This program is FULL. Please call ADVIS to put your name on the wait-list.

Taking Your Seat at the Table

Friday, September 26, 2014
9:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Registration and Continental Breakfast from 9:00 to 9:25 AM
Program begins at 9:30 AM

PPL Park (courtesy of YSC Academy)
1 Stadium Drive
Chester, PA 19013
(directions)

9:00 AM - Check-in and Continental Breakfast

9:30 AM - "Creating Board Reports that ROCK!"
Aimee Gruber, Senior Director of Outreach & Business Development, SSATB
Design board reports that will make you look fabulous! This session highlights strategies, resources, data and information to aid reporting to these school leaders. Maximize resources already available to you. Help your board understand your school’s data in the context of larger regional/national trends. Be the expert and resource your school needs to ensure enrollment sustainability. 

Kelly DeShane, Director of Admission, Tower Hill School will provide a real school perspective on how to create comprehensive, generative discussion-provoking reports that will not only garner credibility with your board, but leave them in awe!

11:00 AM - Break

11:15 AM - "Enrollment Management and Strategic Leadership: 10 Steps To Ensure Your School’s Enrollment Success"
Sally Keidel, Head of School, Montgomery School
ADVIS and our colleague admissions associations have advocated for the critical importance of professional enrollment management to ensure the current and future financial well-being of our schools, and thus the need for the Admissions, or Enrollment Management, Director to have an equal seat at the table with the leadership team. In recent years, we have seen several Admissions Directors appointed to headships, rightly valued for the enrollment expertise they bring to their schools.  ADVIS trustee Sally Keidel, newly appointed Head of School of Montgomery School, formerly Associate Head for Enrollment at The Agnes Irwin School and Director of Admissions at The Hill School, will share The Top 10 Steps to Ensure Your School's Enrollment Success (and not incidentally, credibility with your Head of School and Board), from a presentation which SSATB Executive Director Heather Hoerle gave at this summer's NAIS Institute for New Heads.  

12:15 PM - Join us for a networking lunch and the following presentations:

• Collaborative Admissions for Office Transformation
  Through sharing a common vision of improving access, a group of independent schools in Seattle harnessed the power of technology to accelerate a fundamental change in the way students apply to their schools, spawning Ravenna Solutions, a common repository for a region's schools' applications. Learn how they built on the momentum of the effort to leverage and innovate at each step of the admission process.
  
• ADVIS Website Tips: Marketing and the School Profile Editor 
  Do you know how to optimize your school's public profile on the ADVIS website - the go-to resource about independent education in the greater Delaware Valley? Are you displaying the ADVIS Proud Member Badge on your website which says that you are accredited, you follow best practices and you are looking to be part of the advancement of the wider educational community? Are you aware that inbound and outbound links to ADVIS.org from your website can improve your school's, and ADVIS's, search engine results? Do you know you have access to members' only resources like professional development program archives and tutorials? Barbara Kraus-Blackney, Executive Director, and Jennifer Braxton, Director of Professional Development, will show you how to take advantage of all that membership in ADVIS offers.

Register Now!

Fees:  $25 for ADVIS members; non-members pay $125 per person. Payment should be made in advance of the program either by check to ADVIS or by credit card.

About our Presenters:

Aimee Gruber, Senior Director of Outreach & Business Development, Western US & Canada, Midwest, Hawaii, International, SSATB, is based in British Columbia.
Aimee has spent the past 19 years honing her skills in admission and related fields. She travels extensively throughout the U.S. and in Asia visiting schools, presenting at conferences, and meeting with education contacts on behalf of SSATB-member schools and families. She began her career in admission at The White Mountain School (NH) and went on to serve as Director of Admission and Financial Aid at the Tilton School (NH) and The Webb School of Knoxville (TN). She spent five years as the Associate Director of The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) in Washington, DC, where, among other things she managed professional development workshops, organized international student recruitment fairs in Asia, developed marketing and promotional materials about boarding schools, and represented TABS worldwide. She served two terms on the Board of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) Foundation and was a lead faculty member for SSATB’s International Admission Program. 

Kelly DeShane, Director of Admission, Tower Hill School. Kelly has spent 20 years with independent schools, the last 16 of those years in admission. Kelly started out his independent school career at Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Wayne, Pennsylvania where he served as an Associate Professor of Military Science, Tactical Training Officer, Admission Officer, and as the Dean of Admission. Before coming to Tower Hill, Kelly worked for three years as the Director of Admission at Hawken School, an independent school in suburban Cleveland. After graduating from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Western Michigan University, Kelly served as an officer in the U.S. Army in a variety of assignments in the United States and around the world. While on active duty, he received his Master of Liberal Arts degree in History from Harvard University. Kelly retired from the U.S. Army Reserves as a Lieutenant Colonel. Kelly also teaches world history in the upper school and in his free time he enjoys exercising and reading.

Sally Keidel, recently began as Head of School at Montgomery School with 22 years of experience in independent schools, including the last seven years at The Agnes Irwin School. At Agnes Irwin, Sally spent five years as the Director of Admission and Financial Aid, and then assumed the role of Assistant Head of School. As the head of the advancement team at Agnes Irwin that oversees enrollment, development, communications, and the Center for the Advancement of Girls, Sally was instrumental in a number of leadership initiatives during a dynamic time in the school’s history.  She served as an active member of vital Board committees (Finance, Strategic Enrollment, and Strategic Planning.)  

Recognized as a leader and mentor in the field of independent school enrollment, Sally has been active in several independent school organizations including membership in the Admission Leadership Council of SSATB (Secondary School Admissions Test Board) and the AISAP (the Association of Independent School Admissions Professionals) Ethical Behavior and Best Practice Task Force, and serving as a board member for ADVIS (the Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools), as Vice-President of the Virginia Admissions Group, and as Co-Chair of the ADVIS Rework of the “Guidelines for Best Practices in Admission and Marketing.” 

A graduate of Dickinson College with a BA in French, Sally earned her Master’s in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.