SEMM Conference 2026 | Brainstorm Strategy Group

Confidence isn’t a diploma you hand out on graduation day. It’s a doorway students learn to find, open, and walk through long before they leave campus.

In this workshop, we confront the reality of the ‘Zoom Face Generation’—students who spent high school behind screens, absorbed by algorithms, and arriving on campus less comfortable making eye contact or raising their voice. With bold style and real-world warmth, this session blends cultural commentary and proven techniques to help reshape interaction from the first day to a future career.

You’ll walk away with actionable strategies to cut through digital fatigue, spark authentic connection, and rebuild social confidence—all without requiring a bigger budget. Think micro-moments that matter, attention hacks that work better, and mentorship moves that feel human again.

Learning Outcomes

• Cultivate deliberate micro-engagement techniques to reconnect students.
• Activate student confidence through structured yet human mentorship moments.
• Translate cultural trends (like algorithm attention models) into tools that hold focus and foster growth.

International student needs are evolving, with growing demand for low-commitment opportunities, stronger community connections, and structured events. At Western University, shifts in engagement between two flagship programs—the Global Café and International Peer Guide Program—highlight how student preferences shape program success. This session will explore how adapting program structures can strengthen belonging, foster intercultural connections, and improve retention. Participants will leave with practical, transferable strategies for redesigning student-centered initiatives that can be applied across diverse institutional contexts.

Learning Outcomes

• Recognize evolving student preferences: Understand how shifting expectations for flexibility, structure, and community affect engagement and retention.
• Leverage intercultural connections: Explore how programs that foster belonging and cross-cultural exchange strengthen student wellbeing and institutional outcomes.
• Apply adaptable strategies: Gain actionable, transferable approaches to redesign student support programs that respond to changing needs on any campus.

Promoting services and events online isn’t enough — students need to feel a sense of belonging before they’ll engage and persist. But how can we foster belonging in an increasingly digital world? With more students living local and commuting, York University turned to intentional online activations, FOMO (fear of missing out) and trend-driven content to build community beyond the physical campus. This session explores how digital belonging strategies can strengthen connection and retention, and how you can adapt these ideas for your own institution.

Learning Outcomes

• Design intentional digital activations that foster authentic student engagement.
• Leverage FOMO and social momentum to drive participation and connection.
• Apply trend-driven strategies to strengthen belonging and retention.

Carleton University’s Enriched Support Program (ESP) was created to give students who might otherwise face barriers to university a chance to “Start Now.” By providing supported access to first-year studies, full membership in the university community, and the opportunity to earn credits right away, ESP has become both a recruitment and retention strategy for students who would otherwise be left behind.

In recent years, the program has expanded its mentorship model that connects current ESP students with program alumni. The addition of an online community hub, social events, and a volunteer program — built on a shoestring budget — has extended the impact of the program: current students gain guidance, encouragement, and a stronger sense of belonging, while alumni deepen their connection to Carleton and to one another.

This session will walk through the *how and why* of building mentorship into an alternate admissions pathway. We’ll share:

• The rationale behind introducing mentorship into the original ESP model.
• Practical steps to design and launch a mentoring initiative with minimal resources.
• The outcomes we’ve seen for students, alumni, and the institution—and what we're working on and would do differently next time.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn concrete strategies for adding mentorship to existing student success programs, even with limited budgets.
• Identify ways to engage alumni as partners in student retention and success.
• Apply insights from Carleton’s ESP experience to adapt or strengthen alternate admissions pathways at your own institution.

Higher education institutions are navigating unprecedented change – driven by shifting student demographics, rapid technological advances, and the urgent demand for sustainability, equity, and inclusion. Effective leadership today requires more than adaptation; it calls for bold vision-setting and the capacity to transform institutional culture, governance, and strategy, grounded in evidence-based frameworks such as transformational and adaptive leadership.

This session explores how the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) is positioning itself as a leader in institutional transformation by fostering collaboration not only within Canada but also across international borders. Special attention will be given to opportunities for collaboration with European institutions, including applied research universities and polytechnics, drawing on shared priorities such as applied education, digital innovation, and industry-integrated learning.

