October 14, 2025 · Episode 281
How CUNY’s Holistic Enrollment Strategy and Management Approach Is Filling the Enrollment Pipeline
41 Min · By Dr. Drumm McNaughton
CUNY’s journalism school shows how a holistic enrollment strategy drives recruitment, retention, and alumni success across the student lifecycle.
At one of the smallest graduate schools in the nation, a model is redefining how higher education can evolve to truly center student success. The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY enrolls just over a hundred students each year, yet its outcomes rival those of larger institutions because it aligns everything—admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni engagement—around one mission: helping students thrive.
In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Colleen Leigh, Assistant Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Success, discuss how CUNY Journalism’s holistic enrollment strategy and management approach connects the entire student lifecycle, from recruitment to alumni engagement. The conversation explores how colleges can use data, empathy, and equity to transform institutional culture, not just improve operations—creating environments where students succeed and institutions remain resilient during change.
Turning Student Services into a Cohesive System
In 2019, CUNY Journalism reorganized its student-facing offices to eliminate silos. Admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni relations were unified under one dean, creating a single chain of accountability for the full student experience.
This structural shift did more than improve communication; it aligned the entire institution around student outcomes. Admissions shares insights about applicant readiness and background with student affairs before classes even begin. Career services and alumni relations coordinate on internship placement, employer outreach, and post-graduation tracking. When a graduate lands a position or wins an award, that data flows back into the admissions pipeline as proof of results.
The effect is a cycle of continuous learning and refinement. Instead of fragmented departments competing for resources, every function works toward one goal: student success. For colleges facing stagnant growth or declining retention, this kind of integration transforms reactive management into proactive strategy.
Why a Holistic Enrollment Strategy Outperforms Traditional Models
Most institutions still operate through inherited silos—admissions brings students in, student affairs keeps them enrolled, and advancement reappears years later for donations. This model assumes linear progression, but students’ lives aren’t linear. When those offices fail to share data or coordinate strategy, students experience disconnection and the institution loses visibility into the full journey.
CUNY Journalism’s holistic enrollment strategy replaces fragmentation with alignment. Each department owns part of the same story, informed by a shared understanding of what success looks like. Admissions evaluates prospective students not just on qualifications, but on whether the program’s structure and culture will help them thrive. Student affairs focuses on academic and personal well-being with direct insight into students’ long-term goals. Career services and alumni relations collaborate to maintain momentum beyond graduation.
As Dr. McNaughton stated, “Integration doesn’t just improve retention—it changes the institution’s culture. When everyone works from the same data and mission, the results multiply.”
The Mechanics of Integration: How It Works
Integration isn’t a vague concept at CUNY Journalism; it’s built into daily operations. Each week, directors of admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni relations meet to share updates and coordinate initiatives.
- Admissions reports on upcoming recruitment events and application trends.
- Student Affairs identifies challenges early, such as financial hardship or mental health stressors, allowing immediate intervention.
- Career Services tracks employer demand and alumni hiring outcomes, ensuring that advising aligns with market shifts.
- Alumni Relations shares updates from graduates, highlighting achievements that reinforce the program’s brand and inspire current students.
This cross-departmental rhythm creates a continuous feedback loop where insights drive improvement. It’s a small-scale example of what data-informed decision-making looks like when it moves from theory to practice.
Belonging as the Foundation of Student Retention
Graduate journalism students work under pressure. Their days include field reporting, interviews, editing sessions, and academic deadlines—all while navigating New York City’s cost and pace. Without a coordinated support structure, burnout would be unavoidable.
CUNY’s student affairs team embeds wellness into the academic experience. The school maintains a food pantry, hosts therapy-animal visits, and schedules stress-relief activities like yoga and mindfulness workshops. Career services complement this with events designed to boost confidence and readiness—mock interviews, portfolio reviews, and networking nights.
These initiatives share a common objective: belonging. When students see that the institution anticipates their needs rather than reacts to crises, trust builds. That trust converts into persistence. Dr. McNaughton emphasizes that retention is a cultural outcome, not a bureaucratic one. “Policies don’t retain students,” he said. “People and systems do.”
Alumni as Active Partners in Enrollment
CUNY Journalism treats alumni engagement as a strategic pillar of enrollment. Graduates remain involved as adjunct faculty, mentors, and internship supervisors. Many return to help review applications or join panels for incoming students.
This consistent participation closes the loop between the classroom and the newsroom. Alumni provide real-time insight into hiring trends, professional ethics, and emerging technologies, keeping the program current and relevant. Their visibility also serves as living proof of the school’s impact, enhancing recruitment and institutional reputation.
The alumni board meets quarterly with school leadership, participates in strategic planning committees, and organizes networking events that connect students with professionals across the industry. These relationships are not transactional—they’re collaborative, extending the school’s mission through every stage of a graduate’s career.
Shared Services That Multiply Impact
Operating on two floors in Times Square, the school cannot justify replicating administrative infrastructure. Instead, it leverages CUNY’s Graduate Center for registrar, bursar, financial aid, and wellness services.
This partnership exemplifies resource optimization. Shared services reduce overhead, streamline compliance, and allow the journalism school to focus on teaching, mentoring, and career development. For smaller colleges facing budget constraints, this model demonstrates how efficiency can coexist with mission focus.
Dr. McNaughton points out that such collaboration “allows small institutions to act big without losing their identity.” It’s a reminder that strategic partnerships often create more value than incremental cost-cutting.
