Recruiting students

You know why you chose to enroll at Portland State.

Kayla Nguyen/VANGUARD STAFf

Portland state students traverse the Park Blocks. PSU recruiters are bringing more international students to the university.

Chances are you heard about a program or field of study that interested you, or you felt the need for a career change after the economy plummeted. Maybe you just wanted to live in Portland.

But do you remember how you first heard about Portland State?

It was probably thanks, in part, to the efforts of a recruiter.

Even with two highly publicized state schools within a two-hour driving radius, PSU has managed to increase enrollment by 44 percent since fall 2011, making it the largest university in Oregon.

To achieve this, recruiters at PSU find themselves doing everything from manning tables at local college fairs to meeting with government officials in Hong Kong.

Agnes Hoffman, associate vice provost for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, recently returned from an overseas trip focused on extending Portland State’s international reach. It is, in part, a byproduct of what she calls the “increasing focus on the internationalization” of the campus.

PSU expects more than 2,000 international students this year, coming from almost 100 countries, making up around 15 percent of the PSU student body.

The focus on international students is not unique. Recruitment efforts to increase the internationalization of the student body are found at most large state universities.

In addition to international students, PSU seeks candidates from Oregon resident freshmen, transfer students and students of color. According to a PowerPoint presentation on PSU’s website detailing 2008 recruitment strategies, the resulting global and diverse student body has become a primary selling point for recruiters.

Many Oregon residents first encounter PSU at local college fairs. One of these fairs was recently held in the grand ballroom of the Portland Art Museum for prospective students looking to go into arts programs for music, film
or dance.

It was a short trip across the Park Blocks last week for PSU recruiter Mario Mesquita, an employee in the Office of Admissions who was helping run Portland State’s booth. With Mesquita was Darrell Grant, a new assistant dean in the School of Fine and Performing Arts.

For program-centric fairs, the university often sends a faculty representative to assist with outreach and recruiting for the area of study they represent. Grant, a faculty member in the music department, was able to connect with prospective music students to a greater degree than those recruiters at nearby tables with only general knowledge of their institutions.

“It’s great—a little overwhelming, but great,” he explained.

Monday’s fair was Grant’s first as a faculty representative. Mesquita and Grant were kept busy answering questions, both from eager-faced, college-bound teens and from their parents.

Recruitment efforts at PSU are assisted by an organization called the National Association for College Admission Counseling. NACAC’s many roles include offering strategic assistance for colleges through their regionalized branches as well as helping to organize cataloged prospective student information through digitization.

“I guess you could think about it as a think-tank for college recruiters,” explained Andrea Hendrickson, assistant
director of admissions at Lawrence University and NACAC’s Portland liaison.

NACAC’s Pacific Northwest division, PNACAC, organized the college fair. In order to enter, prospective students were required to register a QR code, which they would present to recruiters to scan. Upon scanning, the information would be sent to NACAC, and then back to the university for inclusion in their student database.

These databases can be enormous—PSU’s 2008 first-time freshman list contained more than 20,000 names—but still remain an effective and popular form of outreach for the school. With the assistance of an organization like NACAC, schools can focus their efforts on broader recruitment practices, rather than organizing names in a filing cabinet.

Their efforts are paying off. Where in-state applications have consistently increased for PSU, the years from 2000 to 2005 saw a 121 percent increase in out-of-state student applications.

While PSU has traditionally been a commuter campus with an older student population, recent trends indicate the “traditional” first-time student population is growing, driving the median student age down to similar numbers as the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

And these increasing numbers of students are, on average, applying to PSU with higher grade point averages—a helpful measure of their “academic preparedness,” which is the admissions office’s primary criteria for admission.

For Hoffman, it seems that part of the goal is to let the academic strength and diversity of the university become a tool of recruitment on its own.

“We seek students who will contribute to our academic community by encouraging student engagement and presenting possibilities for prospective students to become involved on our campus,” she said.