Last year, 16% of SUNY Fredonia students left and did not return after the fall semester, but Dr. Cedric Howard and his team in the Division of Enrollment and Student Services are working hard to close this gap. At the recent meeting of the College Council, Howard, vice president for student affairs, was pleased to announce that this year, that number is down to 12%. “That is an enormous improvement in one year,” Howard said.

Just how important is retention to Fredonia’s ability to invest in its current students and ensure future success? According to Interim Provost Dr. Kevin Kearns, important enough to make it someone’s full-time job.

Kearns told the council, “A generous donor to the university contributed $250,000 for a proposal we’re putting together for retention, so that will allow us to hire a person who will have eyes on retention as a director of retention initiatives, as well as to put together some other initiatives related to early warnings and other things.”

In Interim President Dennis Hefner’s report, he explained that the donation will provide for approximately two and a half years of funding to support these new retention efforts.

Looking ahead to the upcoming academic year, Howard explained that the fall 2020 new undergraduate application and acceptance numbers may appear low; however, “…our enrollment numbers are better than we anticipated.”

He pointed out that last year, the school set record numbers in terms of applicants and admitted students. “We’d never brought in 7,000 applications,” said Howard. “We’d never admitted 1,700 students in one year, so comparing this year to last year, that’s why the numbers are down. However, we feel encouraged pertaining to that.”

To strengthen campus retention efforts, admissions criteria were raised for fall 2020 in order to strengthen the academic profile of incoming students. This included increasing the minimum SAT score for admittance. As of Feb. 10, Fredonia received 5,118 applications, accepted 3,030 students and received 104 deposits, which is an increase of three deposits from last year.

Not only has retention in between semesters increased this year, but so have January term enrollment and the Pennsylvania-Ohio initiative numbers. “Our J-term enrollment was up 12% this year than the previous year,” Howard reported.

At the end of 2019, President Hefner announced the Good Neighbor Award for residents of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Starting this fall, tuition for Ohio and Pennsylvania residents at Fredonia will be $10,980 a year, which is lower than tuition at the three biggest public universities in Ohio and the two biggest public universities in Pennsylvania. In December 2019, Fredonia’s number of out-of-state applicants tripled compared to the previous year.

“Currently, on campus we have 33 students from Pennsylvania and Ohio, from freshmen to graduate students,” said Howard. “If we got 40 applicants, we were doing well. We’ve already admitted more than 50 (out of state) students for the upcoming year. I just found out last week that our top two recruits on the women’s basketball team were recruited from those two states.”

Council Chairman Frank Pagano asked Howard if he had an estimate for fall 2020 enrollment. “I’m planning for 4,600, and I feel comfortable with that number,” he replied. “Our retention numbers are up…We’re making changes across the institution to look at student success as our driving factor across the board.”

Howard’s estimate is an increase of approximately 160 students compared to enrollment in fall 2019.