Alix Smith and Victor Schmitt-Bush
Special to The Leader and Assistant News Editor
Fredonia has once again broken one of its historic records this Fall semester. Of the 192 years since its inception, this school has never seen an incoming freshman class of 1,581 students. The closest Fredonia has ever gotten to this number was back in Fall 2008 at 1,187 enrolled.
This is because Fredonia is making all sorts of changes, ranging from the admission process all the way to how students and faculty interact with each other in the classroom.
Through Fredonia Foundations, this campus is developing a culture that encourages students to pick up different concentrations. More students than ever are taking dual degrees, minors, or just classes outside of their major for recreational purposes.
“As far as Fredonia Foundations goes, we’re now actually having two or three courses that are weaved together with ideas and concepts and faculty,” said Corey Bezek, the director of admissions. “You’re going to have a better experience as a student in putting those pieces together sooner and how you’re able to do it. I’m particularly excited because it’s not something that a lot of other schools are doing.”
In most school settings, students would be expected to listen, sit down and take notes. But Fredonia’s management team is aware that this kind of learning style does not leave much room for student collaboration or involvement. With this year’s implementation of the new learning system, Fredonia Foundations, the bar has been set a lot higher. It not only encourages but mandates that faculty come up with new teaching methods to enhance the student learning experience.
“You’re expected to interact. You’re not going to be sitting just taking tests. You’re going to be working in groups; doing presentations; writing, and all of those things translate to when you’re actually getting a job,” Bezek said.
As far as the enrollment and admissions processes go, they have become whole different beasts altogether. The Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services Cedric Howard began to push Fredonia’s enrollment team to try new things in 2016, and Fredonia has seen a massive influx of incoming students ever since.
At one point, Fall 2017 was actually Fredonia’s second highest freshman enrollment class, reigning in at 1,128 first-year students. With 1,581 freshmen enrolled this year, Fall 2018 pushes Fall 2017 back to a distant third place.
Perhaps one of the biggest contributors to this is the change in time that it takes for students to get accepted here.
“Starting in 2016-2017, Fredonia completely overhauled the undergraduate admissions process,” said Daniel Tramuta, the associate vice president of enrollment and student services. [One major change] included decreasing the time it took to receive a decision from Fredonia, from 28 days to just five.”
Their visitation programs now include ‘“mini-class” presentations taught by faculty, where accepted students could see first-hand what the classroom setting is like at Fredonia. New students are coming to campus much quicker and making decisions at a breakneck speed because the Fredonia team has been showing that it is eager and willing to make a commitment to them.
“[We] identify the best ways that we can eliminate barriers and boulders in our mission’s process so it becomes a seamlessly smooth process from the time that you become interested in Fredonia all the way to the time that you’re actually enrolled here,” said Howard.
Much research and innovation has been done ever since Howard took over in 2016. The Enrollment Services team has made more than 200 changes since then, and they plan to make many more.
“There’s a theory in higher education called the multiple policy levers,” said Bezek. “To affect any change, you can’t just pull one lever. You need to pull 10 to 15 smaller levers to get one change to happen down the road. That’s really what this has been about. These smaller structural changes have led to a bigger impact for the students.”
One of these structural changes is Fredonia’s new online virtual tour, Uvisit. Students and their families worldwide can now experience what campus life is like without needing to travel an unreasonable distance.
“If we can show them what this community is like [from far away], what the experience is, they’re really going to fall in love with it like we have,” said Bezek. “Even two to three years ago, that technology was not readily available.”
Because of this technology, among many other factors, what the campus is seeing this semester is a community made up of students from over 14 countries. As a result, the campus community is now comprised of 68 different languages.
From ethnicity to gender to geography, Fredonia is growing today more than ever in its mission to enrich the campus by becoming more culturally inclusive and diverse.
“This is the most diverse incoming class Fredonia has ever seen,” said Tramuta. “One-third of all incoming students identify as a racial or ethnic minority.”
Even so, the majority of students are coming from Western New York, as is to be expected. This includes Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and a portion from downstate Long Island. Looking a bit further down, Fredonia has drawn its sights toward New York City, too.
“This is actually the largest incoming class from NYC in Fredonia’s history,” said Tramuta.
“[This is because] we have a full-time recruiter there who’s working within that community to help encourage and bring these students up,” said Bezek.
Fredonia’s recruiters are everywhere, however.
“The [success of having] 1,500 new undergraduate students is an accumulation of an entire campus effort, and I want to thank every faculty/staff member, alumni and current students who helped bring these students here,” concluded Tramuta. “They are all part of our Big Blue Family now!”
