Approval of Minutes Motion 21-15: Mr. Conner moved that the Board of Trustees of Central Washington University approve the minutes from the meeting of February 25, 2021. Ms. Gillis seconded the motion. The motion was approved. FY20 BUDGET OVERVIEW Vice Presidents Klucking and Hibbard gave a joint presentation on enrollment and budget forecasts. VP Hibbard reported on Enrollment. College enrollment trends during the pandemic continue to vary greatly across institution type and region. Some of the variance can be explained by the variety of ways institutions responded to the virus. While some institutions moved to mostly online course modality and limited residential housing and programming, other institutions did not. CWU’s transition to mostly distance education modalities last spring offered a safer environment for our students and community, yet negatively impacted overall enrollment. Currently, CWU carries this decline in enrollment through spring 2021, with 584 fewer students over the prior year, a 6 percent decline. This is slightly greater than CWU’s 5.4-percent, year-over-year decline last fall. These figures include students with admit types of first-year, transfer, post-baccalaureate, re- admit, and graduate. CWU continues to see year-over-year increases in re-admit (+66 students, +15 percent) and graduate (+62 students, +12 percent) student enrollment in spring 2021. Much of the decline in year over year enrollment for spring 2021 can be attributed to fall to spring persistence. While our fall 2020 transfer cohort persisted at a similar rate than past cohorts (90.5 percent), our fall 2020 first-year cohort persistence rate from fall to spring dropped to 83.9 percent, a 3.4 percentage point drop from the prior five year average of 87.3 percent. The overall impact of the lower persistence rate is amplified by the lower than anticipated fall 2020 first-year cohort. For comparison, 1819 of our fall 2019 new first-year students were enrolled the following spring, compared to just 1402 of our new fall 2020 first-year students, a difference of 417 enrollments. CWU is projecting a slight decline in fall 2021 overall enrollment: about 10,700 graduate and undergraduate student headcount in fall 2021, which is a decline of 471 students from the prior year. Given the plan to resume in-person learning and increase student housing this fall, enrollment declines are expected to slow, and then to rebound in the next 12-18 months. VP Klucking then gave a quick update on the budget. All institutional portions of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Funding (HEERF) I & II have been used to offset revenue losses in Enterprise Funds-- housing, dining, bookstore, and parking--to avoid violating bond covenants. He added that federal funding has restricted use of the funding. For students, direct-assistance requirements include any component of the cost of attendance and emergency costs associated with the coronavirus: tuition, food, housing, healthcare (including mental), and childcare. Institutional assistance requirements can only be used to defray lost revenue and expenses associated with coronavirus including: reimbursement for pandemic expenses; technology costs associated with a transition to distance education; faculty and staff training; payroll directly related to the pandemic; and additional financial aid grants for students.
2 Board of Trustees Minutes May 13-14, 2021
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