PERRYSBURG — Spring enrollment is up at Owens Community College.
At the 14th day count, enrollment was 8,712 students, 109 percent more than the enrollment target and 3
percent more than enrollment at this time in 2018. The Owens Board of Trustees heard a report on
enrollment at Tuesday’s meeting.
Combined spring 2017 enrollment for the Toledo-area and Findlay-area campuses, as well as the Downtown
Learning Center, was 9,196 students.
Amy Giordano, vice president of student services, said the increase was due to better outreach efforts
and attributed the success “to the entire community working together to make sure every student is
informed and supported.”
The increase is primarily in non-matriculating, or workforce-related student enrollment, and the timing
of their registration, Giordano said.
“There will be additional enrollment activity throughout the semester, including today’s drop for
non-payment and continuous registration of our College Credit Plus and work force populations,” she
said.
There were 213 students dropped for non-payment, down from around 270 last year.
Her office divided students into categories to allow for tracking: continuing students who enrolled last
fall and those students who had not returned.
Continuing is the largest category and includes students who were previously enrolled in the college,
Giordano said.
For the spring term, of the 8,712 students enrolled, 4,373 were enrolled in the fall term.
“Teams in advising and ‘Oserve’ put in place a number of new tactics to make sure this group of students
are informed about when to register, and often more importantly, what to register for,” Giordano said.

One new tactic was having more than 400 students visited with an academic adviser in their classrooms
during September and October to share reminders about registration.
In early October, it was learned that 1,595 students who were enrolled for fall semester had not yet
registered for spring semester. These students were sent an email containing adviser-created course
recommendations, she said. Embedded in the email was the question “would you like to schedule an
appointment with your adviser?”
Within the first 24 hours of the email being sent, 771 students opened the email and 255 responded that
they would like an appointment scheduled, Giordano said.
“Once they indicated they would like an appointment, our front desk team in the Oserve/advising area
called each student to set up a time,” she said. “In total, as a result of that outreach, 589 students
had an appointment scheduled.”
The college also redesigned its advising registration event in early October, which resulted in 67
appointments being scheduled for students to meet with an adviser and over 100 students attending the
event to eat pizza and engage with student services staff members.
“This allows us to reach out to those students in real time,” Giordano said.
Having 100 students attend “is huge.”