Don’t Wait for Them to Come to You

Presented by Michael Merriam, MM, Framingham State University

Reported by Katie Olivo, MA, MS, Shenandoah University

The next step was to generate university buy-in. This involved meetings with many campus partners, namely: the program director, alumni and development, the bursar, registrar, admissions, legal affairs, financial aid, and educational technology. They worked to develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU), and a contract to meet their accreditation requirements, but also strove to meet students where they were. Merriam shared a few tips about this process for those looking to start cohorts of their own:

• Plan course schedules that work best for the students and the sponsoring company. This cohort started with one class per semester during their work hours one morning each week.

On July 1, 2022, Dr. Nancy Niemi began her tenure as president of Framingham State University (FSU). A few weeks later, she charged Michael Merriam, assistant dean for graduate and continuing education recruitment, with four goals:

1. Be entrepreneurial

2. Find programs to expand

3. Don’t spend too much money

4. Increase enrollment

Knowing he had no small task ahead of him, Merriam and his team began identifying programs with capacity that met community demand. They identified three programs to focus on first (counseling psychology, nutrition education, and special education) but ultimately began with one primary cohort for the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

Over the next year, Merriam created a targeted recruitment process aimed at creating cohorts with community organizations. First, he sought company partnerships. One company approached FSU willing to provide 40 scholarships to increase the number of licensed mental health counselors. He took their offer one step further and asked if they could work together to develop a cohort.

• Discuss the preferred modality for the organization - asynchronous online, remote synchronous, hybrid, face-to-face?

• Reduce barriers by examining admissions requirements.

Once these details were concrete, marketing started in earnest: press releases, digital advertisements, webinars, one-on-one appointments, email and text campaigns, and community outreach. This generated a lot of interest that they then had to narrow down to 20 students.

About this time in the process, Merriam went back to his charge from his president and realized they needed more support to avoid spending too much money. Merriam and his colleagues drafted a grant proposal to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health & Human Services. The proposal included 10 letters of support and commitment, including one from the president, and requested funds to hire additional staff and faculty. FSU was awarded $1.3 million and are currently collaborating with nine prospective organizations to establish new cohorts.

Merriam emphasized the group effort necessary to launch FSU’s cohort initiatives. His parting advice to his audience? “Don’t take no for an answer.” n