In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Dan Predoehl, assistant dean of Extended Learning and director of the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College, one of the nation's highest-performing community colleges.

The conversation focuses on why enrollment challenges persist even at strong institutions and how treating enrollment as a shared responsibility—rather than a system with clear executive ownership—creates fragmentation across admissions, student services, academics, and outcomes. Dr. Predoehl explains the Chief Enrollment Management Officer concept and why a cabinet-level role is increasingly necessary to align enrollment strategy with institutional mission, student success, and long-term viability.

Drawing on experience across community colleges and four-year institutions, the discussion examines how enrollment, retention, completion, workforce alignment, and equity outcomes are shaped by leadership structure—not just tactics.

Topics Covered:

• Why enrollment is a system, not a department

• How diffused responsibility undermines retention and completion

• The limits of presidential oversight without executive enrollment ownership

• How workforce alignment strengthens enrollment strategy

• Why open access increases the need for strategic focus

• The role faculty partnership plays in sustainable enrollment management

Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leaders:

• Enrollment outcomes reflect system design, not individual office performance

• Retention, completion, and workforce alignment are core enrollment responsibilities

• Institutions risk long-term instability when enrollment lacks clear executive ownership

This episode is especially relevant for presidents, provosts, enrollment leaders, and senior administrators looking beyond short-term fixes toward structural solutions to enrollment pressure.

Read the transcript and extended show summary:
https://changinghighered.com/chief-enrollment-management-officer-in-higher-education/

#HigherEducation #EnrollmentManagement #HigherEducationPodcast

Institutional transformation in higher education is often described in broad terms. At Stevens Institute of Technology, Dr. Nariman Farvardin describes transformation in operational terms: disciplined strategic planning, academic realignment, and year-after-year execution systems that produced what Dr. Drumm McNaughton calls the Stevens Miracle.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Nariman Farvardin, President of Stevens Institute of Technology, about how Stevens achieved sustained success since he became president in 2011. Under Dr. Farvardin's leadership, undergraduate applications increased 294%, enrollment grew approximately 75%, research funding increased 199%, and the university invested more than $500 million in campus improvements. Stevens also reports first-year retention approaching 96%, graduation rates near 90%, and approximately 97% of graduates employed or in graduate school within six months.

Dr. Farvardin explains the institutional "secret sauce" behind those results: an inclusive strategic planning process that builds ownership across faculty, staff, students, administrators, and trustees, paired with execution discipline that keeps the plan active through regular progress reporting, annual written results, and objectives letters that tie leadership goals directly to strategic priorities. He also walks through Stevens' academic realignment, including the SUCCESS curriculum, which ensures every student graduates with foundational exposure to five areas: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, sustainability, and data science. The discussion also covers student support structures that reinforce student experience and outcomes, including the first-year experience model delivered in 45–47 sections annually, with faculty serving as coaches for small groups of students.

• How Stevens used inclusive strategic planning to build campus-wide ownership and momentum
• Why execution systems matter more than a polished strategic plan document
• How Stevens keeps the strategic plan active through regular updates, annual reports, and objectives letters
• What the SUCCESS curriculum is and why it represents academic realignment, not a one-off initiative
• The five technology areas every Stevens graduate is exposed to through SUCCESS
• How the first-year experience course operates at scale and why it supports retention
• How Stevens operationalized student-centered service so student issues are owned, not deflected
• Why transparency and shared responsibility improved faculty engagement with change
• How Stevens uses honesty about what did not work to keep planning credible
• What presidents and boards should focus on if they want transformation that holds over time

• A leadership execution model that breaks strategy into smaller goals, distributes them across divisions, and updates them annually through objectives letters
• A first-year experience structure delivered in 45–47 small sections (20–25 students each) with faculty serving as ongoing coaches
• A student support expectation that staff "own" the student's problem until it is solved, instead of sending students office-to-office

1. A well-designed strategic plan paired with disciplined execution is essential, even when it requires difficult and unpopular decisions
2. A strong, functional relationship between the president and the board is critical to sustaining momentum and leadership effectiveness
3. Trust-based working relationships between leadership, faculty, and staff are required for long-term success and leadership sustainability

Read the transcript or extended show summary: https://changinghighered.com/stevens-tech-strategic-planning-transformation/

#HigherEducation #StrategicPlanning #UniversityLeadership #BoardGovernance #StudentSuccess

Higher education enters 2026 under conditions that are no longer hypothetical. In this 8th annual end-of-year episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton is joined by Tom Netting of TEN Government Strategies to review how the predictions made at the end of 2024 played out during the 2025 operating year and what those outcomes mean for institutional planning in 2026.

Rather than offering speculative forecasts, this episode uses 2025 as a calibration year. When predictions materialize, they remove ambiguity. They clarify which pressures are structural, which risks persist, and which leadership assumptions are no longer defensible. For presidents, boards, and senior leadership teams preparing for 2026, this conversation provides a grounded planning context based on conditions already in motion.

Topics Covered

• What 2025 confirmed about federal policy instability, accountability, cost pressure, enrollment volatility, and governance risk

• Why the Department of Education is likely to remain in place through 2026 and why its continued existence should not be mistaken for stability

• How redistribution of authority across federal agencies increases compliance complexity for institutions

• Where student loans are likely to move within the federal system and why institutions face growing exposure to borrower outcomes

• Why broad student debt forgiveness remains unlikely and what limited relief options may realistically emerge

• How accountability is shifting toward program-level scrutiny and the implications for academic realignment

• Why accreditation reform remains unsettled and why leaders should treat accreditation as a strategic risk factor

• Workforce Pell expansion, quality oversight challenges, and the risk of fraud and abuse in short-term credentials

• The growing role of states in accountability as federal capacity contracts

• Research funding as political leverage and the planning risk created by funding uncertainty

• Polarization as an operational challenge affecting enrollment, safety, governance, and public trust

• Technology, AI, cybersecurity, and NIST compliance as board-level responsibilities

• Enrollment, demographic decline, cost escalation, and financial pressure entering the 2026 planning cycle

• Mergers, closures, and structural collaboration as necessary adaptation strategies

Key Planning Judgments for 2026

• The Department of Education will persist but continue to shrink and fragment

• Student loans will move further away from the Department, increasing institutional exposure

• Accountability pressure will intensify, particularly at the program level

• Accreditation reform will remain unresolved beyond 2026

• Workforce Pell will expand, bringing both opportunity and heightened oversight risk

• Research funding will remain politically vulnerable

• Cost pressure will continue to drive consolidation and closures

• Technology and cybersecurity will demand sustained leadership attention

This episode is especially relevant for presidents and trustees navigating compressed decision timelines, thinner margins for error, and declining tolerance for ambiguity. The focus is not prediction for its own sake, but clarity about the forces institutions must plan around as they enter 2026.

#HigherEducation #HigherEd2026StrategicPlanning #HigherEducationPodcast