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JPBC Minutes: September 19, 2024

8:30 – 10:30 a.m., Virtual Meeting via Teams

Attendees

Voting Members
  • Martin Abraham
  • Lorraine Acker
  • Mike Andriatch
  • Qudus Bawa-allah
  • Jennifer Blood
  • Monica Brasted
  • James Cordeiro
  • Frances Dearing
  • Michael Doyle
  • Tom Hernandez
  • Sara Kelly
  • Stephanie Learn
  • Carl O’Connor
  • James Onley
  • Skye Paine
  • Kathy Peterson
  • Heather Raczkowski
  • Jamie Spiller
  • Elizabeth Thorpe
Non-Voting Members
  • Julie Caswell
  • Steve Cook
  • Eileen Daniel
  • Keith Davis
  • Crystal Hallenbeck-McPhall
  • Ian Harper:  Co-Chair
  • Mike Harrison
  • Rachael Killion
  • Gary Morog
  • Logan Rath
  • Elliot Weininger:  Co-Chair
  • Robert Wyant
Guests
  • Denise Copelton
  • Jennifer Green
  • Scott Haines
  • Seth Johnston
  • Mehruz Kamal
  • Dana Laird
  • Tammy Jo Manz
  • Tyler Moesle
  • Ashleigh Petrucci
  • Janet Roy
  • William Ruiz
  • Katherine Schaal
  • Rey Sia
  • Bonnie Swoger
  • Brian Wallenhorst

Regrets

Voting Members
  • Theresa Martinez
Non-Voting Members
  • President Macpherson
  • Melissa Wight

The meeting was called to order at 8:31 a.m.

 

Approval of the Minutes

Dr. Weininger asked the committee to review the September 5, 2024, meeting minutes. Dr. Peterson motioned to approve the minutes; Dr. Cordeiro seconded the motion. 15 members voted to approve the minutes. Therefore, the minutes were approved.

 

Announcements 

No announcements at this time.

Undergraduate Admissions Update

Mr. Wyant presented an update on Undergraduate Admissions. The following questions, answers and discussion points occurred:

  • Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
  • Congratulations was extended to the Undergraduate Admissions staff for the outstanding numbers.
  • The question was raised regarding how much in total scholarships were given to first year enrollment students and was this a contributing factor to the increase in enrollment. It was stated that our scholarship program is the driving force behind our growth. It is a great strategy because the debt crisis in this country, especially from college, is significant. We don’t have official numbers yet. With census coming through this week, we will be able to get the data. We will be able to see who is actually living on campus and earning those scholarships because we do award scholarships to commuters that don’t live on campus. It was added that when talking to families and students, cost and affordability are the biggest considerations. More and more students are hearing about the great programs that we have and the scholarship opportunities. This is helping us to be competitive, especially for the students in the higher GPA ranges.
  • The statement was made that JPBC will be doing a deep dive into scholarship spending later in the year. It is not scheduled yet but will be on the agenda at some point.
  • Clarification was requested regarding international student projections and it dropping from 25 to 20 for next year. It was stated that the international projection is 25. The project doesn’t change unless Keith Davis states diff
  • The question was raised regarding why there has been a drop in the Long Island numbers. It was stated that Long Island has been a tricky area for us. I don’t know if there is a particular reason contributing to the drop other than we are 6 ½ hours away. Ultimately it comes down to where the students want to be and what they want to study.
  • The question was raised regarding the free application week. It was stated that SUNY’s application week is different than ours. We run an extended application period that works well for us. SUNY’s free application period is October 21-November 3. Our free application period currently runs from September 16th to November 3rd and potentially into December depending on where we are at. We just sent an email to school counselors this morning and we already have 17-18 responses from counselors wanting us to visit them. This is because the email included information on the free application period and our scholarship program.
  • The question was raised regarding what kind of competitive position Brockport has in regards to scholarships against schools like Oswego and are we going to have to up our game as others see this as a strategy for recruiting students in a limited statewide pool. It was stated that it is a marketing tool for us, and it is one of the best tools we have in our toolbox. It puts us on the radar for students that we wouldn’t normally get. You can see that with our data on our 96 and above students, we would never get those students 3-4 years ago. Now we are getting them in a much higher rate, and we are very competitive with them. I am unsure what other schools are doing. Other schools are aware of our plan, our program and how it is working for us. So, I would imagine we are going to start to see some competition there. It was added that every fall we look at our competitors and try to see what their scholarship programs look like, and we look at private schools too. Generally, our biggest competitors are other SUNY schools. This is a big part of why we proposed a new scholarship program a few years ago because our program was so different, and it was making it a challenge for recruitment. As far as Oswego goes, we saw very late in the cycle after June 1 into July, there were 30-40 deposits which is not common. I’m not sure that is a result of their scholarship program or something else. The other thing we are monitoring closely is that the Governor put out a top 10% initiative in terms of offering automatic admission. We just had a meeting yesterday with SUNY enrollment officers and others about this effort. We are trying to understand if there is going to be any impact and how we remain competitive.
  • The question was raised regarding if the university centers and UB in particular have changed their enrollment strategy to our advantage causing our strong numbers. It was stated that no change has occurred that we are aware of. They are still going after the same students that we are. UB is historically our top competitor. If you look at our Clearinghouse data our competitors are a combination of UB, Geneseo, Cortland, Oswego and Albany, but UB is always our number one competitor. It was added the UB is interested in growing their transfer market. So, we are going to keep an eye on that and looking at how we can continue to be one of the main transfer friendly institutions.
  • The request was made for an explanation regarding the 10% initiative from the Governor. It was stated that there is an interest and an effort that the top 10% of high school graduates will receive automatic admission to some pilot SUNY schools. They are looking at who is going to start the initiative and who would be involved later. We learned a little bit more about it yesterday at the SUNY enrollment officers meeting. SUNY’s effort is to try and help all students in New York and beyond find a place at SUNY. So, they are looking at this opportunity to have the top 10% to stay within SUNY instead of going to a private school or elsewhere.
  • The question was raised regarding what our out of state numbers are looking like this fall. It was stated that our out of state projection was 25 and we are at 39 this year. This is predominantly athletes. In admissions we are stretched thin and would love to have boots on the ground in our neighboring states, but we can’t afford to take an advisor out of New York City, Albany or some other area. We did have some advisors do a few things in New Jersey and Boston. We have had some travel to other states for large college fairs. We have visited Pittsburgh, Scranton and Wilkes Barre areas. It is not a sustainable approach. We need to have dedicated full-time people to do that, but we’re still kind of hitting pockets as we can.
  • The question was raised regarding the improved transfer numbers and if there is an expectation of stability, a drop off or an increase moving forward. It was stated that it is going to be competitive. UB is getting into this market and other schools are trying to tap transfer students because they may be declining with their first year student population. We have an advantage because we have such a strong relationship with FLCC, GCC and MCC. We are fortunate to have the growth with our transfer numbers. If you look back at 2022, we had 800 less applications. We have added 700 new applications from ODCs. We had 266 ODC applications in 2022 and we have 700 this year. We would expect to see that grow even further as we bring criminal justice onboard this spring. We also know that the enrollments at the community colleges is declining, and a big portion of their enrollments are dual credit students. These are traditional high school students. So, it is going to be competitive.
  • The question was raised regarding what is the maximum number of freshman that we could accept. It was stated that we are approaching it. We are not going to hit it because we are going to find room and not shut the door on people because we need bodies. Just like any comprehensive institution in New York State, we need enrollment. With that being said, we are getting thin on class availability and housing availability. We know there are some challenges there. Keep in mind, back in 2018 we have 1281 first year students and over 1000 transfer students coming in and that is where we have been historically. I believe have had over 8000 students at one point and we are at around 7500. So, we have capacity for that. But ultimately it is our services. There is a lot of tax on our mental health services, advisement services and financial aid services. There is a lot of change when you bring in more students. It was added that having come from the recent SUNY meeting that even us having the question about capacity is such an incredibly positive thing to happen on our campus. It is such a great place in terms of having to address serving the increase versus having to fill gaps. In terms of having the conversation about capacity, that will be a part of our enrollment projection discussion. There is a presentation coming up later in October and having those discussions about support services and what we need to do with the growth.
  • The question was raised regarding contingency plans on what happens when you have a great class and very little melt where suddenly you have more students that need beds then you have on campus. It was stated that we do have to monitor that. It comes with experience and feel. A lot of what is done in Admissions is feel. There is data and we try to make informed decisions based off of the data, but you can sense trends and that is why we have our Slate report. It is our lifeline on a daily basis. We can sense if there is going to be a decrease in yield usually before it happens. There is a big unknown and for the most part we can sense a lot of that and try to plan. We are in constant communication with Res Life. It is impossible to predict but it is just a matter of feel, experience and trends.
  • The question was raised regarding what the future plans are to solve the impact of the increased students on classroom shortages. It was stated that there are constant discussions around what resources are needed. The was a lot more proactive work in the summer with the Associate Deans and chairs with trying to help make sure that everyone got the support they needed. It was added that the Provost, Eileen Daniel, the Registrar and the Associate Deans spent most of the summer monitoring enrollment in specific classes and adding sections when needed. They worked with Department Chairs to make sure that those classes were in place and there were instructors for each of those classes. It is a significant component of the summer activities to make sure that everything is in place to meet enrollment numbers. We have added faculty in areas where we have had growth so that we can meet those growth opportunities and support the students the best that we can. We look at the services we provide to ensure that we have the services available to meet the needs of the students.
  • The question was raised if the delayed FASFA slowed down some of adjustment process that occurs over the summer. It was stated that we were very sensitive that students were going through a really challenging time with the FASFA and financial aid processes. Our Financial Aid team did a wonderful job getting stuff out as soon as they could. We did have families that were trying to figure stuff out later in the cycle. I think our numbers were pretty strong from the start so I am not sure if it impacted it all that much. We did have huge bump at the end that we didn’t see coming, but things were looking good throughout the whole spring.
  • The concern was stated regarding the increasing number of students and making sure we have enough services for student accommodations for mental health services and tutoring. Also, many of the popular programs are at capacity and can’t take any more students.
  • The question was raised regarding if there were discussions prior to the anticipated student growth or did the growth happen and the school could not cope with it. It was stated that we have enrollment projections, and we have exceeded those targets. There have been pain points and challenges we have had from before when we had higher enrollment. One of the things that we have been really focused on is trying to make sure we are balancing our budget as well. We are getting closer to being in a great place in terms of our deficit. Now that we have our enrollment numbers, we are going to go through budget projections. We did plan for growth. Last year we had more of a substantial growth and there was a little bit more of a crunch on scheduling, but this year we tried to be proactive on the scheduling over the summer. We did have some delays with deposit deadlines and with the FASFA process. It was added that if you look at where we are at from a deficit standpoint, we have a little bit of work to do from a reserve standpoint. We are in pretty good shape to the extent we can maintain the enrollment levels that we have, and they are above our planned projections. It helps with our deficit challenge and bolstering our reserve balance. As we go through the next cycle and we true up on the census numbers, we will get a better sense of where we are, what we can do and what additional flexibility and options this strong enrollment year gives us. It is part of our ongoing process. We will update the Five-year Financial Model based upon this enrollment performance. We will use the target that Mr. Wyant shared earlier and then we can project out and that will give us the landscape in terms of what is ahead for us. More importantly, the decisions we can make on investment in infrastructure to hopefully support these high continuing enrollments. In addition, it was stated that during COVID our enrollments crashed and there was a great deal of uncertainty in 2021 and even in 2022 on whether enrollments would climb back up to their pre COVID trends or whether the reduced numbers would be the new normal. It appears we have returned to the pre COVID trend, but a couple of years ago it was really unclear whether that was what was going to happen. So, planning has been very difficult the last few years. It was added that one of complications with scheduling is there are trends and majors. Some years we have a large number of students who are coming for Nursing Intent, other years for KSSPE. So, it makes planning very difficult even for incoming freshmen. For example, if they are going to be a Nursing Intent, they have very specific general education courses they need to take and that’s true for a number of majors. So even if we can anticipate the overall number where those students need to be placed sometimes it doesn’t happen or we don’t know until the very last minute. We did work all summer, and we did do our best and we are going to continue trying to make it even better.

