Small Town News

EWU trustees OK contract ammendments

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Board also hears updates on enrollment management and student academic success at March 19 meeting

Eastern Washington University's board of trustees approved three amendments to President Dr. Rodolfo Arevalo's contract at their March 19 meeting. None of the amendments involved additional increases in salary, cost of living or deferred compensation.

Board members approved an additional one-year extension of the president's contract to June 15, 2015. The contract was also modified to provide sick leave consistent with the collective bargaining agreement between EWU and the United Faculty of Eastern, and the termination for convenience clause was amended to provide a 12-month liquidated damage provision rather than the previous nine-month period in the event the clause is exercised.

In other news from a meeting light on action items the board was presented with two reports on enrollment management and academic success measures.

Dr. Ron Dalla gave an update on enrollment management initiatives, including the development of a Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) module. The module promotes students' academic success in a variety of ways while promoting institutional success through strategic and financial planning.

It also creates a "data rich environment" to assist with evaluating decisions and strategies, and sets clear goals for the "number and types of students needed to fulfill the institutional mission." Dalla said SEM would help in determining budget allocations by defining Eastern's areas of student success.

"That's why we're doing this," he said to the board. "It is a very lofty ambition we have here."

SEM's purpose is to better link the two sides of the student experience. It provides continuous coverage and planning from marketing/orientation through the classroom experience and degree attainment on one side with admissions, financial aid, academic support and retention on the other. Dalla said accomplishments so far have been defining a vision and goals for SEM, while also beginning to engage campus constituents in dialogue and identifying action steps. The next step is review and approval by the President's Executive Committee, and then taking SEM campus-wide for discussion.

"We're going to take these goals to as many groups as we can to get input," Dalla said.

The ultimate goal is increasing student retention. One way that is beginning to work is through the university's implementation of an early warning system to let faculty and administrators know when students are beginning to experience academic problems that might lead to dropping out.

Vice provost for academic affairs Dr. John Mason provided an update on academic excellence and student success measures. Part of the challenges facing Eastern in this regard are student academic entrance levels, rising faculty to student ratios, the impacts of budget cuts and creating more access and support for high demand fields.

Mason said skill levels for incoming high school students have dropped in the past nine years, with proficiency in verbal skills down 13 percent and math down almost 10 percent. Eastern's freshmen to sophomore retention rates remain on par with the university's peers, and graduation rates remain steady, but enrollment has increased while faculty numbers have shrunk.

Mason said the university is addressing these challenges, implementing a math lab that has provided over 11,000 hours of student tutoring. The Riverpoint campus has set up a program to help students having problems with "killer courses," with talk of similar programs in Cheney.

Mason said the university hopes to recapture some faculty positions while reducing the number of low enrollment classes to help decrease faculty to student ratios, currently at 21 students per instructor, up from 19 students per instructor. Eastern is also looking at enlarging its centralized academic support, and instituting assessments of student writing.

"No one leaves who can't write," Mason said.

Eastern is also looking at accelerating students' degree attainments, increasing overall internships and internships in high demand fields, and streamlining its successful Running Start program and its summer online offering, one of the school's fastest growing summer programs.

Mason pointed to a number of areas demonstrating Eastern students' academic success and excellence, including the Mock Trial team's fourth-place finish out of 60 universities at a recent competition, the doubling in the last six years of entrants to the student research symposium and its hosting of a Muskie Fellow the past three years.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.



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© 2010 Cheney Free Press Cheney, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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