The Board of Regents members met for their last meeting of the fall semester Nov. 8, 2018 in the J.S. Bridwell Board Room in Hardin Hall.  They gave an update on campus construction, enrollment/academics, annual financial report, proceeds of mineral rights and -insert other topic here. View Livestream HERE

Caven Crosnoe, Chairman opened the meeting with giving a special welcome to the three new regent members who were appointed the board in late August: Oku Okeke, Karen Liu Pang, and Tony Fidelie.

“For our new regents, previously our board meetings began on a Thursday afternoon with all regents attending all of the committee meetings, while each committee took separate action on items. The meetings were legally determined to be committee as a whole meetings since a form of the board attended the meetings. On Friday mornings, the committee chairs presented consent agendas of items approved by each committee for the full boards consideration. Since we have now moved to one day board meetings, at the conclusion of our committee reports, I would like for us to have a brief discussion about how we see the committee’s functioning in the future,” Crosnoe said.

University Dashboard — Fred Dietz, vice president for enrollment management, presented the university’s dashboard indicator and projections to the board members. Beginning in 2012, the administration developed a dashboard, containing measures deemed important by the university and presented to the board each November. According to Dietz, the key metrics are enrollment, residential living, student success, operation efficiency related to finances and outside resources related to finances, and outside resources coming to the institution. 

• “Overall, we saw a slight increase in enrollment. We’re at 6,102 which is always encouraging and some of the items here, 1.1.2 is really encouraging, we’re at 889 new freshman. That’s our freshman count so that’s almost an 8.5 percent increase over last year, which is really strong. The next item, 1.1.3, looks at our new transfer population and we saw about a 6 percent increase in our new transfer students so this is really encouraging as well,” Dietz said. “Overall these numbers are quite solid. semester credit hour generated, 1.1.6, is a really important number as tuition revenue are generated off the semester credit hours so we saw a 1.2 percent increase in semester credit hour productivity in the fall.”
• “As we go down, the enrollment portion of this dashboard, a couple of items that are really important to us as we move forward are percentage of hispanic students enrolled, we’re just shy of 21 percent, we’re at 20.5 percent. This will be important as we move forward. Ultimately, we want to hit 25 percent as a long term goal which would make us a hispanic institution and open up many more avenues for title four funding for the institution,” Dietz said. “Our percentage of African-American students continues to grow we’re up 14.8% this is really encouraging, the hispanic and African-American population it’s really a good indicator of the diversity here at midwestern state so we’re proud of those increases.”

Residential University Experience: Dietz stated there was a population 5 percent increase in the residence halls and the halls are at 93 percent capacity.

Student Success: The first-time, full-time student retention rate (first year, fall to fall) is 64.6% and there is a target rate of 75%. Dietz also stated our university is a little behind our peer group institutions for retention.

“This is kind of a mixed bag here as you look at student success, not all of the numbers on this dashboard are strong and student success is an area we need to have some improvement,” Dietz said. “As you look at item 3.1, which is First-time, Full-time Student Retention Rate (First year, fall to fall),  this is an area where we really are focusing a lot of attention this fall we anticipate coming to you in the spring with some with a report and some measures to look at improving retention.”

Operational Effectiveness:

• Administrative cost rate dropped 7.3 percent
• Average student debt dropped to 237,000

Construction Update — Kyle Owen, associate vice president of facilities services, gave the board an update on construction such as the Health Sciences and Human Services Building, TAS/ADA Fire Marshal Upgrades Project, and Moffett Library renevations. According to Owen, rain held up a lot of construction.

Mineral Rights — After a special called meeting Sept. 14 regarding the purchase offer (that was accepted) for a mineral acquisition, the administration presented recommendations related to the use of the proceeds from the sale of the mineral interests. The administration recommended the following action related to the proceeds from the sale of the university’s mineral interests located in Sections 45, 47, 48, 61 and 63 of Block 4, H&GN Ry. Co. Survey in Reeves County, Texas.  The funds will be used in accordance with the bequest from Mr. Homer Donohoo, Jr., with one-half of the funds to support MSU’s Music Department and one-half to support MSU’s Nursing Department.

NEXT MEETING DATES:

• February 14, 2019
• May 9, 2019
• August 1, 2019