The Student Housing Matters blog explores ideas with leaders in higher education and the student housing profession. This is the place to find stories from those who have worked in the field for many years, podcast interviews, and videos about relevant topics in the student housing world.
It’s about matters relating to on-campus student housing, as well as why quality on-campus student housing really matters. We want this blog to serve as a forum for sharing ideas and insights about how your on-campus student housing can do things beyond simply housing students. How it can be used as a more powerful tool to recruit and retain students on your campus. We look forward to you joining us in the conversation.
Summer Conferences on Campus: More than Extra Dollars
Share:
When discussing the benefits of summer conferences, the first to come up is typically the additional revenue generated from underutilized resources in the summer months. However, the value proposition of summer conferences is much greater and can be used to leverage recruitment, employment, and create a sense of vibrancy on your campus during the summer months. All of this is in addition to the extra revenue.
1. Summer conferences groups are great feeder programs for recruitment.
Camps facilitated by athletics and pre-college programs bring middle and high school aged students to campus, helping to start an affinity for the institution which can be leveraged in the recruitment process by your Admissions team in the future. Build a strategic partnership between the offices that bring conference groups to campus over the summer and Admissions.
2. Summer conference groups create jobs for your campus during the summer.
Both student and professional staff in dining and other auxiliary services are able to maintain employment during the summer when they might otherwise be underemployed or furloughed, which is great for morale and employee retention.
3. Summer conference groups bring life to campus over the summer months.
These groups help ensure your summer activities, such as admission tours and orientation, happen on a campus that looks and feels more like the academic year when it is full of life.
Being able to articulate this value proposition is vital to the success of your summer conference programs. Resources are limited and showing all the ways summer conferences support the mission of the institution, will help create the buy-in needed so our program has both the financial and personnel resources needed for success.
Not sure how to get started as you prepare to fully reopen for summer conference is 2022?
COCM has published a resource guide, 3 Things Your Campus Should Be Doing Now for 2022 Summer Conferences Recovery.The free resource is available on our website and covers the summer conference value proposition along with helpful questions to review your operations, marketing and sales plan, and communicating in these difficult times.