Graduate Admissions Update

Mr. Harrison presented an update on Graduate Admissions. The following question, answer and discussion points occurred:

  • Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
  • The question was raised regarding how many of the denials were for Nursing. It was stated that the exact number is unknown but probably in the 30-40 range.
  • It was stated that the Nursing denials are due to being at capacity in the NP tracks because of clinical placements. In addition, the proposal for the Masters of Nursing Education is almost ready to go and we are hoping to start that in the fall 2026. We will have much more capacity for this program.
  • Congratulations was extended on the outstanding work of the Center for Graduate Studies staff.

Center for Global Education and Engagement Update

Mr. Davis presented an update on the Center for Global Education and Engagement. The following question, answer and discussion points occurred:

  • Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
  • Congratulations was extended for the great work.
  • It was stated that one of the challenges we are going to face that we will need to address, and it is particularly clear in the case of Computing Sciences. Mehruz has done a phenomenal job managing everything that is going on over in Computing Sciences. It is the MS program that we expect to explode on top of the Cybersecurity undergraduate program that is currently enrolling 82 students with not sufficient faculty. So, the challenge we are going to face in these growth areas is making sure we can get the resources into them quickly enough in order to be able to continue to meet these growth opportunities and accommodate these needs. It is a real challenge that we are going to have because not only do we need to come up with the money internally to do this, but these are hard areas to hire. It is not easy to go out and find people who can teach in these areas. We know we have a lot of work to do, and it is going to be a challenge, but I am confident we are going to meet the challenge, and we are going to be able to continue to see this growth and support the programs as they continue to grow.
  • The question was raised regarding if there is good student interest in studying aboard and how is our infrastructure for sending students abroad. It was stated that there continues to be interest in studying abroad. It is rebounding slowly. As we talk to our colleagues across the SUNY consortium, we are all in the same boat. We are not a pre pandemic numbers, but we are not declining. Study aboard is going to like different in the next few years. So, what we are looking at is how is that going to look different. How do we support our students and how do we increase our Brockport student population in our programs. We also send other SUNY students and non SUNY students in our programs, but our target population is increasing the Brockport student population.

Preliminary Fall 2024 Enrollment Update

Dr. Kelly provided an update on the preliminary fall 2024 enrollment. The following discussion points occurred:

  • Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
  • It was stated that JPBC will be doing a deep dive into retention later in the semester, approximately sometime in November.
  • The comment was made on the push of activities for new freshman in the first six weeks. The Academic Tailgate was attended yesterday and quite a few freshman Nursing Intents and Nursing Directs were there and they are all loving Brockport and all the activities that are available. In fact, two of them said that they can’t get to the activities that they want because there are so many. Kudos to the staff that are really pushing those activities in the first six weeks because it shows that they are working.

Additional Items from the Committee

 

No items at this time.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:20 a.m.