Since she first set foot on campus in 1983, Ronda Russell has been synonymous with Montana State University student recruitment. That changed last week when MSU’s long-time director of admissions began a phased retirement that will allow the team she trained to take over MSU student recruitment and enrollment duties.
“I always said that I wanted to leave this job when I still love it and when others can be offered the opportunity that (was) once offered me,” Russell said. “There are rising stars lined up in MSU Admissions that are talented and trained. They need this opportunity to grow and shine.”
Russell will not just turn on her famous Danskos and walk out the door. She will retain the title of director of admissions and will work part-time for about a year to assist those who succeed her in admissions, as well as to help launch a new student recruitment structure that she and Chris Kearns, MSU’s vice president of student success, helped design. It unites the functions of MSU’s registrar’s office with admissions, all under Kearns’ division.
“Having her around gives us a learning curve instead of a learning catapult,” said Kearns, who said the entire unit will try to “download” what Russell knows in coming months. “She has so much implicit knowledge and expertise that we are trying to use this transition period to take all of that practice and deep knowledge and historical awareness … of what worked and what doesn’t and to carry that over into a system that will hold up across all of the shifts and changes that higher education is navigating through now.”
Kearns said that there could be no better mentor. Under Russell’s management, MSU Admissions has become a force regionally and nationally. MSU’s enrollment has increased by 63% since 1992, when Russell was promoted to direct admissions. In that year, MSU had an enrollment of 10,540 students and was the second-largest university in the state. By contrast, the fall 2019 enrollment at MSU was 16,766. MSU is now the largest Montana university, is one of just 130 institutions nationally to possess a coveted Carnegie very high research activity rating and is frequently listed among the most dynamic public institutions in the country. While a lot of factors came into play for that growth, Russell’s strategic management of MSU Admissions’ procedures and marketing efforts has been key, said MSU President Waded Cruzado.
“Ronda’s insights, work ethic and strategy have been vital to MSU’s recent enrollment history,” Cruzado said. “Add to that her dynamic personality and her competitiveness. Thankfully, Ronda has prepared us well to move into the future.”
Russell, who is known for her ability to outwork, out handshake, out charm colleagues who are one-third of her age, is the first to tell you that the success that MSU enjoys today came after years of hard work, and there were many years of static enrollment and even outright disappointment before steady growth.
Russell said the worst period was in 1990s, when the bottom fell out of MSU’s enrollment along with deep budget cuts across campus. Russell had spent about a decade working in admissions at the time, including three years as an admissions counselor at her alma mater, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. She said in those days admissions was done by mailing and recruitment fairs; the internet was just starting to take hold. But she could see the world, especially the admissions world, was changing.
“I thought then that (MSU) needed to be in charge of our own destiny, and I absolutely knew how to that,” she said. She emphasized personalized, old-fashioned meetings with students and their parents while she moved into the digital age. But her primary goal was to put MSU on the list of all students across the country interested in attending college in the Rocky Mountains.
“I wanted to build a national brand,” Russell said. “Here we were, sitting in Bozeman, with pretty mountains outside every window and Yellowstone a short drive away. I thought, ‘Why don’t we sell that?’”
A colleague suggested that, to help tap those potential students, she should seek the guidance of national consultant Bill Royall. She and the late Allen Yarnell, then vice president of student success, received an initial budget of $40,000 to fund the effort. In about 2001, Russell reached out to Royall when MSU’s enrollment was 11,745.
“I told (the administration) that if it didn’t work, I’d just leave,” Russell recalls. “Concurrently, our office kicked into gear. And we have built and built and built since then.”
Mike Ouert, the new director of enrollment services and recruitment, was hired as an admissions counselor shortly after his graduation from MSU in 2005. Ouert said that when most people describe Russell, they mention her dynamic personality and indefatigable work ethic. But her sharp analytical mind and tweaks that she made to the MSU admissions process are also critical to the university’s recruiting success.
“In 2008 and 2009 she made some (key) changes and strategic moves,” Ouert said. “And here we are today.”
In addition to Ouert’s new title on the admissions side, Russell’s retirement has made Anders Groseth the new associate director of recruitment and Shannon Bangen the assistant director of new student programs. Jen Kayser will be associate director of admissions operations, and Steve Burk and Max Hamberger will work with different aspects of admissions information technology. Dallas Dallman will be the associate director for application evaluation.
Concurrently, Tony Campeau, formerly the MSU registrar, will move to the admissions area in the Strand Union Building as the associate vice president of enrollment management. Kandi Greswell has become the registrar and assistant director of enrollment services in Montana Hall.
Campeau thanked Russell for her mentorship and added that her focus and work ethic are unmatched.
Kearns calls Russell’s retirement, a “tectonic plate shift” at MSU. But the organizational changes, which he and Russell hammered out together, will allow MSU to face a “new generation of opportunities and challenges in higher education” that include changing demographics and preferences and students who have lived all of their lives as digital citizens.
He said the new admissions structure will allow MSU to “take the best of what we have learned and add new facets of strategy that address the world today.
“We are very happy that she is staying around to help us negotiate this transition.”
Rolf Groseth, the former MSU administrator who first hired Russell to direct summer orientation 37 years ago, said that as Russell moves to retirement with the vitality to accomplish her longtime goals of adventure travel with her family, she does so with the certainty of her impact on her beloved Montana State.
“She has made such a difference at this university,” he said. “It is that secret sauce -- her exuberance, sense of humor and competitive instinct – that everyone will remember … There really is no one else quite like her.”
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