UWRF outlines recruitment efforts and difficulties

“This is going to be a battle, but you have every capacity to win it,” were UW-River Falls Interim Chancellor Michael Martin’s words to university employees at a Falcon Forum meeting on Feb. 25. Part of this “battle” appears to be on the field of marketing.

The Falcon Forum, which was held in the University Center, outlined UWRF’s recruitment efforts, as well as difficulties that the university faces in this area.

Martin, who retired on March 1, said his last official act as Interim Chancellor would be to meet with the Board of Regents on Feb. 26, to discuss UWRF’s financial evaluation from the consultant group Deloitte. “My emphasis to the Board is: ‘“You have to support UW-River Falls because it can be the most dynamic campus in the System,”’ Martin said at the Forum.

He also encouraged UWRF employees to consider the evaluation. “They certainly lay out some serious concerns, and they are legitimate.” Martin said that Deloitte believes UWRF can “regrow enrollment to what it was approximately 12 years ago,” but that it is “going to take some change; going to take some courage,” and “rethinking who we are.” 

Three days later, Martin was replaced by John Chenoweth, who previously held the positions of Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at UW-Whitewater. 

One of the “changes” that Martin mentioned is to “put marketing at the forefront of what we do now,” said Dina Fassino, who took the stage after Martin. Fassino is the director of University Communications and Marketing at UWRF, and she announced at the meeting that the department will be renamed ‘University Marketing and Communications.’

“Even though our team remains small, we’re more committed than ever to supporting UWRF’s mission,” Fassino said. Beyond recruiting students, another priority of UMC is “building relationships [with] community, business, and industry” partners. The rebranding of UCM to UMC comes after staff reductions at the department, which includes the departures of Deb Toftness, Karen Zander, Tony Bredahl, and most recently, Julian Emerson.

Vathy Leaf, UMC’s Marketing Manager, was the next to speak. As part of her presentation, she shared an ‘elevator pitch’ for employees to describe UWRF. “There are recruiting opportunities everywhere you go. You can help us out by doing more of it.” 

Currently, UWRF is advertising in 10 Wisconsin counties and 7 Minnesota counties and wants to expand its marketing in western Minnesota, especially in counties where the majority of students do not qualify for the North Star Promise program. The program offers ‘last-dollar’ financial aid for Minnesota residents with a family Adjusted Gross Income of less than $80,000, which means it covers the cost of tuition after all other financial aid has been deducted. 

These counties include the Twin Cities counties, Rochester, and Duluth.

UWRF is also participating in the Direct Admit Wisconsin program. As part of direct admissions, 10 Universities of Wisconsin System schools are partnering with 264 Wisconsin school districts to provide what the UW System calls a “simple and seamless [college] admission experience” for high school seniors. The program is beginning with the class of 2025.  

High schools from these districts submitted student GPAs to UWRF and the other UW schools in summer 2024, and, in August and September of 2025, the universities will send admission offers to students who qualify. While beneficial for recruitment, Leaf said that direct admission will make it difficult to predict what enrollment numbers will be for fall 2025. Students still have to accept these admissions offers, after all.

Leaf discussed many other recruitment initiatives as well. UWRF has 5 first-year admissions counselors, who visited 334 high schools and conducted 554 events at those schools in 2024. UWRF also has a Fast Track program that functions like Direct Admit Wisconsin but for Minnesota students. In addition, the university purchases the names of students from organizations like the College Board, ACT, and others to advertise to.

“We purchase about 85,000 student names a year,” said Cindy Holbrook, the Director of Admissions at UWRF. The university sends 2.6 million recruitment emails and 28,000 text messages, as well as video messages, to these students each year.

Other efforts include the Guaranteed First-Year Admissions Policy and a special visit day for pre-college students, and what Holbrook called a “transfer pathway” to facilitate transfer students from Minnesota universities to UWRF.

These initiatives have numerous objectives in mind: to increase the number of Minnesota students, transfer students, and ‘backyard students,’ which are students from nearby counties in Wisconsin and Minnesota. UWRF also wants to increase the number of direct admit students; Holbrook said they need a “baseline” to assess these numbers. 

This baseline will likely be fall 2025’s direct admit numbers. 

Holbrook said that Direct Admit Wisconsin has increased the competition between UW System schools. “We have a huge market of students to go after, but the competition is fierce.” 

UW-Eau Claire is UWRF’s main competitor; UW-La Crosse and UW-Steven’s Point are also competition. So are Twin Cities universities, and the Universities of Minnesota at Duluth and Mankato. “Our top competitors all retain [students] better than we do,” Holbrook said. UWRF’s retention rate is 74.4%, while UW-Eau Claire’s is 81.5%, UW-La Crosse’s is 85.1%, and UW-Steven’s Point is 74.8%. UW-La Crosse’s is the highest in the UW System.

Holbrook presented numerous other challenges to recruitment as well.

The Minnesota North Star Promise is “painfully” narrowing the market, she said. In addition, fewer students in both Minnesota and Wisconsin are choosing to attend college. A quarter of UWRF’s students are transfer students, and many of them transfer from Minnesota’s community colleges. Fewer students are attending these colleges, which hurts UWRF’s transfer rates. “That’s our problem: students choosing not to participate,” Holbrook said.

Amidst these difficulties, University Marketing and Communications has received a budget reduction as well. According to Holbrook, UWRF has 12% of the marketing budget per student that the average university in the United States has. 

This has limited the department’s options. “I would love to do more,” Leaf said. “My base budget when I started at UWRF [in 2018] was $75,000, and I had [another] $75,000 as a one-time expenditure. That’s $150,000 for the whole year. We couldn’t even afford to do paid search for a whole year.” She said that, since then, “We’ve been able to increase that budget,” but also said that the university “can’t afford billboards right now.”

“Don’t ask me to buy lunch,” Holbrook joked. “I don’t have any money.”

The Forum concluded with Leaf mentioning how University Marketing and Communication has used AI in some recent marketing materials. “The interest survey I created on the landing page about the direct admit program started as an AI prompt,” she said.

Future Falcon Forum meetings will be held on March 27 and April 22, and will focus on UWRF's strategic enrollment plan and budget updates, and the university's academic programs, respectively.