Regents receive updates on funding, growth

Northwest’s Board of Regents met in regular session Thursday, July 31, and moved quickly through a brief agenda that included approval of the list of degree candidates slated to graduate at summer commencement that evening.

Business before the board included a report from Provost Kichoon Yang regarding a new funding model for state universities adopted June 12 by the Coordinating Board for Higher Education in response to last year’s Higher Education Student Funding Act. The new model is to go into effect in fiscal 2010.

Yang explained that the Higher Education Funding model, or HEF, ties the base state appropriation for state universities to the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for the prior fiscal year.

State appropriations above the inflation rate, sometimes referred to as “formula funding,” are to be distributed each year according to the three-year rolling average of an institution’s full-time equivalent enrollment. Yang noted that, by prior agreement between the CBHE and the Governor’s Office, formula funding may not be fully implemented until fiscal 2011.

Yang said Northwest is in a good position to benefit from the new funding model under its Rational Expectations Enrollment Plan -- known as REEP -- which anticipates a 20 percent increase in the University’s historical enrollment levels by the 2012 academic year.

Northwest is currently exceeding all REEP targets, Yang said, with the exception of somewhat slower than anticipated growth in the number of transfer students from two-year colleges and other institutions of higher learning. He added that a new joint admission program with North Central Missouri College in Trenton, to be implemented this fall, should boost the number of transfer students who choose to pursue an undergraduate degree from the University.

In other action taken during closed session following its regular meeting, the board voted to approve a one-month extension to the employment contract of University President Dean L. Hubbard, who earlier announced that he will retire next summer.

Hubbard will now step down on July 31, 2009, rather than June 30. The extension means that he will serve exactly 25 years as the University's top administrative officer, the longest tenure of any president in Northwest history.

For more information, please contact:

Anthony Brown,
News Bureau Manager
E-Mail: abrown@nwmissouri.edu
Phone: 660.562.1704
Fax: 660.562.1900

Northwest Missouri State University
219 Administration Building,
800 University Drive
Maryville, MO 64468

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