campaign planning. Leigh Saunders of the University of Minnesota and Karina Kogan of EducationDynamics will share institutional perspective, enrollment marketing trends, and benchmark insights to help attendees rethink cost clarity, flexibility, career outcomes, and trust.
Moderator: Tracy Kreikemeier, EducationDynamics
The New Era of Student Search: Content Strategies for AI and Student Discovery
Modern students research programs across complex digital landscapes, shifting seamlessly between traditional search engines and emerging AI tools. To capture their interest, enrollment leaders must deliver optimization strategies tailored for this new era. This session explores how institutions can meet students where they are, utilizing content optimized for both human engagement and AI discovery. Featuring a real-world case study from Tufts University, presenters will demonstrate how integrating SEO with Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) creates a powerful, AI-aware strategy. Participants will gain practical tactics to boost organic traffic and optimize web copy specifically for AI search tools.
Moderator: Mark Cunningham, Direct Development
The True Value of Visibility: How Harvard Made AI Search an Enrollment Channel
AI is changing how prospects find programs. Are they finding yours? The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School faced this gap: cited by AI for thought leadership, but its programs weren't found. So PON built an AI search strategy that turned that around. Tara Pope of Harvard PON and Search Influence Director Paula French will share two years of UPCEA × Search Influence research on AI program discovery, and the strategy PON used so prospects find its programs. You'll leave with the steps PON took to turn AI search into an enrollment channel, and the data behind the decisions.
Transforming Complexity into Impact: Systems Thinking and Collaborative Strategies for Modern Enrollment Operations
As enrollment operations grow more complex, institutions must navigate interconnected systems, data, and decentralized teams while maintaining efficiency and a strong student experience. Drawing on insights from the IU Online experience, this session highlights how systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration can transform complexity into meaningful operational impact. Presenters will share approaches to strengthening visibility across systems, aligning workflows, and improving decision-making to support more coordinated enrollment operations. Participants will gain practical, immediately applicable strategies to identify hidden challenges, enhance collaboration, and translate insights into scalable action, enabling more consistent, resilient, and student-centered outcomes across their own institutional environments.
Beyond the B-Roll: Leveraging Modular Video Content to Scale the Lifetime Learning Brand
Higher education websites serve as the primary digital gateway for learners, yet visual strategies often overlook the emerging lifetime learning construct. This roundtable shares findings from a content analysis of thousands of institutional video backgrounds to define a new visual grammar for professional education. Attendees will explore the Three-Act Narrative framework—Orientation, Experience, and Achievement—to better align digital storytelling with adult learner motivations. Participants will learn to maximize operational efficiency through modular video assets and data-driven content strategy, ensuring their digital presence effectively communicates value, fosters student success, and boosts enrollment throughout the entire learner lifespan.
Beyond the Funnel: Asset‑Based Approaches to Student Success as a Foundation for Enrollment and Retention Strategies
This roundtable will feature case studies to explore asset-based enrollment management and student success practices. Small and large group reflection will encourage participants to apply these concepts to their local contexts.
Boiler Up, Anywhere: Using Instagram to Connect Purdue’s Online Students
As the number of online learners continues to grow, universities must find new ways to create the same sense of belonging, school pride and community that residential students experience on campus. For Purdue University’s online programs, Instagram has the opportunity to become more than a marketing channel — it can serve as a digital campus. This roundtable explores how Purdue University built an Instagram presence specifically for its online programs by translating the energy, traditions and connection of campus life into content that resonates with today’s learners. With Gen Z making up an increasingly large percentage of prospective and current students, universities must move beyond polished promotional posts and create organic, authentic content that feels personal, relatable and community-driven.
Building Institutional Momentum for Adult Learner Transformation: Lessons from Michigan’s Innovation Investment Awards
This roundtable explores how intermediary-supported design processes, strategic coaching, and innovation funding can help institutions build momentum for adult learner transformation. Leaders from Central Michigan University and Northern Michigan University will share how participation in Michigan Center for Adult College Success Design Labs supported initiatives focused on adult learner enrollment, persistence, and completion. Through practical case studies, presenters will discuss institutional alignment, cross-campus collaboration, change leadership, and lessons learned while advancing initiatives including Central Bound/Microcredential pathways and NMU Evergreen. Attendees will gain actionable strategies for designing and sustaining adult learner-focused institutional change.
