Officials going the extra mile to keep more enrolled. from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.

In a previous interview, Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management, explained how crucial maintaining the increase in student enrollment was to the university. Pointing out that only after the 12th class day will numbers begin to give an accurate picture of enrollment. The 15th class day has now passed and numbers are still unclear.

Not willing  to comment on final enrollment figures just yet, Lamb pointed to another telling statistic, and how the university is attempting to reverse it — retention.

Lamb explained that last year the university’s freshmen retention rate was at 71 percent, meaning, that 71 percent of all freshmen that enrolled the previous year returned for their sophomore year. According to Lamb, preliminary figures for returning freshmen fall ’13  has fallen to 68 percent.

“That’s not the trend we want to see, we want to see the trend in the other direction. There are a lot of things that we can work on and improve. One thing we’re doing is… We’ve started this M.A.P.Works program. We did a very small deployment last year,” Lamb said.

It is clear that administrators are not taking any chances in keeping their new recruits enrolled.

Matthew Park, dean of students and associate vice president of student affairs, said, that through a statistical program, Making Achievement Possible Works, officials can build a better rapport with students, increasing the retention rate.

“It allows us to kind of respond to the issues that our students are seeing. Ultimately, so we can help them get higher grades, stay in school, graduate and be successful for the rest of their lives,” Park said.

The MAP program combines survey data from freshmen and sophomore students, ranging from high school records to a student’s financial history.

Education Benchmarking is the program developer, and it costs the university over $20,000 a year to run. However, Park said by keeping more students enrolled the program will pay for itself through otherwise lost revenue (tuition and other fees).