The admissions office is moving ahead with new enrollment goals.
Every year admissions is faced with the task of bringing new students to campus and in recent years diversity has become a major part of the plan, according to the executive director of admissions.
“I think that anyone in higher education knows that if you’re not willing to think outside where you are currently in your little enrollment box, you’re not going to succeed,” Shannon Zottola said.
Recently President Taylor has stated that he aims to increase Spanish enrollment specifically to reflect the ethnicity’s growth of the population throughout the United States.
Shelly Goff, a 2014 Cabrini alumna who studied English agrees with President Taylor’s newly announced project.
“I think that as a social justice college, which aims to integrate many ethnicities and cultures, Cabrini will benefit from a heightened enrollment of Latino students,” Goff said. “To have more students of Hispanic ethnicity would add more of this background to the English, communications and fine arts classes on campus, while also improving many other classes in the sciences.”
This plan goes hand-in-hand with goals that admissions had already planned, as well. “It’s really looking at what areas are growing in the United States and outside of the United States in terms of bringing students to this area for higher education, particularly students who are a best fit for Cabrini and really stretching out our recruitment efforts,” Zottola said.
Although Cabrini has traditionally recruited to north up to Connecticut and south to Virginia, particular demographics have been targeted in the past similar to the way that Spanish populations are of interest now. The transfers, military, commuter and international markets have all been targeted before.
According to Zottola, the number of diverse students on campus has doubled since 2008 and this new movement is only another step in the process.
“We’ve had to think about how we’re going to get there,” Zottola said. “We have two individuals in the office and the primary job for one is to create partnerships to start to build pathways to enrollment for Hispanic students and the other is recruiter who’s going out into schools and talking to students and families about Cabrini.”
Senior communication major and Spanish minor Valerie Ruiz’s family comes from Colombia and when she first visited Cabrini a few years ago she did not think that there was much diversity on campus.
“Being Hispanic myself, I love seeing Cabrini become so diverse and welcome more Latinos. Just like any other culture, we have so much to offer,” Ruiz said. “The Hispanic population is growing immensely each year and so many Latinos want to achieve a higher education and especially attend a school where they feel welcomed and can fit in.”
Zottola said that admissions is only beginning to set the stage for Spanish enrollment goals with the implementation of two new recruiters and the formation of strong goals comes second. A multi-cultural recruitment task force is to follow soon to ensure the success of recruitment goals.
“I think it’s great and it’s exactly what we need to be doing and there’ll be more to come and I’m excited about that because it means that Cabrini’s headed in the right direction,” Zottola said.
As Ruiz prepares to graduate in May, she is happy that she came to the school and learned about social justice and acceptance.
“Truthfully I did not think there was a huge mixture of cultures when I first got here, clearly I was wrong,” Ruiz said. “Cabrini is becoming so diverse and I love it.”
