Jodi Everett
Assistant Editor
Photo of David Brooking taken by Chris Jenkins
David Brooking was named the Executive Director of Enrollment Management at Mississippi University for Women last November.
This is a new position for the university, and it represents a change for Brooking, who was previously the director of the Student Success Center on campus. Brooking describes his new job as a supervisor of admissions, financial aid and scholarships. The position was created as a means of both recruiting and retaining students as universities across the country have seen dips in their enrollment because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I work with everybody on campus to try and build and maintain enrollment here at the university,” said Brooking. “We want to bring in students to the university who want to be at The W, but we also want to keep them all the way until graduation. It’s really working with everybody on campus to make the experience better for our students so they want to be here.”
Brooking says that all of his previous positions have readied him for working with faculty and students to make the enrollment process appealing to prospective students.
“I think everything I’ve been doing up to this point has prepared me for this role. I started off my career as an academic advisor and went from that to community service. Since 2009, my focus has been on student retention. Recruitment has been a little different, but they go hand-in-hand because you want to recruit students who really want to be here.”
Brooking said he and the Enrollment Management Council have been working to set goals for making the university as welcoming and inviting as possible for prospective students, while bettering the university for current students. He and his team want to put an emphasis on retainment as well as recruitment, as students of The W should feel both welcomed and have a desire to stay on campus.
Additionally, he discussed how he wishes to expand recruitment outside of Mississippi, in order to find students that would best fit The W.
“We’re going to try and expand our recruiting areas into Alabama, into neighboring states, to find students where The W is the right fit,” said Brooking. “There are a lot of students who don’t know they want to be here until they come here for the first time. So just getting students to come visit makes a big difference.”
“We are our own unique place, and I think if we can communicate that with potential students, they’ll love it.”
While Brooking could not give the full details for his expectations of the upcoming year, he does believe that enrollment could go above and beyond what it has been in the past three years.
“I expect us to grow our enrollment from where we are this year to the fall. Our freshman class this year was around 126 students who were first time-full-time students. That’s the lowest we’ve had in some time, so I want us to go well above that within the next year,” said Brooking.
“I want to see a vibrant campus. I think Covid-19 made everybody shrink back a little bit. You have to have a lot of students on campus to make it a thriving campus. I would love to see the residence halls full. I’d love to see the cafeteria full of students all the time, more than just on chicken Tuesdays. There’s just so much we can do with that, and I think everybody is on board with that. The Admissions office is working really hard to get out there and put the word out about who we are and what the education experience is like at The W. I’m confident that we’re going to get back to where we were three years ago.”