Although SIUC administrators are hesitant to officially state news of an enrollment increase, as of Monday of last week, 257 more undergraduate students were enrolled on-campus than compared to last year at that time. It is evident that SIUC is finding new cures for its plague of declining enrollment, a virus that first invaded the campus in 1992.

Chancellor Don Beggs noted that one of the reasons for the increases was a change in SIUC’s New Student Orientation program. Before this year, the program suffered from a lack of attendance by students and parents who were unable to visit SIUC because of work, school or other responsibilities. Changing the start of the orientation from the Wednesday before classes to Friday allowed students and parents to visit the campus at a more convenient time.

Class advisement, obtaining student IDs and financial aid paperwork were hassles made easily conquerable because students and parents found friendly faces on campus to point them in the right direction. This was a far cry from endless long-distance phone calls made by students and parents to get basic information which usually resulted in necessary visits to campus in the long run. Judging by the visible number of proud parents and students touring campus before the start of classes, the change was a success.

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A different student orientation organized before classes also made students feel welcome in an unfamiliar setting. The Aug. 23 Non-Traditional Student Orientation sought to re-introduce older students to the aspects of academic life and introduced them to an array of SIUC programs tailored to their needs. These services, such as workshops, newsletters, tips on finding child care and an emergency locator service for important family concerns, helped to put these students at ease. Non-traditional student brown-bag lunches with University officials and department members also are planned during the school year, so it appears that the University will continue to nurture these students long after the excitement of arriving on-campus subsides.

Many departments and colleges also have pioneered changes to increase enrollment and retain students, which shows that the push to stop the enrollment decline is a group effort not just an effort by the administration. Strategies ranging from telemarketing calls to potential students last spring, to visits to Chicago and its suburbs to enroll students last summer also were attempted.

While this group effort is not a cure-all for SIUC’s problems, it is enough to give SIUC a boost. Although the current number of 15,313 on-campus undergraduate students falls short of the targeted amount of 15,732, there is a marked increase from last year’s figures. This year’s enrollment upswing can become an important catalyst in organizing additional programs to benefit on-campus enrollment. Realizing that early enrollment figures often fluctuate early in the school year, administrators are reluctant to jinx the encouraging news and have decided to wait for further enrollment studies before cheering. But good news deserves recognition, and it seems as if SIUC is making headway in its battle against declining enrollment.