degree programs for the academic year and ensured continued access to VA educational benefits, serving 609 students. The Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities has strengthened compliance, and it is fully staffed. Career Services provided 488 career counseling opportunities to 370 students, and they hosted 18 career events for over 3000 students. Student Leadership Involvement and Community Engagement supported 12 registered student organizations with travel funding for conferences, competitions, and dual experiences impacting about 315 students. The Office of Case Management supported 287 unique students. PATH participation doubled in the last year and have almost 2000 care calls completed for first year students. In addition, they received $20K from the Washington Health Care Authority for collegiate recovery, and they launched a Wildcat Ride Safe/Fee Late Night Ride Share program. The Student Counseling Services has seen 311 clients, 1415 total appointments, with an average wait time of less than five days. Student Health Services has handled 1400 total appointments, including 300 new patients. Mental health issues have been the top diagnosis. University Recreation has had 56,500 recreational center entries and is now fully staffed post-Covid. o SEM Update (Hung Dang, Tishra Beeson) AVP Hung reported that Winter 2026 total enrollment is 7930. Compared to last year, it is a decline of 2.6 percent, equal to about 214. The fall to winter melt rate was -4.5 percent, which represents about 379 fewer students. Retention of first-year students from 2025 registering for their first winter quarter is 95 percent. Last year, we hit 93 percent, so we had a dip of 1 percent this year. Traditionally, it has been around 91 percent. AVP Hung then gave an update on the Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan. The plan was created based on supporting the university mission, vision, value on student success, student opportunities, and access. Goals of the SEM plan focus on growing enrollment, student retention and success, and academic support and student engagement. Currently, applications are up and confirmations are up. We still have two more months until we get a sense of what our numbers might be for fall. We need to continue establishing our recruitment pipeline for the future for first time in college students by expanding prospect engagement, partnerships with OSPI, guaranteed admissions, College in the High School and Running Start, earlier scholarship and financial aid packaging, and on the spot admissions. For transfer students, we need to do more on the spot admissions, provide timely and transparent transfer credit evaluations, offer seamless pathways, and move our scholarship package amount up to $6K over three years. Dean Beeson explained that when the first time in college cohort comes in, we follow them for the entire year and try to monitor what their retention is. The aspirational target is 75 percent. One strategy that is happening now is the early academic alert. It is an early intervention platform that allows faculty and advisors to submit a concern if a student might need some additional academic support or if they see some patterns that we might need to mobilize an intervention. Faculty have been very engaged in this process. They take attendance and then they do report on those academic alerts. We served about 1300 students in the fall quarter, which was a significant uptick, so we are seeing that engagement is high. Then our academic success coaches and our academic advisors reach out directly to those students. They are persistent. They call, text, and email them to let them know they are not alone. They started to see more of a response and engagement from these students. Now they have something called a Wellington High Five, which faculty can submit if they see improvement or positive growth from a student. It comes through the alert systems and can be tracked to see where growth and improvement is happening. There is a lot of cross-divisional collaboration happening and they are in the process of having all the services that students engage in regularly brought into one environment. A “Paying for College: What You Need to Know” guide has been developed for prospective students and
13 Board of Trustees Minutes February 19-20, 2026
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