Driven by students
More students than ever are enrolled in at least 15 credit hours, which will help ensure that they graduate in four yearsIn the past several weeks, I have had the good fortune to attend several meetings with our students at which I have asked them to share their thoughts about what we are doing well and in what ways we can improve.
I am continually impressed and inspired by our students and the thoughtful ways in which they view our world, including Virginia Commonwealth University. Our students remind all of us why we do what we do: to help improve and transform lives, create and innovate, and advance human understanding.
Our students are one of the reasons why VCU’s national profile continues to rise. Students will always be at the center of our mission, and we will all always do everything we can to help ensure that they succeed as scholars and as leaders in their fields and communities.
That is why our focus at VCU emphasizes graduating more students. We are already seeing the reality of those efforts: More students than ever are enrolled in at least 15 credit hours, including 73 percent of our new freshmen. Only 60 percent of freshmen took 15 hours last fall. As students enroll in more courses per semester, they can graduate more quickly and be less likely to incur large student loan debts.
We have, for a long time, not done well enough in helping students pay for their education, even though our tuition has remained low compared to our research university peers. VCU has not been able to offer competitive financial aid to many students, meaning they often graduate with student loans.
We are committed to addressing this in several ways:
- By continuing to invest in the resources, such as faculty, advisers and living-learning spaces that will help our students graduate in a timely fashion. This includes ensuring that students have every opportunity to take the classes they need when they need them, including more robust online options.
- By ensuring that we admit and enroll students who can succeed at and continue to elevate VCU as a major national research university.
- By securing and leveraging our resources, including more competitive financial aid for undergraduates and stipends packages for graduate students. Marti Heil, our new vice president for development and alumni relations, and Bill Decatur, J.D., our new vice president for finance and administration, both began Sept. 16 and have already begun helping with these and other objectives.