Enrollment Management Plan: 2013 Update University of Texas Permian Basin October, W. David Watts President

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1 Enrollment Management Plan: 2013 Update University of Texas Permian Basin October, 2013 W. David Watts President William R. Fannin Provost and Vice President Teresa Sewell Enrollment Management Official Dale Cassidy Vice President, Financial/Business Affairs Teresa Sewell Senior Associate Vice President for Student Services William Harlow Dean of Undergraduate Success Travis Woodward Director of Outreach/Marketing Original Plan Submitted August 1, 2012 Updated October, P a g e

2 University of Texas System This report updates, but does not replace the UT Permian Basin Enrollment Management Plan originally submitted in the Academic year Report Instructions: At its core, the Enrollment Management plan should answer the following four questions 1) Who are the students your institution plans to recruit, enroll, and retain through advising and student success initiatives? (2) What are the costs associated with your plan? (3) How will you derive or allocate resources to pay for your plan? And (4) How will you work to ensure that your students graduate and are academically successful and ultimately graduate? This template represents the minimum amount of information required to complete the plan and is meant as a guide to help your campus consider the types of data and information needed to construct a successful and thorough plan. After completing Table 1: University Goals found at the end of this document, please also attach any documents or charts/tables that support your enrollment strategies, analysis, or key assumptions. Data should include peer group analyses, benchmarking data, trend analysis, and any other relevant tools or models. Please also be meticulous in ensuring that the data referenced and strategies used tie together cohesively among these plans and that campus administration are aware of each document and the significance of the proposed goals and analysis within each plan. Consistency, cohesion, and sustainability are key. I. Vision, Mission, and Goals Please discuss the significance of the vision, mission, and goals or your institution, outlining key milestones for success in the near future. Please respond to all questions in the context of the goals and targets you have identified as an institution. Please ensure that enrollment management and student success goals are compatible. (See section 10 to address when these goals might conflict and ways to mitigate those issues). UTPB, according to its mission, is to serve as an intellectual resource for Texas and the region. It is hoped that UTPB will increase opportunities for West Texas and others across the state to access the education needed to be productive professionals in high demand fields. It is hoped that local residents can do this without having to leave the Permian Basin Region and that Texans will find UTPB an attractive university, both on site and virtually. UTPB has a goal of serving students from across Texas in a supportive learning environment leading to student success, retention and graduation. Following graduation, UTPB seeks to enable successful career paths and post-graduation life for its students. UTPB seeks to use its experience in providing quality distance education to students throughout Texas as well. 2 P a g e

3 Goal One: UTPB seeks to expand its student body both in traditional student numbers and in distance learners from a total headcount of 3831 in 2012 to 8,400 by Goal Two: UTPB seeks to become a science and engineering center for the energy industry in the West Texas Region between I 35 and El Paso by continued growth in engineering programs, by expanding the student base from 512 today to 1700 by Goal Three: UTPB seeks to expand its service to the health care industry by developing and expanding its plans for a nursing program to serve 370 students by Goal Four: UTPB seeks to expand its service to Texas by providing an array of online degrees and course offerings, resulting in increasing degrees, retention, and graduation rates. Growth is critical to UTPB s institutional health. UTPB currently does not garner sufficient support from the Texas formula method of funding higher education combined with tuition to cover its fixed costs. Special item funding from state appropriations, has sustained UTPB in the past; however, these enrollment management goals are needed to ensure that UTPB can operate independently of special item funding from the legislature, in order to sustain the viability of the institution. To address these goals, UTPB must embark on a series of activities designed to increase the number of students who are recruited and who persist until graduation. Often local students enroll sporadically, based on the economy and available employment in the energy industry. Therefore, it is critical that UTPB expand its student base to include more students from across Texas to avoid drawing only on the limited population of the Permian Basin with enrollment trends mirroring the rise and fall of the oil industry. In order to achieve these ambitious goals, UTPB has identified five key groups of students to target for growing its enrollment. Resources and programming are carefully planned to target each of these groups. The five key groups include the following: A. New freshmen from across Texas, including strengthening the number of regional students. B. Transfer students from the Permian Basin and throughout Texas C. Graduate Students D. Online students from across Texas. E. Non-Traditional Students, including veterans, non-traditional age students, part time students, etc. II. Goal Progress Status If relevant, please address the current status of progress made toward the goals outlined in section I as well as key institutional participants who have been involved in working toward your goals. 3 P a g e

