Transforming a College - Book Review

Transforming A College:
The Story of a Little-Known College’s Strategic Climb to National Distinction
By George Keller (Reviewed and condensed by Rik Villegas)
Published 2004; The John Hopkins University Press
Website: http://www.elon.edu

North Carolina’s Elon College was founded in 1889. Four decades ago Elon was a small, mediocre, financially struggling institution trying to attract students and remain solvent. It competed with thousands of other colleges for talented students, top faculty, and money. Today Elon is a beautiful, mid-sized university attracting students from 48 states and 40 foreign countries. It has emerged as one of America’s most desirable institutions, and Elon has been ranked the nation’s top “School to Watch” by U.S. News & World Report.
The book reveals how Elon College, now Elon University, made the transformation happen and what other colleges and universities can learn from the process. George Keller wrote the book for two reasons. One was to describe how a private American college can transform itself using strategic planning, financial ingenuity, faculty dedication, and strong, determined leadership. The other reason was to fill a curious void in the literature and scholarship about U.S. higher education…There exist numerous institutional histories celebrating achievements, what one of my manuscript’s referees called “vanity histories.”…But with very few exceptions, American scholars of higher education have seldom ventured to study in detail a single institution’s policies, plans, people, and progress. Micro studies to investigate how one college or university conducts itself are extremely rare. [pp. 109-110]
Elon University would often send study squads to examine the best facilities and programs operating at institutions in the United States. These would be used as benchmarks and analyzed in their pursuit of excellence. Through committed leadership, strategic planning, and dedicated teamwork, they were able to see their vision become a reality.
The purpose of this review is to glean key points that Northern Marianas College can draw for inspiration and guidance. NMC has achieved much in less than 30 years since being established. There is tremendous untapped potential waiting to be realized as Northern Marianas College continues its transformation process.
For a quick summary of the entire book, Keller identifies six features in the last chapter, Analysis of an Ascent, that aided the college’s climb to prominence: continuous quality improvement, strategic planning and implementation, careful selection, training, and retention of quality employees, creating a niche through “engaged learning”, achieving growth by leveraging limited funds, and effective marketing methods to recruit more students.


