Our Priorities

Goals to guide our success

We strive to meet enrollment goals across four areas: academic readiness, access, affordability, and student success. By focusing on these priorities, we help promising students from all backgrounds access an IU education.

Read our strategic plan below to learn more about our goals for enrolling and supporting talented, deserving students from Indiana, the nation, and the world. To see recent successes, visit our annual OEM Overview.

Our strategic plan

The OEM Bicentennial Strategic Plan offers strategies in line with those outlined in the IU Bloomington Bicentennial Strategic Plan, which in turn aligns with the university-wide plan. We view this plan as the cornerstone of future growth and innovation, and we are dedicated to implementing these initiatives.

Completed

Exploring, evaluating, and implementing third-party prospect and application platforms to be where the students are and to streamline the application process for high school students.

Ongoing

Developing a strong, collaborative and innovative K-12 outreach to promote pre-college engagement and the recruitment of prospective students.

Devising, enhancing, and implementing comprehensive transfer recruitment and application processing strategies to increase enrollment of qualified transfer students (Hoosier Link, non-traditional, military, and intercampus transfers).

Maximizing our Six C’s outreach in order to increase the proportion of underrepresented students in our undergraduate programs.

Implementing local and vended technology that is most appropriate to the advancement of our recruitment, marketing, and processing needs.

Implementing a comprehensive marketing strategy that promotes and celebrates the university’s accomplishments and promotes the IU brand. 

Expanding and enhancing programming opportunities offered to students throughout their first year by solidifying partnerships with various campus offices and the Bloomington community to promote student exploration, engagement, leadership, and success.

Introducing innovation, increasing quantity, and enhancing quality of communications to underrepresented prospective students and families, including digital advertising, website content, and email and print marketing.

Added in FY 2017

Increasing the enrollment impact of the campus visit experience for more than 50,000 prospective students by reimagining the strategic visit plan to leverage a new, state-of-the-art visitor welcome space.

Improving and refining strategic admissions communications for students through new CRM technology, which allows us to celebrate the diverse experiences, interests, and goals of prospective students considering Indiana University Bloomington and more efficiently manage student communication, events, and other work within one comprehensive tool.

Providing a strategic enrollment management framework for the schools and the College and establishing principles of excellence through the coordination of a standardized, best practices approach to standard and direct admission, award strategy, student services, and the student experience. 

Expanding upon successful access and diversity recruitment initiatives for Indiana residents, both traditional and non-traditional, by introducing and implementing an enhanced strategic recruitment and award strategy for transfer students, as well as refining services and support for transfer students in their transition to the Bloomington campus.

[IUB will esteem diversity of all kinds and ensure the full involvement of our global complement of students in our campus life, by: Recruiting and retaining a highly motivated, diverse, academically prepared and global complement of undergraduate and graduate students]

Completed

Supporting and facilitating the successful creation and implementation of a Bicentennial Scholarship Program.

Redesigning the Pell Promise program to provide full tuition for all Pell Promise participants.

Offering the four-year Pathway Scholarships to students who will follow one of the pathways routes to graduate credentials at IU Bloomington and who received Achievement Scholarships as a beginner at IU Bloomington.

Ongoing

Providing and promoting fundamental financial literacy educational opportunities, with particular emphasis during the student’s first year.

Added in FY 2017

Supporting and providing feedback for a need-based grant program to reduce the financial debt burden of our low-middle income families who do not qualify for or receive enough federal or state grant funding to cover the cost of tuition.

Creating a new institutional loan program to provide funding to students from low-middle income families or from families who have experienced an unexpected hardship. The new loan will serve as the replacement for the expiring Federal Perkins loan program.

Striving for full representation from all Indiana counties by developing a highly collaborative and comprehensive recruitment and award strategy for low-enrolling counties, specifically through collaborating with internal and external partners such as the College Board, expanding the Bicentennial Scholarship, and leveraging third-party partners such as the micro-scholarship program Raise.me.

Implementing new programming and recognition for the 21st Century Scholars, Lilly Scholars, MacDonald Scholars, and Snell Scholars to strengthen retention, social engagement, and future philanthropy efforts. 

[IUB will ensure an affordable, engaged, global, residential experience, by: Reducing the debt burden for every financially disadvantaged student through financial literacy education and scholarships and fellowships raised through philanthropy to cover unmet financial need.]

Completed

Working with campus partners to improve the clarity of financial information across the six websites that contain major portions of financial content at IU Bloomington.

Developing and deploying a fully integrated Scholarship and Financial Aid brochure.

Redesigning the Student Central website to provide students and families the necessary resources for making sound academic and financial decisions in support of student success and affordability.

