Washington State University has realigned its Enrollment Services area to better integrate it with the university’s academic operation while maintaining WSU’s focus on recruiting and retaining high ability students.
The Enrollment Services units, including Admissions, Financial Aid and Scholarship Services, the Registrar’s Office and Student Recruitment, have moved from Student Affairs to Academic Affairs. The change was effective in mid-December.
“With this new configuration, Enrollment Services will add greater emphasis to working collaboratively with the academic areas and regional campuses to help the university achieve its enrollment and academic goals,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Robert Bates. Among those goals are recruiting and retaining students through graduation and encouraging more students to study disciplines of high importance to the state.
Bates added that this structure “will help us manage class size, course loads, classroom and lab space utilization, and the distribution of students throughout the various academic programs.”
The realignment is accompanied by a change in leadership. Vicki McCracken has stepped down from the post of associate vice president and associate vice provost for Enrollment Services to return to the School of Economic Sciences where she is a full professor. She previously served as associate dean for academic programs in the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences as well as associate director of research there.
Provost Bates has appointed James Roche to serve as associate vice provost for Enrollment Services.
“Jim has worked closely with our enrollment planning team and brings considerable leadership and management expertise to this new appointment,” Bates said.
For the last seven years, Roche has been WSU’s director of Institutional Research. He has served on several WSU committees and councils including the university’s Strategic Plan Implementation Council and the design team on efficiency and effectiveness.
Roche holds a Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University, a master’s degree from Marquette University, and a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He has been a faculty member at the University of Maryland, a senior editor at the American Association of Community Colleges, and director of communications and research at EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association that advances higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