Building Pathways to Success for Distance and Transfer Learners
This roundtable explores a multi-campus partnership among the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu, Kauaʻi Community College, and UH Maui College designed to strengthen transfer access, persistence, and degree completion for rural, distance, and transfer learners. Through Student Success Coaches, 2+2 transfer pathways, transfer cohorts, workshops, and student engagement activities, the initiative seeks to address barriers associated with geographic distance and transfer. Evaluation findings from a cross-divisional team of faculty and staff Data Fellows, supported through APIA Scholars' Data Voyage 2.0 initiative, will highlight strategies for using data to inform student-centered support and continuous improvement.
Cross‑Functional Accessibility Infrastructure to Support Online Learners
Online learners often encounter accessibility barriers only after courses begin, delaying participation and impacting early engagement. This roundtable highlights how Penn State World Campus built a cross-functional Accessibility Process Team to ensure students have what they need on day one. Through inclusive leadership—where all voices are valued and open-ended questions drive problem-solving—the team connects Learning Design, IT, Student Disability Services, and program management. Attendees will learn how to create shared objectives, break down silos, and implement scalable processes that improve collaboration and support equitable access in fully online learning environments.
From Awareness to Enrollment: Building In-House Multi-Channel Campaigns
Learn how Texas Tech Online and Texas Tech K-12 built a fully in-house statewide awareness strategy combining streaming television, broadcast, Google Search, Meta advertising and authentic storytelling campaigns to drive measurable inquiry and enrollment funnel growth across metropolitan, regional and rural Texas markets. This roundtable explores regional targeting strategies, Permian Basin streaming campaigns, rural awareness initiatives, storytelling integration and leadership-focused reporting frameworks while demonstrating how awareness, engagement and enrollment progression can function as one measurable ecosystem without relying on outside agencies.
From Campaigns to Lifecycle: Smarter Communication That Improves Conversion
Many institutions collect engagement data but struggle to apply it effectively. This roundtable shows how segmentation, automation, and behavioral signals can be used to prioritize outreach and improve communication outcomes. Attendees will learn how to place high-impact touchpoints within journeys, refine messaging based on engagement patterns, and scale communication more strategically to improve conversion.
From Courses to Connection: How Language Programs Build Demand Without Traditional Marketing
This roundtable explores how a community college language program built student demand without the ability to market individual courses. By focusing on study abroad, cultural exchange, and immersive learning experiences, the program reframed language study as a pathway to human connection in an AI-driven world. Presenters will also address declining enrollment and engagement within Spanish and French programs, leading to a small group discussion on how to shift the focus from "taking a class" to "joining a community" to boost enrollment and strengthen programs.
From Demand Capture to Demand Creation in Online Graduate Marketing
The paid media approach for online master’s programs is changing quickly. In this case-based roundtable, the USD Online and its enrollment marketing agency will share how their strategy evolved over several years from lower-funnel paid search to a broader mix of program-specific social and video campaigns as well as brand-level CTV and out-of-home. Presenters will discuss media mix modeling, adult learner behavior, and the growing impact of AI-shaped discovery, offering a practical framework for balancing brand and program-level enrollment marketing investments.
From Disruption to Retention: Leading an LMS Migration Without Losing Student Trust
Major technology transitions can create confusion, disengagement, and retention risks for online learners if institutions focus only on implementation logistics. This roundtable explores how one institution approached an institution-wide LMS migration through a student success and learner experience framework. Presenters will share practical strategies for phased rollouts, communication planning, training, readiness campaigns, and escalation support models that helped improve student satisfaction, engagement, retention persistence, and operational efficiency while reducing support disruptions. Attendees will leave with adaptable tools and frameworks to support student-centered technology transitions at their own institutions.
From Silos to Solutions: Creating Cross-Team Collaboration in Enrollment Management
Enrollment teams often navigate complex environments that span multiple institutions, partnerships, and competing priorities, yet many common challenges are still addressed in isolation. This roundtable highlights a practical, employee-driven approach to fostering collaboration, sharing knowledge, and solving problems across organizational boundaries. Attendees will learn how a structured forum can strengthen communication, reduce duplicated effort, encourage innovation, and build stronger connections among colleagues with shared goals. By creating intentional spaces for cross-functional dialogue and support, organizations can break down silos, improve efficiency, and empower employees to contribute ideas and solutions that benefit both their teams and the broader enrollment community.
From Silos to Systems: How Guided Pathways Align Services to Drive Engagement
What happens when institutions move beyond silos and truly align around the student experience? This roundtable explores how Community College of Philadelphia uses the guided pathways model, structured around meta-majors, to connect advising, career services, faculty, and student support into a coordinated system. Learn how cross-functional teams, shared data, and pathway-specific programming drive student engagement from onboarding through completion. Attendees will gain a practical framework and actionable strategies to strengthen collaboration, improve student awareness, and design more connected, student-centered systems at their own institutions.
