Lauran Hundshamer and Dean Gething on Rebuilding Enrollment at St. Catherine University
Lauran Hundshamer, Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing at St. Catherine University, and Dean Gething, EVP of Online Enrollment Strategy at Carnegie, have worked together since 2022, when St. Kate’s first signed on with Carnegie. During that time, the partnership helped the Twin Cities university reverse a 10% enrollment decline and add another 20% on top of it, even as economic uncertainty and shifting financial aid rules squeeze colleges nationwide.
In this “Beyond the Brief” Conversation, Lauran and Dean discuss how St. Catherine moved from brand marketing to lead generation, why outsourcing graduate and adult recruitment paid off, and how a hundred-and-twenty-year-old women’s college is now chasing visibility in AI search results.
From Brand to Lead Generation
Q: How did this partnership start, and what problem were you solving?
Dean: We became familiar with St. Kate’s when they first started working with Carnegie. St. Kate’s became a client in the fall of 2022. We joined to help grow their online programs, and it quickly became clear that we had honest, open communication and a willingness to challenge each other and ask hard questions in both directions.
Lauran: When I came in, we were coming out of COVID and had experienced almost a 10% decline in enrollment since 2018. So, we changed our focus from brand to lead generation across our three colleges: the College for Women, the College for Adults, and our graduate programs. It’s been a trust-based partnership. We’ve gained back that 10% and added another 10% for a 21.1% increase in new students.
A Legacy Built Over a Century
Q: Lauran, St. Catherine has deep roots for you personally. What’s the university’s origin story?
Lauran: I have a very personal piece of history here. My grandmother graduated in 1935, my aunt in 1976, my sister in 1990. I didn’t go to St. Kate’s myself, which was a bit of a disappointment to my family, but now I’m here building forward. St. Kate’s started in 1905 with a nursing school before we officially became a university. As we’ve grown, we’ve solidified our health sciences and nursing programs, and our College for Women was just named the third-highest ranked college for women in the country by Newsweek, out of all colleges, not just women’s colleges.
Rebuilding the Funnel
Q: What changed operationally to turn that decline into growth?
Lauran: We outsourced our College for Adults and graduate recruitment to Carnegie, and Dean’s team helped me understand what their recommended approach would look like and where improvement would come from in the funnel. The same counselor now handles a warm lead all the way through enrollment instead of handing them off to multiple people, so we can be incredibly supportive throughout the process. Over 80% of students in our adult and graduate programs are only considering two or three schools by the time they reach out, so speed matters enormously. We hadn’t hit our graduate recruitment goal in four terms, and we hit it this summer and didn’t fall short this term for the first time.
Q: How has the economic climate and financial aid landscape affected enrollment?
Lauran: Our highest-cost graduate programs, above the six-figure threshold, have a deep applicant bench, so we haven’t seen much impact there. Our College for Adults is actually seeing more applications, which may reflect economic uncertainty, but we’re also converting more of them because of that seamless funnel.
AI, Retention, and What’s Next
Q: How is AI changing enrollment marketing and the student experience?
Dean: There’s a lot of thinking that AI will devalue the human element of enrollment, and I think it’s going to be anything but the case. Making sure there’s a human element ready when a student wants to disengage from the AI and make contact is critical. Brand is about experience now, and that shows up in the website, the messaging, the admissions process, and the classroom.
Lauran: We paused our SEO work this year to focus on AEO and GEO, making sure that when someone asks an LLM about St. Kate’s, we show up. Other universities aren’t doing this yet, so if we can be first to market, that’s a real competitive edge. We’re also seeing strong early results from connected TV advertising with true geo-targeting.
Q: Any strategies that surprised you once you tried them?
Lauran: We increased our travel reimbursement to $600 for prospective students visiting from far away after noticing a 50% conversion rate among those who used it. That’s also helping us diversify our student population as Minnesota’s own grant programs make in-state recruitment more complex.
Lauran Hundshamer is Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing at St. Catherine University, and Dean Gething is EVP of Online Enrollment Strategy at Carnegie. Thank you both for sharing how a multi-year partnership turned enrollment decline into steady growth. You can find both Lauran and Dean on LinkedIn.