Chapter One: Up from the Ashes
“We thought we would lose students by the 1980s, so we had to scramble,” Young says. The new president made admissions and the improvement of student life programs his first priorities. He redesigned the admissions materials, rearranged his administrative structure, initiated new majors, opened a campus radio station, and brought in student honor societies. James Moncure, Young’s vice president for student and academic affairs, reflected the president’s views in a 1974 article for the Elon Magazine:
The place of a small liberal arts school in the future rests in the quality of student life. The mammoth universities will have facilities as good as those in the small colleges, but the behemoth institutions cannot provide the life style, the maturing environment…Elon College knows this and is doing something about it. [p. 7]
President Young felt that a major handicap to attracting more students was the appearance of the campus. Fred Young therefore did two things: purchased a 43-acre property in 1974 so the college could one day build a beautiful north campus and in 1975 he contracted with Lewis Clarke Associates to devise a master plan for landscaping, beautification, and growth. These were, historically, an important pair of decisions. [p. 8]
The landscape firm assigned Wayne McBride, Jr. to lead Elon’s master plan. His previous experience was mainly in designing resorts for the affluent. When President Young told McBride that he wanted to make Elon campus more attractive to parents and students, McBride immediately understood. He remembers feeling “that a college campus and a resort are quite similar. Both need to be lovely places at which you want to stay and visit often. Most parents want to feel that a college is safe, clean, and beautiful, with creature comforts alongside first-rate teaching.” [p. 8]
Looking back, Fred Young remembers that “in those days fear was our great motivator.” Elon was tuition-dependent, so that college had to concentrate on enrollment. To get more and better students, Elon needed a lovelier campus, new residence halls, a richer student life, and improved academic programs. [p. 9]
According to one of his former close aides: “Fred was an absolute nut about the importance of admissions, retention, and marketing. He never let anyone forget that.” [p. 11]
Young formed a marketing task force in the early 1980s. The group studied Elon’s constituency and the competition and surveyed the students. “We found that the students really liked us – the teaching, the friendly community, the new attention to facilities and more attractive grounds,” declares Nan Perkins, an ex-English instructor and then the director of communications. [p.11]
These new awarenesses resulted in what Young now describes as a “major repositioning” of Elon College. The college leaders decided, with pressure from the trustees, to create a different kind of college for a different clientele. Instead of admitting relatively weak students of modest means…Elon would strive to admit more middle-class and even some wealthy students with average and above average SATs. [p. 12]
Elon’s leaders decided their niche could be: students from loving, affluent families with average and slightly above-average academic credentials… Once Elon decided on its new student market, the priority of initiatives became clearer. [p. 13]
Several of the new faculty pressed Elon’s provost and deans to institute “Writing across the Curriculum” and to provide opportunities for them to learn to teach better, with more critical thinking and the use of computers...Elon faculty learned how to collaborate and help each other. Michael Calhoun sees “almost no departmental isolation here. It’s quite unusual.” [p. 15]
Many professors reduced their lecturing and introduced more active learning and Socratic questioning into their classes. [p. 16]
President Young was convinced that two things were necessary for Elon College to become one of the best institutions of its kind on the eastern seaboard: a distinctive academic and extracurricular program and exceptional quality in everything that Elon did – from the physical appearance of the campus and the college’s financial management to classroom teaching and career planning for the students. [p. 17]
Dozens of consultants have counseled colleges to study their students, to know more thoroughly what kind of students are coming thorough their doors. Few colleges, however, do so. But at Elon, Lela Fay Rich, the director of advising and career services and now associate dean for academic support services, give each entering student a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and studies each student with uncommon diligence. She believes deeply that “a college’s curriculum, teaching styles, extracurricular life, and counseling must match the profiles of students…What Rich has found is that the MBTI reveals year after year that Elon College attracts mainly a specific type of student (ENFP). [p. 18]
President Young is proud of the Elon Experiences (see pp. 50-2), each of which has its own office. “We chose four values – work, service, leadership, and cultural understanding – and made them the modern college’s equivalent of old-time religious inculcation.” [p. 21]
The new academic and cocurricular program gave Elon College a distinctive, competitive approach to educating the whole student – in mind, body, service, leadership skills, work, and spirit. The other prong of Young’s efforts in the early 1990s was his passion for instilling quality everywhere, from registration procedures to the pageantry of the graduation ceremony. [p. 22]
A comparative study of the number of administrators per faculty member and per student was conducted, and Elon College had the lowest staffing ratio of any similar institution. [p. 23]
A major contributor to Elon’s leap into excellence has been its extensive use of outside consultants and visits to college leaders to study the best practices elsewhere. [p. 25]
The university also sends out study squads. Elon staff, faculty, and students studied America’s outstanding college fitness centers and student centers before building their own. Provost Francis remembers that, “for the new library we were planning, I and five others visited ten of the best college libraries to learn the finest features to put into our new library.” [p. 26]
In 1997 Elon had become a distinctively different institution and one that had actually grown more cohesive as an academic community. On Tuesday mornings many from the entire campus take a thirty-minute break to gather around the once-controversial fountain to drink coffee or soft drinks and eat doughnuts, bagels with cream cheese, or fruit. At this break, students can talk with several professors, the president, some maintenance staff, or a trustee who occasionally shows up. [p. 28]

Chapter Two: New Leader, New Initiatives
In 1997 President Young decided that it was time for him to retire after being president at Elon for twenty-four years. At Elon’s board of trustees meeting on October 1998, Leo Lambert was selected as the college’s eighth president. [p. 32]
One of the surprising consequences of President Young’s major repositioning of Elon College… was a profound shift in the kind of parents that the college encountered. They were more educated, more ambitious for their offspring, more inquisitive about Elon’s care for undergraduates, and more willing to assist the college – at least while their sons or daughters were in attendance…Elon created a Parents Council of one hundred families, twenty-five from each undergraduate class. Prospective members are identified by the admissions office and are then invited to join the council by a letter from the president. [p. 35]
The council meets each October and April to hear a state-of-the-university report from President Lambert and meet in committees that advise the administration about student life issues…The Parents Council has raised $150,000 to endow a scholarship, and they collected $250,000 to construct a new health center to assure that their children – and others – receive the finest health care while at the university. [p. 36]