Understanding the Graduate Student Mindset
Graduate students differ fundamentally from undergraduates. They are career-oriented, often balancing work or family responsibilities, and expect immediate value from their education. They care less about campus life and more about results.
CUNY Journalism acknowledges this reality through program design. Career services is fully integrated with academic instruction, ensuring students can connect theory to practice. Faculty coordinate directly with employers to align projects with industry needs. The proximity to major media outlets—many just blocks away—creates daily opportunities for collaboration and exposure.
Events like mocktail networking sessions, résumé workshops, and alumni career talks replace traditional student-life programming. The focus is utility, not entertainment. By aligning structure with student priorities, the school keeps engagement high and attrition low.
Building Community Across Cohorts
Despite its small size, CUNY Journalism invests heavily in community building. Each incoming class overlaps with the cohort preparing to graduate, creating organic mentorship between students. Those completing internships share insights with new arrivals, helping them navigate the program and prepare for real-world challenges.
Student organizations further strengthen this network. The school hosts chapters of national journalism associations, including groups representing journalists of color and investigative reporters. An international student task force provides specialized support for visa issues and cultural adjustment, ensuring inclusion from day one.
The result is a culture where collaboration replaces competition. Students learn that professional relationships begin in graduate school, not after it.
Expanding Access Through Online and Bilingual Programs
CUNY Journalism’s upcoming bilingual online master’s program marks a new frontier. Designed for working journalists—especially across Latin America—the fully asynchronous format allows professionals to pursue advanced training without relocating.
Unlike many online programs, it prioritizes connection. Students will participate in virtual networking, mentorship sessions, and community events replicating the in-person experience. This model shows how online expansion can align with mission rather than compromise it.
For higher education leaders considering hybrid or online growth, the lesson is clear: technology only works when paired with intentional design that preserves culture and outcomes.
Data and Equity as Guiding Principles
Data is central to CUNY’s success. The enrollment team tracks application patterns, retention trends, and career outcomes to identify which students thrive and which need additional support. These insights drive recruitment targeting, advising priorities, and resource allocation.
But data alone doesn’t define decisions. Equity serves as the second filter. The school examines whether policies and practices expand access or unintentionally exclude qualified students. This balance ensures that institutional growth aligns with both mission and measurable impact.
As Dr. McNaughton summarized, “Data shows where you stand. Equity determines who stands with you.”
Empathy as a Leadership Competency
Leadership grounded in empathy and equity defines how CUNY Journalism leads institutional change. As higher education faces shrinking enrollments, new learning modalities, and pressure to demonstrate value, leading with empathy has become both a stabilizing force and a strategy for transformation.
Dr. Leigh’s leadership philosophy combines accountability with compassion. Her team’s transparency, responsiveness, and willingness to listen create an environment where faculty and staff feel supported and students trust that their voices matter. Empathy fuels belonging; equity ensures that belonging extends to every student.
This human-centered leadership model doesn’t replace rigor—it reinforces it. Empathetic leaders strengthen culture during disruption, turning uncertainty into collaboration and shared purpose. As Dr. McNaughton notes, “Empathy sustains people; equity sustains mission. Together, they make change possible.”
Free Tuition and the Future of Access
CUNY Journalism’s next initiative takes the idea of centering student success to its logical conclusion. The school aims to offer free tuition for all master’s students by 2028—the first journalism program in the nation to remove financial barriers entirely. This is not simply a funding initiative; it’s a statement about what access and equity should mean in modern higher education.
Supported by alumni and philanthropic partners, the plan builds on the same principles driving CUNY Journalism’s holistic enrollment model—shared accountability, equity-driven decision-making, and a belief that access fuels excellence. It demonstrates how mission and management align when every institutional decision starts with the question, “What helps students thrive?”
If achieved, the initiative could serve as a national example of how higher education can evolve beyond cost containment toward genuine opportunity—redefining success by outcomes and impact, not tuition revenue.
Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
- Student Success Should Be an Institutional Ecosystem
Student success cannot live in one department. Admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni relations must operate as one coordinated system that guides students from recruitment through graduation and beyond. - Data-Informed, Equity-Driven Strategies Are Non-Negotiable
Use analytics to understand who thrives and where barriers exist but interpret data through a mission lens. Decisions must expand access and opportunity, not just manage numbers. - Empathetic Leadership Builds Retention and Loyalty
Graduate students face intense stress and competing priorities. Listening, responsiveness, and compassion strengthen belonging—and belonging drives both persistence and future engagement.
Quick Overview
- Institution: Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY
- Focus: Holistic enrollment strategy integrating admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni relations.
- Unified structure eliminates silos and ensures shared accountability.
- Weekly coordination meetings align departments on goals and outcomes.
- Wellness, financial support, and career development form a single retention system.
- Alumni engagement extends the enrollment pipeline and enhances job placement.
- Shared services reduce cost and administrative burden.
- Graduate programs prioritize employability and measurable outcomes.
- Bilingual online expansion increases access while maintaining connection.
- Leadership model blends data, equity, and empathy.
- Free tuition initiative by 2028 could redefine graduate access and affordability.
