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August 28, 2010

Ivy Tech enrollment continues to rise

Class sizes increase to make room for students

By TARA HETTINGER Tara.Hettinger@newsandtribune.com

SELLERSBURG — Enrollment continues to grow at Ivy Tech Community College, pushing class sizes to increase as the campus waits for its 78,500-square-foot addition to be complete.

Terry Nolot, vice chancellor of enrollment services, said the fall enrollment is up 402 students, or 8 percent, when compared to last fall. That means the school has set a record enrollment of 5,212. He said this is the fifth year of record enrollments for every term.

“We did anticipate that enrollment would continue to grow. It was a question of how much,” Nolot said. “We’re trying to manage growth, because of scarcity of classroom and parking spaces.”

He said two years ago, the school eliminated admissions media marketing that was used to attract more students, because officials knew space would be an issue until the renovations and additions were complete. He said that should be done in late spring, so until then the school is having to make do with what space it has.

Faculty and staff are parking at an off-campus site and are being shuttled to campus to make more room for student parking. Distance education courses have been added and class sizes grew to make room for the increased demand. Nolot said he hopes to have some classrooms in the addition complete for when the spring semester starts.

Once the renovations and additions are complete, Nolot said about 100 more parking spaces will be added. He said he hopes to increase that number as the college moves forward.

The Sellersburg site isn’t the only one growing. The Ivy Tech system announced a 4 percent increase in fall enrollment statewide, reaching 111,452.

In addition to growing enrollment, the college also is starting new student interventions, dubbed Achieving the Dream, in an effort to improve college retention and completion rates. Nolot said the Southern Indiana campus has implemented that by hosting new student orientation, college prep classes for those who need them and a new Student Achievement Center, which houses academic advisers who will work with students to help keep them on track to graduate.

Nolot said the campus did increase the retention of students from spring to fall by about 10 percentage points, reaching 78 percent.

Nolot said health care and education programs have seen the most growth. This year, the campus did add two new programs in health care — physical therapist assistant and health care support.

Enrollment numbers for Indiana University Southeast are set to be released next week.

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