Jim Rohde - Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admission
What got you into admissions?
I was an intern in the admissions office where I went to school for four years. I met with my college admissions counselor when I was in high school and I got to know him pretty well while I was an intern. I had such a great experience working with him and the admissions office at college. I always liked the world of admissions and meeting with students and talking to them about what schools have to offer them.
What did you do after college?
I graduated college and went into the military. I was a field artillery officer in the Army. I’m currently a captain in the National Guard.
Jim served 10 months in Iraq. Then he was stationed at Fort Riley in Manhattan, KS.
After I got out of the military, I was very fortunate. I was offered the DePaul position very soon after I got out of the Army. It was really a blessing that I was able to find work that quickly.
What do you like about admissions?
One guy that I worked for said in his job description, “I change lives.” And then another guy would often say, “We’re the office of admissions, not denials.” And I love that kind of stuff. I love being able to bring a student into this next chapter of their lives. This is four years that their always going to remember. This is where people get their careers going, and where maybe they are going to meet their wives or husbands. And I think that it’s such an important and transformative four years of people’s lives.
Tell me about your work with veterans.
I really enjoy working with all transfer students, but I also focus on veterans. I do veterans initiatives. I reach out to veteran coordinators. I’m also very involved in an Employee Resource Group for DePaul faculty and staff who are veterans. I work with veteran students. We’ve got 500 veterans at this school, and they don’t always understand the access to education that DePaul offers them.
Why do you like working for DePaul?
I really believe in DePaul and the mission, and the institution’s values, and the Vincentian values that we have. I love describing the experience of an urban education, the experience of an education in the heart of a big city. I’m not sure people understand how interconnected the school is with the city, how much we rely on the city for internships and all kinds of different resources.
The Vincentian values of this university are very important to me. One of the values is the way of the community, and that’s something I see as most important. We’re all in this together. I like to think that me and my colleagues are working for the betterment of that student and for this institution and the mission. It’s not just about churning out diplomas and getting students out the door. The education is more than that. And the diploma has more behind it than just classes and notes and tests. It’s got service behind it. It’s got experiential learning and community service behind it.
The mission also has to do with each student experiencing DePaul in their own way. We’ve got about 25,000 different students, and I think that there are about 25,000 different experiences here.