Here are four ways Bucknell University’s admissions office beat the Great Resignation
The private Pennsylvania university maintained a 100% retention rate among its admissions counselors and enrolled its biggest and most diverse first-year class in its history. Here’s how.
Admissions counselors have one of the toughest jobs in higher education. They’re constantly on the road. They have stacks of applications to read. And in between they’re always talking with prospective students and their families.
The hours are long, the pace is relentless and the pressure is immense because annual college budgets depend on the size and quality of the freshman classes. Job turnover can be high as counselors find work at other schools to advance their careers or give up the profession entirely.
But Bucknell University has done something remarkable amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation that has seen millions of Americans quit their jobs: Its admissions office has remained fully staffed throughout. Bucknell held onto all 15 of its frontline admissions counselors, a number that includes its admissions dean, and added a 16th person.
Even more impressive, Bucknell saw first-year applications jump by nearly 14% in 2021 to more than 11,000 — a record that the university broke again this year. In addition, Bucknell last fall welcomed the largest and most diverse freshman class in its history.
In an interview, Lisa A. Keegan, Bucknell’s vice president for enrollment management, offered some best practices that have kept her team on board and focused on present and future admissions challenges.
Lisa A. Keegan is the vice president for enrollment management at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Lisa A. Keegan is the vice president for enrollment management at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Admissions counselors have one of the toughest jobs in higher education. They’re constantly on the road. They have stacks of applications to read. And in between they’re always talking with prospective students and their families.
The hours are long, the pace is relentless and the pressure is immense because annual college budgets depend on the size and quality of the freshman classes. Job turnover can be high as counselors find work at other schools to advance their careers or give up the profession entirely.
But Bucknell University has done something remarkable amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation that has seen millions of Americans quit their jobs: Its admissions office has remained fully staffed throughout. Bucknell held onto all 15 of its frontline admissions counselors, a number that includes its admissions dean, and added a 16th person.
Lisa A. Keegan is the vice president for enrollment management at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Lisa A. Keegan is the vice president for enrollment management at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Even more impressive, Bucknell saw first-year applications jump by nearly 14% in 2021 to more than 11,000 — a record that the university broke again this year. In addition, Bucknell last fall welcomed the largest and most diverse freshman class in its history.
In an interview, Lisa A. Keegan, Bucknell’s vice president for enrollment management, offered some best practices that have kept her team on board and focused on present and future admissions challenges.
1. Give your people purpose
When Keegan got to Bucknell in mid-2020, she promised to lead with what she called “optimism and purpose” and connect the work of the admissions office to the mission and direction of the university. She challenged herself and her admissions counselors to find ways to make Bucknell more accessible to more potential students despite a pandemic that caused most people to hunker down at home.
One project in development before Keegan arrived was a virtual experience that would let students use their phones or web browsers to explore this university of about 3,700 students — lecture halls, center court of the basketball arena, the historic tree-lined campus and even downtown Lewisburg, Bucknell’s home for nearly 200 years.
In spring 2021, admissions counselors shipped Oculus headsets to admitted students who hadn’t visited campus so they could take part in the highly immersive Bucknell Virtual Experience at home. The response was strong, Keegan said, because prospective students got to feel what it was like to be at Bucknell.
As the admissions office hit its targets, Keegan made sure to reward her staff. Sometimes, Keegan gave her staff extra time off, encouraged them to knock off work early and held gift card drawings — “anything to try to boost their morale,” Keegan said.
Making these connections and emphasizing that their work mattered were key not just to admissions office success but counselor retention, Keegan said.
“I think that when you’re leading with that purpose and connecting people to their work,” she added, “they feel like they’re a part of something bigger.”
2. Be flexible
Bucknell resumed admissions tours in fall 2020, but for safety reasons tour groups were smaller than usual and largely stayed out of campus buildings. When COVID-19 spiked at the end of 2020, campus tours were suspended once again. Campus tours started back up in the spring, but only for admitted students.
“We said, we’re going to try this. We’re going to adapt,” Keegan said. “If we need to halt this because of the health and safety of our team and our campus community and our visitors, then we’re going to do that. That was our mindset the entire time.”
This flexibility also extended to work arrangements. Admissions counselors split time between home and the office as needed. They got time to deal with children and family issues.
Admissions staff members also came to Keegan with an idea: Because some counselors preferred to start late and work late, was there a way to do campus tours late in the afternoon? (Most admissions offices close at 5, Keegan explained, so the last tour of the day usually begins about 3 p.m.) So last summer, Bucknell offered guided campus tours starting at 5 p.m. These late-day tours filled quickly, Keegan said, and proved to her that this outside-the-box approach struck the right balance between her team’s preferences and the desires of prospective students and their families.
“You’re trusting people to do their jobs, and they’re doing them in new ways,” Keegan said. “People can still do really, really good work, and they have.”
3. Show some empathy — and a little vulnerability, too
Bucknell announced Keegan’s appointment in March 2020 in the same week it told students and faculty that because of COVID-19 they would finish the spring semester remotely.
“For me in that transition I had to think really deeply and carefully about how I was going to connect with my new team, recognizing the unbelievable amount of uncertainty they were facing,” Keegan said.
“There’s a pandemic. They were told to work remote. They’re trying to hold on to that incoming (freshman) class. And they have a brand-new leader walking in the door. I’m not sure we could have piled any more uncertainty on that team.”
In the weeks before and after she arrived on campus, Keegan met each of her new team members on Zoom. These get-to-know-you conversations weren’t about work. Rather, they were about dealing with remote school and child care, about caring for aging parents, about finding quiet places at home to work. In Keegan’s Zoom background, her new team members could see children’s toys, home-gym equipment and other signs of normal life turned upside down.
“I made sure they knew I was in the same boat — filled with uncertainty and in a less than ideal situation,” Keegan said. “It was critical to let them know I am in this with you. I am feeling the levels of stress and anxiety that you are.”
4. Play the long game
Right after Bucknell rolled out its new virtual campus experience, conversations turned to what could be next.
Could more locations — places that visitors don’t ordinarily get to see — be added to the Bucknell Virtual Experience? Could the app be placed in the Oculus Quest Store so more people could find it? Could the virtual tour be added to in-person campus visits to inject some life into a campus that’s quiet on Saturday mornings and during the summers? How else could this software be used to recruit more students who because of time or money or distance can’t get to Bucknell?
Dealing with the pandemic was first and foremost about reacting to a crisis. But Keegan said it was crucial to keep admissions counselors focused on what would happen when the pandemic ended. She had counselors think about how new approaches and programs could be made more fun and more useful while remaining relevant 5 or 10 years in the future.
“I think that (approach) helped people realize that they’re not just doing something to respond to a crisis. They’re thinking beyond that,” Keegan said. “They feel like they’re moving the needle. I’ve heard them say that they’re doing meaningful work.”
As difficult as the pandemic has been, it has let Bucknell’s admissions office wrestle in new ways with old issues — including retention.
“During this time good leaders are still bound to lose good people,” Keegan said. “But as a profession and in higher education broadly we have to find ways to continue to be nimble and be thinking about the recruitment and retention of our teams in new ways.
“Higher education is not typically known for being particularly nimble,” Keegan said. “But we’ve had to be.”
This content was paid for by Bucknell University and produced by Inside Higher Ed's sponsored content team. The editorial staff of Inside Higher Ed had no role in its preparation.
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