Pacesetter - Spring/Summer 2010 - Recruitment

Redefining college recruitment

Kettering College team moves from selling to serving
by Julie Thompson

Kettering College’s enrollment team has broken the mold of traditional college recruiting.

Victor Brown, Brandon Kennison and Mike Unterseher are passionate about bringing students to Kettering College, but they don’t spend all their time behind a booth, handing out brochures. The team — led by Brown, the Dean for Enrollment Management — would rather roll up their sleeves on a service project with a dozen high school students or belt out notes with a local church choir.

It may not sound like official recruitment business, but it’s an art the trio has perfected, and it’s effective. The goal is for Kettering College to be on the tip of prospective students’ tongues not because of information they have read, but because of the kc people they have met, Brown said.

Brown calls it mission-minded recruiting -- they’re not just admitting students, but fulfilling a mission for the school. Their message: Kettering College isn’t just a place to get an education, but a place to learn to serve.

Placing Kettering College on people’s minds
One of the best ways they communicate that message is by doing service projects. Two years ago, they launched Renewal Project, working with local youth on minor renovations to a home. Last summer, they worked at the Kettering home of an elderly sister and brother.

With 15 youth volunteers from the Kettering Seventh-day Adventist Church, Brown, Kennison and Unterseher spent three days landscaping, painting the garage, reconstructing the bathroom and making the home handicapped-accessible.

“We’re impacting the community and making an imprint on the Seventh-day Adventist church for the College,” Kennison said.

Recently, the team participated in a Seventh-day Adventist youth rally in Columbus, Ohio, called Just Claim It 2010.

“Most colleges will show up with their table and brochures and their banners and try to talk to kids about coming to their college,” Unterseher said. The kc team took a different tack. In three days, Brown, Kennison and Unterseher organized, with the youth attending the event, six service projects for families in the Columbus area.

“There (were) tons of pastors and youth leaders there, and we wanted them to see that Kettering College is more than just about advertising itself,” Unterseher said.

Service projects aren’t the only way they get involved. Each recruiter uses his own talents to stay connected in the Adventist community. Unterseher and Kennison are a part of a quartet that sings at the College and in area churches. Unterseher runs a separate choir in the College, and Kennison is part of an improvisation team at the College church.

Kennison also used his drama skills to hold a workshop at the Just Claim It rally.

Brown also has a side calling. Before stepping into the recruiting world, he was a pastor and still preaches from time to time.

The three said they see the community as their mission field.

A holistic recruitment team
Brown said his team’s job stretches from cultivation to graduation. If a student is dealing with an academic issue, he or she often starts in the recruitment office.

“If students are having a hard time, we are the ones who shoulder it,” Kennison said. “Not because we have to, but because we want to. I have a lot of students who come to me because I’ve worked with them, and they see me as a friend.”

Once, a student came to Kennison to vent frustration about a class. Kennison was able to give her some ideas of how to resolve the issue.

“I think ultimately we have been able to retain students because of those kinds of conversations, and we also are able to improve the academic process,” Kennison said.

Kennison said his work is more than “selling the College.” His predecessor left a sign on his office door that read, “You are now entering the mission field.” Every day, it reminded Kennison that his job was all about service.

Brown said he hopes that, soon, every kc student can do medical missionary work abroad or learn another language. His dream could become reality now that Kettering College is offering more bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The additional years of study could allow time for a semester abroad without disrupting courses of study. For instance, the school is considering offering a three-year bachelor’s degree in nursing, which would allow a student to take a year out for medical missions and still finish the degree in four years.

Kettering College President Charles Scriven commends Brown’s leadership and vision.

“It’s the key to the kind of growth that matters most,” Scriven said: “Growth in the habits of heart and mind that make for extraordinary impact in the workplace.”