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PARKERSBURG -- West Virginia University at Parkersburg has increased its reserve fund while dealing with fluctuating enrollment numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university president said earlier this week.
President Chris Gilmer told the Board of Governors on Tuesday the university has nearly $20 million in its reserve fund, an increase of 54% since 2018. Gilmer asked for and got approval to take $1 million from the reserve fund to cover a number of upgrades to the Riverhawk Farm, the university's business office and more with the understanding that grants, COVID relief money and other funding would pay for majority of the work.
"(The reserve was built up) through responsible and conservative budgeting and spending while still managing to provide everything that our community has needed to carry out our educational mission and much of what it has wanted to enhance that mission," Gilmer said. "Not one employee has missed payroll during the entirety of this pandemic due to layoff, furlough or COVID-based loss of employment as we found creative solutions to keep everyone employed even when we moved to remote work assignments, and we have judiciously spent reserve funds as needed even while building this unprecedented surplus."
Throughout the course of the pandemic, the university has seen a decline in enrollment. At times, early numbers indicated numbers keeping steady or improving over previous years. However, as the pandemic has continued, the university saw some students deciding not to pursue their education at this time.
Gilmer said WVUP's fall 2021 enrollment saw a significant decline, but comparing it to the last three academic years with the three academic years prior to that, the university saw an increase in overall enrollment across all categories of 5.009%. Student retention, a statistic Gilmer said is often overlooked, is up 9% over the past three years and stands at about 17% above the national average for colleges similar to WVUP.
Regarding spring enrollment projections, on Friday, Jan. 7, the university reached 100% percent of projections for overall head count enrollment and 96% in full-time-equivalent enrollment compared to the same day in the spring 2021 enrollment cycle, Gilmer said.
On the same day, the university was well over 100% of projections for Early College students and at 100% in transfer students. Compared to final 2021 spring enrollment, the school was at 97% FTE in an overall comparison across all categories.
"I want to be clear that these numbers are likely to change significantly," Gilmer said. "Although classes have begun, we continue to accept late registration, which will increase the numbers, and then we will see some erosion of students for non-attendance and other reasons.
"We will not have firm spring enrollment numbers for some time, but I wanted to share … that we are making a very encouraging start to the semester."
For the spring 2022 semester, the university is offering face-to-face instruction on both campuses in Parkersburg and Jackson County.
"Our faculty and staff are highly creative and committed to student success, and we recognize that face-to-face interaction yields more productive results for our students," Gilmer said. "Our concern for health and safety has not diminished, and we will be updating our COVID-19 protocols this week after meeting with the COVID-19 task force.
"We are providing significant opportunity for choice to our students while attempting to balance with the need for faculty autonomy. Many if not most of our courses for spring can be accessed either face-to-face or through virtual learning options, including live broadcasts in which some students are in class with faculty and some are learning remotely, the modality of learning chosen by each student."
Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com