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YSU enrollment up for first time since 2010
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
For the first time since 2010, Youngstown State University’s fall enrollment increased this semester.
Wednesday marked the first day of classes with 12,801 students compared with last fall’s 12,375.
The numbers are unofficial until the 15th day of the semester.
Ron Cole, university spokesman, attributed the increase to multiple efforts.
“We’re more effectively reaching out,” he said.
YSU is using a company to get leads for potential students, and participation in the Crash Day recruitment effort has increased.
“It’s a personal, hands-on type of recruitment,” Cole said.
Last year about this time, Jim Tressel, YSU president, gave each member of his leadership team a list of about 10 names of prospective students to contact.
They had applied and been accepted at YSU for this fall but had not yet enrolled, Cole said.
“He wanted us to be their point of contact to guide them to enrolling,” he said.
Cole still gets emails from some of them when they have questions.
“It gets into that grass-roots recruitment,” he said.
In a news release, Tressel said reversing the downward enrollment trend is a step toward increasing excellence across campus.
“While growing enrollment will remain a priority, we also are working hard to ensure that, once here at YSU, students have the resources to find success, graduate on time, with as little debt as possible and with a job,” he said in the release.
Besides the enrollment increase, this semester also starts with residence halls at capacity and incoming freshmen are the strongest academically in the university’s history.
This fall’s freshmen enrollment increased 6 percent compared with last year, and those students boast YSU’s highest standardized test and high-school grade point average ever among freshmen.
Two of those freshmen are Brendan Monstwil of New Wilmington, Pa., and Hannah Wolf of Poland.
Wolf is majoring in social work and Monstwil, pre-law.
Monstwil was chatting with his older sister, Kendall Cook, a senior, also of New Wilmington, inside a Kilcawley Center lounge between classes.
He had his first class, math, at 9 a.m.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” Monstwil said.
His sister, who is studying education, gave him some tips.
“I told him it’s like high school on a different level,” Cook said. “You have more independence.”
Each experienced some frustrations getting to campus and finding parking places, pointing to construction around campus.
But Cole said several parking spots were available Wednesday even in the busiest time of day.
Wolf, who was browsing in the new campus bookstore, didn’t have a problem finding a parking spot when she arrived for her first class at 8 a.m.
She said she was both nervous and excited about coming to YSU, but she feels she’s ready to tackle the work.
Don Slocum of Kent, a senior who is majoring in graphic arts, hung out in a Kilcawley lounge between classes.
He didn’t have a problem finding a spot, but he doesn’t mind having to park farther away.
“I walk,” Slocum said.
He’s used to it, he added.