BI: Do you have plans to increase the number of degree programs? If so, in what fields?
BM: Yes, we do. Some of the ones that are coming out in the very near future are criminal justice at the bachelor's level, software engineering at the bachelor's level, and a teacher education program for elementary and secondary school teachers.
Criminal justice is going to be rolled out March 1; software engineering, May 1; and the teacher education program, March 1.
BI: Describe the challenge of recruiting and hiring instructors to maintain small class sizes?
BM: It's definitely a challenge, but it's absolutely essential to the success of the program. We have a fairly large academic affairs department with over 150 people in it when you include all of the faculty recruiters, the faculty trainers, and instructional specialists who are quality control people. When you include all of that infrastructure, it's a significant number of people. We have a very organized approach to lead generations of faculty members, for selection of faculty members, for training of faculty members, and we want to keep the student to faculty ratio at about 10 to 1.
So right now, we have between 36,000 and 37,000 students, and we have about 3,500 faculty members.
BI: How have you fared with enrollment growth?
BM: It was slow at first, but we have grown 80 percent per year for the last two years. We are on track to do about 80 percent this year as well. We'll probably finish this year with about 50,000 students, meaning at the end of August.
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