About Our Podcast Guest
Dr. Colleen Leigh, Assistant Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Success, at The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY
With over 20 years in higher education leadership, I’ve dedicated my career to expanding access, advancing student success, and leading institutional change. My work is grounded in the belief that every student deserves the chance to thrive. By aligning strategic planning with data and inclusive collaboration, I’ve helped grow enrollment, improve outcomes, and build student-centered cultures where people feel seen, supported, and empowered. I believe meaningful change begins with purposeful leadership—and a commitment to truly listening to those we serve.
Connect with Dr. Colleen Leigh on LinkedIn →
About the Host
Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton’s approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission.
Connect with Drumm McNaughton on LinkedIn→
Read the Podcast Transcript →
Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 281 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Colleen Leigh
Introduction to Changing Higher Ed®
Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.
[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Dr. Colleen Leigh, assistant Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Success at the Craig Newman Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Colleen leads an integrated team across admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni affairs. And frankly, CUNY Craig Mark Graduate School of Journalism, is a different beast in that it’s relatively small, it’s graduate students only.
However, having said that, what they’ve done in integrating their admissions, their student services, their career services, and alumni services is a model for any college or university, regardless of what their size is.
Colleen’s work is grounded in the belief that every student deserves a chance to thrive. And she joins me today to talk about the CUNY School of Journalism, how they’ve broken down the silos and built a student-centered culture where people feel seen, supported, and empowered, and more than fills their enrollment pipeline.
Colleen, welcome to the program.
Colleen Leigh: Thank you so much for having me, Drumm, I really appreciate it.
Drumm McNaughton: I’m looking forward to our conversation.
[00:01:29] Colleen’s Role and Background
Drumm McNaughton: Gosh, you have got a really interesting role there at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the College of New York. You lead an integrated team across admissions, student affairs, career services, and alumni affairs. Basically, it’s looking at the full spectrum of the student lifecycle. Very unusual. Now, your college is small, and that’s typical, but still being able to see it, the full lifecycle is amazing. Before we get into all those details though, please give us some of your background. I’m excited to hear more about who you are and how you came into this.
Colleen Leigh: Sure. Yes. Thank you again for having me.
[00:02:14] Path to Higher Education
Colleen Leigh: So I have been in higher ed for, it’s almost exactly 20 years. I started my career at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, and I was their admissions and diversity representative. And so that kind of introduced me to the world of recruiting and admissions.
I did do a little bit of admissions in my undergrad, helping to recruit students of color to campus. I was the president of our multicultural organization there, but that was not initially my path in higher ed. After Savannah, I ended up moving back to where I’m from New Jersey and working for the school that I’m working at now, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, the City University of New York, so I’ve been at that school for about 18 years.
But before I even got into higher education, I actually was a journalist. So I was a freelance TV reporter for a Filipino TV station in New Jersey. I am half Filipino and there’s a large population of Filipinos, in the Northeast, but especially in New York and New Jersey. And so that’s really where my career started. It was in journalism and then I ended up just moving into higher education, and I’ve stayed in it ever since for about 20 years. So really happy to be in higher education.
[00:03:23]
Drumm McNaughton: It’s always an interesting path when I talk to my guests. It is very interesting for me. There’s so many divergent ways people come into higher ed. Some of them directly out of college, university, but others like yourself. Journalism for me, it was very different, Navy consulting, et cetera.
To me, it adds to the richness of what we can bring to our students to see there’s more than one way to get into a job market.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, definitely. I have a lot of my colleagues who are come also from different backgrounds and somehow we all now have been in higher education, but I know more recently a lot more schools have this as a path. Like one of my master’s degrees is actually in higher education administration and I see a lot more schools that start to offer it. And so I feel like now students going into their careers after graduation are actually selecting this as a path versus falling into it somehow, or other, you know. Which is exciting.
Drumm McNaughton: It is exciting because I look at one of our jobs is to help transform that younger generation and for them to be able to see there’s all different paths that we can go on, to me is really important.
Colleen Leigh: Yes, I definitely agree. And having a different background, coming from a new background outside of higher ed is also really important because it gives you a different perspective when you’re speaking with students.
Drumm McNaughton: And now you deal primarily with graduate students there at CUNY. And I’m sorry, I misspoke earlier when I gave the definition of CUNY, so apologies to the listener. That’s my own ignorance.
[00:04:59] Mental Health Challenges in Graduate Programs
Drumm McNaughton: We’re seeing all sorts of challenges in higher ed. Undergraduate, the enrollment cliff graduate programs with student loans. With all of ’em, there is a huge component for mental health because programs are very intense. What are you seeing with your current graduate students?
Colleen Leigh: Yes, mental health is a real, I wouldn’t say crisis right now, but we’re seeing a lot more students that are coming in with mental health issues or a lot more stress personally, that then translates into their professional or student life, and especially as graduate students, our program actually is full-time only, so we don’t even have a part-time option.
And we are in New York City. Yeah. We’re right in Times Square and New York City can be very expensive. So on top of your full-time program and the expense of living in New York, especially if students are new to New York City, just that’s overwhelming in and of itself. And so we’ve, have a, definitely, if you’re not from there, it could be a lot just to take in while also starting at a graduate program.
And we have a wonderful student affairs office that does a lot of wellness programming. We also work with a lot of different CUNY schools to learn about what other graduate schools are doing. And of course, we are a journalism school, and so that’s also another stress ’cause it’s not like you just go home and work on a paper or study for an exam. They are out in the streets reporting when other people might be home. So if during COVID our students were reporting, they were out in the streets and going to hospitals and going to different places. If there’s a weather situation going on, they’re out there covering it. And so that adds another layer of stress on top of all the other things that I mentioned.
