SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett
Last year, Seward County Community College recorded tremendous growth in enrollment — 16 percent up. Now that we’ve reached the midpoint of academic year 2024-25, our official certification numbers are in, and we’re thrilled all over again. Student headcount at SCCC is up by 17 percent.
At a time when higher education is grappling with rising costs, and a culture shift that began with the pandemic, many folks in our sector are discouraged. But that is not the story at Seward. I attribute our success to a campus-wide commitment to one goal: recruiting, enrolling, and retaining more students. In other words, enrollment growth.
This weekend, SCCC hosts the Deans & Directors for Kansas Community Colleges in their annual meeting. We’re excited to welcome our peers, and glad to talk about how SCCC achieved success in this critical area. A key factor has been the way our college embraced a “Wildly Important Goal” — enrollment — and learned to focus on that goal despite the everyday things that pull our attention away. This approach is described in the excellent book “The Four Disciplines of Execution,” which our President’s Cabinet read and discussed last year. From the principles in that book, we created measurable goals that aimed for a certain outcome by a certain time.
Then — and this is the part that makes all the difference — our President’s Cabinet members went back to their various areas around campus and shared the vision. They talked to the staff and faculty folks around them and asked the question, “How can we support the goal of increasing enrollment by five percent every year for the next five years?”
It’s been interesting and fun to watch the way various departments have answered this question. For some, like the admissions and outreach department, enrollment is their everyday reality. They are already working hard to connect future Saints with the college, and get them through the process of applying, enrolling, and starting classes.
Other departments, like our business office, searched for ways to support this goal and came up with creative contributions. They helped with personal notes to prospective students who had dropped off the radar. Perhaps more important, they took an interest in the work their fellow team members in admissions do on a daily basis and encouraged them.
We saw this spirit across campus, as team members pitched in to make things work better, with the Wildly Important Goal in sight. For example, as enrollment grew, and the dorm rooms filled up, we needed to address a potential housing shortage. Our Vice President of Business Affairs Maddie Day connected with the local fire Marshall to find out if it would be possible to add beds to the existing rooms. When he said, “yes,” Maddie added a discount for students willing to share their space, ordered more beds, and organized crews to assemble the beds the day before students arrived on campus. You might think beds are a long distance away from enrollment growth, but they are indeed connected, and 60 more students had a place to sleep thanks to our SCCC teamwork.
As we make our way through the current year, we continue to address the needs of the students we already have. After all, the easiest student to “recruit” is the one you already have on campus. In higher ed, we refer to that as retention rates, and ours have improved year over year.
We’re also looking forward to the winter session and spring semester. Rather than only offering two times per year — fall and spring semester — to start an SCCC education, we have expanded the options. In fall 2024, we counted 13 separate start times for classes. Some of these are eight weeks long, which means students learn an entire semester’s worth of material in half the time. The intense pace is not for everyone, but it serves a need and creates more opportunities for more students. Our winter session enrollment and spring semester enrollment will open in just about a month.
Much as we called upon team members to pitch in and help with bed assembly, we have asked a lot of our faculty in order to offer these new options. I’m so proud of our academic team members for learning to navigate online and in-person courses, working closely with local and area high schools, and helping us achieve that Wildly Important Goal.
We’ve already passed the halfway mark of this semester and I am amazed at everything that has come together. Amazed, but not surprised. After all, we set out to do this together, created a goal, and planned to achieve it. With this great team, it’s exciting to imagine what we might do next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Brad Bennett is the president of Seward County Community College, where Wildly Important Goals become reality. If you want to join our efforts to improve the lives of our students and the community we call home, give him a call at 620-417-1010 or email
