Northern sees success with new program

The admissions team at Montana State University-Northern received a national admissions and enrollment award last week, after Northern saw a jump in the number of applications it received from potential recruits this year, due in part to the use of a customer relationship management system they have used since at least October.

Members of the office were presented with the award and $2,500 from Hobson's, a software developer at the company's conference in Indianapolis last week.

"I think it is really cool, kind of a, 'Hey great job,'" said Maura Gatch, admissions director at Northern.

The Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, and California University of Pennsylvania in California, Pennsylvania, were also finalists for the admissions award in the category of admissions and enrollment.

The system, Hobsons' Radius admission and enrollment customer relationship management, or CRM, was installed last fall at Northern along with Montana State University in Bozeman, Great Falls College and Montana State University Billings, a multi-million dollar investment by Montana State University as part of its One MSU initiative.

Tracey Jette, senior director of student success at Northern, said the Radius stores contact data of recruits and how often they have been contacted by the office, sends out automated emails and personalizes information sent to prospective students.

"We can make it a much more personalized journey for our applicants," Gatch said.

Since the program was put in place, the number of applications from prospective students to Northern has risen by 11 percent, reaching 845 applications compared to 756 last year, she said.

Jette said representatives from the admissions office nominated themselves for the award, at the suggestion of Hobson, by submitting a seven-page document explaining how the radius has improved the application process,

Jette said that before Radius, admissions recruiters relied on binders and Excel Spreadsheets to hold their information on each recruit and had to contact them one by one. Radius allows them to contact more students and personalize applications to individual students, she added.

Radius also allows recruits who have sent the office information to access a portal and see where they are in the recruitment process and what other information they have to send in.

"So it kind of takes the mystery out of the application process," Jette said.

Gatch said the $2,500 cash award will be used to purchase a new printer which will allow the office to increase efficiency and further personalize mailings.

"So we are really student focused, getting them the information they need as quickly as possible and correctly as possible," she said.