Earlier this month, the office of recruitment and student engagement held a two-day training program on the university’s new Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) Radius, during which more than 40 UNMC staff members learned more about how the new system can help UNMC recruit and stay in contact with potential students.
Radius is a database that will hold critical information about prospective students.
“We’ve been going through an implementation process, learning what the system can do and how it will benefit us,” said Channing Bunch, director of recruitment and student engagement.
Jessica Tschirren, director of student affairs at the College of Public Health, said there are multiple advantages to the new system, created by Cincinnati-based company Hobsons.
“One of them is the ability to comprehensively track and engage prospective students who are interested in health sciences careers and possibly coming to UNMC, to start very early and track their academic progress and level of interest as they get closer to pursing a health sciences career,” she said.
The system also provides more robust communication streams to connect with individuals who are interested in health sciences.
“We are able to target those messages, whether it’s about the innovated education we are doing here at UNMC, or research faculty are doing that is of specific interest to the student,” she said. “We are able to get that information to them much more efficiently.”
The new system also allows the office to assess its return on recruiting investments.
“It’s an advantage to have a tool that’s robust enough to tell us if a certain pipeline program or a particular event is really producing the yield that we’re looking for,” she said.
As with any new system, there will be vigorous efforts to make Radius effective at UNMC.
Jennifer Escher, who does the day-to-day management of Radius CRM, will conduct more in-depth training sessions.
“We want Radius to succeed and are developing a Radius Learning Community. Each quarter, we will have meetings with everyone involved to discuss their department’s progress with Radius and discuss their questions, comments, concerns. We want to learn from one another and make sure we are using Radius to the best of our abilities.”
Jennifer, RSE office and our campus is lucky to have you!