4,000 students in 4 years
Reaching 4,000 students in four years is in the BAG for Joe Peterson, Utah State University Eastern’s chancellor. At least that is what he hopes to achieve with the enrollment management program he outlined to faculty and staff in an all-campus meeting Oct. 18.
What is the BAG: it is the Big Audacious Goal of increasing student enrollment that Peterson and administrators hope to achieve by fall semester 2017.
Reaching 4,000 students in four years is in the BAG for Joe Peterson, Utah State University Eastern’s chancellor. At least that is what he hopes to achieve with the enrollment management program he outlined to faculty and staff in an all-campus meeting Oct. 18.
What is the BAG: it is the Big Audacious Goal of increasing student enrollment that Peterson and administrators hope to achieve by fall semester 2017.
“My challenge is that each of you own the challenge to increase USU Eastern’s enrollment. We have to devote creativity to achieve it,” he explained using the analogy of a pyramid. The culture of USU Eastern represents the pyramid with all its experiences on the bottom. These experiences lead to beliefs, actions and results.
It costs $15,000 to educate each of the 1,285 students here on this campus whereas on the Logan campus, the cost is $11,381 to educate each of its students. Included in those numbers are the expensive doctorate programs at the university.
“There’s a Japanese proverb that says the nail that sticks out gets hammered,” he said. We have to stop sticking out as the ratio of faculty to student efficiency measures 13.3 student to each faculty member. Salt Lake Community Colleges faculty to student efficiency measures 24:1.
“The belief is that USU Eastern is severely under resourced and has no money. Well, this is not the belief in the Utah System of Higher Education who think we have plenty of money. We are spending our budgets on inefficiency.
“We have cut the dance, ceramics, electronics programs because this college cannot sustain rich offerings in programs because our enrollment does not sustain these offerings.
“Have you heard that the best students go elsewhere or it is up to the recruiters to recruit …We all need to say, students should choose USU Eastern because…, he added.
We have to implement faster, more motion on enrollment issues. We have to show full ownership of this problem. No one is exempt. We need a different set of beliefs, live above the line, solve our fundamental problems and most importantly grow our enrollment. We must change the culture of all and change the game.
“There is an accountability to this community that we need to grow. We need them and they need us. We have to solve efficiency and enrollment at the same time,” Peterson said.
Finally, the announcement by the LDS Church lowering the mission age to 18 and 19 years of age rocked director of enrollment services, Greg Dart’s world. Peterson said, “We will deal with students who are more independent after serving a mission.”
