Turner Business

In this series, Turner Business is providing space for a series of Guest Essayists to provide their thoughts on the After Action Report townhall that was held on Friday, October 30, 2026, in the University Hall Auditorium. This townhall focused on the enrollment troubles that CSU has been experiencing over multiple consecutive semesters.      It was encouraging to see that the administration is carefully reviewing our retention and progression processes at CSU. We do have a number of systems that are outdated, overly complicated, or difficult for students to navigate. At times, faculty members find themselves personally guiding students through multiple, and sometimes conflicting, directions as they work to complete the steps necessary to begin classes. It was reassuring to see these concerns being acknowledged and addressed thoughtfully and thoroughly. It remains to be seen whether the proposed interventions will produce the desired results, but as a faculty member, I ...

In this series, Turner Business is providing space for a series of Guest Essayists to provide their thoughts on the After Action Report townhall that was held on Friday, October 30, 2026, in the University Hall Auditorium. This townhall focused on the enrollment troubles that CSU has been experiencing over multiple consecutive semesters.      To begin, I would like to give credit to the CSU administration for saying that the townhall was not meant to place blame on anyone. However, t here is a difference between blaming and accepting responsibility.  I don't hear the administration taking responsibility for the polies and procedures that they created and now oversee. If the problems substantially lie within the institutional processes, then a mea culpa from the administration would be nice. With regard to the plan for leveraging Element451 to solve the systems and processes problems, i t is shocking that the University System of Georgia apparently does not use ben...

Attendees of CSU's enrollment townhall meeting held last Friday heard from several speakers that the institution will soon begin using Element451 to address its worsening enrollment situation. According to Google AI, Element451 is an AI-native Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and student engagement platform built specifically for higher education. It helps colleges, universities, and technical schools manage the entire student journey — from first marketing inquiry and admissions to enrollment, student success, and workforce education.  Element451 u ses specialized AI agents ("Bolt") to automate high-volume tasks, answer student questions via chat, SMS, email, and voice, read applications, and guide prospects. Element451 also (1) consolidates data from disparate systems — such as Student Information Systems (SIS) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) — into a single database, (2) replaces multiple legacy tools (like email builders, landing page creators, and eve...

On Wednesday, Octo ber 28, 2026, Turner College economics professor Wen Shi took her Money and Banking students on an exciting educational field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Joining in on the experience were Turner College finance professor Brett Cotten , Turner College Academic Operations Coordinator  Jennifer Stone , and Turner College IT Support Specialist  Nandor Domonkos .  As one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta plays an important role in our nation's economy through assistance with monetary policy, banking supervision, economic research, and financial services. The visit provided students with a valuable opportunity to connect classroom concepts to real-world financial systems and gain a deeper understanding of how the Federal Reserve influences interest rates, inflation, and economic stability.  Experiences like these demonstrate the Turner College's commitment to experiential learning, giving stude...

In this series, Turner Business is providing space for a series of Guest Essayists to provide their thoughts on the After Action Report townhall that was held on Friday, October 30, 2026, in the University Hall Auditorium. This townhall focused on the enrollment troubles that CSU has been experiencing over multiple consecutive semesters.       According to publicly available resources, Georgia’s public high school graduation rate increased from 85.4% for the Class of 2024 to 87.2% for the Class of 2025. This represents an absolute increase of 1.8 percentage points, which is equivalent to a 2.1% relative increase in the graduation rate. Over the corresponding available college enrollment comparison, beginning freshman enrollment across the University System of Georgia (USG) increased from 54,051 in Fall 2024 to 56,020 in Fall 2025, an absolute gain of 1,969 freshmen, or 3.6%. Thus, incoming freshman enrollment grew somewhat faster than the state graduation rate, althoug...

The highly anticipated After-Action Report Townhall meeting took place this afternoon from 2:00pm until 4:00pm in the University Hall Auditorium and Turner Business was able to obtain a summary of the event from an attendee.  The townhall presentation began at 2:00pm with CSU President Stuart Rayfield welcoming attendees and introducing the stage party. Among that group were CSU Provost Dustin Anderson and CSU Chief Academic Strategy Officer Michael Röthlisberger , who is also a part of the Turner College's business administration faculty. Rayfield assured attendees that the neither the After Action Report nor the townhall meeting concerned assigning blame to an individual or group, and that attendees should not be concerned that this was the aim of report's authors. She then delved into the issue at hand, declining enrollments at CSU, by describing how summer and fall 2026 have been like a rollercoaster in the sense that in June it looked as though CSU's fall 2026 enrol...

CSU's Director of Alumni Engagement and CSU graduate Laurie Aiken recently took to LinkedIn to thank several Turner College connections for their contributions to the Chattahoochee Valley Young Professionals organization. In particular she thanked  Alexis Gray and Bailey Brado Brown for working to open the door for future networking relationships and programs between the Chattahoochee Valley Young Professionals and Columbus State University graduating seniors. Gray, a 2018 graduate of the Turner College's MSOL program, is the Assistant Director of Alumni and Student Engagement at CSU. Brown recently transitioned from Admissions Coordinator to Career Readiness Coordinator at CSU. She earned a B.A. in communication from Young Harris College in 2016, and an M.Ed. from CSU in 2023. Noting that exciting opportunities on the way, Aiken also expressed pride in CSU alumni and Chattahoochee Valley Young Professionals Board members Arianna Burden-Force , Gabby Castleberry, and Kevin Wo...