An increase in enrollment at Mississippi State has yielded financial benefits for the university’s academic departments. MSU will soon be subject to a $1 million dividend distributed throughout various academic departments for anything from hiring new instructors to sending students to seminars.The academic departments eligible for the dividend include those that recruited students and saw their numbers increase from the 2005 baseline. More than 17,000 students currently make up the total enrollment at MSU, up from approximately 16,200 from the fall 2006 semester.
Philip Bonfanti, director of admissions and scholarships, credits the rise in admissions to the focus on President Robert ‘Doc’ Foglesong’s recruiting program.
Although the infrastructure has been affected by the increased number of students, the university still has room to grow, Bonfanti said.
Jerry Gilbert, associate provost in academic affairs, said that when the departments found that part of the excess revenue would be distributed by the president’s office to the departments generating the excess, recruiting increased.
Effects of the increase range from building renovations to the amount of prospective students MSU is attracting, Bonfanti said.
“We saw nice growth across all the colleges,” he said. “Just in undergraduate admissions, growth ranges from the college of forest resources at 11 percent to the college of education at 2.5 percent with other colleges falling between the two.”
The university has experienced an overall growth of 5.1 percent since 2006, or 833 students for the year. Gilbert said school officials looked at both full-time equivalent enrollment and student credit hour productions when weighing the decision of how to distribute the funds.
The college of business and industry is one academic department that will see a dividend, now at 2,600, which is up 70 students from 2006.
Interim associate dean of the College of Business and Industry Kevin Rogers, said the school has not decided how to distribute the money among the departments. Each department has its own allocation and department heads, and faculty must reach a decision on how their portion of the dividend will be spent, he said.
“Last year, the money came to the college directly, but we really haven’t discussed how we’re going to spend it this year,” Rogers said.
Rogers said money will be more of an incentive in the future.
The departments of mathematics and statistics, art, biological sciences and English are other departments receiving the dividend.