4 Goal One: UTPB has increased its recruiting efforts to high schools and to community colleges over the past five years. Additionally, new efforts with Academic Partnerships are expected to result in the recruiting of additional students. UTPB is one of three partners in the Finish at UT program, which is generating new students as well. If UTPB is to recruit sufficient freshmen students, additional student housing is a must. Area apartments are at 99% capacity and UTPB s housing has a long waiting list. New housing for fall 2012 is being completed for a total of 96 new beds with an additional 99 beds planned for fall of Along with this growth in housing, it is planned that UTPB will start learning communities in housing. New majors in engineering and a highly anticipated future major in nursing are promising for recruiting new students. Another new program with great potential is the $10,000 Texas Science Scholar degree that was designed to fill seats in smaller classes, while giving high achieving students a four year degree in four years at a cost of $10,000. Retention efforts have increased with a newly designed, unified effort to begin in the fall of 2012 through an effort led by the Provost s Office. The new plan will include learning communities with a remodeled area in Student Housing, faculty mentoring, a one stop shop student success center, student mentoring and a streamlining of all academic tutorials across the university. Other activities in collaboration with area high schools, such as preparing to partner in early college high schools, implementing the college success program, Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) have enhanced efforts to recruit within the region. Transfer advisors and recruiters serve community college students who plan to attend UTPB and a transfer scholarship program has been developed, which helps attract and pay tuition for transfer students Update: Dual Enrollment Students, a major non-traditional ages group, grew by 112%. Students other than Dual Enrollment attending online classes grew by 113%. Graduate Students grew by 28%. Students taking classes on campus remained almost perfectly flat. Engineering majors grew by 28%. Nursing opened with 123 Nursing and Pre-Nursing Students. The one core target group that did not grow was first-time freshman students. This group decreased by 12%. UTPB has raised admission standards three times over the past five years with 2013 being the last planned increase. The drop in freshman admissions in 2013 is consistent with the drop in freshmen admitted for the last two increases. For the two s following an increase in admission requirements, UTPB has had Freshman enrollment increases of 6% percent and 5% percent. UTPB is redoubling it efforts to expand its freshman recruiting. Over the summer UTPB revised its scholarship program, making more attractive packages for academically competitive Freshmen. Key to the plan is moving scholarship awards to March and April so that awards can more successfully affect student choices by the academically talented student. UTPB s culture of supporting commuter students supported continued the practice of awarding scholarships just before semester, substantially past the deadline for student decision. Current scholarship funds are being redirected to offer competitive packages to student applicants in a timely 4 P a g e

