The new Vice President of Enrollment Management, Anthony Jones, is new to the DePauw cabinet, but is ready to make an impact.
“He absolutely was on the radar of especially Dr. McCoy” said Director of Human Resources, Amy Haug.
Jones takes over for Cindy Babington, who is now serving as Chief of Staff to the President.
Since working at his alma mater, Fisk University, Jones increased the enrollment significantly, and decided he wanted to do more work in the field of admissions and recruiting. Jones then went to INROADS,” where he worked recruiting minority talent at universities for large law firms.
Jones then worked at the Divergence Corporation before returning to Fisk to serve another term as Vice President of Enrollment Management. While working at Fisk for the second time, Jones met President Dr. Mark McCoy at a leadership academy, and the two became friends.
After becoming President-elect, McCoy reached out to Jones and invited him to DePauw, but Jones’s expertise was in high demand.
“There was a very prominent politician that was reaching out to try and hire him, and I needed to have someone who was more impressive than a lieutenant governor to call him, so I asked Vernon Jordan to call him,” said McCoy.
One night, while working, Jones received the call from Jordan and almost did not answer because he was in disbelief. “The thought that Vernon Jordan would call me was not top of mind,” said Jones, “So I ran to [my assistant’s] desk and asked him if he advised Clinton, and of course she asked him and he said yes, so I ran back to my desk so that I could take the phone call and I’m glad that I did.”
Aside from the phone call, his first visit to DePauw was what really sealed the deal. “The moment that I turned on Anderson Street, I was enamored,” said Jones, “At the end of the day I wanted to be sure that I could make an impact.”
Jones wants to improve both recruiting and retention as well as help DePauw widen its reach of recruiters.DePauw has stationed a permanent recruiter in California, while paying more attention to the South-East and recruiting a more multiculturally diverse class. Jones also wants to make sure the university focuses more on international recruiting and working with transfer students.
“What we have to do is put ourselves in the position to be able to create the best fit class for our university,” said Jones.
Jones hopes to improve class retention. “He’s very focused on the student experience and maintaining that through to graduation,” said Haug.
Through research, Jones found by increasing the retention of students by 2% over the next four year they could potentially add $1.2-1.3 million to the university’s budget. Jones wants to coordinate the retention efforts already happening on campus, and increase collaboration between those efforts.
“He knows what he’s doing, he knows how to lead the team, but he’s also a man of high integrity and very strong values,” said McCoy.
Jones is trying to predict what the best version of the next class to come to DePauw will look like. Right now, he’s deciding what number of students would best serve the University, and he guesses the number will be between 580-600 students.
Jones wants to make sure DePauw has a stable enrollment with good GPAs and test scores, an increase in diversity enrollment and an increased graduation rate. His biggest goal for DePauw is to eventually help create a “healthy DePauw, one that is on the right track and can be here for the next 179 years.”