by Glenn McClothin, Staff Writer
On the first weekend of March, the Asbury University Board of Trustees convened for their biannual meeting.
Larry Brown, chair of the Board of Trustees, spoke in chapel on March 2 and explained briefly what the Board is.
“We’re men. We’re women,” Brown said. “Some of us are Asbury alums. Some of us are not Asbury alums. We come from many different professions. There are pastors and teachers. There are doctors, business people, people involved in the media industry. And so we represent a large cross section vocationally.”
The Board of Trustees has added five new members, four of which are Asbury alumni.
This large body of trustees begins each meeting by reading the Asbury mission statement.
Brown said, “All that we talk about needs to be leading towards and governed by these words.”
At a community meeting for faculty and staff the week after the Board met, Interim Provost Bonnie Baker revealed that, starting next school year, fall break will now be two days long; there will be no school on Oct. 18 and 19.
“A one day break was kind of silly, wasn’t it?” she said.
President Sandra Gray gave enrollment statistics that show Asbury’s growth. The total enrollment from 2017, including traditional undergraduate, adult professional studies (APS) and the graduate program, was 1,956, up from 1,782 in 2013.
However, while Asbury as a whole has grown, traditional undergraduate enrollment has declined between 2013 and 2017 with 1,328 and 1,274, respectively. The APS program has quickly grown from 204 in 2013 to over 400 in 2017. Online education is growing and Gray said the Board is “insistent we develop online programs in a greater way.”
Mark Troyer, vice president for Institutional Advancement and Strategic Partnerships, gave an update on The Ignited Campaign, which is moving forward and nearing completion. Troyer said they are nearly 90 percent to their goal of $62 million and with still two years left in the campaign. When asked about construction on the Collaborative Learning Center, a component of the campaign, Gray replied, “There is no defined tipping point, but we are between third and home.”
In addition, a number of Asbury faculty members have received tenure and promotions. Claire Peterson, David Reil and Joseph Wallace have all been given tenure, and Jill Campbell, Sarah Hogencamp, Erin Penner, Josh Smith and Glen Flanigan all received promotions.
While Asbury moves forward to prepare for the future, the Board’s purpose still stands.
Brown said, “We don’t want to drift from our mission, yet we want to be relevant to our current culture and society as well.”
