UA-Fort Smith has big plans for future

But 6,700-student university keeping wary eye on decrease in enrollment

Graphic showing UA-Fort Smith’s freshman falloff
Graphic showing UA-Fort Smith’s freshman falloff

FORT SMITH -- Paul Beran raised his voice to be heard above the noisy crowd.

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Dr. Paul Beran, chancellor of the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith is shown in this photo.

By this point in the evening, they were enjoying sips from their wine glasses and conversation with one another.

"It's not just about the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith," said Beran, top administrator for the approximately 6,700-student university. "It's about the city of Fort Smith in everything that we're doing."

The occasion was the September gala opening for a new campus arts center, the Windgate Art and Design building, constructed with a $15.5 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

The three-level building sits adjacent to a traffic artery in the state's second- largest city, the five-lane North Waldron Road. Colorful lights dot the structure, creating a nighttime landmark for traffic flowing past a site carefully laid out in accordance with the university's master plan.

Not found in the plan, however, is any mention of a decrease in freshmen enrollment -- which UA-Fort Smith has experienced over the past five years. The number of freshmen fell to 1,099 by the autumn of 2014, compared with 1,328 in the fall of 2010 -- a decrease of 17.2 percent.

Among the 10 public four-year universities in the state, UA-Fort Smith was one of only two reporting decreases of more than 100 freshmen from 2010-14. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff reported an even steeper decline, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education on first-time, full-time, credential-seeking students.

But while the Pine Bluff campus reported a surge in freshmen enrollment this fall, the numbers continued to shrink at Fort Smith, with 1,014 freshmen enrolled, according to university data. Comprehensive freshman totals from the state's Higher Education Department will not be available until next year.

Moving forward, Beran said in an interview, the trend will stop.

"We'll stabilize ourselves," he said.

However, along with enrollment declines, the school has seen personnel changes. Changes this year included new leaders for the school's finance and admission departments. Changes have also taken place within the foundation that supports the university through fundraising efforts.

"Are we at a crossroads here? I would say yes," said John Taylor, chairman of the University of Arkansas Fort Smith Foundation and a longtime advocate for the school. "But I look back at my 30 years involvement here, and I think we've been at several crossroads."

Overall, the school's reported enrollment of 6,707 this fall is 1,000 fewer students than in the fall of 2010. The total has fallen even as it includes 878 concurrent students, mostly high schoolers earning some college credits. That's been an area of enrollment growth in recent years.

Beran cites an enrollment boom that didn't last -- growth fueled by economic uncertainty because of the recession of 2007-09.

Taylor, a senior vice president with financial firm Stifel, said the Fort Smith community also "got hit in the gut" with manufacturing job losses, including the 2012 closure of a Whirlpool Corp. plant.

"What we need to do here is diversify our economic portfolio," Taylor said, calling the university an economic catalyst and key to workforce development.

Moving forward, Beran said, he expects enrollment to grow over the next three years, to about 7,000 students.

"We are really reaching into a population that's more stable for us to be able to recruit," Beran said.

He spoke about steadying the number of first-time, full-time freshmen, in part by recruiting students from smaller high schools in Northwest Arkansas who might prefer going to a smaller college. UA-Fayetteville, which in recent years has become one of the fastest-growing public research universities nationally, now has more than 26,000 students.

Beran also talked about reaching out to another set of learners -- "serving the community even more than we are with nontraditional students."

Currently, the university has 1,609 students who are age 25 or older. Beran said he considers students with children or those without financial support from parents as also being nontraditional.

The plan is to reach "into populations that maybe find it hard to come back to school, and figuring out how to make it convenient for them and create the opportunity for them," Beran said.

Efforts include partnerships with employers like ABB Robotics and First National Bank of Fort Smith to recruit and support workers as potential UA-Fort Smith students.

The university's own past might be described as nontraditional. Founded as a school in 1928, it later operated for decades as Westark Community College. Fifteen years ago, college trustees agreed to join the University of Arkansas System and began offering a wider range of bachelor's degrees in addition to associate degrees and certifications.

In May, UA-Fort Smith announced its largest-ever graduating class, with more than 1,400 degrees and certificates awarded during the 2014-15 academic year. The total included more than 800 bachelor's degrees awarded -- a nearly 100 percent increase compared with the number given in 2009-10, according to the university.

A coming milestone is the school awarding its first master's degrees. Five students are enrolled in a health care administration program, with the first degrees expected to be awarded in 2017. UA-Fort Smith had been the only four-year public school in Arkansas to not offer a master's degree.

Studying biochemistry is 18-year-old Rasa Vongkhamchanh, a recent graduate of Fort Smith's Northside High School.

"I have many friends who put Fort Smith as a second option," Vongkhamchanh said, adding that he felt like other colleges had stronger recruiting efforts at his high school.

"They do college fairs at the high school. Yes, Fort Smith was there, but I don't think they were actively as passionate," Vongkhamchanh said.

Vongkhamchanh said his friends also had some concern about tuition increases.

Declining enrollment can lead to decreased revenue. In budget documents for this fiscal year, the UA-Fort Smith anticipated a deficit of $595,369 in its education and general fund, with its reserve funds expected to help cover the budget gap.

Rare for Arkansas, community support for the university comes in the form of a voter-approved, countywide quarter-cent sales tax, which raised more than $5.8 million during the past fiscal year. Unless voters approve a continuation of the tax, it will expire on Jan. 1, 2022.

Beran said he's committed to keeping tuition below that of most other institutions.

"We might not be at the bottom, but we'll be in the bottom 20 percent," Beran said. However, UA System trustees this year approved a tuition increase that raised credit hour tuition to $150 from $139 at the school.

For Vongkhamchanh, scholarship dollars played a role in his decision to stay home for college.

Since enrolling, he said, his college experience has been good, including "down-to-earth" faculty members.

"Since I'm in band, I feel like the student body is very involved," Vongkhamchanh said, adding, "I feel like there's always something to do."

On a recent overcast day, Brittany Brockwell, 32, took a lunch break near an outdoor fountain.

"It's close to home," Brockwell said when asked why she chose to enroll at UA-Fort Smith. She's pursuing a second bachelor's degree, this time in mechanical engineering. But for Brockwell, "close to home" means closer than other colleges. She drives about 90 minutes from Mena to attend classes.

"More online classes would be a big help," she said.

As for older students, Beran said, they can be very focused academically and, with their questions, push other students in a class intellectually. He said a five-year plan is being developed to consider such things as how much to expand already growing online options, for example.

Construction on campus, with recent additions to the library and a planned student fitness center, have caught the eye of Vongkhamchanh.

"There's a lot of new buildings here, and I like that," Vongkhamchanh said.

The master plan, released in 2013, also calls for adding 1,000 beds of student housing. Within the past 15 years, the first campus housing was built, with a total now of about 940 beds.

But the master plan also projected growth to 9,000 students over the next 20 years.

"We're kind of waiting to see how things go," Beran said.

Taylor recalled teaching at the university decades ago. He marvels at the changes on campus.

"The first 15 or 20 years I was out here, we were just a two-year institution with a bunch of crappy-looking buildings, metal sheds on the corner," Taylor said.

The master plan describes the university as having "evolved from a commuter technical school to a comprehensive university," with needs that include modern academic facilities and a desire to rework university grounds to present a "grand facade" to visitors.

In the two years after the Windgate grant, the university's foundation raised $3.6 million and then $4.3 million for the 12-month period that ended June 30.

But when it comes to the full vision in the master plan, "unless you continue to grow your enrollment base, I don't think that's achievable," Taylor said. "I just think that's simple math."

Metro on 11/09/2015

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