WIN Foundation members have spent months looking at where to target initiatives through discussions with faculty, students, administration, Wittenberg's Board of Directors, and our WIN members who come from a range of disciplines. WIN's membership is working to focus on areas that complement Wittenberg's internal initiatives - not replicate them.
Our efforts can be broken down into two major categories, and each category has projects under development to support those objectives. Progress on these projects, as well as budget information is shared on the Groups section of the WIN Foundation website, and our board meetings are open to all members. Each WIN Committee has a discussion group, and there is a General Membership group for cross-membership discussions and updates.
AREA 1: INCREASING ENROLLMENT
SOUTHERN STATES PLAN. As you’ve probably seen in our other posts (e.g., https://www.wittinnovationnetwork.org/post/college-aged-population-will-drop-15-in-the-coming-decade-what-can-witt-do), demography is a problem being faced by all small liberal arts schools. Midwest and Northeastern states have a declining high school population, but Southern states are growing. As a matter of practicality, Wittenberg focuses most of their recruiting efforts within 300 miles of Witt. This area is adversely affected by this effect. We have assembled alumni who are high school guidance counselors, high school administrators, students, and teachers in the Southern states - along with alumni who work in admissions at other colleges to put together a detailed approach to target specific categories of high schools in Southern States. These students require a geographically targeted message, and we'll be working with Wittenberg's administration in developing that messaging.
MODIFIED ADRIAN COLLEGE PLAN. Several years ago, Dr. Jeffrey Docking, President of Adrian College, published a book that detailed a recovery approach that was used at Adrian College (https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Higher-Education-Colleges-Transformations/dp/1611861543) to improve enrollment there. This approach called on students to be recruited from high school the way that athletes are - across all co-curricular activities. We have been working up several modifications to this, as well as including some things that we can do as a separate legal entity from Wittenberg. High school students like to feel wanted - and this personal touch works. We have also discussed ways in which WItt students in co-curriculars could be part of this recruiting process - reaching out to high school students to recruit them to their organizations. We have discussed ways in which WIN Foundation funds could be used to augment those student org budgets with extra funds if they recruit new students (working with WIN Foundation advisors in the process).
TORCH/WUSO REBOOT. This is a specific initiative in the above project. The twist here is that we are working to restore these co-curriculars with an added feature… having both orgs offer the ability to recruit current high school students to participate while still in high school. Both WUSO and the Torch will be using current generation software tools that enable remote participation. High school recruits could participate in The Torch as guest columnists, or special assignment reporters/photographers. There could be opportunities for high school recruits to guest DJ or have a guest podcast. While this sort of involvement of prospective high school recruits won't be possible for some co-curricular activities, we will be trying to find ways to further develop this technique. The goal is to create a strong emotional bond between these prospective students and WIttenberg - increasing the "yield" on applications (i.e., the % of accepted students who choose Witt).
MUSIC PROGRAM SUSTAINMENT. Similar to WUSO/Torch. We are developing several approaches to sustain elements of co-curricular music … specifically focused on keeping ensemble groups (such as Witt Choir) as active organizations. This would likely be done in conjunction with the Theater Department.
AREA 2: DISTINCTIVE PROGRAMS
21st Century Liberal Arts. The Foundation has been actively working to develop a pilot project in multi-disciplinary internships. The planning of this pilot effort has involved discussions with multiple academic departments and Witt’s Hagen Center for Civic and Urban Engagement. The unique element of this project is that it focuses on providing students with the opportunity to develop skills needed in the "independent worker" age of the US economy. We believe that a successful pilot of this idea could lead to a new way of thinking about liberal arts - something very unique in the higher education markets. There will be more about this project in a future post.
SPECIAL PROJECTS. Our special projects committee is looking at how grants from non-profit foundations and corporations could be combined with new academic programs ideas to create other unique programs. One such program is a project with the business department to accelerate certifications for financial planning minors by combining specific preparation for those certifications with paid internships with financial services companies (we have several execs from those companies as members). We have learned that early attainment of these certifications is critical to the best placements in the Financial Services industry. This sort of program could be unique amongst Wittenberg's competition.
HOW CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
These projects are just a sample of the efforts underway within the WIN Foundation's Committees. You can join the Foundation and become a part of the solution. Simply "hoping" that something good will happen has not changed the status quo. New ideas for projects come from Committees that you can be a part of, and we actively recruit new members with subject matter expertise to evolve rough ideas into practical implementations.
If you don't have the time to commit to actively participate as a volunteer in our projects that's OK too - your membership is critical to funding these initiatives.
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