Cedar Crest College’s leadership prepares for all possible outcomes when census date locks in fall enrollment. After all, it’s a challenging environment for any small private institution to be operating in—particularly a women’s college. Nevertheless, President Elizabeth Meade and her cabinet were thumped when the final numbers came in for fall 2023: full-time enrollment had dropped by 4.5%, creating a $3.7 million budget shortfall.
“I felt a black eye on me and my leadership team,” the six-year president says. “I had a meeting where I said, ‘Everything is on the table.'”
University leaders everywhere understand this feeling only too well as many have made drastic cuts in an effort to adapt to a constricting admissions landscape. Academic program cuts at the University of West Virginia and campus closures across the University of Wisconsin system remind us that these pitfalls aren’t constrained to small institutions.
“After taking a moment to think about how we were going to gain back the trust of our board and our community,” Meade says, “we learned that we needed to move from an emphasis on problems to a focus on potential.”
Rather than cut and reduce, Meade built a one-year growth plan focused on investing in the Lehigh Valley’s high-potential areas, such as working-class women looking for practical avenues to employment through Cedar Crest’s degree and non-degree offerings.
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The plan looks to be paying off: First-year full-time enrollment beat reassessed projections by 11%, a particularly promising win for a college boasting a student body that’s over one-third Pell-eligible and of minority background. Additionally, the melt rate before add/drop week declined by 10 percentage points to 8% and enrollment among Lehigh Valley students has grown by 26%.
And while Cedar Crest’s overall FTE enrollment gain may appear modest (3.5%), there are no “quick fixes,” Meade asserts. “Just as cutting is not a quick fix, growth is not a quick fix,” she adds. “It takes discipline and it takes focus.”
Meads’ take on institutional goal setting
Cedar Crest College had already sprung its strategic plan when last fall’s enrollment numbers came in. But Meade, inspired by John Doerr’s Measure What Matters, had fostered a spirit of collaboration and flexibility among her cabinet, which responded well to quickly scaling a growth-oriented objective. “The goals were set based on data, but we also share a collective responsibility for them,” she says.
Latest developments in data analytics technology have allowed Meade to better share Cedar Crest’s performance indicators with her team in real time. One important outcome was building targeted marketing opportunities for in-demand programs, such as Cedar Crest’s accelerated bachelor’s of science in nursing and its master’s programs in education, nutrition and business administration.
“We knew there was an opportunity for growth in areas where we already had strength and reputation but where there was still a regional gap in supply,” Meade says. “In each of the areas where we invested additional digital media dollars, we absolutely saw growth.”
Why women’s colleges are just as relevant today
Aside from strengthening its existing programs, Cedar Crest has expanded into the emerging foray of cybersecurity and tech. The Elaine and John Harmon Center for Leadership in Technology will help develop new academic programs in artificial intelligence, computer science, cybersecurity and other leading fields. The center will also help Cedar Crest integrate technology-related topics across the college’s curriculum.
Meade likens how Cedar Crest, a 157-year-old college, is pushing into these new ventures to how it helped women in the early 20th century break into the natural sciences. As of 2022, only 25% of women held jobs in cybersecurity, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, and that figure is projected to climb only 10 percentage points by 2031.
“Our identity and mission as a women’s college is as important today as it ever was,” she says. “Lots of co-ed institutions have these majors [in tech], but I think it’ll take a women’s college to say, ‘You belong here, you belong in this field and we can help you get there.'”