5 manner. New funds to support scholarships have been identified: an estate settlement will produce approximately $1.9 million for a scholarship endowment.. The Enrollment Management group is working with the new scholarship programs to revise its recruiting efforts to enroll 445 freshman students in fall 2014 an increase of over 17 percent, with increased numbers from Ector county, Midland County, outside the Permian Basin, and in the top 25% of their high school graduating class. Student Housing added 96 beds in 2012 and 99 in 2013 with an additional 198 beds to be completed by early summer On campus housing is critical to growth given a hyper-inflated rental market in the Midland-Odessa in the current oil boom. Additionally, UTPB is seeking approval to construct a 300 bed housing and dining facility. Living learning communities have been a challenge, but efforts will continue to develop one or more in the near future. A plan to start football is currently awaiting review by the Board of Regents. Football and the associated activities, such as band, cheer leaders, and dance, are critical element in UTPB s efforts to attract traditional aged students from all of Texas. UTPB is the only public university west of I-35 without football. The newly formed Success Center has outgrown the space in which it currently resides and there are discussions regarding a new location. The Success Center trains all tutors, mentors, and supplemental instructors in AVID methods to ensure they have consistent knowledge and training for assisting their fellow students. In 2012, it was determined that enrolling first time freshmen in an AVID freshman seminar combined with a small learning community led to significantly improved to Spring retention rates. While UTPB has offered music courses for some time, a Bachelor of Music degree was not offered until It is anticipated that this degree will modestly enhance recruitment and retention. Goal Two: Over the past several years, UTPB has expanded its potential in science and engineering in several ways. First, industrial technology and mechanical engineering were added as majors, followed in the fall of 2011 with petroleum engineering and the $10,000 degree in Math and Science areas for fall of UTPB graduated its first class of engineering students in spring of 2011 and anticipates approximately 20 graduates annually. Recruits to the program are triple the expected number and almost 200 students have identified engineering as their major. New scholarships and professorships have been established in engineering along with grant and state funding which has made new labs possible. Transportation to the CEED campus where much of the engineering program is housed has been secured through a grant with TXDOT Update: The engineering and industrial technology programs have been successfully established. The combined current enrollment in these areas is 410. Twenty-one students graduated from the Mechanical Engineering 5 P a g e

6 program and 10 graduated with BS in Industrial Technology in National accreditation has been earned from Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for Mechanical Engineering. The Texas Science Scholars has an enrollment of 46, a 30% increase from Financing for a separate engineering building was sought during the most recent legislative session, but failed with the TRB bill. Transportation to the Midland Campus for engineering and music students is being provided at minimal cost to students, thanks to the TXDOT grant. Petroleum engineering began at UTPB in Located in renovated spaces on the Odessa campus, PE will graduate its first class of engineers in December The application for ABET accreditation with be prepared Spring 2014 with a campus visit in 2014 and report on possible accreditation in Summer Goal Three: Faculty has been hired for the Nursing Major and proposals have been sent to the Board of Nursing and to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The community is excited and the local media has published articles about this effort, which has resulted in numerous student inquiries. Currently an area on the third floor of the Mesa Building is being remodeled to create a space for the program and its simulation labs. Funding has been obtained from several sources to support this initiative Update: The nursing program is staffed. THECB approved the program in February 2013 and the Board of Nursing approved the program in April Due to the late approval by the Board of Nursing, the recruitment time was shorter than desired. Currently, 19 students are enrolled in the first nursing cohort with 103 prenursing majors being prepared for the program. The program should reach full classes of 40 each January and September no later than fall Goal Four: UTPB has increased its online teaching efforts in Texas through the several activities. Online offerings have gradually increased across campus to include approximately 23% of current course offerings. These include individual course offerings to serve a variety of students as well as 7majors, which are completely online. It has partnered with Academic Partnerships to offer seven bachelors and masters degrees online, which will be marketed beyond the Permian Basin throughout Texas. Additionally, UTPB has expanded its offerings of dual 6 P a g e

7 credit courses, mostly through online outreach to rural areas of the state and UTPB serves as a partner university in the Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN) Update: Seventy-one (71%) of the student body takes at least one course online leaving 29% students taking face-to-face classes only. Excluding dual credit students, 28% of UTPB s student population takes only online courses. UTPB currently offers 7 programs through AP (Academic Partnerships). Currently, UTPB has 378 enrolled students identified as AP students with another 8 week session scheduled to begin in October. The addition of the Humanities degree to the list of AP programs in Spring 2014 will provide additional online student enrollment. The Humanities degree also is being promoted through Graduate Texas via THECB. Other online programs being planned for at this time include master s degrees in computer science and criminal justice was an exciting time for Dual Credit enrollment, of which 99.6% of courses are offered online. During 2012, 47 public schools chose UTPB for dual credit courses with 523 total students enrolled. Those numbers have expanded for 2013 to 77 schools and 1091 students with the anticipation that more schools and students will be served in Spring 2014 and It is anticipated that the number of dual credit students will double in UTPB is also partnering with the Presidio Independent School District (PISD) to create the state s first online Early College High School. Other West Texas districts have tentatively agreed to partner with UTPB in applying to TEA for additional online ECHS designations. All of the proposed ECHS partners are in small, rural, remote districts that would not be able to participate otherwise in the Early College High School movement. UTPB s partnership with Presidio is supported by a grant from the Meadows Foundation for this year. We will pursue additional foundation support from Meadows, the Greater Texas Foundation and, possibly, the Richardson Foundation. 7 P a g e

