SEMM National
Conference 2027

EDIA admissions cannot be achieved through outreach initiatives alone. It requires institutions to examine how policies, selection criteria, communications, decision-making structures, and applicant support systems may unintentionally create barriers for talented students.

Drawing on an institutional inclusive-admissions strategy developed at Université de Montréal, this session will demonstrate how higher education institutions can move from broad commitments to diversity toward concrete and measurable changes in admissions practice.

Participants will explore the complete admissions journey—from initial awareness and application to assessment, selection, admission, and enrolment—to identify where structural, procedural, cultural, and informational barriers may exist.

The session will also examine how institutions can broaden access while maintaining academic standards, institutional credibility, and confidence among faculties and admissions committees.

Using an Inclusive Admissions Design Canvas, participants will assess one of their own admissions processes and identify a practical opportunity for change. They will leave with a framework for engaging faculties, admissions teams, student services, community partners, and institutional leaders in a shared transformation process.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify structural, procedural, cultural, and informational barriers across the admissions journey.
• Design inclusive admissions interventions that expand access while preserving academic standards and program requirements.
• Establish governance, partnerships, and performance indicators to translate institutional commitments into measurable admissions outcomes.

At Saint Mary’s University, we transitioned responsibility for recruitment marketing from the Recruitment and Enrolment team to External Affairs (central marketing and communications). Under this model, the two teams collaborate to share workload and expertise while leveraging their respective strengths. We have adopted an agency-client approach: Recruitment and Enrolment retains control of the budget, while External Affairs leads the execution of the work. In partnership with our external marketing agencies, External Affairs develops and implements a comprehensive marketing plan aligned with Recruitment and Enrolment’s strategic recruitment objectives.

Two years into this partnership, the results have demonstrated the value of this collaborative model. Together, we launched a bold, unprecedented recruitment marketing campaign that earned multiple industry awards while redefining how our teams work together. Along the way, we expanded collaboration beyond our two departments by engaging the broader campus community throughout the campaign’s development and execution. From cross-campus planning sessions and photo shoots featuring every faculty to regular engagement with senior leadership, we fostered shared ownership of recruitment and marketing efforts. Building on the strong partnership between Recruitment and Enrolment and External Affairs, we also brought the Student Success Centre into the process, extending the campaign beyond recruitment to support students through the arrival phase of their journey. Through branded Welcome Weeks materials and integrated e-communications, the integrated efforts deliver a consistent experience that follows prospective students from initial awareness through to their transition to campus.

Through the lens of our prospective student journey model, and how we meaningfully engage across key touchpoints, this session will share practical strategies for breaking down silos, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and building shared ownership across campus.

Attendees will leave with actionable ideas they can adapt to strengthen collaboration and advance recruitment and marketing initiatives within their own post-secondary institutions or organizations.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify strategies for building effective partnerships between recruitment, marketing and student support units to reduce silos and improve collaboration
• Apply an agency-client collaboration model to clarify roles, leverage expertise, and strengthen cross-functional project delivery
• Develop approaches to engage campus stakeholders throughout the recruitment marketing process to create shared ownership and deliver a more cohesive prospective student experience

Students – future and current – are increasingly looking to AI vs search engines. So instead of aligning their searches with keywords and quality content, brands now focus on authority and substance. In this session we’ll explore what brand reputation means when being cited matters as much as being found. We’ll look at how AI systems decide which institutions to surface and recommend, where the reputation signals actually come from, and the quiet risk of outdated or inaccurate information and approaches. We’ll also look at what marketing, recruitment, and student success teams can do together to ensure their institution is accurately and distinctively represented. It’s a challenging time for all brands, so it’s more important than ever before that institutions focus on their unique brand, that they stand for something, and are well positioning when it comes to authority and reputation.

