Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in a series of Noel-Levitz consulting articles.

Eastern approved the allocation for $500,000 toward the Commitment to Excellence Scholarship, which offers an automatic $1,500 renewable merit allotment to students who meet the criteria.

The merit scholarship is geared toward prospective well qualified, lower-yield students who received an ACT score of 21 or higher, but do not meet honors criteria.

Eastern has a one-and-a-half-year contract with the Noel-Levitz Enrollment Management Consulting Services, which extends to June 30, 2013, and the consultants recommended implementing a merit scholarship.

President Bill Perry said forming a merit scholarship is part of Eastern’s new strategy for packaging financial aid to increase the number of students enrolling.

“Although the scholarship was recommended, it is not a new idea,” Perry said. “Part of (implementing the scholarship) is to meet our competing universities, and part of it is to respond to what we address in the Strategic Plan.”

Universities like Western Illinois University and Illinois State University offer automatic merit scholarships to students.

Perry said they drafted about 1,500 letters to prospective students eligible for the award.

Three Noel-Levitz consultants have made preliminary suggestions to the university based on three key areas.

The three consultants are David Trites with retention, Colleen Murphy with recruitment and Cliff Neel with enrollment management revenue services.

Jerry Donna, the director of the Financial Aid Office, said he and other members of the Eastern community spent several weeks compiling financial aid data from the last two years for the consultants to analyze.

“We created a huge file of past awards given to students to capture the detail of who we have admitted in the past, and Neel used it to look at what we need to do for the future,” Donna said. “The scholarship is a new direction in our award strategy, and it is a merit-based award and not a need-based award.”

Daniel Nadler, the vice president for student affairs and the liaison to the enrollment management revenue services consultant, said the university has implemented easier ways for students to locate scholarships, which included hiring scholarship coordinator Christine Edwards.

Edwards is responsible for cataloging all of the Eastern Scholarships, which are now organized in a searchable database.

“The beauty and the challenge of our scholarships is that they are decentralized so until recently, it was difficult to put your finger on how many scholarships are available, who is eligible and where they can be found,” Nadler said. “This is a way to put our scholarships front and center for current and prospective students along with parents.”

Students can search for scholarships based on major, year in school, county, activities and keywords.

“We will be working very closely with those involved in the admission and recruitment strategy trying to leverage the financial aid resources that we have so that we are most likely to get the kinds of students we need at the institution both in terms of quality and numbers,” Nadler said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].