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Tripathi updates UB Council on fall enrollment
By DONNA BUDNIEWSKI
Reporter Assistant Editor
On the job for almost a month, Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, updated the UB Council Monday on projected enrollment figures for the upcoming academic year.
Not only is the quality of enrolled students continuing to improve, but applications to UB also are up dramatically in recent years, Tripathi reported.
Except for the spike in freshmen admits last fall, projected university-wide enrollment, at about 27,255, has been constant since the fall of 2003, but retention rates for freshmen continue to improve, as do their mean SAT scores and grade point averages. "The quality of students enrolling is improving quite a bit. Enrollment is targeted more toward the quality of students, as opposed to just numbers," said Tripathi.
The mean SAT and high school average of enrolled students keeps climbing, with a projected 1183 SAT and 92 percent grade point average for Fall 2004, compared to 1160 and 89 percent GPA for Fall 1999.
Tripathi added that UB is enrolling more than half of its students from the highest selectivity group—at 54 percent, compared to 32 percent in 1999.
UB's retention rate last year for freshmen who continued on in their sophomore year was 84.9 percent, compared to 81 percent for peer institutions.
This fall, the projected enrollment for the freshman class is expected to be about 3,200, down from 3,581 in 2003. "This was in anticipation of keeping enrollments at the same level while getting better students," said Tripathi.
The admission rate is declining, down from 74 percent in Fall 1999 to a projected 56 percent for this fall, but the enrollment yield continues to climb, up from 29 percent in 1999 to 32 percent for Fall 2004.
"We had approximately 18,211 applicants for the Fall of 2004, compared to approximately 14,800 in 1999. There has been a substantial increase in the number of students applying to UB," Tripathi said.
The quality of university honors and distinguished honors students—with mean SAT scores of 1363 and 1532, respectively, and GPAs hovering at about 97 percent for incoming students this fall—also is improving over past years.
Continuing in its mission to increase the size and quality of its faculty, UB has hired 74 new faculty members for Fall 2004—with more hiring planned, said Tripathi. He noted that faculty searches have gone very well, with most departments filling their vacancies.
Among UB's recent hires are:
Stephen McCaffery, distinguished poet, appointed to the Gray Chair in the Department of English with responsibility for the Poetics Program
Elliot Caplan, Media Study, an Emmy Award winner for film production
Carlos Alberto Munoz-Viveros, School of Dental Medicine, averaged between $250,000 and $500,000 a year in industrial contracts
Mary Thompson, Graduate School of Education, a cutting-edge researcher in the field of literacy and language development
Jonathan Bird, Electrical Engineering, who has an outstanding international reputation in experimental nanoelectronics
Steven Dubovsky, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, recipient of the Gold Medal Award from Mount Airy Hospital for contributions to psychiatry, a national award competition
In other business, two outgoing council members were honored for their service: Jennifer E. Tuttle, student representative since July 2002, and Sheila H. Battle, who was appointed to the council in 1997.