By highlighting strategies for effective change management, approaches to sustaining bold institutional visions, and case studies of cross-border collaborations, this session will provide actionable insights for senior leaders, strategists, and SEMM practitioners. Participants will leave with adaptable frameworks, partnership models, and tools to help institutions expand their reach, embrace innovation, and pursue meaningful, sustainable transformation.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply leadership frameworks – Participants will be able to apply research-informed strategies (vision-setting, adaptive leadership, and change management) to guide institutional transformation.
• Evaluate collaboration models – Participants will be able to analyze and adapt cross-border partnership models, with examples from BCIT and European institutions, to support sustainability, digital innovation, and applied learning.
• Integrate global trends – Participants will be able to identify opportunities to align their own institutional strategies with global trends in higher education, including equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI), and industry-integrated learning.

No students. No alumni. No track record. Just a brand new undergraduate program in the middle of a sector-wide decline, and the challenge is to recruit.

This session goes behind the scenes on how McMaster University’s Wilson College of Leadership & Civic Studies undergraduate program successfully launched (and overenrolled) its inaugural recruitment cycle in a Bachelor of Arts program, a space where student interest is often uncertain. Through an interactive, case study format, you’ll explore the realities of:

• Building awareness for a brand-new program
• Establishing trust and credibility without history
• Engaging students who might not have initially seen themselves in a groundbreaking program designed to shape tomorrow’s leaders

Attendees will walk away with practical recruitment strategies that can be adapted to their own institutions, from exploring marketing tactics and brand recognition to intentional outreach and meaningful relationships with students, families, and schools. This session is designed to spark conversation to be creative in what can feel like a repetitive scope within recruitment and provide inspiration to lead differently while navigating the uncertainty of recruitment.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply effective strategies to build awareness and visibility for a brand-new program in competitive or/and declining markets
• Discover approaches to establish trust and credibility with students, parents, and educators when promoting a program without an existing track record
• Recognize successes and setbacks from Wilson College’s inaugural recruitment cycle that can inform broader recruitment practices during times of uncertainty in higher education.

In marketing and communications, large-scale annual studies are (understandably) viewed as the gold standard for strategy development. Yet time, expertise and budget constraints within higher education MarCom teams mean annual research projects or broad scans are not always feasible. Micro market research offers a practical alternative by focusing on smaller, specific segments to fill gaps, provide timely insights and strengthen strategy.

This session will show how micro market research informed two major initiatives: our 2026 Undergraduate Viewbook and the 2026 international coursework master’s portfolio. These case studies illustrate how targeted, agile research can guide decisions, deepen audience connections and keep projects moving when resources are limited.

Learning Outcomes

• Define the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of micro-market research and explore the ‘why’ of micro-market research in higher ed MarCom
• Identify practical ways that Laurier has employed this method.
• Connect lessons from our master’s portfolio and viewbook case studies to your own context to better understand how it can strengthen your own strategy and decision-making.

In the evolving world of postsecondary enrolment, even well-intentioned strategic plans can stumble without the right foresight. This session offers a candid exploration of common missteps in strategic enrolment management (SEM)—from poorly timed portfolio shifts and siloed decision-making to change initiatives that miss the mark. Participants will gain practical insights into identifying cross-functional opportunities, framing collaboration effectively, and applying change management principles that stick. Through real-world examples and shared lessons learned, this session equips enrolment leaders, governance professionals, and campus allies with tools to craft SEM strategies that are future-ready, student-centered, and institutionally aligned.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify common pitfalls in strategic enrolment management and analyze how timing, siloed decision-making, and poorly executed change initiatives can derail even well-intentioned plans.
• Apply cross-functional collaboration and change management strategies to enhance SEM planning, ensuring initiatives are coordinated, actionable, and sustainable across the institution.
• Develop future-ready, student-centered SEM strategies by leveraging real-world lessons and practical tools to align enrolment goals with institutional priorities.

Journey mapping has long been a powerful way to understand and improve the student experience—but in 2026, new tools are transforming how quickly and effectively institutions can build meaningful maps. This workshop will reintroduce the fundamentals of student journey mapping while showcasing modern advancements that save time and uncover deeper insights. Participants will explore how to leverage Google Analytics custom reports, AI-powered survey analysis, and AI-supported interpretation of human interviews to capture the student voice at scale. The session will also highlight emerging platforms, like persona-based mapping templates, that allow teams to visualize and act on data with greater precision. Walk away with practical strategies and toolkits to modernize your approach and accelerate student-centric decision-making on your campus.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply modern digital tools to accelerate the creation of student journey maps.
• Use AI-driven analysis to uncover insights from surveys and interviews more efficiently.
• Design persona-based journey maps that support evidence-based improvements to the student experience.

Every enrolment strategy starts with understanding the student, but how well do we really know the next generation of Canadian post-secondary applicants? In Fall 2025, OnDeck Marketing deployed its nationwide Student Insights Survey across high schools equipped with our digital advertising screens, generating thousands of validated student responses packed with data.

