Bob Burk is a consummate salesman. He has to be because he’s not just selling vacuum cleaners or life insurance, but something larger than 700 acres and with thousands of employees — NIU itself.

Burk, the director of NIU’s admissions office, has sold students on NIU since 1995.

“My favorite part of my job is working with students,” he said. “It’s good that every once in a while that I can get out and actually talk to some visiting families coming in here. That’s what it’s really all about: talking to students and helping them in making their decision about coming to Northern or wherever is best for them.”

The 53-year-old Burk sells NIU using six factors: the comprehensive nature of the school, quality of the education, the location, the residential atmosphere at the college, cost and the fact that incoming students can enroll at NIU without choosing a major or college.

“A lot of this job is being a good salesman and not just a good salesman to the outside public,” he said. “You have to be a good salesman to your internal staff too.”

That commitment has been put to the test with recent budget difficulties.

“Sometimes when dealing with budgets, especially with the situations that we have right now, you have to make very tough decisions when it comes to formulating what the best approach is for the resources that we have,” he said.

Part of that tough decision is talk of increasing standards for enrollment.

“What our [NIU President Peters] has been saying is pretty true,” he said. “We need to stabilize our enrollment so that our enrollment matches the resources we have. I think right now with about 18,000 undergraduate students, that’s just about the right size. But we need to look very, very closely at this to see if we want to go much larger than this without additional resources from the state of Illinois. We want to make sure we remain accessible to students from the northern Illinois region, and that we continue to serve our students who are already here.”

Kristin Rinehart, associate director in the admissions offices, said Burk has done a great job of running the admissions department.

“He’s done an excellent job of developing a very aggressive recruitment system at Northern,” she said. “Our recruiting is far more marketing-based because of Bob’s efforts. He also has done a terrific job of establishing very positive relationships with school counselors who have an important impact on our success.”

Despite current budget difficulties, Burk sees NIU expanding its size and population in the years to come.

“If we choose and if the resources are there over the next 10 or 20 years, we can grow into a school of over 30-40,000 people,” he said.

In his spare time, Burk enjoys relaxing with his wife of 20 years, Roberta. He is also an avid sports fan, particularly of the NIU Huskies and the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Hopefully, I will be on a beach in Tahiti 20 years from now, but I have no immediate plans to do anything but work hard here at Northern,” he said. “I enjoy what I do, and I think it’s for a purpose. I want to continue to be a part of this place.” Star Poll