Assistant vice president for enrollment management and executive director of admissions and new student programs Katharine Johnson Suski shared ways her staff can support college and department recruitment and outreach efforts during the Dec. 10 Faculty Senate meeting.
Suski said the admissions team can help in three main areas: student recruitment, graduate student admission review and communications.
Recruitment staff provide support through prospect and applicant data.
"Every college has a recruitment team that has access to bimonthly dashboards containing data to help departments and programs learn about prospective and applied students to the university," she said. "Those teams should be the first point of contact."
Colleges and departments looking for more undergraduate students can purchase names from various services of students who have indicated interest in certain fields. Iowa State buys 300,000-400,000 names each year, with individual colleges buying more, Suski said.
Currently, Iowa State works with a vendor for communications to prospective students, but it is an expensive process.
"For the fall 2026 cycle, we are going to move that process in-house to the admissions office," she said. "It will save a lot of money when we do this outreach."
The admissions staff can help contact students through various email campaigns and ensure the Iowa State brand is represented. College and department staff receive analytics from those campaigns with open rates and other information, Suski said.
Faculty and staff can receive graduate admission review support through one-on-one consulting and training for individuals and programs.
Degrees of the future
The senate will vote at its next meeting on two proposed degrees of the future:
- An interdisciplinary bachelor's degree from the agronomy and agricultural and biosystems engineering departments in digital and precision agriculture (PDF). Precision agriculture relies on data to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agriculture. Iowa State would be the first regent university to offer the major with a curriculum focused on agricultural science, sensor technologies, data science, spatial analysis and field-based operations.
- A master's degree in financial technology (PDF) offered by the colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Business focused on financial analysis, computational methods and business analytics. The 30-credit program includes 15 credits in computer science and 15 in finance and business analytics. Coursework would emphasize artificial intelligence, blockchain, software development and more. Students would learn to use financial and technological advances to develop algorithms and descriptive and predictive data analysis techniques.
Other business
Senators will vote at the January meeting on:
- A proposed interdisciplinary minor (PDF) in user experience design in the graphic design and industrial design departments. User experience design focuses on creating intuitive, efficient and enjoyable user interactions with digital products, websites and applications. The 15-credit minor has nine required credits and six elective credits offered in seven departments.
- A proposed online master's in supply chain management (PDF). The 30-credit program allows students to learn at their pace. The coursework-only program provides practical training to develop supply chain professionals with advanced managerial and analytical tools and skills that will help address the significant supply chain manager shortage in the state and across the nation.
- A proposed amendment to the degree planning policy would allow students to pursue a minor or certificate before earning a major of the same name if it does not occur in the same semester. Currently, a student can't earn a minor, certificate or major of the same name under any circumstances. This could help recruit additional students.
- A proposed name change to the animal ecology major, to wildlife and fisheries conservation and ecology (PDF). The name is consistent with peer institutions that have wildlife and fisheries conservation in the major title and may attract more students to the program.
- A proposal to remove guidelines from the Faculty Handbook regarding the percentage of term faculty instructors in a department or at the university. They would be replaced in the handbook with a statement including an annual review of the breakdown of tenured, tenure-eligible and term faculty to seek an appropriate balance for teaching, research and extension responsibilities.
- Proposed changes to curricular-related activities in the Faculty Handbook to clarify guidelines on missing classes, which semesters are impacted and holiday exemptions.
Senators approved:
- The fall graduation list that includes more than 1,600 undergraduate and 380 graduate students.
- Renaming the graduate specialization, "Intelligent Infrastructure Engineering," to "Transdisciplinary Infrastructure Engineering" (PDF) in the civil, construction and environmental engineering department. The new name offers marketing and recruitment opportunities.
- Removing all language in the Faculty Handbook regarding consenting relationships, and replacing it with a link to the consenting relationships policy in the policy library.
- Removing all but one section on intellectual property of educational materials from the Faculty Handbook and providing a link to the new institutional policy on educational materials in the policy library. The remaining section on required readings and textbook selection was moved to the end of section 10.6 (course information) in the handbook.
