Nobody wants the “drama llama,” but then, nobody’s too upset about it, either. And keeping cool to deal with challenges is why Cathryn introduced the 2-foot-tall plush toy when she arrived in Muskegon last winter.

“If you have the drama of the day, you get the llama,” she explains. “Everyone knows about it, even the students. Sometimes one will come to me with complaints, and I’ll say, ‘Do you need the llama?’”

There was a drama in progress when, after overseeing admissions, financial aid and lead processing at other schools for 16 years, Cathryn was hired in 2008 to bring stability to the Grand Rapids location.

“They’d had turnover at the director level, and they needed consistency,” she says. Enrollment was 109 when she arrived; when she left, it was over 200.

The secret? Fun.

“Everybody had a nickname, and we had potlucks all the time,” she recalls. “We had potlucks when we did something great. We even had one for Elvis’ birthday.”

When Roosevelt Park had a director leave after only three months, Cathryn filled in and recognized the campus faced similar challenges. Al Emick was ready to take over in Grand Rapids, so she suggested she move to Roosevelt Park.

Why give up a comfortable gig to face more uncertainty?

“I’m a big hockey fan,” she says, “and there’s this great quote by Wayne Gretzky: ‘You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’”

The first challenge was improving student services. Cathryn’s solution was moving the career services office moved closer to hers. “I needed to be part of that team,” she explains. “I couldn’t be that I would go in their office only when something was wrong. I’m in touch 24/7, talking about goals and keeping people up to date.”

Since the school started arranging job interviews for students, the graduate employment rate has risen dramatically.

When the standard is achieved, will there be a potluck?

“Oh, that will have to be more than a potluck,” Cathryn says. “That will have to be a party.”

Jeff is the guy behind the new face—or rather, Facebook—of Ross.

More and more students have gone from being merely comfortable with networking tools like Facebook to expecting social media to be an important way of communicating with the institution and, more importantly, Jeff says, other students.

“Not just potential students, but current students and alumni,” says Jeff, who started preparing for the planned July 19 Facebook launch in mid-May. “Facebook generates discussion. Someone posts, ‘I’m going to check out Ross today,’ and other people who have become fans see it and weigh in.”

Ross will have a page, as will each campus, making it easy for students at each location to connect with each other—and for perspective students to connect with current students and alumni.

Jeff’s background includes having taught middle school special education, but he also owns an Internet video production company. “We do fun stuff whenever we get the chance,” he says. He’s also volunteered to set up social media for businesses his church owns.

His plans for Ross include incorporating some of that fun stuff into the mix. The first event, he explains, will be a YouTube contest in which students submit homemade videos centered around the “Ross Is Me” campaign.

Ross’ web presence will also include separate blogs aimed at students and staff. The student-oriented blog, he says, will feature information about careers as well as entries by students and graduates. The staff blog will likely feature staff members’ stories.

Jeff says he’s concentrating on web design now. After the launch, he plans to let users generate content, though he’ll monitor the proceedings to make sure everything is appropriate.