Freshmen flood in as administration makes adjustments

By Mike Caputo

As The Rider News reported last week, rises in enrollment have led to longer lines in Daly’s and a higher frequency of tripled rooms within the residence halls.

The undergraduate full-time day student enrollment has risen from 3,593 in 2005, to 3,825 in 2006 — a five percent increase.

According to Jamie O’Hara, vice president of enrollment management, a major contributing factor to the high enrollment figures, is that Rider had its “largest” freshman application pool, which is a 12-percent increase from fall 2005.

This enabled the University to become more selective – 150 students were placed on a waitlist and a high number of students were rejected altogether, claims O’Hara.

Furthermore, there were a high number of students who returned for their sophomore year. Administration points the increases toward the recent improvements to the Lawrenceville campus.

“Clearly, our rising reputation and the quality of our programs and new facilities have made us quite attractive to new and continuing students, and our enrollment growth from both has come even faster than we planned,” said O’Hara.

The University became increasingly more aware of the enrollment rise in May, and worked with its various departments toward dealing with the situation. The expectation, according to the 2005-2010 Strategic Plan, is that “enrollment will grow an additional 100 students over the next four years,” said O’Hara.

He said administration is working very closely with various departments within the University to deal with the higher numbers of students.

“Since the entire growth for the next four years is smaller than what we experienced this year, we can expect to be more selective for fall 2007 and have the same size or even a smaller freshman class next year,” O’Hara said. “We are also actively developing plans for expanded facilities needs for current and new students. This includes planning for new academic, residential, dining and parking needs.”

Although a major percentage of the undergraduate student population is from New Jersey, the number of out-of-state students has increased 3 percent from last year. As a result, the demand for on-campus housing was at a premium, forcing Residence Life to take on consolidation measures.

Beyond the constriction of living spaces at Rider, academic departments have started to feel the squeeze.

Dr. Jeffrey Halpern, associate professor of sociology and contract administrator of Rider’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, claimed more and more classrooms have been filled to capacity, especially during freshman core level courses. He said he feels that the environment and comfort zone is much different for the student and instructor when every seat is filled, especially in the smaller Fine Arts building classrooms.

High enrollment has had an impact on the tightening of class availability and scheduling. As a result, the University has had to fill voids by hiring full-time faculty, thus creating a need for additional space for instruction and offices — a ripple effect created by higher enrollment.

In fact, Halpern said two classrooms in Memorial Hall have already been converted into office space for new faculty.

“It’s a good thing we have more students, it allows us to do more things,” Halpern said. “It’s not as though we are ignoring the problem, but it’s not to say that it’s not a problem.”

Additional reporting by Olivia Tattory