Chapter Three: Student Life and Pleasures
From a perspective student’s first inquiry to Elon, he or she is treated with consummate courtesy. Several parents and students report that every telephone call, letter, or e-mail they sent was answered promptly and politely by obviously well-trained admissions and financial aid staff members. Visitors to the campus are given a tour by students who are said to be well informed and personable. [p. 42]
The orientation for new students is handled in large part by ninety juniors and seniors, whose twelve leaders have had three weeks of “preservice” training…The orientation group also teaches, along with faculty members, in the popular freshman seminar titled Elon 101, which is an all purpose introduction to life at Elon: its academics, organizations, fraternities and sororities, athletic teams, library, residence hall relationships, and service opportunities. The Elon 101 faculty instructors also serve as students’ adviser-mentors until they choose a major, usually in the sophomore year. [pp. 42-3]
Elon’s introduction to college life is so nurturing and welcoming that John Gardner’s Policy Center on the First Year of College, at Brevard College, selected Elon in 2002 as one of America’s Institutions of Excellence in the First College Year..., and Elon’s first-year program was praised by Time magazine in its 2002 Colleges of the Year issue. About 84-86 percent of new students return annually for their sophomore year. [p. 43]
One third of the admissions’ staff travels a great deal, calling on schools and annually opening up new territories for recruitment. Elon spends more to create striking admissions materials; both the admissions view book and the video about life and study at Elon have won awards from the Council for Advancement and Support for Education. [p. 44]
Dean of Admissions Susan Klopman explains that “we use parents more than alumni in recruiting. They are wonderful.” Elon’s responses to all inquiries are swift. Admissions officers buy geodemographic research to find out where the kind of students they seek are located, and they buy mailings lists from the College Board. There is great attention to getting the details right. “We try to exceed parent and student expectations at every step in the process,” says one officer. [p.44]
In 1995 Elon started a “Turning 21” ceremony at Elon. Four times a year those seniors who turn twenty one years of age are invited to a birthday dinner. Each young woman or man who accepts attends with a faculty or staff sponsor, who prepares a letter about how the student has changed while at Elon and what the sponsor hopes for the student’s future. The letters are given to students at the dinner…Seated at round tables of eight each, the students are introduced by their sponsors, and then after dinner, students at each table offer a toast – to their teachers, the university, parents, friends, or the future. [p. 48]
Richard McBride teaches each spring a course titled Life Stories, which has become quite popular. In the seminar, students recall the factors that shaped them to become the persons they are and define what they hope to accomplish in the future. The students read books such as Don McAdam’s Stories We Live By and Sam Keen’s Fire in the Belly and are questioned by other students about their direction, habits, values, and more. Students report that the course really helps them discover who they are, how they became who they are, what they value, what their future might look like, and what steps they need to take to get there. [pp. 48-9]
Elon bustles with celebrative dinners, retreats, committees, leadership roles, and events that feature students. Smith Jackson claims that “we take very seriously the empowerment of every student.” An Elite Program has senior students who are expert at computer programming instructing faculty members in the possible uses of computers in pedagogy. Student government officers maintain a “Piddly List” of student suggests about how to better life and learning at Elon, which is helpful during the annual retreat each August bringing together student leaders and top officers at the institution. [p. 49]
The latest plan states that the institution seeks “to be a national model of engaged learning.” The core of the universities efforts toward this goal are the five Elon Experiences. They are designed to promote the values that college leaders think are essential for young Americans to embrace and practice.
1. Study abroad with one of the nation’s highest percentages of undergraduates (62 percent of all seniors) who travel to foreign countries for one month to one year;
2. Volunteer work or service learning where roughly 85 percent of seniors have worked in one or more service roles such as blood drives on campus, tutoring Spanish-speaking migrants, and building a house for the poor in the Dominican Republic;
3. Internships or co-ops arranged by the Career Center or the academic departments where about 75 percent of all students intern at organizations and business firms such as Merrill Lynch, NBC sports, or Comedy Central;
4. Leadership development where students learn about leadership styles, train others to lead, and practice leadership through dozens of leadership opportunities on campus (more than 50 percent of Elon seniors have held at least one leadership position); and
5. The pursuit of knowledge and discovery of new knowledge through undergraduate research where students work with faculty or independently on research projects. [pp. 50-2]
Most of Elon’s students seem aware that they live, work and study in a rather special place. They call it the “Elon Bubble.” By that they mean that they have somehow stumbled into a kind of Shangri-la, a weird but pleasurable little bubble of bliss, where they are treated like young adults; where they are the center of attention for some very smart and caring scholars, trustees, and staff members; and where professors really teach with skill and dedication. [p. 53]
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) uses five measures that are believed to contribute to superior undergraduate learning: tough academic challenges, active and collaborative learning (discussions and presentations in class, team projects, volunteerism), close frequent exchanges with faculty, other educational experiences (internships, study abroad, conversation with students of different color, ethnicity, and economic background), and a “supportive campus environment.” …In every one of the five assessment areas, the students at Elon consistently report a higher percentage of satisfaction and positive activity than the NSSE average. And last year, for the third year in a row, Elon scored in the top 10 percent of the nation’s colleges and universities in what NSSE survey designers call “engaged student learning.” …Nearly 95 percent of Elon’s students consistently rate their education as excellent or good in the annual survey. [p. 55]

