Dear Colleagues,
I write to alert you to an initiative designed to address a decline in summer school enrollments over the last two years. Unfortunately, we have seen a decrease of 5% in enrollments during each of the last two summers. The consequences of this decline are quite profound for Academic Affairs. Specifically, summer school revenue, after expenses and payment to the university for central services, provides what has become a necessity to meet our instructional demands for the academic year programs. This dependency is probably not the best scenario for supporting our programs, but it is what it is. Specifically, we support from summer school revenues:
1. 13 lecturer positions each at $36K in salary and some benefits.
2. $138K in marketing for graduate programs.
3. $200K in graduate assistant support.
4. $30K in faculty development support.
With the steady erosion of enrollment, I am concerned that the growth in faculty positions over the last two years, particularly the 9 new lecturer positions starting fall 2005, will be neutralized by the loss in lecturers from summer school support.
I have been working with the deans to examine the distribution of offerings over the last three summer school sessions, and we have discussed several steps to enhance summer school enrollment, reversing the trend, so that we grow by 5% over each summer session of 2005 and 2006.
? The deans will work with chairs to determine whether we can offer more courses in high demand from the fall and spring semesters. Moreover, we will try to offer more upper level courses, so that we are positioned less in competition with community college offerings at cheaper tuition.
? We are working with the central marketing department to advertise our summer offerings through such vehicles as ads in area student newspapers, selected mailings to students who have been accepted at Towson in the past several years, but did not enroll, and area high schools.
? Build in greater incentives for appropriate faculty to teach and provide departments with operational expenses to cover summer supplies associated with courses. These initiatives include:
1. A modest increase in the stipend levels so that faculty engaged in teaching of more than15 undergraduate, or 11 graduate students are guaranteed $3,500 per course. Faculty teaching 8-14 undergraduate, or 6-10 graduate students will receive a guarantee of $3,000 per course. Courses with 7 or fewer undergraduate, or 5 or fewer graduate students will be compensated at the existing scale.
2. For summer offerings, faculty will be compensated for official contact hours where those hours exceed credit hours.
I am very concerned about the projected revenue decline in summer enrollments. Our goal here is to try to remove any disincentives that might have evolved over time. I hope that you understand the need to grow our enrollments, and I welcome any suggestions or reactions you may care to share about this plan.
Thank you again for your help.
James F. Brennan, Provost
