University Times

The University plans to expand its incoming Pittsburgh campus freshman class by 200, increase the number of tenured faculty in Arts and Sciences by 21 and build a new undergraduate dormitory.

Provost James V. Maher announced late last month a “modest, but significant, expansion of [the] freshman class from a fall 2004 target of 2,950 to a fall 2005 target of 3,150.”

Over four years, the Arts and Sciences student body is expected to rise from the current 9,200 full-time equivalent (FTE) students to 9,800, Maher told the University Times this week.

(The number of FTE students is calculated by adding the number of full-time students to 40 percent of the number of part-time students. The conversion is used for budgeting purposes.)

“We’re budgeted for 9,200 FTE [now] and the [Arts and Sciences] dean and I agreed to move that up,” he said. “The last three years we’ve been over-enrolled, based on our targets, but with both the number and the quality of applicants continuing to rise, we felt we could accommodate the additional students without sacrificing the quality of our undergraduate student body.”

Part of that accommodation includes increasing the number of tenured faculty in Pitt’s largest undergraduate unit, and building housing to continue the University’s guarantee of three years of on-campus housing for undergraduates who want it. The demand for on-campus housing has increased, albeit fractionally, in recent years, Maher said. Pitt currently has about 6,400 beds on the Pittsburgh campus.

Pitt’s Board of Trustees must approve any capital expansion, he noted, but his office plans to submit a request to trustees in the next few months. He declined to say where a dormitory would be built.

The number of freshmen targeted for the schools of nursing and engineering also will rise, but less dramatically, Maher said. “The School of Nursing has a very small cohort of freshmen, and that number will rise minimally.”

According to Kerry Daley, director of freshman programs in the School of Engineering, targeted enrollment there will increase from 415 students this year to 450 next fall.

Target figures do not match actual enrollment figures exactly, Maher pointed out. For this year’s class, for example, the target was 2,950, while 2,991 actually enrolled.

If the new target total of 3,150 is reached, it would be Pitt’s largest freshman class since enrollment topped 3,200 (3,208) in 2001-2002.

Following that year, Pitt announced a target enrollment goal of 2,775 for 2002-2003, in a planned reduction aimed at trimming undergraduate class sizes while maintaining on-campus housing availability, but the University ended up with 3,112 FTEs.

The recent trend, according to N. John Cooper, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, has been to have more students than the targeted goal, as Pitt’s reputation among accepted applicants has prompted more of those students to attend.

That put pressure on Arts and Sciences to consider increasing the full-time faculty, which led to the provost’s latest decision, Cooper said.

Maher also announced in December an amended admissions process that will advise most applicants to submit supplementary material, such as a personal essay, letters of recommendation related to extracurricular activities, and evidence of endeavors outside the classroom, which previously had been “more strictly optional” to gain admission.

That change will help Pitt “to optimize its ability to evaluate the attainment of its applicants and to enhance access to its programs,” the provost stated.

Regarding expanded access, Cooper said, “The undergraduate recruitment process is always trying to balance a complicated series of goals. We don’t just want a certain number of students; we want qualified students. We also want students who preserve and enhance the diversity of the undergraduate body because we believe that having a diverse student body is an important element of serving many of our constituencies, including the local one. It’s also, we believe very strongly, a critical part of the undergraduate experience for all the students.”

Cooper added that the University’s mission includes a commitment to the region, as evidenced by “the city is your campus” student recruitment campaign. “Our fate as a University is inexorably tied to the viability of the city,” he said.

“It is part of our mission and our identity as an urban campus to be committed to service to our community,” he added. “We’re currently down to about 20 percent of our students coming from Allegheny County. We have a working goal to increase that number.”

-Peter Hart