How Course Design Shapes Engagement, Belonging, and Persistence
What if retention risk is being created in the course environment itself, before advisors or early alert systems ever have a chance to intervene? This roundtable presents experimental research showing that disorganized Canvas course design significantly reduces students' sense of belonging, productive engagement, and motivation to persist, effects that emerge before a single assignment is due. Combined with Ball State's longitudinal student satisfaction data on exhaustion and motivation, the findings make a compelling case for course design as a frontline retention tool. Participants leave with three practical, ready-to-adapt tools to identify and address design friction at their own institutions.
How SDSU Online Reimagined Its Content Strategy to Attract, Nurture, and Inspire
By crafting strategic content tailored to meet prospective and continuing students where they are, SDSU Online spoke clearly and directly to these audiences to help attract, nurture, and inspire.
Recruitment and Student Success: Optimizing Small-Team Outcomes Through "MRI"
In this roundtable, Most Respectful Interpretation (MRI) is a powerful, often invisible force that maximizes small-team impact. MRI is a basic diagnostic analysis that transforms operational constraints into institutional opportunities. Attendees will learn how a “skeleton crew” of graduate program recruitment coaches at Boise State University’s Division of Extended Studies adjusted their communication patterns in micro ways to support high quantifiable enrollment results, while optimizing the limited personnel. This session will explore an actionable strategy to build high-trust collaborative environments that directly support online student enrollment goals.
Scaling Online Enrollment Through Student-Centered Teams
Join Charlotte Online for a discussion on building high-performing enrollment and student services teams centered on customer service, program expertise, and efficient processes that contributed to record enrollment growth and strong student satisfaction outcomes. This session will explore CRM utilization, adult learner communication strategies, enrollment funnel management, and approaches to developing effective teams that support prospective and current students. Learn how Charlotte Online supported seven years of sustained growth and expanded its presence across North Carolina and beyond.
Scaling Video Content With a Small Team to Increase Program Awareness
PACE Education marketing teams are often tasked with increasing awareness and driving enrollment with limited staff and budgets. This roundtable shares how a small marketing team developed a practical, repeatable approach to planning, producing, and distributing video content to support program awareness and engagement. Rather than relying on one-off productions, the team implemented a scalable framework to prioritize efforts, maximize limited resources, and align content strategy with enrollment goals. Participants will learn how to identify high-impact video opportunities, repurpose content across channels, and build sustainable workflows that strengthen brand visibility and program marketing. Interactive activities will help attendees apply these strategies to their own institutions.
Stop Losing Adult Learners: Course Design That Drives Retention
Adult learners often leave online programs due to course design barriers, not a lack of motivation. This roundtable shares three practical design strategies that improve engagement and persistence in continuing education settings: structured weekly roadmaps, early feedback touchpoints, and redesigned discussions. Attendees will gain actionable approaches that connect course experience to student success and enrollment outcomes.
Supporting Adult Learners' Transition to College through an Adult-Focused First-Year Seminar Course
This presentation explores the impact of Tennessee Reconnect (TnR), a state initiative launched in 2018 to provide affordable education for adult learners, focusing on improving retention and completion rates in Tennessee community colleges. Specifically, the discussion will cover the research that examines Cleveland State Community College’s introduction of the Work-Based Learning Seminar (WBLS), an adult-centered First-Year Seminar designed to address common challenges faced by adult learners.
Using a quasi-experimental design, the study compared retention and three-year graduation rates among TnR-funded adult learners who completed WBLS, a traditional First-Year Seminar, or no readiness course. Findings revealed a positive correlation between completing WBLS and higher retention from year one to year two. Additionally, virtual interviews provided rich qualitative insights into adult learners’ experiences, confirming known motivators and barriers while highlighting the value of tailored support.
This research offers valuable guidance for colleges and universities of all types, presenting evidence that adult-focused seminars like WBLS can enhance educational outcomes for adult learners. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of targeted transition support in helping adult learners succeed in higher education.
The $1M Rule: How Marketing and Enrollment Data Built an Undeniable Budget Case
What does it take to grow an online program from 94 to 1,255 students with a lean in-house team, no OPM and a budget you had to fight for? In this roundtable, the marketing and enrollment data leads behind that growth open the full playbook. From building an integrated marketing and data infrastructure to developing the benchmarks that moved a budget from $2.78M to $3.5M+ in one cycle, every step is on the table. Attendees leave with an operational alignment framework and a budget justification template they can adapt and put to work at their own institution immediately.
