The Board of Visitor’s Committee on the University’s College at Wise met Thursday to discuss the college’s six-year plan, specifically its strategies for better student retention and the possible implementation of a graduate program.
Committee Chair John G. Macfarlane III opened the meeting with a vote to approve the proposed Committee Work Plan for the 2017-18 academic year at College at Wise, a plan which includes a focus on student recruitment and retention, affordability, economic development in the region and intra-disciplinary coordination. All present approved the resolution.
Chancellor Donna Price Henry presented the six-year plan for the College at Wise, which includes three priorities — enrollment and student success, an increase in the production of STEM-H degrees and outreach and economic development.
Henry reported a 70-student drop in full-time enrollment numbers this academic year.
She attributed the decline in student enrollment to several factors in the Southwest Virginia region such as the decline in the coal economy, population decline due to fewer births and outmigration and a demographic shift due to an aging population. She also mentioned the K-12 population in Virginia more generally is projected to decline.
“The population decline in Southwest Virginia has been much more precipitous, particularly in the last five years,” Henry said.
Student enrollment has also been impacted by the college’s top competitor East Tennessee State University, located about an hour and a half from the College at Wise. ETSU is now offering free community college to in-state students and increased scholarships that effectively create in-state tuition for out-of-state students within 250 air miles of ETSU.
“So they have come in pretty aggressively to our marketplace,” Henry said.
Henry explained current recruiting strategies implemented in response. The University’s Deferred Admission Agreement offers enrollment at the College at Wise for students placed on the waiting list for the College of Arts and Sciences. Having met some conditions, students are able to transfer from the College at Wise to the College of Arts and Sciences after two years.
Another recruitment strategy is a Chancellor’s Scholarship for “some of the best and the brightest students in Southwest Virginia,” Henry said. Additional strategies include a thriving ROTC program, a program for middle school students to visit the campus and hosting the high school Commonwealth football tournament.
The College at Wise is also considering the creation of graduate degree programs.
“We’re looking at education, a Masters of Arts and Education, as our first graduate program that we would like to move forward with, which we believe will serve the region,” Henry said.
As for STEM-H degrees, the College at Wise hosts summer programs in hopes of increasing interest in these college programs. STEM-H degrees include science, technology, engineering, math and health degrees.
The third objective of the six-year plan includes facilitating economic development in the Southwest Virginia region. Henry said the College at Wise supports the GO Virginia Region One Council, which is working to diversify the economy in response to the decline of the coal industry in the region. Henry said GO Virginia is hoping to diversify the local economy into the technology, energy and advanced manufacturing industries.
Henry said that the six-year plan she presented would be presented to the Finance Committee Thursday and before the entire Board Friday.
She also touched on the upcoming gubernatorial debate that is being co-hosted by the Batten School at the College at Wise on Oct. 9.
“From what I understand, this is the very first gubernatorial debate ever hosted in Southwest Virginia,” Henry said.
Matthew Harvey, a mathematics professor at the College at Wise and the faculty consulting member for the committee on the University’s College at Wise, spoke about the College at Wise’s various responses to the events of Aug. 11 and 12.
He noted the prompt for the writing placement test required for all incoming freshmen asked questions about when free speech becomes hate speech and what a university’s responsibility is in regulating that.
“Those are the sort of things people are doing,” Harvey said. “I was also trying to get sort of a sense of what people are feeling, and that was harder.”
He mentioned an incident last year that was “sort of when we started to learn about things like this.” Various threats came from outside the College in response to a professor having a “Black Lives Matter” poster in his office.
Harvey noted some professors were excited about the idea of the establishment of a graduate program at the College at Wise, but others expressed concern.
“Where there was basically universal concern was [in] practicality, sustainability — how are we going to attract students to actually fill out these programs,” Harvey said. “[There’s] a real concern that we would become invested in them in a way that they’re drawing resources away from what we are doing, and where we’re already kind of strapped in terms of resources.”
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