Chapter Four: Elevating the Academics
President Lambert and his staff talk continually about Elon becoming “a national model of excellence in engaged learning.” [p.57]
Six working groups were organized to study parts of Elon’s intellectual climate for an “Academic Summit” on April 4, 1998. Its purpose: to assess the current academic climate and to suggest ways “to enhance the intellectual climate.” [p.59]
The screening of new faculty candidates at Elon is very thorough. Each prospect must teach a class, engage in scrutiny sessions with students and future departmental colleagues, and present a description of her or his scholarly interests and work to the faculty. This process is not unusual. What is unusual is how Elon orients, guides, and assists each faculty appointee. New instructors begin with a week-long orientation to Elon and then continue to attend monthly orientation sessions. Each is assigned a senior faculty mentor to assist with his or her new life at Elon and to sharpen teaching skills. [p. 60]
Faculty are encouraged to study abroad with students in tow. [p. 62]
Planning during President Young’s years had become an indispensable guide for setting priorities and making decisions at Elon, an approach strongly supported by several of the trustees. And most people on campus thought the 1994 strategic plan called the Elon Vision was a highly useful blueprint. But by 1998 it was largely fulfilled. [p. 65]
President Lambert initiated three different plans, more or less concurrently, between 1999 and 2000. One was the Elon Vision for Technology of 1999…The second planning thrust was for an updated facilities master plan…To accomplish all of this, the planners advocated a more aggressive and skillful program of fund-raising… [pp. 66-9]
The three goals were simple: increase academic excellence, provide new facilities to help boost Elon’s academic life, and gather the resources to make the next steps possible. But underneath the goals was a sturdy commitment to raising the level of scholarship and research at Elon. [p.70]
Elon has put fifteen five-week courses on-line for summer learning. [p.72]

