Admissions Makes Staff, Program Changes

The NMU Admissions office reorganized some of its staff and programs recently in an effort to make the recruitment process more accessible to prospective students. Joanne (Rule) Chalgren, assistant director of admissions, was relocated to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Part of her job also entails recruiting efforts in California at college fairs. Filling the West/Central Upper Peninsula recruiting area is Jose Garcia. New staff member Michelle Corcoran, an NMU graduate, will handle transfer students in the Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin and Illinois.

The Academic Achievement Awards (Triple A) scholarship competition has been restructured. There is an added weekend later in the school year to give high school students who were previously unfamiliar with NMU the opportunity to participate. The competition will be held Nov. 13-14, and again on Jan. 27. Assistant Director of Admissions Gina Lombardini said that in previous years, the November-only competition dates unintentionally prevented students from competing because some did not hear about the scholarship until it was too late.

“We just thought we’d try something different this year. We were seeing students after the semester break who didn’t know about the competition because we didn’t have previous contact with them. So we thought we’d put it later to try to catch those students,” said Lombardini.

The Connect NMU program has also been restructured into Wildcat Weekend. The redesign is intended to make the weekend more of an immersive recruitment tool for students earlier in the recruitment cycle, instead of the previous “yield” program held later in the cycle. For the weekends of Nov. 5 and March 18, students will attend a small informational fair, be able to explore an academic area, participate in various campus events, and discover the campus and community.

“If they’ve never been on campus before, it’s a good way to see what NMU has to offer and maybe they can follow up with a campus visit later for a one-on-one with a professor within their chosen academic major,” Lombardini said. “It’s a great day for a student still juggling the idea of two or three different schools.”

Admissions Director Gerri Daniels had similar thoughts: “Our number one goal is that parents and students get their needs met so they find out if NMU is the right place for them. Our goal is to increase the number of students and families who visit campus one way or the other. We know that if they visit here, they are more likely to attend Northern.”