Since I was on leave this past year, I had more time to do daytime visits on campus (and other places) for Dogs on Call, an all-volunteer local therapy animal organization. Many of these visits provide stress relief for students or staff. For example, we always visit College Library during finals week. There’s always something to learn — why students chose to come here, how well they feel supported in their program, how welcoming (or not) students find our campus, what the biggest challenges are for the admissions team or the mental health team etc. Fritzi, my 8-year-old Small Münsterländer, was a champ through all these visits! (His favorite one was probably the last-day-of-classes visit with the College of Engineering — it was a gorgeous day, we were out on the lawn, students were relaxed, and someone brought him ice cream.) Last week, Fritzi and I visited with staff from the Office of Enrollment and Recruitment, who had to complete the Herculean task of vetting 65,000 applications this spring. There is no simple formula for how many students one has to accept to arrive at the right size and composition for the incoming class. It’s hard to predict the yield rate (the percentage of admitted students that will actually join UW). If the incoming class is smaller than expected, that’s a loss of tuition income, plus classes may not fill; if the incoming class is larger than expected (as was the case last year and the year before), the problem is the opposite: More classes need to be scheduled, last-minute hires need to be made, extra space has to be found. In other words, the quality of our students’ first-year experience depends to an enormous extent on the wisdom and expertise of the people we visited today. Thanks for all your hard work!
Update: Six weeks after this visit, Fritzi died unexpectedly from brain cancer. He seemed perfectly happy and healthy until four days before his death. For eight years, he was the very best companion anyone could wish for. We miss him so very much.