Learning Outcomes

• Gain a deeper understanding of where ‘brand’ stands in this current age of AI
• Understand potential ways refresh and evolve your institution’s brand’s positioning
• Potential action items to help your brand be recognized, cited, and sourced

This session will highlight how Kenjgewin Teg’s student services model is grounded in Anishinaabe-aadiziwin, offering holistic, culturally rooted, and transformative support for Indigenous learners.

Our presentation will share how Kenjgewin Teg centres the whole learner by integrating wraparound student services, cultural teachings, and community partnerships to remove barriers and promote student wellness, retention, and success. Rooted in the understanding that wellness is interconnected—spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical—our approach ensures that students are supported not only academically, but as whole people.
The Director of Student Wellness and Services will speak to the Anishinaabe-aadiziwin Distinction program, a unique and foundational offering that supports students in building their personal wellness bundles throughout their educational journey. This program integrates land-based learning, access to Elders and Knowledge Holders, cultural teachings, and opportunities for self-reflection and growth. It is a cornerstone of our commitment to culturally grounded education and inclusive student success.

In addition, the presentation will highlight the breadth of wraparound supports available to students, including mental health services, accessibility supports, transportation, housing navigation, financial assistance, and community-based programming. These services are designed to address systemic barriers and create a supportive environment where Indigenous learners can thrive.

This presentation will offer attendees a meaningful and practical example of how Indigenous Institutes are advancing economic reconciliation through culture-based, holistic student support systems. By removing barriers, fostering belonging, and building on the strengths of Indigenous identity and community, Kenjgewin Teg is creating pathways for learner success that are both sustainable and empowering. This session will resonate with educators, service providers, and policymakers seeking to implement more holistic and culturally relevant approaches within their own institutions.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify key components for implementing an Anishinaabe-aadiziwin-informed framework, including the integration of a cultural Distinction program.
• Analyze how wraparound supports can be designed and delivered effectively in hybrid learning environments.
• Understand the interconnected relationship between education and holistic wellness in supporting student success.

Most partnerships begin with a signed agreement. The best ones transform institutions. Drawing on Athabasca University’s experience as Canada’s Open University, Michael Shouldice and Richard MacLeod reveal how strategic partnerships with employers, professional associations, governments, and community organizations drive measurable enrolment growth, learner success, and workforce impact. Through compelling case studies, practical frameworks, and candid lessons learned, attendees will discover how to move beyond transactional relationships, measure what truly matters, and build partnerships that create lasting value. This session challenges leaders to rethink partnerships as a catalyst for institutional growth and meaningful outcomes.

Learning Outcomes

• Build partnerships that deliver strategic value
• Measure partnership impact beyond activity metrics
• Connect relationships to enrolment, learner success, and organizational growth

For the second year in a row, the Faculty of Management at Dal has increased the number of students joining its undergraduate programs. This is contrary to many faculties and universities across Canada that have experienced enrollment challenges following recent federal restrictions on international study permits. Like most universities, Dalhousie has a central team of recruitment professionals who travel worldwide selling all the institutions’ undergrad programs. Starting fall 2024, the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie began taking a more active role in recruitment in collaboration with the central team. This shift altered not only the division of recruitment responsibilities but also introduced a more faculty-driven approach to student engagement, program marketing, and relationship building. In this session we present our strategy, lessons learned, and ongoing challenges we face while we continue to grow in a highly competitive environment and a difficult landscape

Learning Outcomes

• Learning to use tools/assets you already have
• How to integrate recruitment and comms to strengthen your impact
• Improved work flow and processes

The University of King’s College is a case study for a small liberal arts campus which launched a SEM plan in 2025. This presentation will provide an overview of the methodology for launching a plan including how to gain support from campus stakeholders and maintain their buy-in. In particular, we’ll discuss how a SEM plan goes from high-level strategy to day-to-day operations in the recruitment team. Using the operational recruitment plan as an example, we will consider how a SEM plan can feed into tactics for real-world impact.

