ASU Spring Enrollment Stays Even With Last Year

ALAMOSA, COLO. (Feb. 6, 2015) . . . Adams State University’s spring 2015 enrollment is comparable to last spring’s, due to 8 percent growth in graduate student enrollment, according to Dr. Michael Mumper, vice president for Enrollment Management & Program Development.

Total enrollment as of census date, February 4, is 3,470, a decrease of less than 1 percent (14 students) from last spring. This includes 2,503 undergraduates and 967 graduate students.

Mumper noted nearly 81 percent of the fall freshman class persisted to their second semester. Undergraduate enrollment decreased 3.3 percent from spring 2014, with some of that attrition attributable to the recent retirement of Adams State’s head football coach, Mumper added.

Business administration continues as the largest undergraduate major, with 368 students, followed by human performance & physical education, with 209, and nursing, with 148 students. Overall, 32.4 percent of Adams State’s undergraduate student body identifies as Hispanic.

Graduate program expansion Adams State offers eleven graduate programs, including an online Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision that was initiated in the fall of 2013. The remainder are master’s degree programs. Counselor Education (both master’s and doctoral programs) accounts for nearly half of the graduate student population, with 509 enrolled.

Adams State’s second largest graduate program is the Master’s in Teacher Education, which grew by 4.4 percent since last year, for a total of 65 students. “This reflects growth in Adams State’s Boettcher Teacher Residency Program (BTRP), which will continue to expand,” said Adams State President David Svaldi.

Offered in collaboration with the Boettcher Foundation and Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC), the program helps prepare teachers for low-income, rural and urban public schools. Last fall, PEBC was awarded a $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Quality Partnership Grant program. The five-year grant will enable the BTRP program to serve more Colorado school districts and add a focus on training teachers for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).

Svaldi noted $300,000 revenue from the BTRP stabilized this year’s budget and allowed the university to award a retroactive salary increase for this fiscal year and plan an additional raise for fiscal year 2015-16.

The Master’s in Music Education, now in its second year, also experienced significant growth, increasing by 7 percent. A new emphasis in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) was added to the M.A. in Humanities program last spring.