UNCW positioned as an alternative

By Josh Spilker

Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo has a cup of ink pens in her Alderman Hall office at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

With each click, panels on the side of the pens display each of UNCW’s strategic goals: Create a powerful learning experience. Strengthen regional engagement. Provide a safe campus environment. Increase financial support. Foster a superior faculty and staff. Embrace diversity. Become global citizens.

The pens represent DePaolo’s vision that the university’s goals be functional, rather than just idealistic.

“We had before what we called a strategic plan, but it was essentially a notebook where we inserted the plans from each of the vice chancellor’s divisions,” said Kenneth Spackman, the director of university planning. “Chancellor DePaolo wanted to direct things, not to have a top-down process. There was a tremendous amount of broad-based input, but rather to have everyone working on it in the same direction.”

DePaolo and the university administration are navigating a course that sees more and more students becoming interested in an education from UNCW.

“We want to be seen as the quality alternative to flagships and mega campuses,” DePaolo said. “It’s not that one is better than the other, it’s just different and North Carolina needs both.”

The numbers are starting to back up her claim. UNCW is one of the top 15 masters-level public or private universities in the South, as ranked by the 2008 US News and World Report College Rankings. The university’s SAT scores have risen consistently, from fifth-highest in 2000 in the UNC system to third-highest in 2007, behind only UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University. UNC-Chapel Hill and UNCW have had the most net gains in that time period, with UNC-Chapel Hill scores gaining a net of 51 points, from 1251 to 1302, and UNCW scores going up a net of 60 points from 1097 to 1157, just eclipsing UNC-Asheville’s 1154. The most recent scores do not include the writing portion of the new version of the SAT test.

As UNCW has attracted brighter students, the chancellor sees a need for more scholarships to support them.

“Once you’re working with these very bright students, what makes a difference for them is whether or not you can give them a merit scholarship because others can give them a merit scholarship,” DePaolo said.

As tuition and costs increase, the university also has developed SOAR (Support Opportunity Access Responsibility), a program that allows high-achieving, low-income students to attend UNCW at a low cost. The financial aid office will review financial aid applications and determine if a family’s income is double the poverty level for a certain family size.

For example, the 2008 poverty guideline for a family of four in the continental United States is $21,200. UNCW would allow students in a family of four, making under $42,400, to qualify for SOAR.

The 2007-2008 school year is the first year for the program, and students must maintain a 2.5 GPA to remain in the program. A portion of each student’s tuition goes to funding the program, hopefully allowing each qualifying student to pay a nominal amount to attend each year.

“It’s a package so that they will pay no more than $1,000 a year by the time they graduate,” DePaolo said.

More students
Scholarships are becoming even more important as the population of the state increases. According to Norma Houston, the director of UNC Tomorrow, the state will have a net gain of 80,000 students by 2017, bringing the total to 290,000. The current number is approximately 210,000 students.

“We have no reason to believe those numbers are not accurate. If anything, that number will go up because our state is growing very, very rapidly,” Houston said.

UNCW currently has approximately 12,000 students and expects to reach 15,000 in the next 10 years. Although the university has just completed several new buildings and projects, DePaolo does not believe the current facilities will be able to hold everyone.

According to the latest study published in October 2007 by the State of North Carolina Higher Education Comprehensive Planning Program, UNCW had 812,794 square feet of academic facilities (not just classrooms and a library, but also administration) and a ratio of space to students at 72 feet per student. That was only above UNC-Charlotte and Fayetteville State University. In 2005, UNCW’s ratio was tied with UNCCharlotte for lowest at 70. N.C. State University had the highest ratio at 186, followed by UNC-Chapel Hill at 142 and N.C. AT&T State University at 130. For the seven North Carolina masters-level universities, Western Carolina University had the highest at 98. The average ratio is 93 for a fouryear public university and is 132 for a research university.

“We’re tied with Charlotte for the worst square footage per student,” DePaolo said. “We will get more buildings in the future, but we have so much catch-up that we will never have enough buildings in the foreseeable future to have that projected increase all in residence here.”

