Chatham University’s Admissions Office is focusing on new event structures to welcome prospective students to campus. Some key changes include discontinuing scholarship interview days and scaling back the frequency of events to host more robust accepted student days.
Vice President for Enrollment Management Brandy Gershon, who stepped into this position this academic year, is working with Admissions Office staff to spearhead these changes. As a result of these efforts, commitments from incoming students seem to already be larger than they were at this time last year.
“Right now, I think we are [40 students] over last year’s [incoming class] numbers in the undergraduate level, and the graduate [level] is up about 10 [students] over last year,” Gershon said. “We’re really in strong collaboration with marketing. [Vice President of Operations and Communications] Bill Campbell and I work together very closely.”
Gershon worked in enrollment at Chatham from 2015 to 2020 and then came back in October 2025 when University President Lisa Lambert asked her to step into the role of vice president for enrollment management. In her time away, Gershon visited more than 200 colleges as a part of another job, learning about admissions tactics she’s now bringing to Chatham to strive to increase enrollment.
There were more than 300 visiting prospective students and families on campus in January and an estimated 350-400 in February.
“Faculty are going to have full classrooms to talk to, and our staff is going to feel that excitement,” Gershon said. “We’re bringing a lot of people together at one time, rather than smaller individual events that maybe weren’t as well attended.”
Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Chris Purcell explained that the number of students who pay tuition deposits influences how the Office of Student Affairs and other University departments plan for the next school year.
“Every week, a lot of folks on campus get this report that Brandy [Gershon] and the Admissions team set up, and it says how many students have deposited, and it says how many deposited this time last year,” Purcell said. “So, we do check these numbers along the way and make some critical decisions along the spring and summer about how we’re going to set up the fall.”
Gershon emphasized the importance of incoming students submitting their enrollment deposit early, since it is necessary in preparing for the number of incoming students that will be on campus.
“Rather than new student registration days, we now have welcome days where students and their families are going to have the opportunity to come to campus and talk to Residence Life, Student Affairs, Student Success and Academic Advising to get all the pieces put together so everybody is comfortable and confident when it comes time to move in,” Gershon said.
Gershon and the Admissions team are hopeful that new strategies will continue to increase Chatham enrollment in the future.
“I think that the accepted student days are proving fruitful as far as students being confident in Chatham as their No. 1 choice to make that deposit,” Gershon said. “We’re hoping that trend will continue.”
