LSA is embarking on a transformative journey to revolutionize its undergraduate recruitment processes. This initiative seeks to streamline the current student recruiting processes by making them more efficient and further leveraging data-driven insights. Partnering with Information Technology Services (ITS) and their Salesforce Center of Excellence (SFCOE), LSA Student Recruitment aims to implement Salesforce to manage its recruitment activities, enhance communication, centralize data, and increase operational efficiency.
LSA Student Recruitment will join the enterprise-level Salesforce Recruitment instance of Education Cloud, leveraging ITS knowledge and expertise in providing these services at scale. The implementation of Salesforce for student recruitment activities will position LSA as a leader in leveraging technology for student engagement and success. By December 2025, LSA Student Recruitment plans to collaborate with the LSA Marketing and Communications team to enhance communication strategies, including the Dean’s Welcome Letter campaign.
The project kicked off in February with the primary objective of collecting and consolidating all current prospect data into Salesforce. A pilot program with the Transfer Bridges initiative, which serves as a testing ground for the new recruitment process, will start in fall 2025. Insights gained from this pilot will inform the broader future implementation strategy. This transition will enable LSA to utilize Salesforce’s Education Cloud, Events Management, and Marketing Cloud products. These systems will provide LSA with marketing automation capabilities and an efficient events management solution, as well as the ability to facilitate data updates for a more streamlined approach to communicate with students and stakeholders during the recruiting cycle. The data collected will then create insightful reports and dashboards. The ultimate goal is to provide personalized and timely communications to prospective students.
A diverse team spearheads this project, comprising members from both LSA and ITS. Key figures include project sponsors Cathy Handyside, Executive Director of Enterprise Application Services, and Robert Jones, Assistant Director of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Ancillary Enterprise Systems, both from ITS; and Susan Perreault, Director of Student Recruitment, and Michael Hartman, Director of Transfer Student Center & Initiatives and Assistant Director of Student Recruitment, both from LSA. The project is led by Robert Norris, Salesforce Business Analyst Lead (ITS), and Vanessa Newton, Senior Project Manager in Undergraduate Education (LSA), with strong support from a skilled team of technical leads, application developers, and business and data analysts from ITS and LSA Technology Services. This team is working closely together to ensure the project’s success. The project team is actively working to mitigate any risks and resolve issues with the support of the steering committee.
This project aims to create a future where prospective and admitted students receive highly personalized communications, recruitment strategies are guided by data-driven insights, and the number of engaged prospects who ultimately enroll increases. The transition to Salesforce is expected to save considerable staff time by minimizing manual data entry and streamlining processes, enabling the team to focus more on building meaningful student relationships and delivering effective communication journeys.
