Navigating the 366-Day Year

9/12/2023

This past summer, Dave Taibl moved from Collegiate’s Development Office into the position of Director of Admission and Enrollment Management.

In his typical take-the-job-seriously-but-don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously manner, he explained his new title as “horrible for both a business card and name plate,” then added, “It’s all in the fine print.”

What does that fine print actually mean, especially since the position at Collegiate and many other institutions was for generations referenced more concisely as Director of Admission?

“Strategic enrollment management is more than just cultivating and recruiting families to fill classes,” Taibl explained. “It’s also working with all the departments of the School to ensure that everyone is mission-focused and on point so we’re serving students well. If we’re doing that, then we effectively retain them, and we can anticipate when we have areas that could be problematic for retention and re-enrollment.”

Through life experiences including a variety of roles in the independent school world, Taibl (pronounced Tie-bull) has assumed his latest assignment well prepared.

An Air Force brat who grew up on bases throughout the United States, he’s a graduate of Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax County and Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.

“I went to a very large public high school where we had 979 students in my graduating class,” he said. “I knew I needed accountability on a personal level academically and went to a college with 900 undergrads.

“My college experience was very immersive and one where I appreciated the relationships I had with my professors, peers, and coaches. I played lacrosse for four years, and after college I was really looking for an experience where I could keep that sort of energy moving.”

After doing his due diligence, Taibl signed on at Christchurch School to teach English, serve as a dorm parent, and coach three seasons. He remained there for seven years, added director of admission to his résumé along the way, and learned well the nature of independent school education.

“First year, I coached soccer, which I hadn’t been involved with since youth soccer in maybe the 8th grade,” he said with a laugh. “I worked with both indoor track and girls basketball in the winter. In the spring, I was head varsity lacrosse coach right out of undergrad. Made a lot of mistakes right off the bat.”

Over the years, Taibl, who earned an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia, served as dean of students at St. Stephen’s-St. Agnes School (Alexandria) and assistant head of Stuart Hall (Staunton). One thing led to another, and, after a couple of other stops, including 10 years at the Enrollment Management Association, he became Collegiate’s Associate Director of Development in the summer of 2022.

One morning during the whirlwind first week of classes as Collegiate’s 1,687 students were settling in, he spoke with joy and enthusiasm of his new appointment in the Admission Office.

Seems like your job description essentially involves marketing and recruiting and monitoring the progress of the “recruits” during their time here.

That’s exactly it. It’s 80 percent retention, retention, retention and 20 percent actual recruitment and marketing to ensure that we have mission-fit families. It’s a lot more difficult to recruit a new family than to keep the ones you have.

Collegiate does an exceptional job of that, so my job is to ensure that we’re looking at all those pieces of evidence in such a way that we can anticipate where we see either new opportunities, who’s underrepresented in our community, or where we’re not necessarily reflecting the values to be able to retain families that we seek to serve.

What are prospective students and their families looking for in a Collegiate experience?

They appreciate that Collegiate is a place that gives their children an opportunity to learn self-advocacy and agency and supports them at being very adept at leaning into their areas of discomfort in order to grow.

One of the things that Collegiate does is ensure that all our kids are known well and that we have a plan for their success. Our parents recognize that there’re really good and healthy relationships with adults in this community on a daily basis and that we really do get to know their children and support them and push them in areas where we see that perhaps they haven’t considered a future success.

How is this different from the past, even the distant past?

Some of the values in our mission are timeless, but there’re other things that we may not have anticipated that our children need to be prepared for that the world expects now. We’re dating ourselves, but it might have been that you could pick a path and know generally what the requisite for a future job might be. Then you could help steer a student to find the resources, and we had many of them in-house to prepare them for future success.

Now we’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist but will in the future. The spirit of being innovative and entrepreneurial required a lot more creative thinking, so we partner with a lot more outside resources than we ever have to provide a snippet into the life as it exists in greater Richmond for our students.

School years end, but does your job ever end?

No, it’s an overlapping calendar. We used to joke that it’s a 366-day year. We’re always working on composition of one class or one entrance grade in each division and already thinking about the next. We started this school year with full enrollment and 100 applicants for next year. There’s not really a point to sit and reflect as much as we need to be working to evolve and adapt readily.

What excites you about your role at Collegiate?

One of the things I really enjoyed was getting back in the pace of life at a school. In this admission role, I have the privilege of being involved in all three divisions and meeting with teachers and families on a daily basis. It gives me great joy to see 191 new students begin at Collegiate this week and watch them grow and thrive as they create relationships with their teachers and coaches. That’s the rewarding piece…when you see students realizing their full potential in such a great, nurturing place.

One of the things I’d really hoped after working for Enrollment Management Association was to take all the tidbits and life lessons that I’d seen from the better part of 1,100 schools and hundreds and hundreds of professionals and put some of those pieces into practice, so having the opportunity to do that here with such a wonderful, veteran team is a real honor and privilege.

~Weldon Bradshaw

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