This session will showcase the data and its implications for recruitment, admissions, and marketing strategy. We'll break down how to segment students by academic interest, geography, and decision-making drivers, and how to turn those insights into actionable recruitment campaigns that convert.

Attendees will see how survey data, when combined with targeted media and on-campus engagement, can improve yield and shorten decision cycles. We'll also share practical approaches to building a feedback loop, so student preferences inform marketing tactics and admissions decisions year after year.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn how to translate large-scale student survey data into targeted, measurable enrolment strategies
• Discover new ways to segment and prioritize prospective students based on interests, location, and competitive considerations
• Understand how to build a repeatable, data-driven feedback loop to continually refine recruitment and admissions efforts

Personalization is fast becoming the baseline expectation for prospective students—but what does good look like in a higher education context?

This interactive (and competitive) quiz-style session explores how personalization has evolved across the sector and how our efforts compare to what students now experience elsewhere—from dynamic pricing in retail to AI-curated journeys on platforms like Netflix.

We'll share fresh insights from the Prism Report, an independent piece of research conducted with UCAS in the UK, alongside anonymized behavioural data drawn from hundreds of thousands of prospectus interactions. Using examples from both inside and outside the sector, we'll challenge assumptions, reveal blind spots, and spark conversation about what meaningful personalization really means in 2026.

And yes, there will be prizes!

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the behavioural psychology principles that underpin effective personalization in student marketing.
• Learn to identify the difference between performative and meaningful personalization tactics.
• Gain insight into how student expectations around personalization have shifted—and what that means for future campaigns.

For many prospective students, your website is the first—and often most important—step in their decision-making journey. Instead of focusing solely on blockers, this session will share what’s worked in improving the program journey—from making program information more searchable and engaging, to guiding students toward programs that match their interests. We’ll also candidly address common challenges like internal buy-in and resource constraints. Attendees will walk away with actionable next steps to assess program pages, prioritize content for domestic vs. international audiences, and run lightweight evaluations to improve the journey from exploration to application.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify the most common website barriers that disrupt program exploration and application flows.
• Learn practical methods to streamline decision-making and highlight the information students prioritize.
• Gain tools to evaluate and improve key pages (program details, archives, application) to reduce friction and increase accessibility.

Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) isn’t a department or a single person’s responsibility. It’s a shared, institution-wide approach. Every member of the campus community—staff, faculty, student ambassadors, and alumni—plays a role in advancing SEM goals.

Leading and adapting to change through SEM means embracing continuous improvement. It involves analyzing SEM data and reports, including retention metrics, to make informed, strategic, and sustainable decisions about programs and courses.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Which reports and data sets are essential to effective SEM
• What data to collect—and why it matters
• How data-informed decisions can drive meaningful impact across your institution

This session explores how York University's Markham Campus created a consistent student experience across multiple faculties with distinct governance structures. The Markham Model of Student Success uses Program Resource Clusters (PRCs)—monthly, cross-functional meetings—to align advising, admissions, learning skills, career education, student life, counseling, accessibility, and wellness. This approach fosters collaboration, reduces duplication, and improves responsiveness to student needs, ultimately enhancing student outcomes and institutional agility without requiring a structural overhaul.

This presentation shares how the Markham team moved from a bumpy start to what they now call a “lumpy but working” model, where each lump represents a point of connection, progress, and partnership. Participants will learn how leadership teams across decentralized faculties can apply similar governance and communication structures to achieve alignment in their own institutions, without the need for structural overhaul.

Learning Outcomes

• Examine how multiple faculties with separate governance structures can coordinate effectively under one shared campus vision for student success.
• Analyze how data sharing, early alerts, and cross-functional problem solving can improve both student outcomes and institutional agility.
• Reflect on the idea that integration is not perfection, but progress, and consider how to sustain momentum even when systems remain lumpy but improving.

Okanagan College is rapidly evolving. AI, Data and new tools have become the thread in transforming experiences and decision making in student recruitment and enrolment lifecycle. In partnership with the College’s IT Digital Learner team, Recruitment & Enrolment Management is now translating real-time conversational data into actionable real-time insights that reveal student intent, information gaps, and emerging enrolment patterns that can be acted upon.