Drumm McNaughton: We’re gonna get more into the challenges just a little bit, but from my listener’s perspective, I wanted to go into how CUNY journalism structure is.
[00:06:50] CUNY Journalism School Structure
Drumm McNaughton: It’s unusual because it’s a small school. You’ve got different divisions within there. How’s the school structured? Because I think that makes a big influence on how you are able to look at the full student lifecycle.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, definitely. So we are a small school. We only enroll about 110 to 120 students every fall. We’re only a year and a half program, so students start in August and they graduate the following year in December. So at most we have anywhere from 220 to 240 students on campus in the fall. And we are only, two floors of a building. So it might sound like, oh, that’s so small, but we’re only two floors in a building in Times Square. So it does get really packed in the fall, which is great, we have a lot of activity going on at the school.
[00:07:34] Integrated Student Services
Colleen Leigh: And so as you mentioned, my position oversees admissions, the director of admissions, a director of our student affairs office, director of career services, and the director of alumni affairs. So I’m the person that oversees the entire student experience from recruitment all the way to when you graduate, and I’m making sure that’s a seamless experience. And we also have an operations department who’s also an assistant dean, and that person oversees our facilities, our public safety, is our HR liaison, because we do have some shared services at another CUNY school, and they also oversee our academic operations.
Drumm McNaughton: So you’ve got operations, you’ve got academic affairs, and you’ve got your stuff as well.
Colleen Leigh: Correct, yeah.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. S
[00:08:18] Recruitment and Alumni Involvement
Drumm McNaughton: o with that integrated team, how do you take input that informs recruiting for your next class? Because you have an opportunity with what alumni are telling you, things like that, what they need.
Colleen Leigh: Correct. Yeah, because I oversee all the student facing departments and I work very closely with each director. It’s really an entire school operation. In terms of recruitment we do utilize our current students, we utilize our alumni, and also our faculty and our staff are really involved. So we actually have some staff in a couple weeks going to a conference on behalf of admissions because it’s a more of a focused on a broadcast conference. And we, so we actually have our equipment room who do a lot of in the classroom work with our students that are attending that and actually bringing a lot of equipment and showcasing that. Like you mentioned about getting input from alums, we do have a really great alumni board and we communicate with them regularly and so they are the voice for our alums. And so they will tell us, some places that maybe we should go recruit from or if we have new alumni ambassadors that wanna get involved with recruiting or doing some kind of work within with admissions, maybe interviewing applicants or things like that, reviewing applications. And then of course we have our faculty that are always informing, other places that we should recruit. Sometimes they go with us to recruit at various conferences. So it really is an entire school recruitment operation going on campus,
[00:09:46] Chief Enrollment Management Officer
Drumm McNaughton: So in essence, your position is essentially a chief enrollment management officer, a CEMO.
Colleen Leigh: Correct? Correct. Yeah.
Drumm McNaughton: And that’s a term that is coming up more and more within higher education because higher ed with the enrollment cliff coming up, with all of the challenges that we’ve got going on in higher education, we’ve got to look at the student experience holistically. It can’t be like one vice president of admissions told me a while back, “my job is just to recruit ’em in. I don’t have anything to do with ’em after that”. That doesn’t work anymore.
Colleen Leigh: No, it definitely doesn’t work. And it’s funny that you say that because when I was working at SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design, I was solely a recruiter. There was a totally different admissions, counseling, advising, all that. Once I got the application, I was onto the next student. And so that’s one reason why I ended up wanting to move on to a different institution because I really wanted to see the entire way through.
I wanted to, those students that I recruited who applied, do they actually come, how do they do when they are in the school, and how are they as an alum, as an a graduate? So it’s been really great to see that through the entire experience.
Drumm McNaughton: So tell me, how does that experience work?
[00:11:03] Holistic Student Experience
Drumm McNaughton: Because as I’m thinking about it, you’re responsible for recruiting the students and you’ve already said you’ve got faculty, you’ve got people going out to different conferences, things like that. Once you’ve got ’em in the door, you’ve gotta be able to take care of and dealing with all the challenges that a full-time student does, especially Times Square. First time I went to New York City I was completely overwhelmed. And I can just imagine somebody coming from a small rural area to New York City for, what is a fabulous program, it’s like, how do I deal with all the stimuli?
Then you’ve got to be able to help them find jobs, career services, and then help them as alumni and from a networking. So how does that all work together?
Colleen Leigh: It’s been really great. This position only started, I wanna say in 2019, so we didn’t have the PO this position beforehand. And so our previous dean really thought this would help streamline a lot of the student facing departments and help with collaboration and things like that. And yeah, it’s been really great.
Every office really helps each other. So admissions is actually helping a lot of our career services department right now. We’re leading up to our career fair that’s taking place in a few weeks. Our, current students really help out with our student affairs for different wellness activities. We have a graduate student association that does a lot of programming, so that helps out with our student affairs office. And of course our alumni are sprinkled throughout. Sometimes they attend our career fairs, depending how you know, far out they are from graduation. A lot of the more recent grads might attend the career fair. We have them help out with admissions, with the application. Sometimes the application review, some of our alum are actually our faculty, adjunct faculty. We also have them help out with interviews. A lot of the alums, depending on where they’re living, might help out at various events, recruitment events, graduate fairs, conferences, if we do presentations at media outlets. If they’re working there, they help get us in the door to meet some of the interns, to meet some of the current working journalists there and talk them about our various programs. So it really is a collaborative experience, a collaborative office.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s neat. So you’ve got your admissions, you’ve got lots of people working to bring students in. Once they’re in, they’re working obviously with academic affairs for their curriculum and student affairs for advising, that type of thing. Career services when they’re getting ready to graduate, and you’re leveraging your alumni for helping to position people, not only for jobs, but also for internships, I would assume.
