SOUTHEAST OFFICIALS PLEASED WITH HIGHER FALL ENROLLMENT

Fall enrollment numbers added up to good news for Southeast Missouri State University.

The school had 7,904 students enrolled for the first day of classes Monday, up 61 over a year ago.

The figure included 7,107 undergraduates and 797 graduate students.

But what had university officials really smiling Tuesday was the fact that the school had 11 percent more first-time freshmen enrolled for the fall semester than a year ago. School officials said that is important if enrollment is to continue to grow.

Southeast had 1,375 beginning freshmen enrolled for the start of the fall semester.

"This is the best building block that we have in so far as future enrollment is concerned and meeting the goal that the regents have set for us," said university president Dr. Dale Nitzschke.

The university hopes to boost total enrollment to 10,300 by 2006.

Nitzschke said a growing freshman class also is important in the school's efforts to fill its residence halls.

Most first-time freshmen live in the campus residence halls, he said. Filling the residence halls is financially important to the university, Nitzschke said. It also adds to campus culture. Nitzschke said everything that the university does, from sports to music, depends on having a large population of students living on campus.

Nitzschke credited stepped-up recruitment efforts with helping to increase enrollment.

Besides a boost in the number of first-time freshmen enrolled at Southeast this fall, the university also experienced slight increases in the number of seniors and returning freshmen.

But Southeast registered an 11 percent drop in the number of sophomores and a 2 percent decrease in the number of juniors.

The decline in the number of sophomores partly reflected last year's drop in beginning freshmen at Southeast, said Dr. Ken Dobbins, the school's executive vice president.

The number of beginning freshmen was down 5 percent last August, Dobbins said.

Southeast wants to do a better job of retaining students, said Dobbins. "Retention is one of the issues we will be looking at this year," he said.

Dobbins is the school's chief financial officer. He also supervises student recruitment and retention efforts following a restructuring of student-affairs operations this summer.

Southeast's goal is to have 75 percent of its freshmen students return for their sophomore year with 2.0 or "C" grade-point averages or better.

Currently, 70 percent return for their sophomore year, but only 67 percent meet the grade-point goal, Dobbins said.

The first-day enrollment figures don't reflect the total headcount for Southeast classes at outreach centers in Malden, Sikeston and Perryville, he said. Those figures will be included in the final enrollment figures that are calculated about four weeks into the semester, Dobbins said.

Southeast gets the lion's share of college students from its home county of Cape Girardeau. Seventy percent of those college-bound students enroll at Southeast, Dobbins said.

Jackson High School contributed the most students to this fall's beginning freshmen class at Southeast, with 82.

Another 68 students graduated from Cape Girardeau Central, followed by 37 from Sikeston and 33 from Notre Dame High School, Dobbins said.

Two St. Louis area high schools -- Lafayette and Fox -- sent 25 and 22 students, respectively, to Southeast this fall. Another 68 students came to Southeast from several high schools in the Rockwood district in the St. Louis area.

Southeast has expanded its efforts to recruit St. Louis area students. "We are making great strides in the St. Louis area," Dobbins said.