The Power of 15 Minutes: Embedding Guided Meditation to Support Well-Being and Connection in an Online Environment
What if well-being wasn’t something individuals had to seek out on their own, but instead was built into the rhythm of work and academic life? This roundtable explores a simple, scalable approach to supporting mental health through weekly, 15-minute guided meditation sessions embedded into institutional calendars. Rather than relying on apps or self-directed tools, participants engaged in live, facilitated sessions with colleagues and peers, fostering well-being and connection. Piloted across faculty, staff, and student populations using an accessible virtual platform, the initiative yielded consistently positive results, with participants reporting improved well-being and greater balance during the workday. Attendees will explore participation trends, user feedback, and key lessons learned from implementation across multiple audiences. The session also provides a practical framework for launching similar initiatives, including scheduling strategies, facilitation considerations, and approaches to building engagement. Participants will leave with actionable ideas for integrating low-barrier, community-centered well-being practices into their own organizations.
Build Your Own AI Marketing Assistant
Marketing, enrollment, and student success teams need more than one-off AI prompts. This 75-minute hands-on workshop helps attendees build a custom AI marketing assistant they can use the next day. Each attendee opens a free webpage, enters their role, brand voice, audience, and strategy inputs, and walks out with a custom instruction block ready to paste into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini. The session pairs prompt craft and social media metrics with marketing strategy and comms guardrails. Attendees leave with a working AI assistant, a prompt pack, a strategy worksheet, and free access to the webpage.
Building the Machine: From Reactive Support to Scalable Growth
As enrollment marketing teams face growing program portfolios, increasing enrollment expectations, and rising operational complexity, many discover that their existing operating models can no longer keep pace. This interactive workshop uses a three-year organizational evolution as a case study to explore how one institution transitioned from highly customized, reactive support to more standardized and scalable service delivery. Participants will examine lessons learned in strategic staffing, service design, prioritization, and operational alignment, then apply those insights through guided discussion and self-assessment. Attendees will leave with practical frameworks for building enrollment marketing operations that can support growth, complexity, and evolving institutional priorities.
Doing More With Less: Strategic Responses to Enrollment and Budget Pressures
Declining enrollments, staffing transitions, budget pressures, and increased competition are forcing continuing and professional education units to rethink how they operate and grow. This session explores how Extended Education Ventures at The University of Texas at Austin responded to organizational and economic uncertainty through cross-functional collaboration, operational restructuring, strategic budgeting, and program innovation. Presenters will share practical lessons learned, real-world scenarios, and adaptable strategies for maintaining operational effectiveness, supporting enrollment growth, and identifying new opportunities with limited resources. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for navigating change while sustaining impact across their own organizations, including restructuring workflows, enrollment stabilization tactics, and implementing standing cross-functional meetings, among other strategies.
Flipping the Script: How LSU is Building Degree-Level Support for CE Learners
Learn how LSU Online: Continuing Education is redesigning support for continuing education learners by treating them with degree-level support. The session outlines a practical framework that includes virtual community, adapted academic support for short asynchronous courses and certificates, and career services resources. Grounded in data, pilot lessons, and change management, it gives participants concrete ideas to strengthen belonging, persistence, and career momentum for CE learners in their own institutions.
Reducing Adult Learner Friction: Flexible Models for Working Professionals
This interactive workshop explores how institutions can reduce barriers for working adult learners in continuing education. Using examples from asynchronous courses, accelerated 7-week formats, and microcredential programs in biomedical sciences, facilitators examine how scheduling, funding navigation, and program design impact learner access and persistence. Participants will collaboratively identify common friction points, discuss flexible learning and credentialing strategies, and develop actionable ideas to improve adult learner engagement, accessibility, and success within their own institutional contexts.
The Handshake Isn’t the Hard Part: Building Transfer Partnerships That Actually Close
Most transfer partnerships stall between the first meeting and the signed agreement. This session explores why — and what institutions can do differently. Drawing on dual institutional perspectives, including direct feedback from community college partners who said yes, presenters share a structured outreach system a two-person team used to build five partnerships in one year. Attendees will see live AI-assisted workflows that cut outreach preparation from hours to minutes, then apply them in a hands-on lab. Participants will leave with a drafted outreach message, a diagnostic for identifying follow-up gaps, and a scalable system they can implement with a small team immediately.