So you’ve got all of these functions working together, dare I say, “like they’re supposed to”.
Colleen Leigh: Exactly. You would think this is standard kind of structure at many schools. And when our previous Dean thought this kind of, actually, it was called assistant Dean of Student Experience back then, and then it changed to, with our new Dean, Assistant Dean of Enrollment management and Student Success.
But yeah, I think this structure works really well. We are a very small school. I know at many other schools it might include a financial aid office or a registrar office, but some of those services are handled for us at a different school because we are so small. And so we’re really able to just focus on that student experience, which has been great. I get to see them, as I mentioned, from the beginning all the way through, and they have one this one contact throughout their time at the school and then beyond.
[00:14:29] Shared Services Model
Drumm McNaughton: Let’s talk just a little bit about these shared services, because this is a new model for higher education. Smaller schools such as yourself have to do this or the cost will be prohibitive, especially with, the limited number of students. But the shared services model is critical for many small institutions. Tell us a little bit about how that works.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, so when we started, our school will just be coming up on its 20th anniversary actually next year, so we opened in 2006. And so we were just a very small school. I think our first graduating class was 48 students, and so it was just trying to get the doors open and develop, it was journalists running a, a school. Everyone was a journalist and coming in and now running a school, and I’ve been there since 2007. So I was there when the first class graduated, which has been great. Been able to see all the different changes. So when we opened, it was just trying to figure out the curriculum and all this, but with, again, with such a small footprint in New York City, just two floors, we weren’t actually able to have a registrar, a bursar, a wellness center, financial aid office. And so we utilized the graduate center, which is one of the doctoral granting institutions at CUNY. And they already had all those, and they only deal with masters and doctoral students. And so that was just the most common sense, they’re also only about five blocks away, so in terms of geography, it wasn’t a far walk if a student had to go to the financial aid office or go to something at the wellness center.
And that’s been really helpful because we can really just focus on our students and not have to have all these other offices. There’s an office that deals with that directly and we can build out other teams and other departments that are more supportive for our students.
Drumm McNaughton: It reminds me of a model, it’s an organization, they’ve got six colleges and universities underneath them and the colleges run their own academics, whatnot, but they provide all the backend services, which frees the college to really focus on their mission instead of all the peripheral stuff that goes with that.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, I feel like it’s a great model, and then just from a financial standpoint too, for the institution, obviously the graduate center does get some money from us to help do these services. But I feel like, if we had those departments at our school in terms of salary and all the different build out, we would have to do to have a bursar window and have a wellness center. Schools really do save some money as long as they have a great relationship with their shared services office, which we do,
[00:16:59] Graduate vs. Undergraduate Challenges
Drumm McNaughton: And so I wanna take this in a little bit different direction because of your experience with undergrads there at Savannah. How does the challenges that grad students face, how are they unique and different from that of undergrads and how does that, how do those challenges influence what you’re doing from the holistic perspective?
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, that’s a great question. With undergrad, my experience has been, they come in, and one you’re dealing a lot with their parents. So you come in, you’re talking to their parents, and. Sometimes helicopter parents, right? We’ve all heard that term before too. So they might be more involved than their actual kid,
Drumm McNaughton: as long as they’re not doing their coursework.
Colleen Leigh: As long as they’re not doing that. So from the beginning you’re dealing a lot with the parents. They’re asking about safety, they’re asking about the curriculum. And the students, I’ve actually had the question like, are you a party school?
So from the students, it’s a different kind of question, right? How’s the campus life there? What kind of clubs do you have? Things like that. How’s the city of Savannah and things like that. So it’s a little bit of a different priorities, I would say, going on as an undergrad. And they’re not, sometimes they’re not really sure about what they wanna do. Coming into a school, they might start off, at least for Savannah, they might start off in architecture, photography, and end up graduating in a completely different department or program.
With graduate students. They are very focused. So they’re coming in and they’re very focused with what they wanna do. They’re getting their master’s degree. They know they wanna focus on journalism. They might not know exactly which medium do they wanna focus as a broadcast reporter, do they wanna focus on data journalism, investigative? But they can figure that out. But they do know it’s journalism. And the foundation of that is writing, reporting, fact checking, things like that.
And the different priorities for them are really career outcomes, building their network. The location of the school is very important, especially for journalism, we are in the media capital of the world. So Times Square, we’re right next door to the New York Times, we’re very short distance to many other outlets. And so the location is very important for the students as well.
But I would say they’re much more focused on how will this program get me a job? How will doing this program prepare me more than me just doing this on my own? And so we talk to them about what our program can help you do, versus trying to do this on your own, ad hoc, taking courses here and there. We’ve had students that have come in with zero journalism background, and when they graduate, they’re actually working at the New York Times. So we tell students those stories. Can you work at the New York Times in a year and a half or two years on your own, or does it help to come to grad school to learn the skills that the New York Times is looking for? Meet the faculty that are also working at the New York Times. Build out that network and you can get there faster through a graduate program.