Learning Outcomes

• Understanding the steps needed to create a SEM plan in small campus environments and budget restricted scenarios.
• How to build – and keep – consensus among campus stakeholders.
• How to react to market changes with your operation plans without losing sight of your SEM goals

How can higher education institutions create meaningful, human-centred recruitment experiences in a landscape increasingly shaped by AI, automation, and other depersonalizing tools? At the DeGroote School of Business, we responded by reimagining a longstanding outreach activity as a recruitment event that supported DeGroote’s experiential learning strategy: the High School Business Heroes case competition.

Informed by recent research and thought leadership on student preferences for experiential approaches to recruitment (Jackson, 2026; Kelly, 2026), DeGroote redesigned the event in 2026 as a one-day case competition that allowed prospective students to experience business education rather than simply hear about it. More than 150 students participated, and subsequent recruitment data demonstrated that participants were more successful in their applications to DeGroote, and referenced High School Business Heroes as a key factor in their decision-making to attend the program.

Building on that success, in 2027, we expanded High School Business Heroes beyond campus and into key conversion markets across the country, testing how an experiential recruitment approach could be scaled while retaining the authentic, engaging experience that made the original event successful.

This session will unpack our approach and lessons learned, including:

• Data & Outcomes: How we measured the relationship between participation in an experiential recruitment activity and key recruitment outcomes.
• Designing for Experience: How we transformed a traditional outreach event into an authentic opportunity for prospective students to experience DeGroote’s approach to learning.
• Scalability: Lessons from expanding the competition into priority conversion markets while maintaining a meaningful student experience.
• Practical Application: A framework participants can use to identify, audit, and elevate existing outreach activities at their own institutions through experiential learning.

Participants will leave with a practical example of how experiential learning can function not only as a curricular differentiator, but as a recruitment strategy that builds connection, demonstrates institutional value, and gives prospective students a meaningful preview of the educational experience they are being invited to join.

For several years running, we’ve brought first-party survey data from thousands of Canadian high school students to this conference. This year, new questions dig specifically into AI: what students actually use it for during their search (comparing schools, finding scholarships, decoding admission requirements, getting help with an essay), whether it’s added schools to their list or quietly taken them off, and, maybe most tellingly, what a student does the moment after AI tells them something about a school. Do they take it at face value? Check the school’s own site? Ask a person? That last question gets at something most AI conversations in this sector skip entirely: trust.

Rather than present these findings solo, we’re bringing them to a panel of institutional leaders who will respond live: what surprises them, what confirms what they already suspected, and what it means for how their institutions show up in both AI tools and their own owned channels. Attendees leave with specific, current findings on how AI is actually functioning inside the decision process, multiple years of trend data showing what’s shifted, and a range of real institutional perspectives on what to do about it.

Learning Outcomes

• Attendees will be able to identify the specific tasks Canadian high school students are using AI for during their post-secondary search, based on new survey data.
• Attendees will hear multiple institutional perspectives on how AI is expanding or narrowing students’ consideration sets, and what that means for institutional visibility.
• Attendees will learn how much students actually trust AI-generated information about a school and what they do to verify it, alongside real-time reactions from institutional panelists navigating these implications for their own visibility strategy.

This session moves from why career-informed recruitment conversations matter to how recruiters can actually put them into practice.

The previous session established that career-informed conversations can strengthen recruitment by helping students explore fit rather than simply filling seats. The strongest participant response was not only interest in the approach, but a practical question:

How do we actually do this, and what tools can we use? This session begins answering that question.

Recruiters are uniquely positioned to provide early career-informed support. They meet students before enrolment, enter Grade 12 classrooms, speak with teachers and schools, discuss programs and future possibilities, and often encounter students who are not receiving meaningful education-to-career guidance elsewhere.

With the right knowledge, skills, and tools, recruiters can turn these interactions into more valuable conversations—helping students make better-informed decisions while simultaneously strengthening trust, engagement, and the institution’s recruitment efforts.