This session explores how these insights are shaping daily strategy, strengthening lead nurturing, and informing evidence-based decisions at every stage of the funnel. Okanagan College leaders Jordan Perrey, CIO, and Mehgan Cabrera, Associate Director, Recruitment & Enrolment, will share a candid look at the cultural and technical learning curve of collaborating between teams while utilizing disruptive technologies, emphasizing how human judgment and empathy remain essential in interpreting data and supporting conversion outcomes."

• Understand how Okanagan College is leveraging AI data to inform institutional decision-making.
• Identify practical steps for cross-team collaboration that enhance enrolment outcomes.
• Recognize the balance between automation and human connection in an insight-driven strategy.

What if your greatest brand ambassadors are already on campus?

At Sheridan, Unlock is more than a campaign. It is a bold invitation to explore what is possible when your brand is built from within. Through authentic engagement with students, faculty, and staff, Sheridan brought its brand to life by focusing on lived experiences and shared values.

This session will explore how Sheridan turned brand-building into a community-building exercise. The result was greater alignment, deeper storytelling, and stronger advocacy across the institution. You will leave with practical tools, inspiration, and a roadmap to create a brand that resonates not just externally, but at every level within your institution.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn how to build an authentic brand by engaging internal communities in the discovery and storytelling process.
• Explore practical tools for embedding brand values into day-to-day operations, communications, and student experiences.
• Understand how internal brand engagement fuels external results in recruitment, retention, and reputation.

Learn the three core strategic moves necessary to differentiate a post-secondary brand and escape the "sea of sameness." This fast-paced, high-impact session, led by Andrew Leopold, uses the recent transformation of Humber Polytechnic as a blueprint for success. Andrew will focus exclusively on the strategic decisions that yield the highest return in brand clarity and institutional value.

Attendees will walk away with actionable insights for translating high-level vision into decisive action, ensuring your brand stands out, attracts talent, and drives meaningful industry impact.

Learning Outcomes

1. Specialization as Strategy: Learn the critical value of choosing and owning a niche (like the Polytechnic Model) to signal unique value to prospective students and employers.
2. Branding for Economic Relevance: Discover how Humber aligned its strategic title and visual campaigns (e.g., "Builders of Brilliance") by tying the institution's purpose to a major national challenge: solving Canada's "productivity crisis."
3. Mandate Alignment & Execution: Understand how strategic pillars—Forging Deeper Partnerships and developing programs like Applied Masters—ensure the curriculum, research, and partnerships consistently reinforce the single brand message, driving lifelong employability and adaptability.

The value of higher education is under question like never before. Recent research reveals that Canadians believe the value of a college or university education has declined in recent years, with growing skepticism among certain ideological groups. Issues such as tuition inflation, political and social controversies, online learning challenges, and shifting government policies are reshaping public perception—and institutions must adapt.

Join our panel as we unpack key factors influencing trust in higher education, and discuss what schools can do to demonstrate value in today's rapidly changing landscape.

Discussion topics may include:

• The Trust Deficit: Why skepticism is growing and who is most affected.
• Cost vs. Value: The role of tuition, inflation, and affordability in shaping opinions.
• The Digital Shift: How AI, online learning and pandemic-era policies are influencing trust.
• Government Policy & Enrolment Caps: The ripple effects of international student permit limits and institutional funding challenges.

Join us for an engaging conversation that goes beyond the headlines—because the future of higher education depends on how we respond to today's challenges.

Every year, thousands of students share their thoughts about post-secondary life—and in 2025, over 24,000 of them told us exactly what’s working, what’s missing, and what needs to change. Drawing on findings from the 2025 Brainstorm Student Interests Report, this insight-driven session explores the student experience across the full post-secondary journey—from attraction and enrolment, to student development and engagement, to career readiness and transition to work.

Using Brainstorm's Student Success Ecosystem as our framework, we’ll examine what students are telling us at each stage of their path—IN, THROUGH, and OUT—and what those insights mean for institutional strategy, service design, and employer engagement. Whether you work in recruitment, student services, career development, or employer relations, you’ll leave with a deeper understanding of student expectations, key friction points, and actionable ideas to improve support across the entire journey—from first contact to first job.

Every interaction, decision, and initiative in postsecondary education creates ripples that shape students’ lives—and, ultimately, society itself. In this closing plenary, we’ll pause to connect those dots and reflect on the lasting impact of our collective work.

Through guided discussion and collaboration, participants will identify one courageous action they’ll take after the conference to advance student success, institutional strength, or sector-wide change. Together, we’ll capture these commitments on a shared “Ripple Wall” — a visual or digital pledge board that extends the energy and accountability beyond the event.

Leave re-energized, reminded of your influence, and ready to make waves that matter.