Drumm McNaughton: Sure. So that is key as part of the enrollment or the admissions process. Talk to me a little bit about the student services, which is the other areas or student affairs under you.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah. So with our students, our graduate students, they come in and like I said, because they are full-time in the program, and we are living in a very expensive city, finances are a big issue. And so we have developed, oh, actually this happened, right, I think, right before COVID or right after COVID, we developed a food pantry. there’s food insecurity with students, especially graduate students, and in an expensive city, so we’ve developed a food pantry.
We’ve definitely, since COVID, have increased several wellness events that we have on campus. We also have a lot of like professional events, journalism related events. But if we don’t offer these kind of stress relieving events, like we have pet therapy, we’ve had DIY aroma therapy where you create your own ar aroma balls, with essential oils. We’ll have massage chairs, we’ll have massage therapists come in and do massages for 30 minute windows, students can sign up. We’ll have mocktail, paint, and sip. And so if we don’t actually create these kind of wellness events, sometimes students will not take care of their mental health, take care of their wellness, take a little time out. And so we’ve had to create those spaces for them at our campus just to make it accessible to them.
Our students live in all different boroughs. Some students live in Jersey, some live in Connecticut even, and take the train in. And so there’s one place that they can all get together and do this. They’re at the school all the time and if we have these spread throughout different times throughout the day, it allows them the opportunity to do so.
Versus undergrads, I think they, it’s a longer program, it’s four years or more, and so they have a lot more opportunity to figure out what courses they wanna do, and there’s a lot more kind of I would say, activities built in to undergrad. Versus graduate students, shorter program, very focused, some come in with families and so we have to, create very specific type of professional and more kind of stress relieving events around their classes and program for them to participate in.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.
[00:21:58] Building a Cohort and Community
Drumm McNaughton: And how about building a cohort? You’re bringing in a small group of students. They attract and they work with each other as part of the cohort from an undergrad experience that’s done many times through Greek life or clubs or whatnot. How does it make it easier or does it make it easier for that type of thing?
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, we do a lot around creating a community with the incoming class. We also, because our program, is a three semester program, we have the graduating class that’s there in their third semester, also the incoming class. So they do get a chance to mingle first semester and third semester before they graduate.
And so that’s been great because the third semester students just finished their required internship in the summer. So they participate in a lot of the career services events in the fall, talking about internships, where they’ve interned, they’ve shared their experiences, and then the graduating class and the incoming class get to know each other and kind of can share experiences. Incoming class is very scared about different classes or things, and the third semester can say, “I’ve been there already. I understand it. This is how I did it, these are my tips or my, little secrets on how I got through it”.
We also have, just like undergrad actually, a lot of associations. So we have clubs, we have , a lot of journalism specific associations. We have student chapters for various journalism associations like the Investigative Reporters and Editors, Association, which is IRE, we have a student chapter for that. A lot of the, the journalists of color organizations, we have chapters, National Association of Black Journalists, Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists, and so we have a lot of those chapters. So through those little groups as well, they create their cohort. And then also just for international students, with everything going on, we’ve created an international student task force that has a lot of our student facing departments in it, and they will speak with alumni who are international alum. They were an international student in our program and then they graduate, and we have a few recent graduates that participate in that where we can make sure that we’re covering and trying to sort through any issues for international students. And we always have check-ins and things like that. So we do try to create a pretty tight community at our school. On the administrative side, we build it, but also through the students themselves they create that community in a very short time too.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, and I wanna challenge my listeners because many folks will say, “Hey, this doesn’t apply to me”. Step back and look at the overall concept, how these departments and the students are all involved with their own experience.
[00:24:30] Alumni Connections and Networking
Drumm McNaughton: And that leads me directly into the alumni connection. You’ve got your third semester folks working with your incoming freshmen, and the third semester folks, when they were first term, their third term are now out in industry. You’ve also got an incredible connection with other alumni to build that network and you can leverage that potentially for a new job.
Colleen Leigh: Yes, definitely. A lot of our students, when they graduate, some of them have worked at their internship actually, that they had that summer. And so they were offered a job and they’ll say I just need to finish one more semester. Can I wait till January?” And a lot of them will say yes, or they might freelance for them in the third semester. And so it’s great for our incoming students to see that and say, “oh wow, now I’ll know someone that’s working at ProPublica or someone that’s working at NPR or the Times or wherever they may work”.
And yeah, our alumni board is very active. We have a very active alumni board from a wide range of classes. Some of the alumni board members are from 2010, but others are just from 23 or 24. And so really it’s really good to have that perspective because the ones from 2010 are now 15 years into their career. But then we have some more recent alums that are building, just starting out in their career. And so it’s really good to have both perspectives from alumni. And they’re involved with our homecoming. We have quarterly meetings with the dean. They’re just really active and that’s been really great too. They try to reach out to alum. Part of their expectations is actually to participate on various committees at the school, whether it’s strategic planning committee, campus life committee, anything like that, they actually participate in those monthly meetings, so they’re really active and really helpful to our school.
Drumm McNaughton: One of the benefits of going to Harvard Business School, HBS, is the networking that you get there or Stanford, you’ve got top people going into Silicon Valley or throughout industry, whatnot. The ability to network with alumni to be able to say, “Hey, I’m from CUNY School of Journalism, or I’m from HBS, or et cetera”. There is it’s own “badge of honor” to where you’ve almost already got a great network to help you with your job search or your future career.
