NNU shifts to enrollment-driven marketing
Higher‑ed strategist Bart Caylor shared that Northwest Nazarene University moved from a brand-awareness focus to an enrollment-driven marketing model by aligning strategy, structure and accountability. The post frames the change as a shift from raising visibility to directly aligning resources with enrollment outcomes. (x.com)
Northwest Nazarene University has recast marketing as an enrollment office function after a stretch of declining student counts, tying campaigns more directly to recruitment results. (caylor-solutions.com) Bart Caylor wrote on March 12, 2026 that Northwest Nazarene had spent on billboards, wrapped buses, airport placements and mall signage before concluding that visibility alone was not lifting enrollment. He said the university moved marketing under enrollment after an external assessment. (caylor-solutions.com) Caylor’s account centers on Dr. Stacey Berggren, who is now listed by Northwest Nazarene as vice president for enrollment management. Her university biography says she previously served as vice president for enrollment and marketing and, before that, registrar, admissions counselor and director of undergraduate admissions. (nnu.edu) The backdrop is a smaller student body. Idaho Education News reported Northwest Nazarene’s fall enrollment fell to 1,778 from 1,906, a drop of nearly 7%, and said the university’s numbers had been sliding since 2019. (idahoednews.org) More recent third-party enrollment trackers put Northwest Nazarene at 1,635 students in the 2024-25 academic year, including 1,043 undergraduates and 592 graduate students. Northwest Nazarene’s own enrollment-data page confirms the university publishes student-count disclosures, though the searchable page did not surface the figures in the crawl. (collegetuitioncompare.com) (nnu.edu) What changed was not just messaging but reporting lines. Caylor said marketing had sat under advancement, where it was split among fundraising, reputation work and storytelling, before being reassigned to enrollment with direct responsibility for growth. (caylor-solutions.com) Northwest Nazarene’s current academic-services listings show an enrollment division with admissions, enrollment technologies, admissions operations, and retention and persistence under Berggren. That structure matches Caylor’s description of a tighter link between marketing, recruiting operations and student follow-through. (catalog.nnu.edu) The university is a private Christian institution in Nampa, Idaho, founded in 1913 and affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene. Its mission statement says the school is centered in Jesus Christ and focused on “the transformation of the whole person,” a pitch that still has to compete in a shrinking and crowded higher-education market. (nnu.edu) Caylor framed the lesson as a budget and accountability shift: if enrollment growth is the goal, he wrote, strategy, staffing and spending have to be organized around that outcome. For Northwest Nazarene, the test is no longer how widely the brand is seen, but whether those efforts produce students who apply, enroll and stay. (caylor-solutions.com)