Projects that have received allocated funds are a new school of nursing facility on the northeast corner of a parking lot near Dobo Hall. The estimated cost is $30 million, and construction is to begin in the fall. A teaching lab for the school of education also has been designated to that same parking lot, at an estimated cost of $34 million with construction to begin in the fall of 2009. Phase three of the Seahawk Landing project will include space for 662 students and a parking deck to accommodate 992 vehicles plus motorcycle parking. This project will be built on 13 acres of a 140-acre pine forest. Renovations also have been completed on the University Union and Burney Center and are nearing completion on Friday Hall.

Because of space limitations, the university has to employ what DePaolo calls “creative measures” to find space for more students. They are exploring partnerships with community colleges to offer four-year degrees at some locations, as well as a satellite campus in Onslow County, which DePaolo calls the “the largest underserved region in North Carolina.”

The university already has fouryear degree programs in education, clinical research, nursing and criminal justice in place at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville. There are locations for classes on Camp Lejeune and at the Marine Corps Air Station-New River, as well as at the Jacksonville campus.

“There is an increasing demand from the military population there, and the military personnel that is coming back,” said Dr. Johnson Akinleye, an associate vice chancellor and director of extension programs. “The estimation is that in the next couple of years there will be a surge in growth ... because of that there is a need for educational programs there.”

UNCW will add a bachelor’s of social work program and business programs in the fall of 2008 at Coastal Carolina Community College, and Akinleye said the demand for the programs are high.

“If you have a program that they can start there and complete in that location, it makes it very attractive,” he said.

Videoconferencing and online classes are increasingly being utilized, and Akinleye hinted that a satellite campus might be set up in the area eventually.

“As we grow, the attempt is for us to create a satellite campus there, which may mean we need some additional facilities, joint-use facilities,” he said.

Growing programs
Other infrastructure changes will occur with the introduction of the Campus for Research, Entrepreneurship, Service and Technology (CREST). This initiative has received the Millennial Campus title from the State General Assembly. Pioneered by North Carolina State’s Centennial Campus, the designation sets aside portions of the campus for public and private industry use.

“It allows you to bring private industry onto campus in ways that you couldn’t before,” DePaolo said about the Millennial Campus designation. “That creates the synergy that often, with industry working closely with faculty, with student-interns, with students to create new industry, to pursue ideas and to eventually create new industry and new jobs.”

Approved in June 2007, three sections of the campus have been given the Millennial Campus designation, including the Center for Marine Science south of the campus. One area will be a Health, Fitness and Nutrition Center that will feature a sports medicine center, combining the resources of the applied human sciences department, the school of nursing and the athletics department. Another area will include initiatives for chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology and will feature a forensics chemistry lab and DNA sequencing laboratory. The Center for Marine Science is furthest along with MARBIONC, a company initiated by the Center for Marine Science that combines research in marine biotechnology and develops patented research for use in the marketplace.

“The three sites that we chose provided the greatest opportunities for us if we had the Millennial Campus designation,” said Mark Lanier, assistant to the chancellor. “That would then allow us to have some flexibility in going into partnerships and having some flexibility regarding construction and the financing piece.”

UNCW is actively seeking partnerships with businesses in these areas. DePaolo stressed that each center could be shaped differently, but that the university is open to ideas.

Businesses would have access to the faculty knowledge and resources, as well as the possibility of student workers and interns.

“We’re absolutely flexible with this,” DePaolo said. “I think each project will demand its own specific set of parameters. Each one will be different.”

Real World 101
With these initiatives, the university will become an even more important cog in the region’s economy. Currently, UNCW estimates their annual impact at approximately $500 million, which makes up about 10 percent of the total economic activity for the seven-county region. Construction projects have totaled approximately $240 million from 2001 to 2007, and another $180 million already is designated for future projects.

But for the university’s success to continue, the chancellor is not shy about discussing funds. More scholarships are needed to maintain top students, to retain faculty and to continue the building projects.

But they also have found more challenges. The university was confronted with some of its biggest weaknesses, including low percentages in ethnic minorities, lower than average faculty pay and a small number of merit scholarships.

The University Planning Committee has developed 10 progress measures to judge the university’s advancement in these areas and more. “They represent our serious attempt to measure the extent that we are meeting those goals,” said Spackman, the director of university planning.

