Notre Dame of Maryland University seeks out-of-state students

Notre Dame of Maryland University

Notre Dame of Maryland University will be hitting the road with its recruitment efforts in an attempt to bring a more diverse group of students from across the country to the Baltimore school.

Details on where the school will be recruiting or how many out-of-state students the administrators want to bring in are still being worked out. But Notre Dame, where more than 80 percent of students are from Maryland, has already taken some steps to branch out, President James E. Conneely said in an interview with the Baltimore Business Journal.

The university recently re-assigned one of its recruitment officers to focus on working with Notre Dame’s alumni network to spread the word about the school. Notre Dame will likely tap into its alumni network, which spans the country, to increase recruitment outside of Maryland. The school has clusters of alumni in Florida, Atlanta and the Northeast, so those could be places Notre Dame turns to search for students.

Conneely said he wants to draw in more students from outside the state to improve students’ experience at the school and make them more well rounded.

Diversifying Notre Dame’s student population is one of several improvement efforts Conneely has in store for Notre Dame. Conneely joined the university in July, when he succeeded longtime president Mary Pat Seurkamp. He is the first man to lead the university and is being inaugurated Friday.

Another item on Conneely’s agenda is making sure students leave Notre Dame’s liberal arts school with practical skills and experiences that can help them land jobs.

“Education is not just what happens in school,” he said.

The high cost of a college education has pushed students to look more closely at what they get for their tuition money and zeroing in on degrees with ties to industries with growing job openings. That means liberal arts schools are being challenged to make sure their degrees for English literature and philosophy have practical value that students can use to get a job.

For Conneely that means making sure students have more opportunities to apply what they learn in class to the real world. He wants to see the university expand internship, co-op and volunteer experiences for students. Administrators will be looking into how to include volunteer or internship requirements into curriculum in the future.

“A strong liberal arts background helps you succeed better no matter what profession you’re in,” Conneely said. “But we have to keep it current.”

Notre Dame is also pushing its entrepreneurship minor as a way for students to strengthen their creativity and leadership skills. Entrepreneurship is not just about starting your own company, said Conneely. It’s a state of mind. Approaching problems with an entrepreneurial mind (one that is constantly seeking solutions) can be a valuable skill in any profession, he said.

“To see a need and have the nimbleness to say, ‘How do I meet that need?’” Conneely said. “It’s more of a mind-set, a culture. It’s another part of solving problems.”