The identity of Candidate No. 2 for vice president of enrollment management has been revealed. Jefferson R. Blackburn-Smith, the senior associate director for strategy, outreach and recruitment in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience at Ohio State University, will be visiting campus Nov. 28 and 29. Read below for a detailed profile of Blackburn-Smith.
As Otterbein360.com previously reported, Otterbein decided to keep the identities of the four candidates confidential until a day before their campus visits. More information on the reasoning behind this decision can be found here.
Brian F. Dalton, the first candidate, visited campus Nov. 21-22. Otterbein360 will be profiling the final two candidates as soon as their information is made available. Students can use this information to give the search committee informed feedback on the VPEM candidates.
Jefferson R. Blackburn-Smith, Candidate No. 2
Jefferson R. Blackburn-Smith has worked in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience at OSU since 1995, starting as the senior associate director for strategy, outreach and recruitment in 2004. In this position, he has developed OSU’s long-term and annual undergraduate recruitment plans.
In his resume, Blackburn-Smith said he helped increase the number of applications to OSU by 74 percent as well as the average ACT score of the freshman class from 25.6 to 28. He also oversaw the development of recruitment techniques that pushed data to front-line recruiters.
At the Nov. 28 open Q&A forum in Roush, Blackburn-Smith said that based on a decrease in demographics in Ohio, Otterbein needs to focus on bringing in students from different kinds of backgrounds than it normally does. One of the ways this could be done, he said, is through evaluating our financial aid strategies.
“It’s not just we need new recruitment strategies in order to be successful and bring these new populations, but we’re going to need to support students differently,” he said. “We’re going to need to … make sure that we’re able to support the students that we’re going to bring to campus.”
In his cover letter, Blackburn-Smith said that recruiting a successful class at OSU requires strong partnerships with other campus offices. He also said that though OSU is a public university, it has followed a private-school model with its outreach and recruitment operations.
Ohio State University is a public university with 175 undergraduate majors and a campus stretching more than 1,700 acres. It enrolls 64,077 students. OSU is switching from quarters to semesters in summer 2012 and has made a pledge that students who plan their schedules with their academic advisers will graduate on time.
Before starting at OSU, Blackburn-Smith also served as the vice president of marketing at the Hayward Co., a central Ohio remodeling company, and the general sales manager at International Readers Service Bureau Inc., a magazine subscription agency. According to his resume, he has not been employed at any other college besides OSU.
He holds a master of arts in English from OSU.
Blackburn-Smith’s resume and cover letter can be accessed in the “VP for Enrollment Search” tab in My O-Zone.
Check back to Otterbein360 for more updates on Blackburn-Smith and the other candidates as information is made available.
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