Enrollment Planning Team

Minutes

December 19, 2005

Present: Mr. Andrew Hendrix, Dr. Ann Willbrand, Dr. Braden Hosch, Mr. Corey Feraldi, Mrs. Gail Ratchford, Mr. Glenn Shumpert, Mrs. Katya Terry, Mr. Marshall Davis, Mr. Randy Duckett, Mr. Randy Warrick, Ms. Stephanie Foote, Dr. Val Lumas, Mrs. Vivian Grice

Randy Duckett welcomed everyone at 3:04 p. m.

Programmatic Updates

• Randy Duckett informed the group that each Freshman Cohort would be tracked during their first year of attendance.  A student has been hired as a “student retention coordinator”. She maintains the list of freshmen in the cohort and keeps track of their registration status.  She follows procedures regarding the communication with students who:
  1. Withdraw during the first semester
  2. Do not participate in priority registration. 
     • Involves communicating with the students academic advisor
     • Emails and phone calls to the student
     • Alerting appropriate University staff if specific follow up is required
  3. Are placed on probation or suspension
  4. Had participated in priority registration but did not return in the 

      Spring.

• Marshall Davis explained the role his office plays in notifying students who took English 101 or 102 during the Fall semester and made less than a C.  He indicated that Dr. Tom Mack also receives a copy of the letters that are sent.  In addition his office notifies students who have a failing grades in a foreign language class, so the student can drop and re-enroll to take that class again.
• Vivian Grice reported that there were 203 students on the Probation/Suspension report that had run over the weekend.  Notices are going out tomorrow to these students.
• Stephaine Foote reported that her area would be sending out a flyer to these students who are being placed on probation informing them of a workshop being offered January 6, 2006.  The workshop is a pilot program now and is open to all students on probation.  They will address the issues to help identify the needs of the student.
• Glenn Shumpert in Financial Aid spoke on the Satisfactory Academic Progress. He informed the group that students and faculty often confuse the Academic probation and suspension policy with the Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic progress policies.  In fact there is a Financial Aid committee which considers appeals. And is very different from the better known SS&P committee.  Two different committees, two different appeals processes, and just because they may be given a second change to attend, that does not mean their aid will be available to them.   His office reviews the reports and sends out letters to inform the students that they will not be eligible to receive it.  Because of our decision to allow students to process their bill prior to the end of December, some of the students who have already processed the bills, will actually not be eligible for the aid after the fall semester grades are posted and will be required to return the money they had already spent for Spring semester.  Another significant issue is the fact that Financial Aid appeals can not be heard until after the 4^th and 5^th fee payment days, due to the workload in his office.  That is after the late registration period is over and most of the cases are not heard until after tuition was due.

Dr. Braden Hosch asked Glenn Shumpert about the difference in the SS & P appeals and the FA appeals and Glenn explained that the criteria is in deficient hours and not tied to the GPA like the SS & P.

Research Updates

• Dr. Braden Hosch distributed two handouts to the EPT.  One was on the High School Course (Executive Summary) prerequisites study findings.  Briefly it states that students that are granted exceptions to admission prerequisites are retained at lower rates and their grades are lower.  The second handout was on “Preliminary Report on Summer 2005 Enrollment Patterns” and it stated that most students taking summer classes are taking them near their summer address and choosing the least expensive avenue.  The summer enrollment is declining and Jodi Herrin will be preparing more detail data on this issue in the near future.

Action Team Reports

• Stephanie Foote reported that she had presented the Summer Transition Program to the MG and they had endorsed the proposal.  The name of the program is PACE and is an acronym for Preparing for Academic Excellence.  They are in the process of working on the marketing tools to get the information out and what the tuition will be.
• Glenn Shumpert stated that the Financial Aid and Scholarship Action Team hope to bring a proposal at the next EPT meeting.

Andrew Hendrix informed us that Spring applicants remain at about the same as last year.  However, fall applications show a slight increase over the previous fall.  He also informed the group that a large number of applications have been received and are in a holding pattern until after Spring registration  Presently students are experiencing a 2 ½ week response delay.  On the return of the break Admissions will be doing lots of follow-up for fall 2006.

Meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p. m.

Respectfully submitted,

Gail Ratchford