Everett Community College (EvCC) was facing an enrollment decline approaching the Spring 2020 quarter during the initial phases of the pandemic. The largest area of opportunity was to retain returning students and to do so, EvCC had to prepare them for the first term of virtual learning.

EvCC was already engaged with Swim Digital Group (Swim) to build long-term enrollment strategies, but it was evident that there were necessary rapid response enrollment solutions in order to meet the Spring enrollment goals.

Swim facilitated a series of discovery sessions to identify immediate communications and technology solutions that could be deployed within the three weeks prior to the start of the Spring quarter. Since EvCC has a quarter schedule, they were also quickly approaching enrollment period for the Summer quarter so Swim created scalable solutions that could live past the rapid response for Spring.

Swim identified two target audiences that required immediate action - new applicants and returning students - and activated three types of solutions.

When EvCC engaged Swim in rapid response work, there were three weeks until the Spring quarter and they were more than 15% down in enrollment. As a result of this work, they only ended 0.5% below the FTE goal. The strategies used for Spring were also scaled for the Summer enrollment, which ended 10.7% higher than the FTE enrollment goal.