Participants will receive a Decision-Readiness Conversation Guide designed for use in school workshops and individual recruitment conversations. The guide will include:

• Indicators of visible and hidden uncertainty;
• Practical career-informed conversation prompts;
• Signals that a student may need further exploration;
• Questions for exploring the connection between program, career, and future; and possible next steps for continuing the student’s decision-making process.

The guide provides an immediately usable starting point while also demonstrating the broader knowledge, skills, and institutional structures required to offer education-to-career guidance confidently and consistently.

Learning Outcomes

• Use practical career-informed questions in recruitment conversations and school presentations.
• Consider how career-informed recruitment practices could contribute to stronger program fit and student success.
• Identify opportunities to move from individual recruiter practice toward team and institutional approaches.

MacEwan University’s Faculty of Arts and Science has been exploring how to communicate more effectively with students in an increasingly complex enrolment environment. In response, the Faculty has developed a multi-channel communication strategy that uses a hard-copy welcome brochure delivered by Canada Post, targeted drip communications, social media, in-person events, and email to reach students at different points in their journey. More recently, the University introduced a student life platform that provides additional opportunities for targeted communication about academic and non-academic events and supports greater student engagement.

This case study will explore how the Faculty uses these complementary communication channels to support recruitment, transition, engagement, and retention. We will share what we have learned about matching the message and communication channel to the audience, coordinating communications across platforms, and creating a more personalized and connected student experience. Whether institutions are managing enrolment growth, responding to declining enrolments, or simply looking to strengthen student engagement, participants will leave with practical ideas for developing a multi-channel communication strategy that can be adapted to their own institutional context.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify the strengths and limitations of different communication channels for reaching students at various stages of the enrolment and student journey.
• Apply a multi-channel communication approach to create timely, targeted, and personalized student communications that can scale as enrolments grow.
• Evaluate opportunities to strengthen student engagement and connection through coordinated use of digital, print, social, and in-person communication strategies.

Today’s students face increasing pressure to make high-stakes education decisions while navigating uncertainty about careers, finances, mental health, and their future. As competition for domestic students intensifies, recruitment has become a race to secure enrolments—but is moving students through the funnel faster always the best strategy?

This session explores how institutions can shift from simply recruiting students to supporting informed, confident decision-making. Participants will examine how pre-enrolment engagement, career exploration, gap-year pathways, and decision-readiness initiatives can strengthen student confidence, improve institutional fit, and support long-term student success.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify practical opportunities to position their institution as a trusted partner throughout the student decision journey.
• Differentiate between traditional recruitment strategies and decision-readiness approaches.
• Evaluate how structured pre-enrolment engagement can strengthen yield, student confidence, and institutional fit.

When resources are stretched, “doing more with less” often results in overextension and burnout. But what if the real key to thriving is doing less—but better?

This session explores how simplifying processes, clarifying priorities, and reducing complexity can unlock greater efficiency and impact.

Participants will see how subtraction—not addition—can strengthen alignment with institutional goals, improve outcomes for students and staff, and build confidence even in lean times.

Whether you’re in the thick of it or planning your way out, this session offers a roadmap for turning institutional strain into strategic opportunity.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify opportunities to streamline processes, programs, and practices for maximum impact.
• Apply strategies to align limited resources with institutional priorities and student success.
• Learn from real-world examples where simplification and clarity led to stronger outcomes for students, faculty, and staff.

MELT—the students who commit but don’t show up—can be a silent but significant challenge for universities. How can enrollment services teams proactively combat MELT and ensure a smooth transition from admission to arrival? This session will dive into MSVU’s summer melt project and its evolution. The session will provide insight into issues and potential strategies on how other institutions can tackle the issue.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify strategies to strengthen conversion rates at different stages of the enrolment funnel
• Develop communication and automation strategies for effective communication planning
• Analyze conversion activities and measure data to evaluate and inform real-time adjustments to conversion planning

International student compliance is often viewed as the responsibility of immigration advisers or a specialized international office. Yet many of the institutional decisions that create immigration risk occur elsewhere—during recruitment, admission, registration, program changes, leaves and withdrawals, academic progression, graduation, and career transition.

