President David J. Schmidly highlights the importance of accountability as UNM works to achieve its goals that include increasing the number of qualified and diverse faculty and staff, increasing graduate and undergraduate enrollments, increasing research awards and expenditures, among others. At the recent Faculty Town Hall meeting, Schmidly referred to the University’s academic ledger while answering questions from audience members, calling the ledger “UNM’s report card.”
The full ledger can be viewed by visiting: http://www.unm.edu/president/documents/Five_Year_Academic_Ledger_2006_2007.pdf.
The ledger is meant to track multiple year trends for sets of data in 5-year increments. The current ledger looks at data sets from 2002, but will be updated this semester to look at the numbers from 2003 through 2007.
“As a research institution, I think it’s important for us look at how we’re doing from a research perspective – by looking at the numbers. This way we’ll be able to allocate our resources in strategic directions to areas of the University that need our help the most,” Schmidly said.
The report can be used by departments all across the campus. Schmidly said the report would be used not only to hold the president accountable for the progress of UNM, but also to hold the entire executive leadership team and academic departments accountable for progress as well.
“I would ask every person who loves this institution to get involved in tracking our progress. We’ve set forth some pretty ambitious goals, but I believe it’s reasonable for us to see progress in every category, every year as we attain the vision we’ve set out for us.”
Schmidly noted the increase in diversity among the student body, with African American, Native American and Hispanic numbers moving up from 11 to 21 percent during the five years. Freshman retention rates, which are shown as being approximately 75 percent, are somewhat stagnant with only a 2.5 percent change during the time frame.
Institutional Research Director Mark Chisholm said that the retention rate from Fall ’07 to Fall ’08 rose to 77.3, which will be reflected in the updated ledger and upcoming enrollment report.
UNM showed progress in hiring more diversity within the faculty ranks. Though actual numbers are small, there was a 10 percent increase in African American faculty; 26.3 percent increase among Native Americans; 20 percent increase among Asian/Pacific Islanders; and an 8.7 percent increase among Hispanic faculty appointments. Tenure track faculty numbers declined 3.3 percent during the five-year period, while non-tenure track numbers saw a 16 percent increase.
Chisholm noted that faculty numbers can vary depending upon what a particular department is doing with faculty lines. “They may still carry, for example 30 faculty lines on their books, but may be hiring more temporary faculty to cover all the classes that they teach,” he said.
The percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students increased 4.3 percent, while the classes with more than 50 students dropped 4.5 percent.
Non-degree students represented the highest drop, 2,436 down to 1,774, nearly a 25 percent decline.
Chisholm noted that UNM has seen a drop of 100 or more in non-degree students every year over 15 years. “Non-degree students tend to be senior citizens and staff or students who want to get into a graduate program. Some want to generate the grades necessary to get into a graduate program. Others are high school concurrent enrollees,” he said. He said the rising cost of tuition and less expensive options to take courses through Continuing Education or CNM are reasons UNM has seen the drop in non-degree credits.
“What we will see are those who take a specific class for licensure or with very specific career objectives, but we will lose those who are taking classes for fun,” Chisholm said.