If you’ve ever had anything to do with Open Day, you’ll know what a mammoth effort it is to organise. The Future Students team took a brief pause from Open Day 2021 preparation to share a bit about how it all comes together.

Who are you?
Maria Kirkpatrick-Jones – Director, Undergraduate Future Students
Leisa Griffin – Project Coordinator, Undergraduate Future Students

What does your team do?
Future Students is responsible for achieving domestic student enrolment targets at Macquarie University. We run recruitment awareness activities and events throughout the year, visit schools, and participate in career markets and expos.

We are responsible for Open Day – the largest and most important domestic recruitment event of the year. This year’s Open Day is on Saturday 14 August 10am – 4pm. It will be an on-campus and online event. We’re expecting over 8,000 people to attend.

How does your work contribute to the University’s mission?
The Future Students team contributes to Strategic Priority 3 in Our University: A Framing of Futures – Aligning the nature and size of the University of the future.

We do this by delivering domestic undergraduate and postgraduate enrolment targets set by the University by engaging throughout the year with prospective students and their influencers. The largest engagement activity is Open Day, which is a major driver of influence for high school students, their parents, non-school leavers who want to study at university, and prospective postgraduate students.

We work very closely with Group Marketing and see Open Day as an opportunity to bring the brand alive. This year’s event will ladder up to the You^(us) brand campaign (you may have seen it out and about or online) in its messaging and we’re encouraging everyone involved in Open Day to be consistent with this.

Who do you most frequently work with?
We work with many stakeholders across the university (and externally) throughout the year. For Open Day, this is an “all of university event”, where we all pull together to showcase all that Macquarie has to offer – from the sprawling park-like campus with fantastic facilities, to high calibre academics and passionate students with fantastic graduate outcomes. We could not deliver such a large-scale event without the support of academics, professional staff in Faculties, Group Marketing, Admissions, Student Success Team, Student Wellbeing, Accommodation, Property, Student Groups, Macquarie International, Alumni, Student Administration, Library, Campus Life, and, of course, our Student Ambassadors.

What is a recent achievement that you’re proud of?
We’re very proud of our quick pivot to an online Open Day in 2020 due to COVID-19 and bringing all our stakeholders together on the journey with us as we reinvented the Open Day concept in the new virtual world.

We pre-produced over 100 videos and live-streamed content from 14 studios – covering each area of study and general information about Macquarie.

Our attendance targets were achieved and the feedback from those who attended was very positive.

This year, we are taking the learnings from last year’s event as we deliver a hybrid experience, on campus and online. We’re so glad to have an on-campus element for us to showcase the amazing new developments and engage face-to-face with our prospective students.

What’s planned for the future – anything exciting on the horizon?
Open Day is hugely exciting, and all the online content will be available on our Open Day web platform for a month after the actual event on 14 August.

We have a full schedule of events throughout the year – on campus and off campus, and in any given week we are visiting schools and taking part in career expos and markets.

Another huge event for us is Explore Your Options in December, when prospective students are seriously considering their university choices around ATAR release time.

How can staff contact you or find out more?
The Open Day website has all the details for this year’s event. Register to attend so that you receive all the important information.

Email the team if you’d like to learn more.