A few big changes have been made to the New Student Relations Office located on the South Plains College campus.

Perhaps the most recognizable change is that the office is now called the Enrollment Management Office, though it will still be located in the New Student Relations building. The purpose of the Enrollment Management Office is to recruit and retain a diverse student body.

The plans for the new office went into planning in October when SPC received a Title 5 Grant, which includes one component focusing on retention. In order to focus on retention, the college created the Enrollment Management Office. The new office is divided into two divisions mainly focusing on recruitment and retention.

The Enrollment Management Office recently received three new employees as well. They are: Christina Conner, the retention specialist; Johnny Lopez, data tracking specialist and; Brenda McKelvey, the Title 5 secretary.

“The retention team is working with representatives from all areas of the South Plains College campus that will help create programs to better serve our students,” said Kimbra Quinn, director of enrollment management. “One of the programs is we will be working with students that are on suspension to give them more personal advisement with their classes.”

The Enrollment Management Office will still be focusing on everything the New Student Relations did, but now with an emphasis on retention.

Among the areas the office will be concentrating on is to improve the advising system and set up an early-alert system to catch students early who are having trouble in college and to keep them attending classes on campus by having the professor contact the Enrollment Management Office when a student has missed a certain number of days.

The office also is working to help develop and coordinate retention activities for faculty and staff to help students complete their education goals.

“I am very excited,” Conner said. “We haven’t had any office to centralize on retention efforts for the whole campus.”

“We are already doing a lot of great things to retain students in individual departments. This office is a way to keep that focus at a campus-wide level.”

For further information on the Enrollment Management Office, contact Quinn at 894-9611, ext. 2114, or Conner at ext. 2961.