JackCentral

Despite being a long-standing project, NAU’s offer to faculty, students, and staff to boost student recruiting and retention with grant money from the school has only recently come into notice, in a time where budget cuts are a hot topic.
The President’s Undergraduate Student Recruitment and Retention Grants began in the academic school year of 2003-2004. Margot Saltonstall, an assessment coordinator with enrollment management and student affairs, said the school allocates $25,000 to be disbursed to about 10 groups or offices on campus, usually in the amount of $2,500. Aside from the 10 recipients, the other 20-30 applicant offices or groups on campus do not receive grants.
The awardees then use the grants to help create new programs or to fund existing programs, all with the promise they can help boost enrollment or maintain the number of enrolled students on campus in their particular college or group.
James Rund, ASU’s vice president for university student initiatives, said currently ASU does not offer a program like this and would have to evaluate whether one could work at the university.
David Bousquet, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs, said the program is helpful to show people the difficulties in recruiting new students or keeping those students already enrolled at NAU.
NAU President John D. Haeger said a primary goal of universities is to continually grow enrollment numbers. By making the work of the grants a priority, the university is helping to fill a tremendous need for well-educated students.
Saltonstall said the program allows everyone on campus to help in creative ways to keep the university growing.
“This gives folks a chance to try out innovative projects,” Saltonstall said. “There are a lot of good ideas that you can’t implement, so here is the chance. If the idea works out, we can expand it.”
In recent years many programs have been able to obtain grants for programs and expand them without the need for further funding. In the 2004-2005 academic school year, the College of Engineering was able to obtain a grant for $2,500 for the STEP UP summer engineering camp for women. Fonda Swimmer, director of the Multicultural Engineering Program, said the program helps to show young women in high school the potential of a career in engineering. The grant was able to help offer $500 scholarships to winners of the camp’s design projects, as well as general start-up costs for the program.
“STEP UP would not have been possible without the grant,” Swimmer said. “Once we got started and the momentum was there, other partners were there to step in. Little ideas can blossom into big things.”
Now in its fifth year, the week-long camp has become nationally recognized, with inquiries from as far away as Boston. Companies like Intel and Medtronic have become donors and the Science Foundation Arizona has even contributed funding to help begin a camp for boys. Swimmer said some girls who have attended the camp have already enrolled in NAU as engineering or science majors.
Other programs on campus had success through a one-time loan. Sue Belatti, the coordinator for learning communities with the office of residence life, said learning communities, residences where students share a major or interests and work together, obtained $3,250 in 2004-2005. They were able to use the money to put on dinners with faculty, as well as field trips to businesses in Phoenix.
Belatti said the goal was to take the number of learning communities from two to seven. Currently, there are 20 learning communities on NAU’s Mountain Campus, with another four planned for fall 2008. Belatti said she also credits the grant for helping create initial success, with 191 of the 235 learning community students coming back for the next academic year.
“The grant was our way to get the community off and rolling,” Belatti said. “There has been no more funding from the grant since, as we’ve kept it going as a department. We also get funding as a collaboration between the academic and Residence Life.”
Despite being successful, the grant program is not shielded from potential budget cuts. With the threat of $16 million being cut from NAU’s budget, Haeger said this item, along with others in the budget, is left to relative uncertainty for the time being.
“The budget is not clear and we’re not sure what the impact is going to be,” Haeger said. “We’ll know within the next couple of months after a series of decisions to the budget, but for now, we just don’t know. But if there was a $16 million cut, we couldn’t support the grant program.”
Bousquet said it was worth mentioning the money for the program was allocated from other areas when the program began in spring 2004.
However, Bousquet said if $16 million were needed to be cut from the budget, $25,000 is a small amount and only a fraction of the way to the end goal.
Belatti said the goal of the loan is to help programs or groups on campus get the one time boost and then stand on their own feet in the next school year.
With budget fears clearly defined, Saltonstall said she looks at the potential for significant loss as a possibility for something good to happen.
“In a time of budget cuts, there is a smaller pool to try new things with,” Saltonstall said. “When there are not a lot of resources and when there is scaling back, you have to see what is essential. You have to be creative and really act on ideas. We want people to not feel their hands are tied because of the budget.”
For more information regarding the grant program, visit http://home.nau.edu/emsa/grants.asp. The deadline for proposals is March 27 and grants are available for students, faculty and staff.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 6:34 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.