Dear Defiance College Graduates:

It is difficult to believe that we are already a full month into our fall semester!  Now that things on the registration side have settled down, we have our official enrollment numbers for this semester, and I am pleased to report that our enrollment stands at 1074 students – the highest total number since 1971. Of course, we care about the quality of the educational experience we offer, but it is nice to be able to enjoy some quantity as well.

Speaking of quality, during this past month I have had the opportunity to travel to a series of cities and regions to meet with alumni as part of our "Campaign Kick-offs.”  It has been my pleasure to meet alumni recently in Dayton, Denver, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Boston; and I am heading off to New York this week.  One of the things that has struck me in my conversations with alumni is how much impact their Defiance experiences have had on the course of their lives.  The strength of the continuing bond with the College is truly inspiring.   I have very much enjoyed hearing the stories about legendary faculty members who served as mentors not just academically, but also for life.  (And I must admit that I also enjoy hearing the stories which most alums seem to have about various pranks in which they were involved as students.  You can all rest easy that we are not planning on re-opening any long-closed disciplinary records!)  I would like to explore ways for us as a college to more formally recognize faculty from the past who have had such positive impacts on students’/alumni’s lives.  Ideas anyone?

You should see us becoming increasingly aggressive this year in our recruiting, especially as it relates to recruiting students from different parts of the country.  Two areas of special focus are going to be (a) reaching out to high schools in states from which we have not recently drawn many students, and (b) reaching out through UCC and other religious groups to prospective students.  I think that we have a real competitive advantage here, especially since so many of our alumni are either educators in high schools (or in school districts in which they know the high school guidance counselors) or pastors or others with religious connections.  If you are willing to help us in the outreach process to your school district or religious group, please e-mail our Vice-P resident of Enrollment Management  Michael Suzo at msuzo@defiance.edu, so that he can pass your information on to our admissions team.

I mentioned last month that we had started welcoming alumni back to campus on a regular basis to have lunch with our students.  We call the program "ASK” (Alumni Student Konnections – yes, I know that connections is spelled with a "C” but since we are all about defying the ordinary, I think we can defy normal spelling conventions every once in a while); and I would like to thank publicly those alumni who have participated so far:  Ryan Gladieux ’08, Carlissa Crumit-Hancock '91, Duncan Jamieson '62, Charlotte (Booher) Johannigman '94, David Polzin '71, Timothy Tobias '84.  Student reaction has been very positive.

There is much more to report, especially with homecoming next week.  I certainly hope to see many of you there!  As always, feel free to contact me at mgordon@defiance.edu with any thoughts, ideas, interesting stories, etc.

Mark Gordon