Colleen Leigh: Yeah. That’s one of the reasons students come in is to build the network, whether it’s through expanding their network through faculty or through our alumni. So we are a pretty young school. We only have about 1500 alum, but what’s great about being a young school, as I said, is our alumni are really invested in the program and in, in the various programs and in our school. And I could reach out, or our director of alumni affairs could reach out to at least probably 10 to 20 people in every single class and say, can you talk to this student? And they were more than willing to do and so I do that all the time. Our Director of Alumni Affairs does that. We’ll have, various job postings for our alums that we do through our alumni newsletter.
And they’ll always say, “Hey, we have a job opening at my media outlet. Feel free to share my email with any alums that want to talk about working here or what this position looks like before they apply”. And so we have that all the time. So they’re really invested in the program and the outcomes of our students.
And it’s really great for just a small school, only been around 20 years. There’s a lot of, alumni bonding and they have different events that they do on their own and get together. Joke that, you know a lot of, they say at the law schools, “look left and right, one out of three will make it.” At our school, it’s “look left and right, the person next to you could be your boss in a few years”. So don’t look at it as a competition, where you have to get that story you have to publish. Look at it as building your network and creating these bridges with your students because you never know. That person could be your boss in a few years. And it’s actually happened several times where they’re like, “oh my gosh, one of my classmates is now my supervisor”.
Drumm McNaughton: ” And I’m sorry, I really dissed them on that one paper”.
Colleen Leigh: Exactly. I didn’t like that article. And now they’re my boss now. I love every article.
Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. You just made that up. No, I’m
just kidding. Yeah.
[00:28:32] International Students and Visa Challenges
Drumm McNaughton: So we’re coming up to the end of our time, but there was one other thing I wanted to mention. International students, the numbers are starting to decrease. What do you see as the trends going forward and are the things that we need to be thinking about right now when it comes to enrolling international students?
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, definitely. Our numbers also have decreased a little bit, but it’s not because they don’t wanna come, it’s actually because a lot going on with the current administration, they actually were not able to get visas. And only for international students do we defer admission for one year in hopes that they’ll be able to try to get that visa next year.
And so for us, we are a journalism program we do have a bilingual spanish program, so it’s both in English and Spanish, the program. And we’re actually launching an online program and in the spring, our very first online program, which is very exciting. But, we don’t actively really recruit international students. They find us organically through search, through our digital advertising, digital marketing. But because we have a very high TOEFL score or I-I-E-L-T-S score because you have to be able to write pretty strongly in English and also have a really high speaking in English as well. We don’t actively recruit, I would say outside of maybe Canada, we do a couple things in Montreal or Toronto. So we don’t really have a huge number of international students. Some other journalism schools do. They do have a, like most of their population is actually international students and so this new administration and a lot of things going on with international students has really affected them. Because ours hasn’t been that big, maybe 10 to 12% of our incoming class it hasn’t affected us too much, but we have seen a decrease because of students not being able to get their visas. So as I mentioned earlier, the international student task force that just started within the last year and a half, maybe two years, because we were seeing one a lot more students that were just having issues with either, once they’re here because we have a publishing requirement at the school, they have to do the CPT form all the time, which is the curricular practical training. And so we’ve had to talk to ’em about how to submit those forms and how to, you have to do it for every single article that you submit. And so how do you do that? What’s the process for that? And we’ve have these, we started creating these international student check-ins every few months just to see, we just had one last week for our incoming students, our new students, and we’ll probably touch base again with our third semester students. And so just being a little bit more proactive with international students. Obviously we’re limited in what we can do because of federal, federal laws, but we wanna make sure that we understand completely how our international students can succeed and be able to answer those questions for them as much as we can.
We do have an international student’s office, and that is one of our shared services, which is at the graduate center. And so they’re really helpful too, they come to our orientation and do an entire presentation, and because we are a very small school, they really get to know our students and they know, okay, they only have 12 students, let’s really understand each of their circumstances as best as we can to try to help them. And so just being more proactive and sharing information, and sharing the process, and just doing check-ins, they just appreciate check-ins and making sure that, they’re not forgotten, and that’s been really great and I’m really excited that we started that task force just in the last year and a half or so.
Drumm McNaughton: One last question before we wrap up. You just gave me a new line of inquiry. Thank you very much.
[00:31:57] Launching Online Programs
Drumm McNaughton: You’ve got some incredible holistic programs that are working together, you’re starting online. How are you going to be able to get to build these cohorts to be able to offer these same services in a meaningful way to online students? And is it all gonna be full-time online or is it gonna be part-time?
Colleen Leigh: Yeah, these are great questions. Yeah. This is our first kind of foray into online. This is a pilot program and if it goes well, this is the way that we will try to increase enrollment and try to increase access to some of our programs. ’cause like I mentioned earlier, it’s really hard to just pick up and move to New York City and be in a full-time program.
And this is an online bilingual program. It’s a different type of curriculum compared to our on-campus programs. We don’t wanna cannibalize our on-campus program where everyone now does online. And so it’s a different kind of program. It’s a focus for journalists already working in the field. Versus our on-campus program has a little bit more students that might not have any journalism experience. This is a little bit more for that mid-career journalist looking to expand their skills. And also it’s very small, we’re only looking for maybe 10 students to start. It is asynchronous, a hundred percent asynchronous.