This interactive session challenges participants to rethink compliance as a shared institutional capability embedded throughout the international student lifecycle.

Using a real-world student journey scenario, participants will explore how seemingly routine decisions across admissions, registrarial services, academic operations, immigration advising, student success, and career services can create downstream compliance implications when ownership and communication are unclear.

The session will introduce a practical Compliance-by-Design Student Lifecycle Framework for identifying regulatory touchpoints, clarifying responsibilities, improving cross-functional handoffs, and creating escalation pathways before issues become student or institutional risks.

Participants will leave with tools they can use to map their own student journey and identify where policies, systems, data, and departmental responsibilities need stronger alignment.

The goal is not to turn every department into an immigration office. It is to build institutional systems in which the right people recognize when a routine decision may carry a compliance consequence—and know when and how to escalate it.

• Identify critical points across the international student lifecycle where institutional decisions can create immigration compliance, service, or student-success risks.
• Assess gaps in ownership, communication, data-sharing, and cross-functional handoffs that can result in unintended consequences for international students.
• Apply a Compliance-by-Design framework to clarify responsibilities, establish escalation pathways, and strengthen collaboration across enrolment, registrarial, advising, student-support, and career functions.

Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) is most effective when it is understood as a shared institutional responsibility rather than the work of a single department or committee. This session presents a case study of how one college created a culture in which employees see the connection between their work, student experience, and enrolment outcomes.

Using a system-thinking approach, the college embedded SEM planning imperatives within the broader Strategic Plan and then enabled cascading plan to create action. Participants will learn how governance structures, SEM councils, and core teams were established to translate SEM directional goals into coordinated action and accountability across the institution.

This interactive session will leave participants with practical strategies for mobilizing people, aligning planning processes, and creating the organizational conditions that make SEM everyone’s business and a catalyst for institutional transformation.

Learning Outcomes

• Connecting cascading plans to mobilize action
• A systems-thinking approach to a SEM organizational framework
• Strategies for creating a SEM culture

Post-secondary institutions (PSIs) are increasingly focused on improving access and enrolment for low-income, racialized, First Nations, newcomer, and first-generation students. However, systemic financial and institutional barriers often prevent these students from seeing university as a viable path. Community-based organizations (CBOs) offer a powerful bridge delivering trusted, long-term support that transforms student outcomes.

In this session, representatives from Pathways to Education Canada and Queen’s University explore how collaborative partnerships between universities and CBOs can move beyond traditional recruitment into deep, institutional relationships. Beginning with the story of Pathways’ flagship program in Regent Park where post-secondary participation more than tripled, this presentation outlines how combining high school wraparound supports with targeted university transition programs creates a sustainable pipeline for underrepresented youth.

Attendees will learn through a concrete case study like Queen’s University’s tailored $10,000 scholarship model. We will discuss how this financial and relational investment enables front-line CBO staff to actively champion partner institutions, demystify the transition process, and ease the financial burden for graduating youth.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify strategies for multi-faceted CBO partnerships: Learn how to look beyond standard recruitment practices to build meaningful, long-term relationships with community organizations that directly influence student post-secondary choices.
• Design targeted financial and transition supports: Examine a successful financial aid and transition model such as a dedicated scholarship for equity-deserving students that lowers financial barriers and boost matriculation rates.
• Leverage community staff as institutional champions: Understand how to equip front-line community program staff with the information and incentives needed to confidently present your institution as a supportive, accessible option for graduating youth.

For many prospective students and families, the Bachelor of Arts continues to face persistent misconceptions: lower earning potential, unclear career pathways, and fewer employment opportunities compared to STEM disciplines. Ironically, these myths persist even as employers increasingly identify communication, adaptability, leadership, critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving as among the most important workforce skills of the future.

