Institutional Development Committee

Minutes for August 10, 2004

Present: T. Brown, B. Butler, D. Pierce, I. Rossell.

Guests: Archer Gravely, Steve Honeycutt, Jeff Konz, Mark Padilla, Scot Schaeffer, Bill Spellman.

IDC met in the Phillips Hall Conference Room from 1:00 – 3:00 PM.

Today’s meeting was called at the request of Dr. Padilla, for the purpose of addressing the biennial enrollment projections (for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 academic years) which must be submitted to OP in early September. In addition to IDC members, Dr. Rossell asked the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and representatives of the Administration to attend the meeting.

Dr. Gravely reviewed an enrollment planning document summarizing UNCA enrollment trends as well as projections for high school graduates in North Carolina. The UNCA Guiding Concepts, which were approved by the UNCA Board of Trustees and the Faculty Senate in the early 1990’s, specify that UNCA will not exceed a fall headcount of 3500 students. Our current estimated fall headcount for 2004 is 3459 students. UNCA has increased in popularity to the point that if we continue to accept new students at the rate that we have for the last couple of years, and if student retention increases, we will exceed the 3500 headcount cap next year. If we remain within this enrollment cap, we will forfeit the budget increase that accompanies additional students (our budget increases $200K for every 20 additional students). In addition, the projected number of high school graduates in North Carolina will increase tremendously over the next 10+ years, and OP would like to see 31-33% of these graduates enrolled within the UNC system. Although there are “high growth” institutions that will be able to absorb some of this growth, there could be pressure on UNCA in the future to accommodate some of these graduates, as well.

Questions that arose included: How was the enrollment cap of 3500 headcount decided on, in the early 1990’s? What is the maximum number of students that UNCA could adequately handle and still retain small class size, given the number of existing classrooms? How would the quality of the student body change if we admitted more students? How might increasing student retention affect our overall size? It was agreed that these issues, as well as many more, need to be addressed in a campus-wide discussion this fall. It is likely that the Chancellor will ask UPC to help guide this campus discussion.

Dr. Rossell asked Dr. Padilla if he was looking for support from IDC to increase the enrollment cap beyond a fall headcount of 3500 students. Dr. Padilla said that he was, at least until the campus has an opportunity to decide what size UNCA should be. At the present time, enrollment growth money is our only source of new faculty positions. One suggestion was to consider redefining the enrollment cap as 3500 annual FTE (in 2004, there will be 3092 estimated annual FTE). Dr. Rossell said that she would not like to alter enrollment cap that much, before the rest of the campus had an opportunity to participate in the discussion. After some discussion, IDC members suggested temporarily redefining the fall headcount cap to exclude graduate students and non-degree seeking students, with the rationale that those students do not make the same demands on university resources that degree-seeking undergraduates do. In Fall 2004, there will be an estimated 250 non-degree and graduate students on campus. Excluding these students from the enrollment headcount decreases the fall headcount from 3459 to 3209.

Dr. Brown made a motion (seconded by Dr. Pierce) to suspend the inclusion of non-degree and graduate students from the fall headcount for the next two years. This will allow the Chancellor to submit a biennial enrollment projection model to OP by the early September 2004 deadline that addresses the anticipated growth in new and retained students. This motion is made with three provisions: (1) That the enrollment projections submitted do not establish University policy as to UNCA's size and rate of growth; (2) that they can be subject to revision if necessary; and (3) that the Faculty Senate will address the issue of student enrollment, university size, and growth rate during the Fall of 2004. IDC members voted electronically on this motion, and it passed unanimously.

All attendees at the meeting agreed that a campus-wide discussion of university size and growth needs to begin immediately.