Mid-South University Population Goals and Solutions

Mid-South University Population Increase Goals and Solutions

Samantha Danico
Department of Leadership
University of Memphis
5/5/15

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Abstract
Mid-South University is in the process of making goals to increase their population.
Based on their current demographic and their incoming students, there is an increase of Latino,
adult, and veteran students. To increase their population they must address some key issues
having to do with Student Affairs that range from vandalism to lack of value on campus. To
address these issues the school must target multiple departments in order to come up with
solutions to each of the issues presented. Solutions and recommendations are addressed and
highlighted through the paper based on the student needs of safety, feelings of belonging and
value, as well as the students overall satisfaction.

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Mid-South University Population Increase Goals and Solutions

Mid-South University is in the process of trying to increase their number of graduates,
their retention rates, and brining bringing(?) more new students to campus. As the Vice President
of Student Affairs, I am collaborating with the directors of Student Affairs offices to come up
with the best solutions in accomplishing these goals. There are a number of barriers when
thinking of increasing enrolment to the University. Some of the barriers include students feeling
as if they are not valued, the campus environment changing, vandalism on campus, student
policy violations, and overall student satisfaction. The purpose of targeting multiple departments
in Student Affairs is to target the student in multiple areas of campus life. If we only target one
area, then the student may not find satisfaction in the other areas and we may lose our numbers
and not obtain our goal of 28,000 students.
First, there are multiple ways in which we can address students feeling as if they are
living in a safe environment. Sometimes it can be difficult to promote safety on campus,
especially when you are a larger university in a city that has higher crime rates. But, there are
some things that we can do to make the students feel safe. For the on campus students,
Residence Life can focus on the safety of the students within the residence halls. Since the
residence halls have seen an increase in vandalism on their buildings, they can help this by
keeping up with the maintenance of the building. According to Strange and Banning (2001),
people are more likely to vandalize a building that is poorly kept. By letting buildings become
damaged or dirty, the school is opening up the possibility of vandalism. Another issue seems to
be the alcohol consumption on campus. Coming up with new campus initiatives to target these
students with alcohol consumption problems maybe a solution. According to Bartlett, Dell,
Mykota, and Robertson-Boersma (2015), there has been success with student run intervention

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programs to help students who may have a drinking problem. They saw significant results on
their Canadian campuses. But this is only one program. Other programs may include classes,
seminars, or sanctions.
Another department Student Affairs can focus on is Physical Plant. In a study performed
by Kim (2015) it was concluded that students performed better academically when students felt
safer on campus and when crime rates were lower. This could lead to higher graduation rates if
students were to do better academically. Kim proposed, based on his correlational research, that
students would feel safer if all public areas were perceived to be safer by the students. This
would mean that Physical plant would need to increase higher traffic areas, increase lighting in
dimly lit areas, and keeping pathways clear and safe. Though this may not be the only way to
increase safety in the physical campus environment. To decrease crime on campus the Safety
department may need to use their budget to increase cameras on campus as well as increasing the
amount of areas that students would be able to reach dispatch or another form of emergency
service. This may mean increasing emergency telephones or emergency boxes on campus.
When students feel safe on campus, they are more likely to continue their time on campus which
will increase retention rates (Strange and Banning, 2001).
Though feeling safe on campus is one important factor, there are many other factors that
make students feel welcome on campus. To make students feel as if they belong on campus,
working with the Student Activities Board is a must. Since there is a growing Latino population,
it is important to make them feel as if they matter on campus to increase their sense of belonging.
According to Strange and Banning (2001), there are five aspects to feeling as if a culture matters
to a campus: feeling noticed, feeling important enough to be cared about, feeling empathy from
others for accomplishments and failures, being needed, and felling appreciated for ones efforts.

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They also state that when they feel as if they are valued on campus, they are more likely to get
involved with the campus and will perform better academically as a result. Therefore, one way
that Student Activities can push for their minority student populations to feel more valued is to
have student activities that are geared towards their cultures and make them feel as if their
cultural background is valued on campus. Another way to do this is to specifically ask members
of these minority groups if they would like to participate in the planning of events. This shows
the interest in having multiple cultures imputing ideas into the planning process of events and
programs. Though some students may not have the benefit of living on campus, which may limit
their ability to attend programs and events afterhours or stay afterhours to help plan. Therefore
there must be more ways in which minority groups feel valued.
Another way to target these groups is to have support systems on campus. According to
Karp (2011), there are four mechanisms that gave positive results to helping students succeed in
college: creating social relationships, creating goals and enhancing commitment, understanding
the college environment, and making college life feasible. Through these steps, student support
groups can make minority students integrate better into the college environment and ultimately
succeed in college. There must be a number of groups on campus to accommodate the numerous
minority groups with distinct issues to address, such as veteran services, cultural services,
English as a second language, at-risk students, as well as first generation and low income
services.
Another way to increase a students satisfaction and feeling of belonging on campus is to
feel person-environment congruence (Strange and Banning, 2001). But it seems, since there is a
large number of incoming Latino, veteran, and adult students, there may be a lack of personenvironment congruency. This means that Mid-South is going to have to come up with ways in

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which to alter this. Some ways to change the person-environment incongruence is to remake the
environment, seek a new environment, or adapt to the existing environment. The university must
focus on reaching a level of congruency for these students. Helping students adapt to the current
environment may include helping them feel as if college is a place where they fit in. With such a
large number of students on campus, it can sometimes be difficult to find where one fits in.
Perhaps the University can have a club recommendation specialist where students can express
their interest and be directed to student organizations that they may feel fit their interest. With
adult learners or veterans, it maybe be beneficial to have an area on campus, study space on
campus that is specifically for them. On such a large campus it may be difficult to remake an
environment, but the environment can update to become more inclusive to the needs of these
groups by having more options for them to feel welcomed. The last thing that the university
would want them to do is seek a new environment and by updating our departments missions,
the university can hopefully stop that from happening.
Multiple departments on campus can focus more on the students experience within MidSouth Universitys current environment. By looking at the current experiences of the students on
campus Mid-South can target what it does well and exemplify it. By making the current student
population feel safe, welcomed, and valued they are more likely to stay at the university. With
incoming students seeing that there are more students like them, they will be more likely to want
to attend the university feeling as if they will fit in to the environment. This will increase the rate
of the Latino, veteran, and adult learning population on campus. All departments of student
affairs can help in this effort to make these students feel as if Mid-South University is their
home.

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References
Bartlett, E., Robertson-Boersma, D., Dell, C., & Mykota, D. (2015). Whats your cap? The
highlights and lowlights of developing a research and theory-driven binge drinking
prevention initiative on a canadian university campus. University of Saskatchewan
Undergraduate Research Journal, 1(2). Retrieved May 5, 2015, from
http://usurj.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/usurj/index.php/usurj/article/view/115/53
Karp, M.M. (2015). Toward a New Understanding of Non-Academic Student Support: Four
Mechanisms Encouraging Positive Student Outcomes in the Community College. .
Retrieved, from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED516148.pdf. CCRC Publications
Kim, W. (2015) Effects of students` perceived safety of public outdoor environment on academic
achievement at university campus. Architectural Research, 17(1), 13-20. doi:10.5659
Strange, C., & Banning, J. (2001). Educating by design: Creating campus learning environments
that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Grading Rubric
a). Strength and quality of work 50/50 points The recommendations are
well thought out and supported by literature, indicating their chances of
success.
b). Support and reference to readings 50/50 points Good application of inclass and out of class sources!
c). Organization of final report and quality of writing 49/50 points Well organized
and well written paper. Consult APA style guide for properly listing references in
particular, how journals should be listed.
149/150 points