Chapter Five: Financing the Rise
With so little money and no huge benefactors, how was Elon able to transform itself so rapidly?...The university performed this quasi miracle by using more than a dozen different measures. But many at the university attribute a large portion of the achievement to one person, the fifty-four-year-old vice president for business, finance, and technology, Gerald Whittington. [p. 76]
He [Whittington] supported the initiative to invest heavily in the admissions office and urged the admissions staff to work hard to “grow” the enrollment by adding 100 to 110 new students a year. At the same time, he pressed to hold the discount rate –tuition dollars returned to entering students as scholarships – at only 12 percent, thus compelling the admissions office to entice more students with little or no financial need to study at Elon. Most other private colleges and universities were returning in financial aid to students 25, 35, or even 45 percent of their sticker price tuition, receiving only 75, 65, or 55 cents of income for each dollar in tuition revenue. [p. 78]
Since Elon could not dispense many scholarships, Whittington and his colleagues decided the college’s tuition should be kept as low as possible, both to help Elon’s parents pay their college bills and to make attendance at Elon seem a good value. [p. 79]
At the heart of our financial strategy were three things: growing the enrollment gradually, strict control of tuition discounts, and competitive, value-oriented tuition price. [p. 79]
But if Elon was to recruit more students from prosperous families, the campus had to provide a vastly improved infrastructure, the basic facilities and services for the functioning of a desirable college community. [p.79]
In little more than a decade, Elon has become one of the nation’s loveliest and best-equipped small universities, mainly by attracting larger enrollments, holding down financial aid, and borrowing boldly. [p. 80]
Whittington also squeezed dollars from every sector of Elon’s operations and gathered new dollars from such innovations as issuing a Phoenix Card, debit and credit, from which the school earns a percentage, and granted Coca-Cola exclusive “pouring rights” for soft drinks on campus for a fee. [p.81]
A close examination of Elon’s finances turns up dozens of cost-saving frugalities. [p. 81]
Purchasing is another area in which Elon has excelled. Without resorting to the cheapest items, the university’s business staff has artfully managed to acquire most items, from food to computers, at bargain prices. [p. 82]
The budgeting process is remarkably transparent. It begins in the fall of each year with Vice Presidents Whittington and Francis looking at the present year’s operations. Elon’s NewCentury strategic plan, and the local and national financial picture and then roughly shaping the budget for the next academic year in approximate outline. They then take it to President Lambert for confirmation or alterations. Next, the proposed budget outline with its priorities is shown to the executive committee of the board of trustees, who approve it or suggest some changes. This done, the budget committee, composed of Whittington, Francis, and one elected member of the faculty, draw up guidelines for all academic department chairs and staff division heads to assist them in preparing their own budget presentations for the next year. The guidelines include such items as the inflation rate, admissions and retention data, and the overall financial picture. Then each department head prepares her or his requested budget, based on the guidelines, and presents it to one of the four deans or a vice president. These requests are trimmed or increased in places, and a rough first cut of the upcoming budget is sculpted…In January the rough first cut, along with its operating assumptions and reasons for new monies, shifts in resources, or continuing allotments, is presented at an all-campus forum. Not just faculty but everyone who works at Elon is invited. Questions are asked, and some community members offer suggestions for changes in the proposed budget. “Are we budgeting enough for computer training?” “How adequate is our funding to aid travel-study abroad?” “Why are we not renovating the dorms this year?” After this the budget committee whittles, adds, and rearranges once more, and a few weeks later they bring the revised proposed budget to the all-university forum again for further questions, suggestions, and final comments…This revised and tweaked budget for the next academic year then is shown to the president for further possible minor adjustments before going to the board of trustees for final approval. [pp. 83-4]
Budget making at Elon is viewed not only as a way of parceling out scarce monies but also as a way of educating everyone in the Elon community about how much is being spent and how and why it is being spent. The process is also viewed, at least by Whittington, as a means for receiving criticisms and innovative suggestions in advance from those who must live within the budget’s financial boundaries. [p.84]
Fund raising at Elon has been heavily dependent on a relatively few alumni, friends, parents, and trustees. Now the university’s officers will need to spread their nets to foundations and corporations and encourage many more people to include Elon in their estate plans. [p.86]

Chapter Six: The Fruits and Ironies of Success
John Gardner, the executive director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College, located at Brevard College in western North Carolina said: To me Elon is the new gold standard for undergraduate instruction in America. They do almost everything right. Every officer, professor, and staff member seems courteous, informative, and caring. Elon is a real community, and one that is becoming quite scholarly. I’ve given them one piece of advice: “Don’t screw it up!” [p. 89]
President Lambert has added an additional full-time multicultural recruiter to the admissions office… [p. 91]
Six-year graduation rates have jumped from 63.2 to 71.2 percent, and more Elon graduates now go on to graduate and professional schools, about 18 percent immediately after college and an estimated 20 percent more after one to three years of travel or work. [p. 94]
Elon’s emphasis on active learning, work, and community service produces many graduates – about 43 percent – who have two or even three job offers by the end of their last college year, frequently as a result of their summer jobs, co-op positions, or foreign travel. [pp. 94-5]
President Lambert holds Leadership Elon sessions several times a year. This is a mix of thirty-five to forty faculty, alumni, local residents, students, staff, and trustees invited who are invited to each session. The participants review the priorities of the New-Century@Elon strategic plan and hear about the admissions picture, several faculty initiates, the newest proposed facilities, and the finances of the university. At these meetings they get to question the president about where Elon is going and why and about how Elon hopes to get there. Leadership Elon sessions are one of Lambert’s inventive means for keeping everyone informed about current conditions and Elon’s plans for the future and for preserving the sense of community despite Elon’s growth. Lambert believes that “we have incredible teamwork at Elon. We play in each other’s sandboxes and collaborate constantly. [p. 96]

Chapter Seven: Analysis of an Ascent
The rapid rise of Elon College, now Elon University, from ordinariness and poverty to distinction and financial stability is perhaps worth a search to locate the factors that made the climb possible. The search may also be helpful in some ways for colleges and universities that aspire to rise in quality and renown. [p. 98]
If one looks carefully at the actions of Elon in recent decades, six features that aided the college’s ascent stand out: continuous quality improvement, strategic planning and implementation, careful selection, training, and retention of quality employees, creating a niche through “engaged learning”, achieving growth by leveraging limited funds, and effective marketing methods to recruit more students.


