Affiliates Forum
CERPP Affiliates are noted scholars, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners who are dedicated to elevating policy and practice in admissions and enrollment management.
The CERPP Affiliates Forum provides a space for these leaders and thinkers to advance their work and their ideas directly with those who are doing the hard work in the field.
John Braxton, our inaugural CERPP Affiliate, commences the Affiliate Forum with a call to action to shape the research agenda for enrollment management. Together with Don Hossler, CERPP Senior Scholar, their recent article urges practitioners to point out the areas needed for further research. Their article is available below, courtesy of AACRAO’s Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly.
A Call for Assistance in the Development of a Practitioner-Defined Research Agenda for Enrollment Management
Part of the core mission of the Center for Enrollment 
Research, Policy and Practice is to advance research relevant to the practice of enrollment management. In recent years CERPP has undertaken several studies ranging from college admissions, the backgrounds of senior enrollment managers (SEOs), to studies of what SEOs and their staff should know.
It is in this context that the Center is encouraging enrollment professionals to participate in a research project that is being launched by the Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly (SEMQ) published by AACRAO. John Braxton, an emeritus higher education faculty member at Vanderbilt and now a Research Affiliate with CERPP, and Don Hossler, Senior Scholar with CERPP, have launched an innovative approach advancing research in our field. In the summer 2019 issue of SEMQ, Braxton and Hossler authored an article titled “Developing the two-way practitioner-researcher loop for enrollment management.” In this article they note that the higher education research community can only undertake practice relevant research if they have a good understanding of the needs of enrollment professionals.
To make research useful to practice, there is a need for the two-way loop described in this SEMQ article. CERPP encourages enrollment professionals to take time to read this important article and to suggest studies that address day-to-day issues and concerns in the real world of enrollment management practice. Student recruitment practice, the selection of applicants for admission, the impact of types of financial aid on matriculation decisions and the retention of students, the effects of developmental education on student success, constitute some possible areas for research.
If areas of importance to you are missing, please send your suggestions to either John Braxton or Don Hossler. AACRAO SEMQ will take an active role, along with Braxton and Hossler in disseminating them to the research community of enrollment management.
CERPP Affiliate John Braxton and CERPP Senior Scholar, Don Hossler, along with colleagues Alexandra Wendt and Wendy Kilgore, published an article titled “The Pathway Towards the Institutionalization of Enrollment Management” in the May 2022 of College and University Journal.
This study examined the levels of institutionalization of SEM in colleges and universities in the United States. The researchers drew upon Resource Dependency Theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003) and Institutional Isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) to frame their investigation. The data for this study included 674 institutions collected through an AACRAO 60 Second Survey. The researchers used frequency distributions, Pearson Chi Square testing, and Analysis of Variance testing to analyze the data. The findings reveal that the SEM concept has been implemented by nearly all non-profit four-year colleges and universities of institutions and that there is little variance in the extent to which strategic enrollment management has been implemented when comparing private baccalaureate and research universities as well as public research universities. Ultimately, the findings indicate that both strong and normative isomorphic pressures shape the adoption of SEM at a structural level of institutionalization and that modest isomorphic pressures prevail for procedural and incorporation level of institutionalization of SEM.
John Braxton and CERPP Senior Scholar, Don Hossler, along with colleague Alexandra Wendt, published on the most pressing research topics as defined by enrollment management practitioners. Their article is available in the link below, courtesy of AACRAO’s Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly.
John Braxton with colleagues published an article on how to use database audits to improve institutional student retention. Their article is available in the link below, courtesy of AACRAO’s Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly.