Now that finals week is almost over, summer brings an opportunity for some students to continue with their studies.

In recent years, the university has found fewer students are taking summer classes. There was a nine percent decrease in enrollment during the 2012 summer semester. Chancellor Rita Cheng and Provost John Nicklow were forced to take action.

“Last year, we had 2,765 students that were enrolled in summer school by June 23,” she said. “This year, as of now, we have 2,169 students enrolled for the summer with seven weeks left for enrollment.”

According to Cheng, there was an increase of 130 students who enrolled from last week.

Nine of SIU’s faculty, administrative-professional staff and administrators joined together to create the summer enrollment task force. Together they discussed the possible factors of the university’s decrease in summer enrollment. The task force evaluated the university’s previous model for summer school, making suggestions on changes that could be made and the factors contributing to the decline in student enrollment.

Cheng said she saw the declines during recent years and put together the task force. It determined there were many internal and external factors that caused the decrease of enrollment.

“Things outside of our control were especially with the economy and students not having the right class options available to them,” she said.

The summer enrollment task force’s report stated the university was also unable to control a smaller amount in Federal Pell Grants. There was also a decrease in student loan availability and competition from community colleges within the area.

More issues included fewer courses being offered, student-employment, availability of the summer school schedule, unpopular classes being offered and ineffective communication from the university to the student body, according to the report.

“Advertisement for summer classes are now being posted on the student’s portal,” Cheng said. “We’ve posted ads not only in the Daily Egyptian, but other newspapers around the area. We’ve also sent out postcards throughout the community and hosted events promoting summer enrollment.”

In its report, the summer enrollment task force said the summer program needed to make changes to identify the courses needed by students. Also, the program should involve advisors and offer courses that do not compete with other community colleges.

Gayla Stoner, a member of the student enrollment task force, said there are many improvements the university is making to increase enrollment.

“We are offering the more popular and beneficial courses for students,” she said. “We are also posting summer offerings much further ahead of time, involving advisers in the scheduling and advertising of courses, and leveraging our expanding online course offerings.”

Stoner said the task force also gives college advisement resources such as spiral-bound course booklets for easy access to summer courses easy and quickly.

“We have distributed over 400 around campus and at off-campus sites. Advisers are key to summer enrollment and helping students see the value of summer session to stay on track and finish faster,” she said.

Primary goals to help students are to accelerate their graduation time with the use of one or two summers in an undergraduate career, Stoner said.

“One big thing that we’ve done is increase the number of online classes and create more of an open campus model,” Cheng said.

Jasmine Brown, a senior from Bolingbrook studying fashion design merchandising, said she enrolled for summer classes online for the first time this year.

“Online classes are much more convenient for me,” she said. “I can travel if I want to, and get my work done at my own pace.”

Cheng said she believes future summer enrollment will continue to increase.

“The decline of enrollment didn’t happen overnight and we’re doing everything we can,” Cheng said. “So far, we’re right on track.”