From Homegrown Pride to a Tipping Point

For more than 30 years, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) ran admissions on a homegrown database. It wasn’t just any system—it was built and maintained by Mark Fetherston, now Vice President for Enrollment Management.

But in the past few years, things shifted. Student expectations were rising. The complexity of financial aid workflows, compliance tasks, and digital engagement was accelerating. And Mark’s role had grown beyond IT tinkering. “It was very clear there was a lot changing that one person could not keep up with,” he said.

A brief experiment with Slate confirmed it: MIAD needed something else. “I hear people rave about it,” Mark said, “but for us, it was clunky. We didn’t have the technical staff to make it sing.” After three months, they walked away.

Choosing a Platform Built for People

The turning point came when MIAD’s Director of Admissions suggested Element451. Mark was skeptical until he saw how it worked.

“What struck me was that it was designed for people, as opposed to just programmers. You could drag, drop, and build without needing a degree in computer science,” he said.

That mattered because MIAD’s admissions team was small—just eight people. And when Element451 onboarding began, two were out on maternity leave, shrinking the team by 25%.

The platform’s ease of use, integrated communications, and flexibility sealed the deal. Mark even solved one of his biggest worries—managing art student portfolios—by replacing a costly SlideRoom license with a workflow they built directly inside Element451.

But what intrigued him most wasn’t the CRM functions. It was the potential of Bolt Agents—AI teammates who could take on repetitive outreach and free his staff for higher-touch work.

The First Jobs: Letting Agents Prove Themselves

MIAD didn’t dive headfirst into agentic AI. Instead, Mark’s team picked clear, mechanical jobs where success was easy to measure.

The first? Getting deposited students to submit their final high school transcripts.

“We just said: let’s have the agents contact students who don’t have an official transcript, and see what happens,” Mark explained.

The second was financial aid paperwork—nudging students to sign their award agreements or finish FAFSA.

The third was more experimental: event outreach. MIAD does its best recruiting not in guidance offices but in high school art rooms. Mark’s team built an agent that automatically found every student from a target school and sent tailored invitations: We’ll be in your art department, second hour. Talk to your teacher if you can join.

That meant writing prompts carefully so the agent wouldn’t confuse an in-school visit with an on-campus event. But once tuned, it worked—and gave MIAD a scalable way to drive attendance.

The ROI: More Effective Than People

The results surprised even Mark.

Instead of staff chasing paperwork, agents handled the reminders. Instead of counselors juggling email lists, agents sent the invites. Students responded faster, and compliance rates climbed.

The efficiency gain was undeniable:

• Staff time saved: hours of manual outreach offloaded to agents.
• Higher completion rates: more transcripts and aid forms turned in on time.
• Cost avoided: eliminating SlideRoom’s licensing fees.

And while MIAD hasn’t published hard percentages, industry benchmarks back up what they experienced. Schools using AI agents see an 8.5% lift in enrollment without adding staff, and proactive nudges drive a 21% reduction in student melt.

Lessons Learned from a Lean Rollout

Implementing a new system with a lean team isn’t easy. Mark points out that timing matters.
“We launched when two of our top people were on maternity leave. That made things harder. If I could do it again, I’d give us a little more time before go-live.”

Still, he sees the transition as a success. The key was starting small, choosing repetitive task first, and then layering on more complex jobs.

“Now, having all our communications in one place—emails, texts, even calls—has been incredibly positive. We know who said what to whom, and what happened next. That’s something we just didn’t have before.”

The Road Ahead: From Admissions to Student Success

Now in their second year, MIAD is pushing forward.

• Mark is working on a job that will automatically create student email accounts when they deposit—a process that used to require clunky imports.
• Counselors are being trained to build their own jobs, so AI becomes part of daily admissions practice, not just a back-office function.
• And Mark is watching the potential of AI in student success outreach. At a conference, he saw a demo where agents reached out to students struggling in a class. “Students were more honest with the agents than with a person. That’s powerful,” he said.

For Mark, the vision is clear: agents as teammates, extending what a small staff can accomplish.

Why It Matters

MIAD’s story isn’t just about switching systems. It’s about proving that a lean admissions team can scale with the right kind of partner.

Legacy CRMs may log data, but Element451’s AI Agents acts on it—sending nudges, managing compliance, inviting students to events, and freeing staff from repetitive work.

By starting with Bolt Agents, MIAD unlocked:

• Scalable outreach without new hires
• More effective student follow-up
• Lower tech stack costs
• A future-ready foundation for student success

For Mark, it’s simple: “We’re in a really good place now. And the agents are only going to grow with us.”