I am pleased to announce that Carmen A. Brown, a 30-year enrollment management veteran, will join Cleveland State this summer as our new vice president for enrollment services. Carmen joins us from the University of New Mexico, where she demonstrated outstanding leadership and a true commitment to promoting student success.

With experience at two urban universities, Carmen shares our conviction that every student is entitled to an exceptional college experience. She has demonstrated this philosophy repeatedly throughout her long and distinguished career.

In this role, Carmen will serve as the University's chief administrator, responsible for student recruitment, retention and graduation. She will work to continue CSU's trend of improving the academic competitiveness of incoming freshmen and promote programs related to career transition. Carmen will also play a key role in growing the partnerships that CSU has established with other area colleges to ensure smooth transferability and high academic standards.

And, she will lead our very important campaign to improve student retention and increase the graduation rate at CSU. As most of you know, this is a critical area for Cleveland State, and Carmen's expertise will help make a substantial difference.

Since 2008, Carmen has served as vice president for enrollment management at the University of New Mexico. There, she developed a strategic and tactical plan using state-of-the-art technology and industry best practices to streamline the enrollment and admissions processes.

Prior to that, she was assistant vice president for enrollment management at Florida International University, where she received the Presidential Award for Achievement and the Gabor Exemplary Employee Award. She previously served as director of admissions for 27 years at FIU, where she also earned her bachelor's and master's degrees.

I also want to extend my gratitude to Corinne Webb, our interim vice president, who has been squarely focused on advancing many of the University's important objectives, including retention and graduation. She has done an outstanding job in developing new systems in admissions, financial aid, registrars and career services and has focused the entire student services team on quality improvement aimed at helping our students achieve the goal of graduation.

Please join me in welcoming Carmen to the CSU community this July.