By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Grand Valley State University has 25,892 students enrolled for fall 2008—its highest enrollment ever. And even though the school has lowered its growth rate over the past six years to keep student numbers manageable, it’s still playing catch-up after its six percent enrollment growth of the 1990s.
“We’re still adding professors to keep up so we don’t have a bottleneck for students working to get their degrees,” says Gayle Davis, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “We have 30 new professors coming aboard to fill new positions, and another 70 filling existing positions.”
Departments get the new professors according to the need to accommodate students with their degree programs.
“We want students to be able to explore what they want to do, but as soon as they’ve decided on their program they don’t have to waste any time and jump through hoops,” Davis says. “We need professors so we don’t have any closed classes, so the students can move on to grad school or careers.”
Davis says enrollment in the Kirkhof School of Nursing and the College of Health Professions—occupational therapy, physical therapy, physician’s assistant and others—increased from 86 classes and 3,375 students in 2005 to 111 classes and 4,580 students this fall.
For students to move on to their health sciences majors in a timely manner, the school has added several professors to teach an expanded number of foundation classes. This gives students an opportunity to select the classes they need from a variety of class times.
About two-thirds of the new professors, who hail from all over the world, are in their first teaching positions. While the age range is large, the majority are in their 20s and 30s.
Source: Gayle Davis, Grand Valley State University
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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