The University continues the momentum it had last fall as spring enrollment figures increase from last spring.
According to university reports, spring enrollment at Texas A&M University-Commerce rose 1.60 percent, or 138 students, since last year. This brings the number of total students to 8,741, according to the preliminary enrollment report as of Jan. 15.
“We still have a backlog of students needing to register so we will be over enrolling sections to get students registered, particularly
in basic skills classes and some university study courses,” James Klein, dean of arts and sciences said.
The largest area of enrollment increase was in the masters program. Due to the success of fall graduation, future enrollment is now even more important.
“Some of these are the natural flow of student through the classifications. For example, if you have a high enrollment four or five years ago, one could assume you will have a higher graduation rate in four or five years,” Mary Hendrix provost and vice president of Academic/Student Affairs, said.
The freshman enrollment is a major area of concern. With a decrease of 123 students, which is a14 percent drop since last year, new enrollment efforts are now taking place.
“We are targeting those high schools from which our data indicate our students demonstrate college readiness,” Hendrix said.
Because of the rise of community colleges and dual credit programs, the university has focused on higher-level students where is has seen previous recruiting success.
According to an article printed in The East Texan last fall, Dr. McFarland has voiced his desire for the university to reach a goal of 10,000 students by Fall ’08.
“When we establish our goals for enrollment, we need to consider the number of students who graduate or we will not achieve our goal of 10,000,” Hendrix, said.
The University sees the rise of these programs as a competition and is not afraid to play rough.
“We have designed, and are marketing, degree programs for teachers that will provide them with master’s degrees in education with options for teaching dual-credit courses,” Hendrix said.
The issue of fluctuating freshman enrollment is not only at Texas A&M University-Commerce, it is at other institutions as well.
“This is a trend for us as well as our peer institutions. More students are attending community colleges and/or come to us as sophomores because of dual-credit and advanced-placement courses. An interesting fact about our freshman class is that 15.3 percent of our students were ranked among the top 10 percent of their graduation classes in Texas,” Hendrix said.
The university has made some changes to adapt to the freshmen enrollment rise and fall as well as changes that were made to attract and keep freshmen attending.
“Several retention strategies were implemented in the fall. Our early intervention procedure was implemented where we check grades and attendance and notify students of resources available to support them. Also, we implemented a calling campaign two weeks ago to contact those students in good standing who were enrolled in the fall, but who had not enrolled in the spring. Also, we removed transcript holds for students who graduated from high school in December, but we were holding their applications until we received official transcripts. Dean Stephanie Holley will be implementing specific recruiting strategies for the Fall 2008 semester to recruit first-year students,” Hendrix said.