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August 24, 2016
Nicholls State University President Bruce Murphy welcomed a familiar face to a new position and detailed the university’s outlook for the new school year.
Murphy presented faculty with his “state of the university” address during the school’s faculty institute last Wednesday. He addressed Nicholls’ budget, programs and progress toward long-term enrollment goals during the talk.
Also, Nicholls introduced Dr. Marilyn Macik-Frey as the dean of the College of Business Administration. Her new full-time role will not be foreign to her, as she had served as interim dean of the college since Dr. Shawn Mauldin’s retirement last November. Macik-Frey, who has been at Nicholls since 2007, was chosen after a nationwide search, according to a university press release announcing the hire. She said she plans to honor the college’s tradition and build on it going forward.
“There’s a legacy to the College of Business Administration that goes back for years and is deeply connected to the regional business community. I’m proud to serve as dean and keep that legacy alive,” Macik-Frey said.
Murphy highlighted Nicholls’ recent accomplishments during his presentation. The university had its highest freshman retention rate ever, with 71.1 percent of students returning for their sophomore years. Murphy also stressed the successes of the university’s nursing program, noting that 100 percent of Nicholls’ nursing graduates are employed. According to Murphy, Nicholls’ average test score of 95 percent on the NCLEX-RN, a nursing exam, outpaces both state and national averages.
“If you want to go and get a nursing degree and have a really good chance at being successful at it, Nicholls is a great place to go,” Murphy said.
Murphy said promoting academic victories like those of the nursing school would be instrumental in recruiting and keeping future students. That effort to attract additional students is integral to Nicholls’ long-term plans, according to Murphy. With state appropriations continuing to fall each year, Nicholls will look to supplement that lost money through higher student enrollment.
“One of the advantages of getting less and less money from this process is it’s less and less important. So we have to focus more and more on where this money comes from, and that’s our students. So we have to make sure our students are going to be there, are going to support us,” Murphy said.
Murphy had previously said that Nicholls’ long-term goal for enrollment would be about 8,000 students. This year, the university has slightly more than 6,000 students and saw a very small increase in the figure after a string of years featuring enrollment losses. Murphy credited improved scholarship distribution, better orientation programs and empowering recruiters with NSU’s historic retention rate.
To start progressing toward 8,000 students, Nicholls will seek to stabilize its cost of attendance going forward, according to Murphy. Murphy said Nicholls had the lowest tuition increase in the state’s university system this year, which he hopes to become a trend as the university keeps costs down.
“You can say, ‘You’re taking a risk.’ We’re probably taking a risk, but we need to do that to increase student attendance,” Murphy said.
However, Nicholls has supplemented its lower tuition costs with higher student-assessed fees. The university received a budget cut of $483,000 from the Louisiana Board of Regents and a “flex warning” from Gov. John Bel Edwards which warned universities to be prepared to only spend 95 percent of their budgets. The flex warning meant NSU had to generate another $1.18 million in self-generated funds, according to Murphy. After efforts like fundraising and searching for other revenues, the university added fees of about $15 per student for this year.
Due to the tighter budget, Nicholls did have to make some cuts. According to Murphy, the university identified five or six non-mission programs it will phase out. The university also ended overtime pay for staff except for campus police.
Murphy previously stressed the university’s culinary, online and petroleum engineering programs as those ripe for growth on the path to increased enrollment. Culinary enrollment has stabilized, but Murphy said he thinks the school’s new building and the university’s nationwide emphasis on the program could boost attendance in future years. Meanwhile, programs with an oil and gas emphasis have strengthened in the downturn, as many in the industry turn to education to prepare for the market’s eventual rebound. According to Murphy, the enrollment efforts for those target schools have produced a mixed bag so far.
“We are making improvements. We are not at those target numbers yet, but that’s where we want to be,” Murphy said. •