One: Quality Everywhere
“Quality everywhere” was the mantra of former President Fred Young, and he constantly pursued excellence in every aspect of Elon’s operations – from every event on campus, every trip abroad, every class of instruction, to every telephone response. Quality is also seen in the maintenance of old buildings, construction of new buildings, and the beautiful landscaping and fountain that give the campus a surreal “Disney” atmosphere.
Before any of the 27 new building since 1988 were constructed, a contingent from Elon made up of administrators, faculty and/or staff will have researched and visited the best that other colleges have built so they can approximate the finest elsewhere. Elon’s trustees forbid the college’s leaders from deferring maintenance to ensure that everything functions properly and is well maintained.

Two: Addiction to Planning
Elon’s s trustees, faculty, and executives boldly design the college’s future. While many colleges and universities are risk aversive, Elon makes decisions based on keen analysis and shrewd appraisal to improve the position the college and assist it to achieve its mission.
Strategic plans are based on sagacious competitive analysis, which makes Elon distinctive and gives it a comparative advantage. Both President Young and the current President Lambert created strategic priorities, set goals, and communicated next steps widely to make sure that the strategies were carried out. Visionary strategies become action imperatives and targets for financial investment, with annual reports on the progress of each strategic plan.

Three: Attention to the Selection, Training, and Rewarding of People
Elon is one of the most inclusive communities in American higher education, and it values its cooperative community life as a jewel-like possession. At Leadership Elon meetings, planning sessions, and budget presentations, the invitees include grounds workers, admin managers, security guards as well as faculty, students, and administration to gather input and ensure that everyone’s voices are heard.
Newly selected faculty and staff are carefully chosen and they all receive orientation, ongoing training, and coaching. New students are selective targeted through the wooing of high school guidance counselors, and selection of fellowship and scholarship recipients. The results are an astonishingly little turnover among faculty and staff, and what the students call the “Elon Bubble,” which refers to the secure, harmonious community atmosphere they feel.

Four: Creating a Distinctive Niche through “Engaged Learning”
Engaged learning is an action-oriented, experiential style of education that goes way beyond passively attending lectures, taking notes, gathering data from the Internet, and taking examinations. By creating this type of learning environment, Elon distinguishes itself from the majority of institutions steeped in traditional teaching methods.
Elon’s leaders believe that their particular style of engaged learning is the coming wave in undergraduate instruction. Faculty members are required to be inspiring and motivational in their teaching style. The core of the university’s effort toward the goal of engaged learning are offered to students in what is known as the five Elon Experiences:
1. Study abroad with one of the nation’s highest percentages of undergraduates (62 percent of all seniors) who travel to foreign countries for one month to one year,
2. Volunteer work or service learning where roughly 85 percent of seniors have worked in one or more service roles such as blood drives on campus, tutoring Spanish-speaking migrants, and building a house for the poor in the Dominican Republic,
3. Internships or co-ops arranged by the Career Center or the academic departments where about 75 percent of all students intern at organizations and business firms such as Merrill Lynch, NBC sports, or Comedy Central,
4. Leadership development where students learn about leadership styles, train others to lead, and practice leadership through dozens of leadership opportunities on campus (more than 50 percent of Elon seniors have held at least one leadership position), and
5. The pursuit of knowledge and discovery of new knowledge through undergraduate research where students work with faculty or independently on research projects.

Five: Financing Growth with Relatively Small Amounts of Its Own Money
The presidents, advancement and financial officers, and trustees have been strategic about borrowing, pricing, and soliciting new money. Elon’s cost of tuition, room, and board is kept competitively lower than the rest of peer colleges to convey the sense of value or the best buy. Elon borrowed money to help provide a contemporary campus environment and it leveraged its limited funds with remarkable skill.


Six: Effective Marketing
Elon did not give much attention to promoting itself until the last 15 years. It has deftly sought notice of its special traits and emerging quality initiatives through news releases and attention aimed at news media, publishers of college guides, and higher education leaders, and influential people in government and the nonprofit sector.
In addition, Elon publishes eye-catching recruiting booklets, and its quarterly alumni magazine has well-written articles and news stories. World-famous figures have been invited to campus to speak, which makes these important visitors more aware of Elon and all it has to offer. [pp.98-105]