How to Utilize SMART Goals to Increase Enrollment

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Recruiting Road Map for Career and Technical Education Teachers to Increase Enrollment

Recruiting for career and technical education teachers is essential in keeping a full-time job. In my first several years I approached recruiting and increasing enrollment in my program with little to no strategies and therefore I was constantly stressed and overwhelmed by having to teach multiple preps every year. Not only that, but over my career, I’ve felt like a first-year teacher several times because I was being asked to teach new or different preps from what I had the previous year in order to stay full-time. At year seven I finally added strategy to recruiting for the career and technical education program. Setting a goal and creating a road map is what finally got me headed in the right direction to increase enrollment for my program. Get your free Recruiting Road Map here.

In this episode, Khristen discusses:

No One is Going to Fill Your Classes
Applying the SMART Goal Strategy to Setting a Goal
SMART Goal Setting in Action
Where to Go Now That You’ve Set Your SMART Goal

No One is Going to Fill Your Classes

Unfortunately, I thought that after I had a full-time teaching position, that year-to-year my position or schedule would stay the same because students need electives to fill their schedules. While they do need electives, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to sign up for your career and technical education course. While the counselors may know of the courses you offer, it doesn’t’ mean that they are going to make sure that you get enough course requests to make that happen. You need a plan because you are the reason you are going to get requests and no one else and that is the key to increase enrollment.

Applying the SMART Goal Strategy to Setting a Goal to Increase Enrollment

As a career and technical education teacher, you may already be familiar with setting and teaching students how to set SMART goals, but have you applied this principle to your goals to increase enrollment for your program? If not, now is the time! When I finally starting setting SMART goals relating to recruiting and increasing enrollment is when I started seeing progress. The Recruiting Road Map will get you started in this process and help guide you through setting your SMART goals. As a review, here’s what the acronym SMART stands for:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Timely

SMART Goal Setting in Action to Increase Enrollment

Let’s look at how the SMART strategy can work for setting a goal to increase enrollment in your program. Let’s say that you are currently teaching five different preps over the course of seven class periods. Your ideal schedule would allow you to teach just three related courses with a beginning level, intermediate level, and advanced level. Currently, you teach two sections of the beginning level course. After talking to your administrator, you figure out that you would ideally be teaching four sections of that beginning course–which would mean that you need approximately 150 course requests. You figure that if you put all your efforts into just increasing enrollment in that course, you can achieve the enrollment numbers by the time the master schedule is released.

Specific: Increase beginning level course sections from two to four

Measurable: 150 course requests are needed for four sections

Achievable: If focus is pointed just at this one course

Relevant: one local university and the local technical college offer programs related to the course

Timely: By the end of the course request period

SMART Goal: By the end of April course requests, I will have 150 requests for “Course A” so that I can increase the number of sections that I offer from two sections to four sections.

Where to Go Now That You’ve Set Your SMART Goal

Now that you have created your SMART goal, you will need to figure out how to get there. Stay tuned as I will soon be posting an episode on how to complete your road map. Eager to get started, make sure you get the Recruiting Road Map here.