Bill Eilola steps up to the plate for LSSU Admissions
-Kenny Casperson

A new face this year in LSSUs Administration building is Bill Eilola, the new Vice President for Enrollment Services for the school. Eilola was born in the U.P., in Hancock, before starting his work in higher education at Walsh College in the Continuing Education program. After that, he worked at Grand Valley State for twelve years as the Director of Admissions before leaving public education to work at Ford Motor Company, where he coordinated programs to bring university engineering programs on site for company employees. He wanted to go back to the university campus, however, so he went to work at Gannon University, a private university in Pennsylvania, before moving back to the U.P., and to LSSU, this summer. I wanted to come here for a variety of reasons, says Eilola, mostly I wanted to come back home to northern Michigan, to the quality of life we have here. Also, having worked in state universities most of my life, I saw a lot of potential here at LSSU. Besides that, this is a great place to raise a family, I have a wife and three sons. Among the things Eilola wishes to accomplish in his first few years here, he says he wants to do a lot of work in the recruitment and retention areas, bringing new students in and making sure that the needs of current students are met, keeping a full calendar of activities available across the campus. Of course my first and immediate goal is to increase the number of students coming in, both freshmen and transfer students, and in order to do that we have to devise a new recruitment plan, take steps to make LSSU more visible and up to date, especially in cyberspace. Were increasing the number of prospective students we communicate with, especially over the internet, and were also expanding our recruitment base geologically, to Wisconsin and northern Illinois as well as our traditional base here in Michigan and in Ontario. As far as goals for this year alone, Eilola had one that he wanted to get done right away; Im really trying to get out and get to know the people here, the students, and our outstanding faculty, learning about all the programs we have available here. I want to get to know our faculty especially right now, though, they really are one of the strongest aspects of this university. Eilola also wanted everyone to know that the door to his office on the second floor of the Administration Building is always open  hes always happy to meet new people. 
