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Financial Futures supports ‘try-and-test’ practices for engaging prospective students

Jennifer Schufer and Jen Constable were intrigued. As leaders in CU Boulder’s Admissions and Strategic Relations and Communications offices, they had always thought of themselves and their teams as brave and efficient in their work. 

“Financial Futures took what we believed was effectively reaching students and turned it on its head,” said Schufer. Through an intensive set of guided “scrum sprints,” their teams tested ideas to engage prospective students, adapted quickly based on the data they gathered and, most importantly, “started to see failure as an opportunity to learn and adjust,” Schufer said. “It’s something that can move you forward.”

Constable agrees. “We’re moving away from making assumptions about what we perceive will work to a model of try-and-test, so we can really learn what does work and what doesn’t.” Constable and Schufer point out that “failing forward” and changing course quickly, while initially uncomfortable, has reinforced the mission-driven aspects of their work and led their team to new successes.

“In one of our sprints, we tested a very simple change to our transfer application page that yielded pretty amazing results,” shares Constable. “And this is just one small corner of the Financial Futures initiative,” observes Schufer. “It’s exciting to think about the whole-campus impact that will be realized through the work of individuals and teams like ours.”

“The faster we try, fail, learn, succeed and repeat, the better we get at helping the world see our CU Boulder faculty, our research and our community in the most authentic way,” said Schufer. “So, when prospective students say ‘yes,’ they know CU Boulder is the right fit and that they have the potential to do amazing things at our world-class university.”

Join campus leadership to hear more Financial Futures stories and project updates at the on June 25, 2019, from 11 a.m. to noon, in UMC 247.