In this session, representatives from McMaster University, a globally recognized STEM-intensive institution, will share how Humanities, Social Sciences, and Wilson College of Leadership & Civic Engagement recruitment teams collaborated to challenge outdated narratives about arts education. Through a guidance counsellor engagement initiative, the team developed a “”myth-busting”” presentation that explored labour market outcomes, salary data, employer expectations, transferable skills, and the wide range of careers pursued by arts graduates.

Participants will learn how McMaster reframed the conversation from “What job does this degree lead to?” to “What skills does this student graduate with, and how can those skills create value across industries”. The session will also highlight how this work is informing the development of a broader marketing campaign focused on elevating the value and relevance of arts education to prospective students.

Attendees will leave with practical strategies to support student decision-making, outreach opportunities, communicate career outcomes more effectively, and build recruitment messaging that better aligns with student expectations and de-bunk arts stigmas.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify and debunk common misconceptions about arts degrees and develop evidence-based strategies to address them with prospective students, families, and school counsellors.
• Connect employer-demanded future workforce skills, including communication, adaptability, leadership, analytical thinking, cultural competence and problem-solving, to liberal arts curriculum and student outcomes.
• Apply practical recruitment and marketing approaches that position arts programs as flexible, career-ready pathways within an increasingly complex and evolving labour market.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense potential to improve, streamline, and harness creative solutions for the backend of post-secondary Student Success units but knowing where to start behind the scenes can be daunting. Designed for staff, managers, and administrative leaders across Canadian higher education, this collaborative session introduces five targeted ways to champion AI within your team’s daily operations and workflow. One of the best foundational ways to begin this process is knowing how to co-think alongside AI. This session is structured as a guided exchange: the facilitator will introduce foundational examples to spark ideas, followed by rich peer discussion to tap into the collective expertise in the room. You will walk away with practical insights, new peer connections, and a clear SMART goal to guide your personal AI adoption over the next three months.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify five practical AI applications to streamline administrative and staffing workflows within post-secondary Student Success units.
• Exchange insights and operational practices through structured peer-to-peer discussion with colleagues across Canadian institutions.
• Develop a personalized SMART goal to implement one new AI application into your professional practice within three months, that is both meaningful and individualized to your own context.

What happens when your institution’s largest venue closes right before recruitment season? You rethink everything. When the University of Alberta lost its central Open House venue to renovations, the recruitment team leveraged the disruption to break old habits and pioneer a new model.

In this session, we will break down how we navigated change management, aligned diverse academic and administrative stakeholders, and reimagined the prospective student experience from the ground up. We will share candid lessons on managing disruption, maintaining positive guest experiences during major operational shifts, and turning logistical constraints into creative solutions.

Learning Outcomes

• Discover strategies for fostering creative problem-solving within recruitment teams, empowering staff to reframe operational hurdles into innovative, guest-centric solutions.
• Consider new approaches for event planning, and communication
• Explore methods and metrics for evaluating guest satisfaction, event flow, and conversion success across decentralized events

Developing a Strategic Enrolment Management plan is only the beginning; the real challenge is turning strategy into sustained institutional action.

Co-presented by Mount Saint Vincent University and Academica, this session combines MSVU’s experience through two years of SEM implementation with Academica’s perspective from supporting SEM planning and implementation across Canadian postsecondary institutions. Together, the presenters will explore how priorities move from plan to action, accountability is built across the institution, progress is measured, and strategies evolve as enrolment conditions change.

Participants will hear candid lessons about what has worked, what has required adjustment, and what MSVU has learned along the way—and leave with practical approaches they can apply to advance SEM implementation at their own institutions.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify the key conditions that support successful SEM implementation, including institutional ownership, clear accountability, prioritization, and sustained leadership attention.
• Apply practical approaches for translating a SEM plan into action, including establishing implementation priorities, monitoring progress, and maintaining momentum beyond the initial launch.
• Assess when and how SEM priorities should adapt to changing conditions, drawing on lessons from MSVU’s implementation experience and broader SEM work across Canadian postsecondary institutions.