WEBVTT

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 back to undergraduate admissions. Sure, that was an absolutely wonderful

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part of my career. It was silver
rewarding and it's such a happy time in

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people's lives when they're choosing a
college and coming to university.

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And so that was really enjoyable for
me. There were lots of challenges. I

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always said every year it was more
different, better, we wanted really

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more students, we wanted more diverse
students and we wanted better

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academics, students. And so there
were, there were challenges that were

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continual. Um I would say my, what I
feel proudest of probably in that um

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experience was I remember very clearly
a meeting with the provost milk

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collection and we were talking about
how we needed to really, this was

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shortly after I became director, I try
and recruit more freshmen into the

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class because our senior class was our
largest class and it really didn't

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make sense for a lot of reasons. There
were a lot of really strong

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underrepresented students who were
starting at community college that we

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felt should really have the university
experience economically the way

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that we were funded through the state.
It was not to our benefit to have

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larger numbers of juniors and seniors
and less freshmen and sophomores,

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just lots of reasons. And so I worked
on a program called shaping the

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class where we really worked to uh
build that. The issue is as the

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destination for the top high school
students in the state as freshmen and

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hired a group of recruiters who
actually went and spent time in the high

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schools and my message to them was
always, I want you to be that high

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school counselors best friend. If
there's any questions about higher ed,

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they should be calling you. And it
worked. So, um, our freshman class

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became our largest class. We really
inverted that pyramid, and I really do

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think it was launched to help improve
the academic reputation quality of

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the university.