The progress measures track student- to-faculty ratios, minority students enrolled, retention and graduation trends, undergraduates on campus, faculty salary and giving goals. Part of that plan was finding 14 peer schools that reflected where the university is and where they wanted to go. These schools are from several states and include masters and doctoral institutions, as well as schools that are both larger and smaller than UNCW.

“We wanted to stretch, we wanted to have some peer schools ahead of us, so we could look to see what they’re doing and transfer to our own situation and do better,” Spackman said.

In looking at the progress measures, UNCW has averaged better freshman retention trends than the peer average and has high six-year graduation rates. They also are very close to their peers in instructional faculty salary, studentto- faculty and student-to-staff ratios and have increased their alumni giving percentages.

Still, UNCW lags behind in percentages of minority students (hovering around 11 percent of all students for 2005-2007) and in endowment.

Diversity is an issue that was recognized as a concern in many conversations. Spackman said the university has taken a broad view that welcomes students of different types of diversity, rather than on a number.

“What I think is needed, what the literature says is needed, is to concentrate on the learning portion of that goal for diversity, to incorporate diversity in the curriculum for everybody, so that diversity involves everybody and not just a headcount,” Spackman said, adding that their view includes having more international students, as well as more students studying abroad.

Another priority is to keep retention and graduation rates high. While they already are high compared to the rest of the state and to their peers, they want to push farther.

“We would like to increase graduation rates, to bring our four-year graduation rate up to 50 percent and our six-year graduation rate up to 70 percent,” DePaolo said. “And again, we’re one of the highest in each of those categories in the state, and we want to keep pushing that.”

According to Spackman, the UNC system wants each of its campuses to continue to push graduation rates. The 2006 graduation rate was at 65 percent, and the goal is for UNCW to be at 80 percent by 2015.

“Everybody is going to have a stretch from where they are, even Chapel Hill,” Spackman said.

Strategies for improvement
The UNC system is asking its ca puses to stretch with the UNC Tomorrow initiative, which wants all of its campuses on board with a single mission and goal. Houston, the UNC Tomorrow director, described the initiative as a “stronger alignment between what the university does and what the people need it to do.”

Houston said they want each campus to find ways of increasing “access” to education for adult learners who may already be in the workforce and are transitioning careers, as well as addressing the individual economic needs of the region.

The chancellor was prescient in developing the strategic goals for UNCW. Representatives from UNCW and from UNC Tomorrow use words like “in sync” and “in tune” when describing UNCW’s goals with the region’s needs as discovered during the UNC Tomorrow listening forums held this past fall.

“Chancellor DePaolo has done an outstanding job in reaching out to the community, getting advice from different constituencies, not just in Wilmington but throughout the Southeast region,” Houston said.

Many of the issues expressed by the public at UNCW’s listening forum were topics already covered in the strategic goals, such as the need for education access to the Hispanic community, opportunities at Camp Lejeune, working with biotech firms and “seamless” community college to university programs.

“UNCW was ahead of that curve already in our planning,” DePaolo said about the report. “Specifically, how we are a part of this community, a part of this region and have always seen ourselves as addressing the community needs.”

As the number of students increases at UNCW, the quality of students increases, and the community partnerships grow, it is a microcosm for some of the new challenges and opportunities for the region as a whole. The chancellor rattled off all the programs that she is proud of the university doing, such as developing clinical research and film studies programs to meet a city’s growing industry, encouraging progress in the boat industry, and in marine science, mariculture, commercial fish production and nursing programs, among many others.

It is clear that UNCW wants a flexible campus, one that responds to the needs of the community, as well as to its students.

“In the last five to 10 years, I guess, more universities have realized that they need to become engaged universities and really partners with their communities, their regions,” DePaolo said.

To further those relationships and to meet some of the university’s financial goals, DePaolo said there is a lot that the business community can contribute.

UNCW, however, also needs businesses to be sensitive to its needs and to the needs of the students that it continually educates.

“We need jobs for our students,” DePaolo said. “This community is one where the students that are here, stay here after graduation, and there haven’t been enough jobs. We have to grow the jobs in this community, so that as we’re bringing the brightest kids from around the state here, we need to keep them here.”