The University of Maryland Eastern Shore hit a milestone this fall as its student population eclipsed 3,000 for the first time in five years.
UMES’ combined undergraduate and graduate total of 3,166 marked the fourth consecutive year of enrollment growth. Reaching the 3,100-student milestone was part of a goal set at the end of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Latoya Jenkins, UMES’ Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Experience.
“We were persistent in our efforts to create a plan based on our recruiting strategy to reach a large population of students that would be successful here at UMES,” Jenkins said. “We want to ensure that any barriers these students had to enrollment were removed so they could start their journey to change their lives.”
First-year enrollment led the growth, as 958 first-time students – 828 freshmen and 128 transfer students – became part of the Hawk family. Last year, 733 new undergraduate students came to Princess Anne.
Jenkins credited the increases in recruitment and retention to the Office of Admissions and Recruitment, led by associate vice president of Admissions and Recruitment Darryl Isom.
Isom pointed to a more aggressive approach to communicating recruitment efforts that included creating partnerships, and pipelines and utilizing alumni recruitment.
“We made a concerted effort in expanding our national and international recruitment footprint allowing us to recruit more students outside of the Maryland region,” he said. “We know that the more prospective students learn about UMES, the more they’ll want to attend.”
In order to meet the needs of a growing student population, Jenkins developed an experienced student affairs leadership team that leveraged skills from student retention, to social life on campus, to expanding career services.
With a growing student population and the necessary staff in place to manage the growth, Jenkins said the next priority is to ensure that campus community concerns continue to be heard.
“Student success is everyone’s business,” she said. “We want to hear about the things we’re doing well and the things we can really look at and we want to get the word out that everyone should be sharing their experiences about the things we can do to make our campus community even better.”
