It Takes a Village

Admit It!  You might think that the only people who go into recruiting and yielding an incoming class are those who see such responsibilities in their job descriptions; namely those of us who work in the Admission Office.  But the truth is it takes a village — or in our case a campus — to accomplish what we do.  It’s not just the admission officer who presents an information session and the student tour guide who leads you around campus who help you to understand an institution.  It’s also the professor who taught the class you sat in on or the administrator from the study abroad office who took your phone call or the academic advisor who answered your email.  These examples are likely also somewhat obvious because you had direct contact with these individuals.

But what about all those campus community members who aren’t obvious?  The website designer who collaborated on and built the admitted student website for example, or the Bursar’s Office employee who established a means by which students could send an enrollment deposit electronically, or the Scheduling Office employee who helped our office reserve all of the campus space needed to put on prospective and admitted student programs.  There’s also the catering manager who helps to provide any food we have at any of our events, the staff in Residence Life who establishes a showroom we can use on our tours, the person in our School of Business who facilitates tours of that particular facility…the list goes on and on.  Oftentimes our staff and cadre of student volunteers get all the credit, but that credit is richly deserved by many others on campus.  One of the great things about W&M is how welcoming and friendly this place can be.  When prospective students and families contact a professor, administrator or staff member their questions are welcomed and addressed.  The entire campus works together to build our community year after year.

We recently started a program in our office through which we honor these unsung heroes.  Each month, we select one campus employee who contributes greatly to our office’s efforts, and that employee is “Toasted by Admission”.  They are recognized publicly on a staff-wide listserv, their supervisor is contacted regarding our gratitude and we treat the award recipient to an after-work get-together with our staff.  To really market an institution to a prospective student and family we need so much more than we can provide.  Our campus village is unbelievably supportive of our office’s efforts and we want to celebrate the efforts of all of our villagers.

Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ’09
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission