The number of Colorado College students only enrolled part-time increased by over 100 this year. Pandemic Fall, by the enrollment numbers.
Plus, a student club virtually combines passion for birds and voter participation
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2017, Colorado College students were enjoying Midnight Breakfast at Rastall Dining Hall. (Campus dining services are currently offering grab and go options.)
Today, we speak with CC’s vice president for enrollment, Mark Hatch, about how the pandemic is impacting Colorado College’s admissions numbers and recruitment efforts. We also talk to a Colorado College student who led a text-banking event for the Tiger Audubon club.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained her thoughts on CC’s plan for spring.
💩Oh Crap: An NPR team followed Andrea Bruder, who chairs Colorado College’s Scientific Advisory Group, and Scientific Advisory Group member Miro Kummel through the process of collecting a wastewater sample from South Hall for the college’s wastewater testing program.
✨New Contributor Alert: At the end of the Block, Arielle Gordon ’21 will step back from The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. Please give a warm welcome, and a Twitter follow, to our new contributor Esteban Candelaria ’21.
✉️In Your Inbox: Let us de-densify your inbox.
On Friday, a Sodexo employee working at Colorado College tested positive for COVID-19. Another Sodexo staff member who they came in contact with is now in quarantine.
On Monday, a CC employee who works in Tutt Science tested positive for COVID-19. They haven’t been on campus since last week, and another staff member who they had contact with is now in quarantine.
Colorado College is seeking 30 staff members to volunteer to join the Emergency Operations Center, Logistics section. The volunteers will help with food and mail delivery if there is another large quarantine on campus.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released a statewide COVID-19 exposure notification system for Apple and Google phone users. More information is available here.
Colorado’s Office of Sustainability just started a new podcast called “How They Did That,” featuring discussions and interviews with CC students who created sustainable projects during the pandemic. Listen to the first episode here.
Election Day is six days away. CC’s Election Resource Guide is available here.
Decreased enrollment and increased virtual information sessions: Colorado College admissions during the pandemic
During a typical year, Colorado College’s Vice President for Enrollment Mark Hatch is “barnstorming” across the country and the world to promote the college.
“You spend a lot of time in airports; you get a lot of United flight miles; you get a lot of Marriott Rewards points,” Hatch told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “You eat a lot of lonely dinners in a restaurant with a newspaper, or your iPad. And then you ... work.”
Hatch said he would then visit high schools during the day, attend a college fair in the evening, email until about 11 p.m., and then get up around 6 a.m. to repeat it. Around Nov. 1, he retreats to his office to read applications.
But obviously this isn’t a typical year.
During Pandemic Fall, Hatch travels to high schools via Zoom and hosts information sessions virtually instead of in Cutler Hall.
It isn’t just the traveling that’s different. This year, fewer students are enrolled full time at CC, and with the Nov. 1 early decision deadline just days away, the college will soon find out what the future might bring.
👨🏫Roll Call: What CC’s enrollment numbers look like this semester
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported that as of Sept. 24, undergraduate enrollment numbers are about 4% lower than last year. At Oberlin College, fall 2020 semester enrollment is down 11%, and at Ithaca College, 4,957 students are enrolled this semester, as opposed to 5,852 during fall 2019.
1,873: Colorado College is no exception. Under normal circumstances, Hatch said CC usually has between 2,100 and 2,150 students enrolled full-time each semester. (At CC, a student is considered full-time if they are enrolled in three or more blocks per semester.) This semester, 1,873 students are taking classes full-time, about a 12% decrease.
542: On May 10, 630 first-year students told CC they planned to enroll for the fall semester. The college’s target was 570 members of the class of 2024, but right now, 542 first-year students are enrolled.
215: This year, CC is also seeing a sharp increase in students taking a leave of absence. Generally, between 45 and 65 students take a leave of absence — although Hatch said that number tends to increase slightly during election years as some students opt to take time off and work on a political campaign. This year, 215 students are taking the fall semester off.
149: Part-time students usually make up just a fraction of CC’s enrollment, with about 30 or 40 students taking 2 ½ or fewer blocks. This year, that number is 149.
🔮‘An art and science to admission’: How the college is preparing for the future
As focused as some people might be on the current numbers, Hatch said the future is just as important. If the college under-enrolls the class of 2025, the impact will last for the next four years. Hatch said this year’s early decision applicant pool so far is about 30% smaller than last year’s, and the total pool is about 20% lower.
Last year, the college received 10,267 first-year applications, a record number, and admitted around 13.6% of them. This year, instead of admitting around 1,350 students, Hatch said he is anticipating admitting closer to 1,500.
“So we’ll probably push the envelope a little bit,” Hatch said. “But there’s an art and science to admission.”
The Office of Admission runs regression models based on a number of variables: academic rating, zip code, gender, financial aid status, and whether or not a student visited campus, to name a few. From there, Hatch said they are able to predict the number of students who may accept early action and regular action offers.
“And we don’t have any of that engagement,” Hatch said. “The campus visit, those metrics are gone. So I’m going to get my ouija board out and do a lot of praying.”
In place of visiting hundreds of schools this fall, the admissions staff have been participating in a variety of virtual events. Hatch said about 25,000 students usually indicate interest in the college, and this year there are about 30,000 names in their database so far.
But just because the barrier to attending a virtual event is generally lower than attending an in-person information session doesn’t mean people are participating. Hatch said the no-show rate is “ridiculous,” exceeding 50% in some instances.
Virtual admissions events might be here to stay, but Hatch said the college is also looking toward other ways to make the world smaller.
“I think we’re going to have to do some things that a lot of other colleges have had to do for years, but we haven’t — cast a much wider net and waste a lot of money in P’s: printing, paper, and postage,” Hatch said.
So high school students, get ready. If you thought your mailbox was already full of shiny brochures from interested colleges, this may only be the beginning.
Tiger Audubon promotes virtual activism through text-banking and social media posts
Last year, CC student club Tiger Audubon took members on in-person birding trips to local parks in Colorado Springs. Now, thanks to the coronavirus, birding looks a little different this fall.
Courtney Knerr ’21, one of the club’s co-chairs, said Tiger Audubon is focused on community engagement and conservation. The club, which formed just last year, shifted their in-person events to virtual programming and outreach — doing everything from text banking to instagramming to virtual birding competitions.
The group held a virtual text-banking session Oct. 17 in pursuit of their conservation goals. A couple members tuned into a Zoom call and spent part of their afternoon reminding people to vote in the Nov. 3 election by using the text-banking software Spoke.
“Even though you can contact your representatives, now the really important part is to vote and make sure that you’re getting representatives in office who are actually going to care about the conservation goals that we care about,” Knerr told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Knerr estimated she texted about 700 voters during the event led by Stand Up America, an organization working to increase voter turnout. Through Spoke, sending 700 texts just means clicking a button 700 times. Stand Up America provided pre-written responses to send to voters if they answered the initial text. Knerr estimates that of the 700 people she texted, about 50 of them responded to her.
“Most organizations have told us that it’s like 90% of people who don’t respond,” Knerr said. “And then, like 95% of those people, even if they don't respond, they still read the information. … Leading up to the election, somebody who isn’t sure quite how to vote or has been putting it off, will get texts every day or every few days. Your text could just be the one that makes the difference.”
Last week, Knerr told the Reporting Project that Tiger Audubon might plan another text bank before the election on Nov. 3. “It’s just been a really easy way, and kind of a more accessible way to college students, I think, to get involved in the election,” she said.
In addition to text banking, Tiger Audubon has kept busy during Pandemic Fall with their programming on social media.
Earlier this month, the club promoted Birdability Week on their Instagram stories, which was a movement to make birding more inclusive for people with disabilities. For example, people worked to log which birding sites have benches and wheelchair-accessible ramps in an effort to support birders with disabilities. Tiger Audubon has also hosted multiple virtual birding competitions during the pandemic, where birders compete to log the most species on individual birding excursions.
To Knerr, the link between conservation and voter mobilization couldn’t be more clear.
“To help the environment right now,” she said, “really one of the top things you can do is just go vote.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, Isabel Hicks, and Esteban Candelaria in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.