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Enrollment On A Roll
Radford’s Board of Visitors’ second meeting of the year in June was infused with a sense of prosperity and growth, brought on in large part by a forecast for significantly increased enrollment for the fall semester.
At the top of his quarterly report to the board, President Bret Danilowicz helped convey the mood by noting, “I do believe that a little bit of celebrating is in order today.”
With a total enrollment of nearly 7,700 students reported in September— an increase over last year—a quick tour through some of the final enrollment data bears that enthusiasm out.
In short: Year-over-year growth from fall 2023 includes a 28% increase in new freshmen and a 25% increase in new transfer students. Overall new student growth is boosted by 47% growth among students from Southwest Virginia, and enrollment by adults 25 years or older increased by 40% from previous years. Totals for first-generation and Pell-eligible Highlanders also achieved new heights.
Those achievements represent a collective effort, wrought by an array of such factors as the Radford Tuition Promise, now renewed for a second year; the arrival in 2023 of Radford’s new Vice President for Enrollment Management and Strategic Communications Dannette Gomez Beane; the rollout of the school’s extensive rebranding; a newly redesigned website and several ambitious expansions in community outreach.
Considerable credit, too, has to go to a dedicated group within the university’s 84,000 alumni who – through programs like the Admissions Ambassadors and the Education Champions – donate their time, their energy, their knowledge and experience, and their enduring loyalty to Radford.
Alumni Admissions Ambassadors volunteer to reach out to high school students who have been accepted to Radford, and over the past year, they gave public talks, wrote thousands of personalized postcards and placed hundreds of calls to households.
Education Champions generally are secondary school faculty who act as Radford representatives and liaisons to the college-bound.
Here is a brief sampling of just a few of the alumni who support their alma mater through their volunteer work and service.
Time to give back
“That is great news,” Chad Burke ’91, of Chantilly, Virginia, said of Radford’s fall enrollment.
Burke, a retired Marine colonel who’s now a program manager for the Federal Aviation Administration’s DroneZone website, met his wife, Julie Burke ’91, when they were Radford undergraduates. Married in 1993, they now have three children.
For the past few years, the Burkes have volunteered as Admissions Ambassadors, sharing their personal thoughts with students they hope will choose Radford.
“I just felt like it was time to give back,” Chad explained. “I got a lot out of the university and wanted to show my appreciation.
“Radford was a great start to my life, and it created a foundation of education and life lessons.”
Julie is a senior manager and North America Ventures & Acquisition Client Account HR Lead with Accenture, the company she’s worked for the past 25 years. She began volunteering as an Admissions Ambassador sometime around 2020.
“In the U.S. today, the college admittance process is not very personal anymore,” she said. “So I feel these individual connections, our postcards and calls, provide a personal touch that represents Radford well. I like to share my experiences at the school, specifically that all of my professors knew me by name, as opposed to sitting in a lecture hall with hundreds of people.
“My time at Radford was special; I met my spouse and so many lifelong friends there. Radford was right for me – not too big, not too little – and I think that size can also be a good fit for many other students.”
They made me fly
For Kathy Grimes ’75, giving back to her alma mater has practically become a second career.
A resident of Ocean City, Maryland – and an auxiliary officer for its police department – Grimes studied health and physical education at Radford, then taught high school and college for about 20 years.
Today, she’s president of the Delmarva Radford University Alumni Chapter and an extremely active booster, given to approaching anyone she spots bearing even the smallest of Highlander gear.
“If I see a parked car that has a Radford sticker, I leave a note on it: ‘I’m Kathy, from Ocean City, and we have an alumni association here. Please contact me if you have any questions,’” she explained, adding that she has recruited for her chapter that way. “Wherever I am, I’m looking for stickers.”
That same focus goes into her work with prospective students. Although she composes up to 100 postcards a year, she’s careful to lend each one its own unique wording and to mail them simultaneously.
“These kids that are at the same high schools, hopefully the mail will get them there at the same time,” Grimes said, “I never want any of them to say, ‘I got a postcard from Radford’ and have somebody else say, ‘I didn’t.’”
Grimes also boasts an extensive Radford lineage – all four of her sons are Highlanders, as well as each of their spouses. She wants students and their parents to know she saw fit to send all of her children there, and as such, she said she can personally speak to the value of nine individual majors.
One key reason for her level of school spirit? Radford changed her life, she said.
“I wasn’t a straight-A student. I wasn’t a bad student, but I was a social butterfly. But there were a lot of opportunities to grow there. They took a mediocre student, and they made me fly,” Grimes recalled.
“And I found out Radford does that well, and I share that with the parents. They need to understand it’s not just the ‘A’ students that get all the opportunities, all the attention. It’s everyone.”
Pop-up video
Tony Johnson ’07 graduated and entered the working world at a crucial moment in technology – he received his diploma one month before Apple’s iPhone hit the market and forever changed the way people can receive information.
So there’s a symmetry to the fact that he forged a modern approach to his admissions ambassadorship. Now a real estate agent in Chesapeake, Virginia, Johnson recently supplemented his outreach by recording an on-camera testimonial to the young people considering Radford.
“Kids today, they do video,” he reasoned. “What’s a better way than video for them to see how excited you are? I think you can get to know people better if you see what their facial expressions look like.”
Johnson’s video is sent to prospective students who have been admitted.
“I’m reaching out to congratulate you on being accepted into the Highlander family,” he explains in his 73-second clip, clad in his school’s signature colors. “My Radford experience prepared me not only for success in my field but success in life in general.”
He also urges viewers to visit campus and congratulates them on their high school graduation.
“I just do it for the love of the school,” Johnson said.
Undisputed ‘Champion’
It’s only been five years since Chelsea Curtis ’19 graduated from Radford, and today, she teaches English literature and composition at Magna Vista High School in Ridgeway, Virginia.
Curtis is both a Ridgeway native and a Magna Vista grad.
“I came back home,” she recently said. “It was strange at first, but at this point, I call my old teachers by their first names, so it’s not weird anymore. It’s very cool.”
Curtis is also an Education Champion, an in-school advocate for her alma mater.
“For me, it’s finding a way to make college not so scary for students, and with my experience with Radford, and with it being fairly close to where I’m at, that’s easy to do,” she explained.
Much of that, she said, involves introducing students to opportunities in higher education.
Last fall, Curtis brought a group of students to Radford’s campus, where they engaged with the English department, toured the grounds and had lunch at Dalton Hall.
She’s also imported experts to Ridgeway, such as admissions counselor Mark Shuman, who visited Magna Vista when her class was learning about resumes. Shuman offered firsthand information about preparing their materials for college and employment.
Another of her professors, Amanda Kellogg, MBA ’23, who previously served as a graduate programs coordinator at Radford, also sat in on one of Curtis’ classes. An associate professor with a doctorate in English literature, Kellogg provided feedback on the students’ Shakespeare projects but also gave them exposure of a higher variety.
“That was the first time a lot of my students met someone with a Ph.D.,” Curtis said. “It was the first time a lot of them heard about what a Ph.D. is, and I explained that you can get a Ph.D. in anything, anything you’re excited about in school, and be a doctor of it. It was a way of encouraging learning and saying, ‘Do what makes you happy.’”
“As an alumni, you want to know how to get involved, and you want to know what you can do to support the university other than donating money. You look into the programs Radford has and the initiatives that the alumni are doing, and you can find one that fits you,” she said.
“I was very excited to see this one, that fits me, because it involves my own students, and it’s just so special to me.”
