It is incredible that another recruitment cycle is in the rearview mirror! Where does the time go? The students we work with remain about 16 to 22 years old and yet we keep getting older! As I creak to another presentation, I have to remind myself that they are what keep us young. How fortunate are we to collaborate year in and year out with amazing young people who are going to change the world for the better? I’ll take that gig every day even though I get a few more gray hairs in my beard.
It has been another record year as far as enrollment – the largest in our history! Over 20,000 applications rolled in this past year. We have 2,343 new first year engineers on our campus. We are very excited as we move closer to our goal of 10,000 undergraduate engineers. Bigger can be better, you can have quantity and quality as Purdue Engineering continues to push the boundaries for excellence in education, research, and real-world engineering experience for our students. I feel better knowing that in the future there will be even more Purdue Engineers creating a stronger infrastructure, protecting our environment, designing products and processes for peoples’ needs, and helping us live longer healthier lives.
These large enrollment numbers don’t just happen. I continue to be proud of our OFE team who embraces quality customer service, creativity, enthusiasm, and fun. Each year we consider how can we meet future students where they are at and how we can provide authentic, excellent customer service. Or as one of our families noted, we’re “honest but not too pushy”! One big change this year is that we shifted our Adopt-Your-State program from an email platform to a text platform, where current students interacted with admitted students via text. This proved to be much more effective than email, as we increased response rates by 25%. Our student office staff also developed and led a brand-new program on campus called Purdue’s Clues! The goal of this program is to make sure that top students from the surrounding counties do not overlook what awesome opportunities are available right here in their back yard in the College of Engineering. We are excited to expand participation in this program in the coming year. We also introduced our new Dean to his first incoming class with a note about why he loves Purdue along with cool stickers of some of his favorite locations and traditions on campus. We continue to ramp up our social media presence and had successful Instagram ”takeovers” in the spring by our student staff. This helped future Boilermakers to get a sense of what studying and living on campus could be like, as well as what future opportunities await them upon graduation.
As always, it takes an entire campus to recruit students. We are truly grateful to all of our remarkable partners across the University including all of the Professional Schools, Office of Admissions, College of Engineering Program offices and so many more. I appreciate you taking time to peruse our annual report. Please let me know if you have any questions, feedback, suggestions, or collaborations you would like to discuss. Here’s to another amazing year!
David Bowker
Director of the Office of Future Engineers
Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach
Social Media Engagement
OFE has an in-house marketing and communications team that maintains social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and BlogSpot. The team uses these channels to increase click-through rates on the web through various social media campaigns throughout the year. Our social media accounts reach thousands of prospective and admitted students, and their families – locally, nationally, and globally in ways that they tell us they want to stay connected! With help from current Purdue Engineering students, we are constantly creating content and posting images that inspire, motivate, and promote undergraduate education, research, and study abroad. A new campaign that was introduced in the Spring of 2018, #PurdueEngineerOfTheWeek is just one example of how the team is looking to increase traffic to the web while highlighting student life on our beautiful West Lafayette Campus.