4 minute read
Upward Mobility
Five Minutes with MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee
Colleges and universities across the country experienced significant enrollment declines in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Tennessee is certainly no exception, as students and parents considered issues of safety, value, and the remarkable uncertainties created by COVID-19 and wondered if a gap year or other alternative to a four-year college experience might not make sense. Due to the exceptional work of our faculty and staff, MTSU appears to have weathered this storm. Tell me more about that.
The University reported the largest year-over-year gains in enrollment last fall among the state’s locally governed higher education institutions.
With a 1.7% overall increase, MTSU also remains the largest undergraduate institution among the locally governed institutions (LGIs), which include Austin Peay, East Tennessee State, the University of Memphis, Tennessee Tech, and Tennessee State.
Our official head count reported for Fall 2020 is 22,084, an increase of 369 students compared to numbers from Fall 2019. MTSU’s undergraduate enrollment of 19,192, while down 1.35% over last year, still places the University tops among the LGIs. Also, in converting head count into full-time equivalencies, MTSU’s 17,905 number was up just shy of 1%. MTSU was the only LGI to show increases in both head count and full-time equivalencies.
The University’s surge was fueled by an almost 28% growth in our College of Graduate Studies and by record retention efforts of currently enrolled undergraduates by our faculty and advisors. New graduate enrollment at MTSU outperformed our LGI peers, jumping by 631 this year to 2,982 total. Student success efforts led by deans and academic advisors helped MTSU retain 350 more students over last year, a 2.56% increase.
Our growth during these challenging times was not an accident—it came from deliberate, focused, and relentless work by our faculty and staff during a global crisis.
We welcomed new and returning students to campus for Fall 2020 with a virtual Convocation ceremony.
How is MTSU working to build on this achievement as the pandemic has continued?
MTSU’s admissions and recruitment staff have a whole new set of challenges this year, as our partners in the high schools and community colleges either moved to online learning or dramatically reduced the accessibility of their schools to outside recruiters. In normal times, our recruiters would have been visiting schools, hosting information sessions, and staffing tables at college fairs.
We developed a new program focusing on MTSU’s 70 highest-priority feeder schools, conducted remotely. We also created a series of virtual get-to-know-us sessions geared to students in many of the cities our True Blue Tour visited in past years. We created signature, new True Blue Recruitment boxes to get information and promotional materials into the hands of our high school recruiting partners—who, in turn, helped share those with students. We also offered our in-person campus tours a little differently this year, hosting a smaller number of guests.
And we created a new, one-year-only scholarship plan called Bridging the Gap to draw back any student who was offered one of our guaranteed scholarships for Fall 2020 but decided to take a gap semester or year. Those students are able to roll over their initial awards to this spring or fall.
Many classes in the Fall 2020 semester were hybrid in nature, meaning students met both on campus in classrooms and remotely online. How did you prepare for this new method of curriculum delivery in a way that ensured MTSU continued to deliver a high-quality education?
MTSU recently invested $3.5 million in video/audio upgrades to our classrooms so that all class meetings can be captured electronically. The University devoted another $3.4 million toward faculty laptops, online exam proctoring, and other software and equipment needs.
This technology enables faculty to make sure that all students, including those unable to come to class because of the virus or quarantining, continue to receive the same highquality education they enjoy during normal times. Much of this money comes from the federal CARES Act, but the University put in considerable dollars as well. We are determined to persevere in our educational mission.
MTSU continues to receive accolades for its impact. Please highlight some of the good news recently about the University.
News of MTSU’s growth comes as the campus celebrates a trio of national rankings:
• U.S. News and World Report ranked MTSU as the top public school in Tennessee (and No. 80 nationally) in social mobility for its track record of success in helping “economically disadvantaged students” graduate.
• For the second consecutive year, MTSU was the only LGI included in The Princeton Review’s national Best Colleges list, an honor only afforded to 13% of the nation’s higher education entities.
• MTSU was the state’s top public university ranked by Forbes among America’s Best In-State Employers.
