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aboutus » president
Letter from the President
 The first year of my presidency has passed with a frenzy of activity. I am pleased to have joined the Lake Erie College family and am proud of the progress we have made. This breathtaking campus of just over 1,000 total students has awakened into a vibrant academic community that is focused on excellence, tradition and service:
Focus on Marketing and Enrollment Results in Record Year
While many colleges and universities around the country are encountering a drop in enrollment, Lake Erie College has seen growth. In 2006/2007, the Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) program saw a 35% increase in enrollment and the newly-developed FasTrac night and weekend program for adults welcomed its first class of students. Total undergraduate enrollment at the College also increased.
We embarked on an aggressive and exciting marketing campaign that challenged prospective students to ‘Get In and Stand Out.’ This campaign hit billboards in northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania and new collateral pieces helped to round out the campaign’s impact. The admissions staff worked harder than ever before to make sure that students in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York were aware of the many opportunities to ‘Stand Out’ as a student at Lake Erie College. These orchestrated events resulted in a 93% increase in student applications in the first four months of the campaign and a doubling of the number of unique visitors to the College website. The increase in campus visitors and applications has allowed us to become more exclusive in our selection process.
New Programs
In addition to 22 existing majors and the opportunity to pursue an individualized major, students enjoy five new majors and two areas of concentration. The College introduced new majors in marketing, sports management, pre-health professions (medical, dental, pharmaceutical, veterinarian), management and history. New concentrations in cutting-edge areas such as forensic psychology and therapeutic horsemanship are also offered.
The College announced the addition of three new athletic programs – women’s golf, men’s and women’s track and football! The kickoff of the sports has contributed much to the excitement of campus and has allowed us to strengthen our relationship with alumni, the town of Painesville and area high schools. Golf and track will begin collegiate play this fall and the football team will begin as a club team in the fall and will begin league play in 2008. Lake Erie has also entered an exploratory year of NCAA Division II status and hopes to gain full status by fall 2008.
The Lake Erie College MBA program has expanded to include two on-site programs with Parker Hannifin Corporation. Programs are now held at their world headquarters in Mayfield Hts., Ohio, as well as the gas turbine division in Mentor, Ohio, boosting spring MBA enrollment by over 20%.
The College entered into an articulation agreement with the Rochester Institute of Technology E. Phillip Saunders College of Business which allows qualified Lake Erie College graduates to accelerate their progress through the R.I.T. College of Business MBA program. Through the agreement, Lake Erie College graduates, who are accepted to the R.I.T. MBA program, will have the opportunity to waive select MBA courses, allowing them to complete the R.I.T. MBA program in as few as five academic quarters.
Athletic Achievements
Each and every Lake Erie College Storm athletic team reached a milestone in the 2006-07 season, the fourth season that the Storm has been involved in NCAA Division III play in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC). The men’s and women’s soccer teams both tied records for wins in a season and the Storm volleyball, men’s cross country and women’s cross country teams all finished with their highest AMCC finish in history. The men’s basketball team won their second consecutive AMCC championship, the women’s basketball team posted their most successful record ever, and baseball and softball teams also experienced winning seasons.
Media Relations
Lake Erie College has been able to Stand Out amongst its peers by receiving international news coverage. With the announcement of a new President, new academic programs, winning athletic teams and a new football program, the media had a lot of good news to report from our campus. The College also announced a search for its first-ever fight song to cheer the Storm into battle. This (combined with the aforementioned) resulted in newspaper coverage in USA Today, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon Journal, Columbus Dispatch and many others via a pick-up by the AP wire, television coverage on WKYC Channel 3 in Cleveland and on the Fox News show “Studio B with Shepard Smith.” The stories were also picked up by international newswires and were distributed on web sites and magazines in places such as China, Scandinavia, Cambodia, Singapore, South America and various Arabic countries. Record Breaking Fundraising
Since July 1, the College has received approximately $6 million in gifts and pledges; gifts and pledges include a $1.3 million grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to establish a center for entrepreneurship, a $350,000 challenge grant from alumna Carol Morris ’67, a $100,000 gift for an endowed scholarship fund established by alumna Debra Goodrich Royce ’80, and several other major gifts.
Campus Upgrades
Lake Erie College has a beautiful 50-acre campus and a 90-acre equestrian center. To celebrate our 150th anniversary, we gave the campus a face-lift including: extensive landscaping to beautify campus, sidewalk paving for improved navigation for students with disabilities, repainting and renovations of many buildings and painting of the barns at the George M. Humphrey Equestrian Center. Renovations to campus continue.
As you can see, our campus has come a long way in one short year. We look forward to another year of successes.
Sincerely,
Michael T. Victor
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President, Lake Erie College
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