Her Story
About Darlene
With over 30 years in higher education, I currently serve as Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management at Utah Tech University. I oversee the offices of Admissions and Recruitment, Financial Aid and Scholarships, the Office of International Programs, enrollment marketing and communication, and our regional pathways coordinators. My typical day involves several meetings where we monitor our enrollment closely, looking at demographics, pacing, and analytics on enrollment, and working with our team and external partners. Right now we're ramping up for 2027 while finishing out the year of 2026, and we're also implementing a new CRM this summer with a go-live date of July 1, which is a gigantic lift with a lot of pressure but very rewarding. One of my proudest achievements has been setting and achieving aggressive enrollment goals each year. During COVID and shortly thereafter, we actually achieved our highest incoming classes in university history, and the university has grown in enrollment every year. In a tough market with demographic cliffs and all of that, we continue to push forward and meet the strategic plan and mission of the university by bringing in the class each year. At the end of the day, it's all about working with students and helping them access higher education and changing their lives. Graduation is a time when we're able to really celebrate the work that's happening and celebrate the wins when our students are successful.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Darlene
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I had a mentor who was our registrar at my first place of employment, and she worked with admissions. She was a very strong personality, and I kind of have a tendency to want to be liked all the time. While people liked her, they respected her, and there was a balance. I learned a lot from her on being, you know, having a strong voice and standing up for what you believe in, even if people don't like it. She really taught me that balance between being liked and being respected, and I would say she was one of my greatest mentors.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The ability to balance professional and personal life is crucial. This is a role with a lot of pressure, and if you take things home with you, you'll go crazy. Work extremely hard, but find time to balance that with things that you enjoy, and make that a priority. It's so important to preserve and protect your mental health, because you're in a fishbowl. Enrollment is every university's lifeline - that's where a lot of the revenue is generated through headcount. So everybody's always concerned and asking, what is the enrollment? And if you're up, it's great, and if you're down, it's not great. That ability to kind of preserve and protect your mental health has really allowed me to continue on in this profession, because a lot of people, or even around campus, are like, you have the hardest job on campus or the worst job on campus. But at the end of the day, it's all about working with students and helping them access higher education and changing their lives. So celebrate the wins - when our students are being successful.
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