Grove City Wants You!

Alums can help college combat enrollment challenge

Small, tuition-dependent private liberal arts colleges face enormous pressures today. Since 2016, at least 20 have closed their doors, according to Inside Higher Ed, and experts expect more to follow. Most of the closures are due to dwindling enrollment and the financial pressure it creates.

Grove City College isn’t one of those schools. Sound fiscal management, a commitment to stewardship and vigorous fundraising keep the College on stable ground. But it faces the same enrollment challenges that a dozen closed colleges faced. After the tsunami of the Baby Boom and the waves of their Gen X and Millennial children, colleges are fishing out of a shrinking pool of prospective students – which in a few years will be smaller thanks to low birth rates tied to the 2008 financial crisis.

Attracting students is necessarily more difficult when the supply for higher education outpaces the demand, according to Lee Wishing III ’83, vice president for student recruitment. Advertising, direct mail, outreach at college fairs, and social media campaigns are the standard tools in the admissions field, but Grove City College has something that other schools don’t and that can make a real difference when it comes to student recruitment: You.

“Alumni are a real powerhouse when it comes to admissions recruiting,” Wishing said.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many current and prospective students learned about Grove City College from or made their decision to attend after talking with or knowing alumni of the College. But the Admissions Office does track referrals as indicated on student applications and it found that alumni are responsible for pointing an outsized number of prospective students to the Grove.

Wishing said the connection that prospective students have to alumni is one of two key reasons that they end up attending. “It’s a simple sauce,” he said. “If you know people associated with the College and you visit, you enroll. If we can encourage alumni to get interested students to visit, then we can meet the challenge.”

Trustee William Mehaffey ’64 agrees. Mehaffey has been recruiting students for more than 50 years and he’s pretty much the prototype for a freelance alumni recruiter. The retired financial planner has played a role in the college selection process for dozens, if not hundreds of students and alumni. Mehaffey said he gets a degree of satisfaction at Commencement when he can tick the names of students he directed to the College off of the program.

Mehaffey has been recruiting students for more than 50 years and he’s pretty much the prototype for a freelance alumni recruiter.

He’s found much of his success in his church, Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mount Lebanon, Pa., which he says is known informally as “Grove City South” because of the number of alumni in the congregation. Mehaffey’s work over the years may have something to do with that. “I’m known as an unabashed recruiter for Grove City,” he acknowledges. One of his Beverly Heights recruits, Donald C. Templin ’84, is now a fellow College Trustee.

Mehaffey said he keeps tabs on church families with children who might be prospects and talks up the College. He distributes literature, including the annual freshman profile, that provides additional information about what’s going on at Grove City and what kinds of students might be successful. He also makes sure to connect them to the Admissions Office.

Amy (Fisher ’08) Mucha, second from left, poses with three of her CVCA recruits – Olivia Nitzsche, Catie Stanley and Ryan Klemmer – back in 2018 when they were seniors in high school. The three veterans of Mucha’s AP stats class are now sophomores at Grove City College.

Mehaffey thinks it’s critical that alumni connect with the offices of Admissions and Alumni & College Relations about prospective students, give some of their time and, like he does at graduation, celebrate the achievements of students he’s helped secure an excellent education and prepare for a successful future.

“If they like Grove City, and most people look fondly upon their experience at GCC, surely the very least they could do is some sort of recruiting in their church, recruiting in their school district, recruiting in their neighborhood,” Mehaffey said. “Given the circumstances at small private colleges these days we need to help out. The alums need to help out.”

Not surprisingly, other top alumni recruiters are educators working in public and Christian schools, according to the Admissions Office. Amy (Fisher ’08) Mucha, who teaches at Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy (CVCA), said she refers “any student that is in my high school math class.”

“I often joke that Grove City should pay me a commission given the amount of students I send their way from CVCA,” said Mucha. Joking aside, Mucha said lets her students know the College is challenging academically, but it will prepare them well for life and will make their college experience “something truly amazing.” On the school’s “college day,” all the teachers wear shirts from their alma maters and talk about their experiences, Mucha said. “It is one of my favorite days of the year, because I get to sing Grove City’s praises as part of the school day.”

Brandon McCall ’08 is founder and principal of Cornerstone Christian Preparatory Academy, a school designed to prepare students for Grove City College.

Mucha’s school is kind of a “Grove City West,” with many College alumni in the faculty and CVCA graduates well-represented in the student body. Mucha is married to another CVCA and Grove City graduate, Nate Mucha ’08, assistant professor of Design. At one point a few years ago, she said they calculated that three percent of the College consisted of former CVCA students.

“I love Grove City College, and I love my CVCA students. So when those two worlds collide, it makes me very happy,” she said.

Brandon McCall ’08, a one-time Education major who earned his degree in History, is another leading alumni recruiter. McCall is a founder and serves as principal of Cornerstone Christian Preparatory Academy, a school he said was born of a discussion about what a high school that prepped students for Grove City College would look like.

“All the things my friends and I loved about Grove City – the education, the values – would be built into a high school,” he said. Cornerstone Prep opened in the fall of 2008 with seven students. In the school’s 12 th year, it has over 200 students in preschool through 12 th grade, McCall said, “all from the vision that was born in the classrooms and dorms at Grove City College.”

Given that founding vision, it’s natural to expect the College to be high on a collegebound Cornerstone student’s short list. “We recommend kids that are stronger in their faith, academics, have a good work ethic, and positive attitude to check out Grove City,” McCall said. “We know that where shared values align, good things happen. A student we’d recommend really has to have a heart to be a part of a culture they want to participate in Biblically and academically.”

McCall said he tells those students a lot of Grove City College stories. “Stories of struggles, frustrations, failures. And also stories of success, fun, and relationships. We talk a lot about how tough it was but joking about the challenges, in my opinion, demystifies it and makes it a reality that they can embrace,” he said.

“I think my favorite story is the ‘macro’ story of a bunch of our graduates at Grove City are building a culture there that makes the College a better place while they are growing in the process. It makes me proud that I get to watch my kids at Grove City as the people that I wish I was when I was there,” he said. “That just gives me so much hope that even if we didn’t achieve everything we could have, we still have the opportunity to elevate others in our place.”

That chance to elevate others is clearly one motivation for Mehaffey, Mucha and McCall – along with other unsung alumni recruiters – to go above and beyond to make the case for the College with prospective students. They know what they got out of their time at Grove City College. They want to share that transformational experience and they want to ensure that it remains long after the current crisis in higher education is resolved.

In the meantime, Grove City College alumni can help the College weather it. In some ways, admissions is a numbers game. To thrive, the College needs to recruit a certain number of prospective students every year. The larger the number, the better the chances that the College meets its enrollment goals.

“We have approximately 28,000 alums,” Mehaffey said. “If you just take half that – or even a quarter of that – you’ve got 7,000 alums. If those 7,000 alums could just send us one name of a candidate for Grove City College every year, then we’ve got a bigger number there.” •