8 Chart I. Original Report Table on Historical and Projected Enrollment by Student Population Group Please provide the historical number of enrolled students in the of each semester listed and the projected estimated enrollees for future semesters. Student Population New Freshman Students New Transfer Students Returning Undergraduate Students New Graduate and Professional Students Returning Graduate and Professional Students Total Enrollment P a g e

9 Chart One - Updated Student Population New Freshman Students New Transfer Students Returning Undergraduate Students New Graduate and Professional Students Returning Graduate and Professional Students Dual Credit Students Total Enrollment P a g e

10 Targets: Group A: First Time Freshmen UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of first time freshmen by approximately 5% per year for the next 10 years. UTPB seeks to improve its retention rate of freshmen students from 59% to 65% by the fall of UTPB seeks to improve its six year graduation rates of first time full time freshmen from 32% to 34% by Update: UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of first time freshmen by approximately 16% next year and 5% for the next 12 years. UTPB seeks to improve its retention rate for freshman students from 59% to 73% by the fall of UTPB seeks to improve its six year graduation rate far first time, full time freshmen from 32% to 40% by Group B : Transfer Students UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of transfer students by approximately 9.5% per year for the next 10 years. UTPB seeks to improve its retention rate of first time fulltime transfer students from 64% to 75% by the fall of UTPB seeks to improve its four year graduation rates of full time transfer students from 55% to 60% by Update: UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of transfer students by approximately 9.5% per year for the next 12 years. UTPB seeks to improve its retention rate of first time fulltime transfer students from 64% to 75% by the fall of 2025 UTPB seeks to improve its four year graduation rate for full time transfer students from 55% to 70% by (Four year graduation rate for this population exceeded 68% in FY08.) 10 P a g e

11 Group C: Graduate Students UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of graduate students by approximately 7.4% per year for the next 10 years. UTPB seeks to increase the number of master s degrees from 151 per year to 155 per year by Update: UTPB seeks to increase its recruitment of graduate students by approximately 7.4% per year for the next 12 years. UTPB seeks to increase the number of master s degrees conferred from 151 per year to 180 per year by Group D: Online Students UTPB seeks to increase its online credit hours from 23% to 35% by UTPB seeks to increase the number of bachelor degree programs offered completely online from 4 to 8 by UTPB seeks to increase the number of masters degrees offered online from 2 to 5 by Update: UTPB seeks to increase the percentage of students enrolled in at least one online course from 49% in 2011 to 78% in UTPB seeks to increase the number of bachelor degree programs offered completely online from 9 in 2013 to 25 by UTPB seeks to increase the number of masters degrees offered online from 4 in 2013 to 16 by Group E: Non-traditional Students UTPB seeks to increase its support services for non-traditional students in order to encourage retention and more timely graduation rates Update: Programs for Veterans Services and Financial Literacy were created during Veterans Services assists military and student veterans maneuver through the University by explaining programs and procedures. Financial Literacy programs teach students about budgeting and the realities of loans and credits. 11 P a g e

12 UTPB seeks to double its 2013 dual enrollment students by UTPB also anticipates growth with online Early College High Schools with 5 collaborating schools from the West Texas area by P a g e

