By Hannah Werle / Jambar Contributor
Recent efforts and changes at Youngstown State University have largely contributed to a rise in enrollment, defying industry trends with a 10.7% increase in fall 2024.
Ross Morrone is YSU’s academic marketing and enrollment strategy officer, a position created in an effort to improve YSU’s marketing to incoming students.
Prior to this role, Morrone served as the university’s chief marketing officer, and worked alongside Jennifer Pintar — who was associate provost — on ways to better market YSU’s academic programs.
“I was working with her and starting to really set that line in the sand of how do we market the programs versus how do we market the institution — and where should that responsibility lay?” Morrone said. “We realized the Office of Academic Affairs never really focused on that marketing.”
Morrone said YSU created his position to blend the responsibilities of admissions and marketing into one role specifically focused on boosting enrollment.
While Morrone officially started his new role in July, he’d been doing the work since October 2023. Since then, he’s initiated several efforts to make YSU’s programs more appealing.
One initiative was creating the Explore YSU website. Separate from YSU’s main site, it focuses on recruitment and streamlines the marketing process, from advertisement to contact with the university.
“It’s a whole marketing funnel. Getting ads in front of them, so that when they’re searching for a degree, they can find us. Then, come into our funnel, get on our website, get more information and then be able to reach out to somebody,” Morrone said.
The next step of this process was creating an Academic Master Plan. Morrone explained most colleges, including YSU, have a Strategic Enrollment Plan, but other colleges also have an AMP.
The AMP focuses on everything within the academic sphere, from meeting faculty and student needs to assuring program names respond intuitively to students’ searches.
Morrone said the AMP would work with YSU’s SEP and the newly-created Strategic Communications Office to blend academic marketing with enrollment strategies and positive public relations.
While Morrone’s efforts have yielded positive results, he admitted there’s more to the enrollment increase than just marketing.
One short-term cause for YSU’s enrollment spike was its absorption of students from Eastern Gateway Community College.
Jeanne Herman, the associate vice president of Institutional Effectiveness, worked with EGCC and YSU officials to transfer students from the community college after it closed at the end of the spring semester.
Herman said representatives from YSU’s admissions, financial aid, registrar’s, bursar’s, marketing and academic affairs offices met regularly to create a transfer process that would best suit the needs of EGCC students.
“What came out of those meetings was a simplified process to apply, a website for their students and then academic affairs would constantly bring back to us the programs as they began getting approved,” Herman said.
According to Herman, the process involved transferring students into equivalent associate degrees — and creating such programs if they didn’t exist.
To create new programs and secure federal-aid permissions, academic affairs needed approval from the Ohio Department of Higher Education, the Higher Learning Commission and the U.S. Department of Education.
Herman said she applauds the departments, chairs and faculty who worked to create these programs.
“On the academic side, I know what goes into creating a curriculum, and it is very labor intensive and the fact that they were able to put together a substantial curriculum that is with the YSU integrity and passed all of the approvals is amazing,” Herman said.
With EGCC’s closure driving some of this year’s enrollment boost, questions remain about whether YSU’s rising numbers are a one-time occurrence.
Herman said YSU is still assessing demand for more associate degree programs, which could attract additional transfers. She added that because these programs are permanent, they may continue to draw students beyond the community college.
“Now that we have grown substantially with our associates, what we found is not only that [EGCC] students came and registered for our new associate programs, but other students did too,” Herman said. “[It] was definitely our [EGCC] students, but it was other students in the associate programs that also helped [contribute] to the increase in enrollment.”
While incoming EGCC students certainly added to the increase in enrollment, one group has seen consistently rising numbers, despite a recent net decline in overall students enrolled at YSU.
YSU’s Fall 2024 Preliminary Enrollment Summary shows that first-time undergraduate international students more than doubled from 208 in fall 2023 to 469 in fall 2024. However, this figure excludes graduate, continuing and otherwise-classified international students.
Nicholas Dubos, an international student and scholar adviser at YSU’s International Programs Office, attributed YSU’s increasing international student population to a welcoming environment and word-of-mouth.
“First of all, I think we have created an excellent environment. Especially in certain parts of the world, where we tend to get a lot of our students … it’s like, they know YSU exists. And so, friends and family tell people,” Dubos said.
Morrone, Herman and Dubos agreed many factors led to the YSU’s enrollment increase this year.
From a new marketing strategy to a fortuitous closing and continuous efforts for a welcoming environment, YSU has worked hard over the year to boost enrollment.
