Student Recruitment by Faculty Phone-a-Thons

Phone-a-thons are an enrollment effort that began in earnest in the 1980s as a method for recruiting college-bound students.Often, this technique manifests in the employment of current students to staff phone banks and call prospective students during prime time periods.Although enrollment management functions are not part of the traditional faculty role, the authors describe a program of involving faculty from the College of Engineering, Forestry and Natural Sciences in an annual phone-a-thon.Each year since the fall of 2005, faculty have been organized to call students who have submitted an application to study in an engineering, science, mathematics, or forestry major at Northern Arizona University, but have not yet committed to enroll in the university via deposit.The faculty's phone call mission is to reach out to this selective group of prospective students in a nurturing manner in order to exemplify our student-focused environment, to answer questions, and to increase yields.This paper will present summary data with conclusions about the effectiveness of this annual effort, which takes place over the course of two evenings each year.