Since receiving the invitation to speak at The Christian Coalition of Colleges and Universities (CCCU) Conference in Virginia Beach last Summer I have been looking forward to the event.  CCCU is a great organization and what I was particularly interested in was the conference they had structure this year bringing together leadership from Enrollment Management, Academic Affairs, and Marketing for three days of intense discussion around serving adult students.

This conference was particularly interesting to me for a few different reasons.  First – the topic, I’m always excited when higher education professionals take the adult student audience seriously enough to devote conference discussion to it.  Second – the location, in 7 years of non-stop travel I had never been to Virginia Beach.  And third – the audience, rarely do we pull these three groups together in a purposeful way and encourage them all to have the same learning experience and take it in through their individual lens.

Unless you live in a cave you know that Virginia Beach is a great place – but the weather last week was more than a disappointment.  It was bundled in fleece and a wool coat that I stepped off the plane Thursday night to an unusually cold 18 degrees.  I have rarely heard a group of people apologize so much for the cold!  While the location looked lovely – we all enjoyed it watching out the windows only.

The topic and the audience however, more than outperformed expectations.   Adult students are clearly becoming an increasingly important focus for the members of the CCCU group and it was a pleasure to watch the schools more “seasoned” at serving this audience engages in lively discussion with those who have played at the margins but have never invested fully in purposeful engagement.   The lessons shared from the “big winners” in the adult student audience were very valuable and shared with a spirit of camaraderie that shows theses schools true dedication to serving adults well and built on the need to do this by breaking down those infamous “silos” that we so often see in higher education.

As the closing keynote my charge to this group was to sit together at the same table more often.  To bring together the members of teams who may not easily see how their interconnectedness may benefit the institutions work with adult students in higher education but that, with continued dialogue, certainly would.  This will mean engaging with one another in different ways than they may have in the past.    The schools that are members of the CCCU are very well positioned to excel with the adult audience (as several already have) but they need to get moving.  The adult student audience needs to be served in much better ways than we have in the past, this group, with their newfound energy and their efforts to reach beyond their respective areas of the institution just might do it.

If your school is looking to focus growth initiatives around adult or graduate students please join me for a two-part webinar in April where we will look at communicating with prospects to bring them in the door AND to completion.