We do have some professional development certificate programs that have low residency where you come into the school maybe three times throughout the program. We don’t have that option at all. It’s completely online and it is open to domestic students. But a lot of the audience we were thinking is actually more for Latin America students.
And we are thinking about those, actually it starts in the spring, and so we’re like knee deep in how do we create these cohorts? How do we create that community? One thing that came out of COVID was the option to do virtual events. And so we were trying to build out a lot of virtual events specifically for online students, but of course open to on campus, but very different timeframes, different kind of focus of what the programs we offer.
We’re gonna probably try to do like any kind of wellness things, you might have a virtual option for them to participate. Now, not to say there are plenty of students that we’re seeing from the tri-state area that are actually interested in an online program. And so for those students, they’re more than welcome. If you wanna come to the campus, they can come to the campus for an event or maybe plan out a trip where they see a couple events taking place in a week. If they wanna come and visit the campus and participate, they’re more than welcome to have that access as well.
[00:34:13] Creating Online Cohorts and Community
Colleen Leigh: But we are starting to think, how do we, as you mentioned, create that cohort, create that community. So again, they’re not the forgotten students, they’re online, they’re doing their own thing. We wanna make sure that they leave as a very satisfied student, have a very satisfied time at the school, and then of course, be a really engaged alum and be able to give back in that way once they graduate.
[00:34:32]
Drumm McNaughton: This is all fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing this. I think there’s some great ideas and opportunities for other institutions to bring these functions together to make sure that the student experience is what they should get instead of what it is they just need to get. So thank you.
Colleen Leigh: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.
Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, our two final questions, three takeaways for college presidents and boards. What do they need to be thinking about? What you guys are doing with the overall student experience?
Colleen Leigh: Yeah. Great end of the podcast question, I think for everyone to listen and hear what other schools are giving as their takeaways. One thing I would say is that student success should really be an institutional ecosystem, not just one department. And so too often, the enrollment affairs, student affairs, career services, all those in departments operate in silos. And so specifically for graduate students, their needs might be different than undergrad. And so they have a lot of financial needs or a lot of personal needs. And so it doesn’t really fit into one office. So if schools can break down those barriers build more integrated student success ecosystems and again, guide them from recruitment all the way to graduation and beyond.
I think that could really champion a lot of different structures and really connect a lot of student facing touch points into one kind of cohesive institution. Another thing I would probably say is just, data. Right? Data informed, equity driven strategy is like a non-negotiable.
So like you mentioned, the enrollment cliff, financial strains, different things that require leaders to make decisions should always be grounded in data and mission. What’s that saying? If you don’t have data, it’s an opinion. And really using analytics to anticipate what is the kind of student that thrives here? Who’s the kind of student that struggles? And trying aligning it with all those different offices, admissions, financial aid, they really should just look at their policies, I would say presidents and deans and just say, ” how do our policies expand access and opportunity and not just focusing on managing on the numbers”, and so I would say data informed decision making, equity driven strategies, really a non-negotiable, I would say.
And then the final thing I would say is really just, I guess empathetic leadership. So especially for our students, graduate students, they face a lot of stress, unprecedented stress, and so if you can lead with empathy and you just listen to students, that’s really a lot of times that they want is just to be listened to, to feel like they’re not forgotten. Prioritize their wellbeing and try to create the culture of belonging. I think that really helps with impacting retention and student outcomes. And I really think humanizing that leadership not only help support student success, but it also strengthens, I think the school, it strengthens the enrollment, and I really think it strengthens the alumni loyalty and they’ll want to give back to the school after they graduate. So that would probably be the third thing I would recommend.
Drumm McNaughton: Those are great recommendations and I always try and remind presidents, alumni doesn’t mean they’re only there for them to open their wallets. They’re there for a whole host of functions, which will ultimately end up having them open their wallets.
Colleen Leigh: Definitely. I totally agree.
Drumm McNaughton: So what’s next for you?
[00:37:51] Future Plans and Free Tuition Campaign
Colleen Leigh: Well, a lot of things going on at the school. Actually, we are launching a, we have launched actually a free tuition campaign knock on wood that it happens, but we would be the first masters in journalism in the country to offer free tuition. The goal is by 2028, that incoming class in the fall would be the first class to be completely free tuition.
And so our dean is really busy at fundraising and we have a lot of our alumni actively giving us testimonials and different things about their experience so we can try to get funders interested in our school. And so that’s really the big thing on the horizon and what would that look like once we have that, we’re starting to have various committees and meetings around free tuition. How do things change admissions wise? And then student affairs, career services, and alumni wise, once we become free tuition, there’s a lot to think about. So that’s, that’s our next thing on the horizon.
Drumm McNaughton: Wow. That’s an incredible BHAG.
Colleen Leigh: Yes, definitely.
Drumm McNaughton: So I certainly hope it all works out for you.
[00:38:48] Conclusion and Farewell
Drumm McNaughton: Colleen, thank you so much for being on the program. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Look forward to the next time our paths cross.
Colleen Leigh: Thank you so much, Drumm. Appreciate it.
Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Colleen Leigh. Colleen, it was wonderful having you on the program, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I learned so much about what you guys are doing. Thank you.
To my listeners, thanks again for being on the show. Look forward to seeing you next week.
