AFA Report to the Board of Trustees
Spring 2007


The Admissions and Financial Aid committee has been meeting separately and jointly with the Enrollment Management Team every other week. Both committees are excited by the increased student numbers, and are embracing the new challenge of how to best shape our future student body and how to retain students once they arrive at Wells.

In the fall we worked on:
·    understanding why we were so unprepared for the large influx of new students this fall. We decided that although the leaving of Dean Hall this past summer was the ultimate cause of the disorganization and ensuing confusion, some safeguards should be in place to prevent it from occurring again. Once the Jenzabar computer system is running (by Fall 2008) this problem will be unlikely to happen again because faculty will be able to view class enrollment as it happens.
·    how to best shape the future student body. Even within the committee, concerns varied on how to best do this - we will be calling an open meeting of the Faculty in the spring to hear what others have to say. Once we have an idea of the array of faculty perspectives we will make recommendations to Admissions for future years.
·    a vision for an Academic Resource Center. We have brainstormed ideas for where it should be housed, what resources should be included, and how to get students to use it. This topic will continue to be a major focus of our Committee work for the spring and directly affects retention rates.
·    finalizing the changes to our Mission started last fall- including the possible addition of  the Director of Institutional Diversity Steve Gilchrist to the Committee.

For this spring we are planning:
·    to hold an open meeting with the faculty to hear faculty perspectives on how best to shape the future student body.
·    to work on the Academic Resource Center (Information Commons?). Preliminary plans are for a pilot center to open this semester in the central area of the library.
·    to finalize the changes to our mission.
·    to work with Associate Dean Cindy Speaker on the success of the first year program and how best to increase the retention of students.



Respectfully submitted,


Jaclyn Schnurr
Chair, AFA