POPULATION BOOM!

Dana's enrollment surges to a three-decade high

For three years, the quietest place on the Dana Campus was Rasmussen Hall. The residence hall has been empty since 2001, except for a short stint as temporary office space during the renovation of Borup Coliseum in 2003.

All that — and a lot more — is changing this year at Dana.

A record number of incoming students means Rasmussen is more than reopened — it is almost filled to capacity. With a 10 percent growth in the overall student body from last year, Dana officials are both basking in success and scrambling to modify the campus to meet the academic and housing needs of more students.

It could be the beginning of a new golden age at the college. The increased enrollment is not a blip. Improved admissions and marketing efforts are behind the increase, and officials predict the trend will continue for the foreseeable future. If that is the case, this year's enrollment of 617 fulltime students could rise to 750 students by the college’s 125th anniversary in 2008.

Keys to Success

The most dramatic aspect of Dana's growth is that it is the result of many small and medium-size changes across the college.

“We’ve always felt we had what prospective students wanted,” said Carrie (Larkins ’94) Reed, director of college relations and marketing. “We offer great faculty-student relationships, outstanding career placement and the opportunities to really be active and involved in a variety of extracurricular pursuits. What we lacked was the right way to communicate that to prospective students.”

In recognition of that need, Dana hired Art & Science Group of Baltimore, Md., to conduct a marketing assessment. The company did extensive research, including telephone surveys, to get a better grasp on how Dana was coming across to prospective students and what the college could do to improve their recognition among young people.

The results were great news for Dana. When students in the greater Omaha area were asked what they wanted in a college, they responded the ideal college would be a warm, supportive place where faculty and staff were supportive of students and their goals. Students also wanted opportunities to get involved in a variety of activities, including athletics, fine arts, and volunteer and academic groups.

“We were very excited about the marketing research results,” Reed said. “It told us students want to go to a place like Dana. All we had to do was let them know we were here.”

Armed with the research results and a new slogan, “Develop Talents, Take Charge, Build a Future: We’re With You All the Way,” Reed and Dean of Enrollment Management Jim Lynes worked to revamp all of Dana’s publications and its web site. New materials were revised to be more marketing-oriented and attractive to prospective students. Special emphasis was placed on Dana’s strong academic programs and active atmosphere.

Other changes within the Admissions Office have been ongoing since Lynes’ arrival in 2001. One of the first was the removal of an application fee. Without that extra hurdle, Dana saw applications steadily rise, from 427 freshmen applications in 1999 to 912 for the 2004-05 academic year. Admissions standards were also tweaked to eliminate weaker students less likely to thrive and graduate at Dana. This year’s entering class has an average ACT score that is a half point above last year’s, a trend the college hopes to continue.

Lynes and the faculty also worked together to modernize Dana’s curriculum. New majors were added in Criminal Justice, iMedia, Accounting, Management Information Systems and International Studies. These interdisciplinary studies merged Dana’s liberal arts tradition with new technologies and career fields to produce exciting opportunities for students. Nearly 8 percent of this year’s incoming students indicated interest in Criminal Justice, while 4 percent indicated iMedia.

With these structural changes behind them, Dana increased the number of people actively recruiting students. In the Admissions Office, a more mature and professional staff was better able to articulate to students why Dana was the right college for them. Coaches in the athletic department and fine arts directors also stepped in to help bring in the active students Dana is known for. Faculty began reaching out even more to students who would fit into their own programs and bring other qualities to Dana.

Lynes said he expected these changes would bring Dana success in attracting more students, but he didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.

“The spike has happened a year earlier than I thought it would happen,” he said. “I think this trend will continue. The college has said they want to get to 750 in enrollment, and I think we can expect to see that within the next five years.”

In all, 202 freshmen entered Dana this fall. In comparison, 140 freshmen entered Dana in 2002 and 164 in 2003. The last time Dana had an entering class of more than 200 was in 1981, when the college admitted 206 students. The new students, as well as healthy retention of existing students, have made Dana’s student body 10 percent larger than last year, and the biggest group since the height of the Vietnam War in 1971. The addition of 20 traditional part-time students and 32 part-time Danish students studying here for a shortened study term brings the total headcount at Dana this fall to 669.

Lynes said he believes that Dana can reach those large class sizes of the war years again, as long as the college keeps on changing to meet students’ demands.

“We emphasized keeping up with admissions trends,” he said. “We try to change as much as possible. Without these changes in the last couple of years, we wouldn’t be talking about this big class.”

Changing for Success

Higher enrollment means some changes for Dana. As a residential college, one of the most important issues is where to house the additional students. Fortunately, Dana had room to grow in its own residence halls. The re-opening of Rasmussen Hall created space for both the new students and returning students who would prefer to have their own room rather than the more typical double occupancy.

The extra available space easily accommodated this year’s spike in students, but if the trend continues, the college will have to look elsewhere for housing options.

“One of the things we have coming up is looking at housing,” said Chris Jebsen, dean of students. “We’re working on a plan for new construction and renovation. Last spring we lowered the price of single rooms, which helped us reopen Rasmussen. But now we are pretty full, especially in terms of male students.”

Fortunately, Dana has room to grow, said Dr. Brian Viets, provost and dean of the college. “Unlike many schools, Dana is not ‘landlocked.’ We have areas around campus where we could expand with new construction. Few colleges in our area have this luxury.”

While housing may be fairly easy to modify, growth causes some more challenging questions for academics at the college.

“It’s great having the larger class, but we don’t want to become UNL or UNO,” Viets said. “The close personal connection students get in classes is extremely important to Dana’s identity as a college. We don’t want our students to lose that valuable experience.”

For this year, Viets has opened new sections in some general education classes, the most popular with freshmen. The goal is to keep the classroom environment as intimate as possible. For classes that by necessity must be larger, faculty and administration carefully consider each student's individual needs to determine whether they would succeed most in a small or larger class.

“We haven’t dealt with this number of students in recent memory,” Viets said. “We’ve been hard at work all summer making sure we have the right classes in the right classrooms so we can continue to offer the kind of education that has made us so popular.”

While Viets and his staff are focusing mostly on this year’s needs, he said the college is preparing to accommodate even more students in the future. Plans for future resource allocation have already been discussed and everyone is committed to keeping the atmosphere of Dana unchanged.

The small problems caused by Dana’s enrollment success are dwarfed by the excitement caused by such a change in the college, Viets said.

“I think it’s exciting whenever you get an influx of new students,” he said. “They bring with them an energy. It just permeates through campus. When the campus gets that injection of energy, it’s going to be a great semester.”