Ongoing

Improving and expanding self-service technology and tools (such as SmartSource services) made available to students and families in order to shorten response time and ease of use.

Added in FY 2017

Collaborating with the Office of International Services and others on the free passport initiative. Providing free passports to students will have to be accounted for as a financial aid resource.

Identifying and implementing additional methods to deliver important financial information to students and parents leading to improved financial preparedness for students at the start of each semester. 

[IUB will ensure an affordable, engaged, global, residential experience, by: Increasing the transparency and visibility of scholarship and financial aid information to increase success and affordability.]

Ongoing

Designing and implementing an extended orientation and first-year student engagement program throughout the entire first year.

Enhancing international and multicultural education programs for first-year students.

Expanding arts and humanities opportunities for first-year students.

Added in FY 2017

Continuing to provide leadership in implementing a unified First Year Experience program that synthesizes and strengthens students' academic and co-curricular experiences by creating a boundary-crossing first-year experience,  preparing students for a pathbreaking four-year experience, and developing opportunities for students to document their experiences,

Implementing newly designed orientation and first-year transitional programs for transfer students that positively impact their academic, personal, and social needs. 

[IUB will inspire all undergraduate students to embrace curricular and co-curricular practices that engage them deeply in their learning; ensure that such practices are a part of each student’s experience; and create indelible connections between our undergraduates and our campus.]

[IUB will esteem diversity of all kinds and ensure the full involvement of our global complement of students in our campus life, by: Ensuring the integration of diversity, global empathy, and intercultural understanding at all points of shared student experience, such as orientation.]

Ongoing

Supporting the development and display of curricular and co-curricular learning activities by enabling the recording, validity, and display of appropriate experiential/engaged learning activities on the student record and adding them to the student transcript. 

Adjusting registration and enrollment processes for beginning students (including international students) to place them into courses and experiences that best match the requirements for their academic objectives.

Added in FY 2017

Enabling students to obtain a certified electronic diploma so they may access their diploma much more quickly and making it available in multiple modalities for students to display and/or share.

Displaying and communicating academic experiential learning activities to more fully represent the student academic experience at Indiana University. 

Completing the development of the Transcript Cover Page enabling students to highlight specific components of their academic record to the intended recipient, while ensuring that the highlighted items are drawn from the official IU documents and credentials.

Enabling the display of the dissertation title and link to the dissertation on the transcript to enrich the transcript on behalf of the student for the intended recipient. 

[IUB will enhance academic and life success for our students through excellent, technologically enabled academic and career advising, by: Developing and adopting best practices and metrics for academic and career advising to support student completion, success, and life and career goals.]

Completed

Identifying space to provide a welcoming and hospitable area for prospective and current students and their families that appropriately reflects the stature of Indiana University, and continuing to reevaluate and reconfigure current space to meet future needs.

Ongoing

Collaborating with appropriate campus partners in the expansion of IUB’s offering of one-stop services for the benefit of the students.

Ensuring the integrity and accountability in OEM operations as shared services practices are fully adopted by the campus and the University Administration.

Added in FY 2017

Completing renovation of Ernie Pyle Hall (Admissions presentation/tours) and 1514 E. 3rd Street (Admissions administrative building) as suitable spaces to provide a welcoming and hospitable area for prospective and current students and their families that appropriately reflects the stature of Indiana University.

IU Principles of Excellence

[IUB will ensure that all student-facing services are tightly aligned with the academic mission and the goals of this strategic plan.]

Ongoing

Streamlining administrative and fiscal/financial functions to obtain organizational efficiency when possible while maintaining effectiveness, sustainability, and compliance with federal, state, and institutional policies.

Working with Student Central partner offices, including the Bursar, Registrar, and the Office of Student Financial Assistance, to find more effective and efficient processes and deliver the highest level of student services possible.

Establishing standard benchmarks, best practices, and reporting models to bolster and assess current and potential services and efforts.

Added in FY 2017

Supporting effective student communication and organizational decision making by leading the strategy and implementation of two new constituent relationship management (CRM) and communications tools: Slate, for the recruitment of students (segmented messaging and territory management), and Salesforce, for current students and staff (student services and staff management).

Developing and implementing innovative marketing strategies—including augmented reality, paid digital, and retargeted advertisement—to create awareness, change attitudes, and impact actions with prospective and current students. 

IU Principles of Excellence

[IUB will ensure decisional support through the continued integration of such support in the Budgetary Affairs and Campus Strategic Initiatives unit.]

[Leverage IU’s scale wherever possible to create greater educational opportunities and to generate efficiencies in new areas. Scale should be used to permit the concentration of resources on strategic priorities, to create broader access to resources available across the university, and to exploit economies of scale.]