Back to Case Studies
Morgan State University was facing enrollment decline alongside growing frustration from both prospective and newly admitted students.
While the institution had invested in systems, technology, and staff, students still encountered inconsistent communications, sensed unclear ownership between offices, and had difficulty getting timely answers during critical onboarding moments. Communication issues were especially experienced around financial aid, housing, and enrollment readiness.
Leadership understood that the challenge was not a lack of effort, but instead alignment. Students experienced Morgan State as a series of disconnected steps, moving from office to office without a clear path forward. Meanwhile, internal teams worked hard within siloed structures. Morgan State engaged Swim to help bring clarity to where the experience was breaking down and to design a more coordinated, student-centered future state.
Swim began with a comprehensive Environmental Analysis designed to experience the institution through students’ perspective while also examining how systems and processes functioned behind the scenes. By combining lived student experience with an operational review, Swim replaced assumptions with evidence and isolated fixes with a shared understanding of what needed to change.
This work included Secret Student experiences that captured real-time friction across inquiry, application, financial aid, and onboarding. Deep-dive sessions were held with Enrollment Management and Student Success teams to understand workflows and constraints. Swim also gathered insight through student surveys, focus groups, and campus-wide listening sessions with faculty, staff, and administrators. Communications and process audits across Admissions, Financial Aid, Housing, Advising, the Registrar, and Orientation revealed where handoffs broke down and messaging created confusion.
Together, these insights provided Morgan State University leadership with a clear, institution-wide view of how students actually moved through Morgan State. The findings directly informed the development of future-state journey maps that aligned people, processes, and communications around shared goals for access, clarity, and student success. The result was a roadmap grounded in reality, designed to improve coordination, improve the student experience, restore student confidence, and support sustainable enrollment and retention outcomes.
Swim began this work with a comprehensive Environmental Analysis because institutions cannot improve what they cannot clearly see.
Too often, enrollment challenges are addressed through new initiatives without a shared understanding of where systems break down or how students actually experience them. By intentionally combining qualitative insight with operational review, Swim replaced assumptions with evidence, allowing Morgan State to move beyond anecdote and surface the true drivers of friction, confusion, and disengagement.
This approach gave leadership a full, institution-wide view of how policies, processes, communications, and handoffs intersect across the student journey. It revealed not only where gaps existed, but why they existed, who was impacted, and what could realistically be changed. The result was a set of insights grounded in student reality and operational feasibility, creating a strong foundation for future-state journey mapping and sustainable improvement.
The Analysis Included:
This work surfaced consistent patterns. Students received fragmented and sometimes conflicting messages. Communications were siloed by department. As a result, students often did not know who to contact for help, and delays in financial aid processing created anxiety that led some students to disengage entirely.
Using Environmental Analysis findings, Swim partnered with Morgan State leadership to design a future-state student journey that re-imagined onboarding from acceptance through the first semester.
Key elements of this work included:
This future-state design directly informed the creation of Bear Essentials, a centralized one-stop engagement and triage model that became the primary point of contact for enrollment-related questions.
Swim supported Morgan State through implementation by facilitating stakeholder workshops, aligning leadership around shared goals, and translating the future-state journey into operational reality.
Implementation Included:
This work moved the institution from department-based communications to a coordinated, student-centered system designed to support progression rather than create barriers.
The impact of this work was both immediate and significant:
Just as importantly, Morgan State gained a shared institutional understanding of the full student journey, creating a foundation for sustained improvement beyond the initial engagement.
Morgan State University’s experience demonstrates how Swim’s Environmental Analysis is not simply a diagnostic exercise, but instead, a catalyst for transformation. By combining Secret Student research, deep operational analysis, and authentic stakeholder engagement, Swim helped the institution see itself clearly and design a future-state journey rooted in real student experience.
The result was not just enrollment growth, but stronger alignment, clearer accountability, and a student experience designed to support success from first contact through completion.
