There is much-needed effort in the recruitment of students for all programs. Our Nursing program lists 245 majors, and is the only program with over 200 students enrolled. There are 16 programs with fewer than 50 students and of those, 9 programs have fewer than 20 majors. (Table 3) It is only by staffing the general education requirements that many faculty members are able to fulfill their full-time teaching load of 12 credit hours per semester.

What the Data Tells Us?

The data tells us that we have a pressing need to recruit students to our under-enrolled programs. There are sixteen (16) programs where fewer than fifty (50) students are enrolled. These programs tend to rely heavily on providing general education service area courses to complete their teaching loads.

Recommendation

The following recommendations are offered given the data on program enrollment:

1. That each program area develop and implement an aggressive recruitment plan to increase the number of students in its major programs.
2. That each academic program actively engage in helping students who are undecided to consider majoring in its program.
3. That faculty identify and pursue possible scholarship and internship opportunities for their students.
4. That faculty strengthen their teaching and learning, and assessment skills, to keep students engaged and hungry for knowledge.
5. That the institution considers combining appropriate programs to reduce the number of major fields.
6. That the registrar's office develops a method of identifying student minors in the student management system.
7. That a full-time Director of Graduate Studies be identified and hired.
8. That a Graduate School Recruiter be hired to coordinate recruitment efforts for graduate students.

Faculty Instructional Loads

Faculty instructional loads can be assessed in several different ways. When considering which calculation of the Full-time Equivalence for Faculty (FTEF) to be used one of the most difficult variables to capture is where to factor in the teaching of cross-referenced and developmental coursework. Therefore, the “Origin of Instructor” method will be used here in this calculation. This method is consistent with that employed by the Delaware Cost Study in its analyses of data. A trained statistician should only undertake the calculation of data related to FTEF.

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