13 Chart II: Original Report Table Institutional Goals Most Recent Data (2011) Goal in 3 Years (2014) Goal in 5 Years (2016) Goal in 10 Years (2022) Students Number of New Freshman Enrollees 342 (F 11) Number of New Transfer Enrollees 411 (F 11) st Year Retention Rates Number of New Graduate and Professional Students Number of Returning Graduate and Professional Students 59.17% (F 10-F 11) 65% 68% 72% 70 (F 11) (F 11) Total Enrollment 3831 (F 11) Total FTE Enrollment 2648 (F 11) Goal/Targeted Total Enrollment Percent of undergraduate students enrolled full-time Percent of undergraduate students that are transfer students 4 Year Graduation Rates (THECB Data Source) 6-Year Graduation Rates (THECB Data Source) Number of Degrees Awarded, By Class Level 66% (F 11) New- 13% (F 11) Ever- 60% 66% 66% 66% 18% 65% 18% 65% 18% 65% 17.5% 17% 18% 19% 31.9% 34% 36% 39% UG- 541 Grad- 151 Courses Number of Gateway Courses** P a g e

14 Courses (continued) Faculty and Staff Space Utilization Housing Number of Student Enrolled in Gateway Courses Percent of Students Successfully Completing Gateway Course upon first attempt? Most Recent Data (2011) Goal in 3 Years (2014) Goal in 5 Years (2016) Goal in 10 Years (2022) % 90% 90% 90% % Occupancy in Gateway Courses 85.03% 85% 85% 85% Number of Online Courses Offered Percent of Student Body Enrolled in at least 1 online course Number of Tenure and Tenure-Track Faculty 134 sections (F11) % 60% 62% 71% Number of Adjunct Faculty Student/Faculty Ratio 19:1 21:1 22:1 23:1 Student/Advisor Ratio 27:1 27:1 27:1 27:1 Classroom Space Usage Efficiency Score Laboratory Space Usage Efficiency Score Percent Housing Capacity Utilized 97.12% (F 11) 100% (F 14) 100% (F 16) 100% (F 21) Number of Housing Spaces 519 (F 11) , P a g e

15 Chart II: Institutional Goals - Updated Most Recent Data (2011) Goal (2015) Goal (2020) Goal (2025) Students Number of New Freshman Enrollees 342 (F 11) Number of New Transfer Enrollees 411 (F 11) st Year Retention Rates Number of New Graduate and Professional Students Number of Returning Graduate and Professional Students 59.17% (F 10-F 11) 65% 72% 73% 70 (F 11) (F 11) Total Enrollment 3831 (F 11) Total FTE Enrollment 2648 (F 11) Goal/Targeted Total Enrollment Percent of undergraduate students enrolled full-time Percent of undergraduate students that are transfer students 4 Year Graduation Rates (THECB Data Source) 6-Year Graduation Rates (THECB Data Source) Number of Degrees Awarded, By Class Level 66% (F 11) New- 13% (F 11) Ever- 60% 66% 66% 66% 18% 65% 18% 65% 18% 65% 17.5% 16% 18% 20% 31.9% 34% 37% 40% UG- 541 Grad- 151 Courses Number of Gateway Courses** P a g e

16 Courses (continued) Faculty and Staff Space Utilization Housing Number of Student Enrolled in Gateway Courses Percent of Students Successfully Completing Gateway Course upon first attempt? Most Recent Data (2011) Goal in 3 Years (2015) Goal in 5 Years (2020) Goal in 10 Years (2025) % 90% 90% 90% % Occupancy in Gateway Courses 85.03% 85% 85% 85% Number of Online Courses Offered Percent of Student Body Enrolled in at least 1 online course Number of Tenure and Tenure-Track Faculty 134 sections (F11) % 61% 70% 78% Number of Adjunct Faculty Student/Faculty Ratio 19:1 21:1 22:1 25:1 Student/Advisor Ratio 857:1 857:1 857:1 857:1 Classroom Space Usage Efficiency Score Laboratory Space Usage Efficiency Score Percent Housing Capacity Utilized 97.12% (F 11) 100% (F 14) 100% 100% Number of Housing Spaces 519 (F 11) , P a g e

17 ** Please describe Gateway Courses as your institution defines them and provide a few examples. We are not referring primarily to remedial level classes, but instead, to classes required of most/all freshman students that can sometimes be obstacles to timely degree completion. Seven GenEd courses are required of all freshman students with no alternative. HIST 1301 HIST 1302 ENGL 1301 ENGL 1302 PLSC 2305 PLSC 2306 COMM P a g e