Lorna J. Hunter, whose depth of experience in admissions, enrollment, and financial aid spans institutions ranging from the Ivy League to public universities, will become the College’s new vice president of enrollment management. Hunter, who for the past four years has held that position at The College of Idaho, will begin at Washington College on August 15.

“Lorna Hunter has a proven record of enrollment success, and she understands Washington College’s student-focused approach,” says College President Kurt M. Landgraf. “I am thrilled to welcome her to our community. Her array of skills and the range of experience she brings to the critical job of leading our enrollment, admissions, and financial aid teams are just outstanding.”

Hunter has been at The College of Idaho—that state’s oldest private liberal arts college, with a student body of 1,000—since 2013, where she pursued a personalized, student-centric strategy in enrollment. She worked with offices across the campus to develop new ways to draw more international and out-of-state students and student athletes, and to engage faculty and alumni to help educate prospective students about the school.

Previously, she served 11 years as vice president for enrollment management for Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, where she grew applications by 48 percent, attained a 29 percent increase in the entering class, and increased enrollment of students of color by 10 percent. During her five years as dean of admission and financial aid at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, she achieved a 25 percent increase in applications to the College of Arts and Sciences and increased applications overall by 31 percent.

 At Dartmouth College, where she served eight years as associate director of admissions and director of minority recruitment, Hunter helped attain gender parity in the Class of 1999, 24 years after the Hanover, New Hampshire, school initiated co-education. She also served three years as assistant director of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, where she developed and implemented programs to enroll students of color. Throughout, she has helped develop marketing and communications plans to complement enrollment strategies.

 “Successful enrollment management is always a team effort, involving the entire institution, and I’m excited to join the team at Washington College,” Hunter says. “In our world today, where data are created at astronomical rates, a liberal arts and sciences education is growing even more valuable. Having the capacity to know what is important, to critically decipher information, to have the ability to learn new things because you have learned how to learn—these are the keys to citizen leadership and employability.”

Hunter in 1978 earned a BS in rehabilitation counseling and education at Penn State University, in 2007 an MA in adult education with a concentration in effective team leadership and team dynamics from the University of Rhode Island, a post-master’s certificate in enrollment management from Capella University in September 2012, and a PhD in higher education from UMass Boston in 2015. For her dissertation, she wrote “The Untold Story of the GI Bill: The Experiences of African American Veterans With Attaining Educational Benefits Through the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944.”