DEALING WITH DIVERSITY
NASHVILLE-BOUND
Communications studies professors discuss language surrounding issues of privilege.
Eastern men’s and women’s basketball teams are headed to Nashville of the OVC Tournament.
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Dai ly Eastern News PAGE 8
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W W W .D A I L YE A S TE R N N E W S. C O M
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
“TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID”
VOL. 99 | NO. 108
BOT names David Glassman university’s next president By Luis Martinez Administration editor| @DEN_News David Glassman was named Eastern’s next president during the Board of Trustees meeting Monday, where he said he intends to remain enthusiastic amidst challenges facing higher education in Illinois. “I look forward to the opportunities and meeting the challenges we have before us as we continue the unbelievable tradition and fine student-centered education that we provide students in our region and in our state.” Glassman, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Bradley University, will take office June 1, 2015 through May 31, 2020. As president he will receive a base salary of $290,000 and a $32,289 annual housing allowance. Glassman said the first area of focus as president will be learning the culture of the campus. “First, I certainly have to learn the culture; all universities are unique and the culture is something that is very important to understand in order to move forward in activities and initiatives,” Glassman said. Glassman said he previously spent time in Springfield talking with officials and public legislators about Eastern’s importance to the region, as well as the state. He also said Eastern’s recent enrollment troubles are reflective of other both public and private institutions. “The solutions we’ve identified at Eastern,
they may in fact be unique, and so I have to start looking at what is the plan, how do we leverage our strengths at Eastern?” Glassman said. “How do we take those things that are so important to our students and move them forward so that we can stabilize and reverse the enrollment and continue the Eastern growth?” Glassman said a multi-step plan is needed to combat the challenges of enrollment. Location, awards, staff, experiences, and residential life are all aspects he said should be strongly marketed. “Strong marketing and branding (an) image is going to be necessary for us to move forward and increase our enrollment,” he said. Glassman said the experiences surrounding Eastern is something to promote. “The experience here at Eastern is second-tonone, and that’s something that the people of Illinois and our surrounding communities and the collar states need to know,” he said. Glassman said he was perplexed with Gov. Bruce Rauner’s recent proposal to cut state funds to higher education. “But at the same time, accountability and affordability is something that we need to maintain and that we need to be the strongest advocates possible for higher education in Springfield,” Glassman said. “The presidents of the public institutions in Illinois must come together and talk about the defendable mission that we have in higher education in the state of Illinois.”
BOT, page 5 CHYNNA MILLER| THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
David Glassman was approved as Eastern’s next president succeeding Bill Perry Monday during the Board of Trustees meeting in the University Ballroom in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.
Campus, city respond Eastern plans to maintain to presidential choice its admission standards By Luis Martinez Administration Editor | @DEN_news After the Board of Trustees announced David Glassman as Eastern’s next president Monday, members of the campus and community greeted him and presented concerns about the university’s budget. Paul McCann, the interim vice president for business affairs, said Glassman would have to work with him on figuring out Eastern’s budget. “Day one we will start focusing on the budget; that will be an issue,” McCann said. “We’ll start working in Springfield, getting that information over to Springfield and seeing what happens there and bringing it back to campus. That’s when the hard decisions will start.” Grant Sterling, the chair of Faculty Senate, said Glassman will have to focus on faculty contract negotiations as well as budgeting issues. “You never know what someone is going to be like once they’re here,” Sterling said. “You interview somebody for any position and it’s hard to tell, but based on the interviews, almost every single person I talked to ranked him No. 1 out of the four candidates.” Reginald Thedford, the student body president, said he believes Glassman is a good pick for Eastern’s next president. “He has that Midwestern culture, so he
knows how Illinois functions as a state,” Thedford said. “He has some connections within Springfield as far as getting donations and funding for higher education.” Thedford said despite Glassman having worked in private universities, he also has some experience with public institutions. Chris Dearth, the director of admissions, said he expects to work closely alongside Glassman on improving enrollment efforts to be more aggressive. Dearth said he was in support of Glassman’s emphasis on marketing. “I like his approach from marketing,” Dearth said. “It is kind of what we attempted to do this year. I think if we are more aggressive and get the message of EIU out to Illinois and the rest of the surrounding states, we are going to be in good shape.” President Bill Perry said Glassman is a good fit for Eastern because he is a strong scholar and has experiences at public and private universities similar to Eastern. Glassman will officially take over Perry’s position on June 1 after Perry leaves May 15. During this time, existing policies would take care of all presidential signing duties. “We won’t miss a beat,” Perry said. Glassman will have a transitional period where he would meet with Perry and other constituencies on campus. PRESIDENTIAL REACTIONS, page 5
By Jarad Jarmon Managing Editor @DEN_news Even with enrollment dropping, Eastern has and will plan to maintain its current application requirement standards to allow a better student enrollment yield for the following semester. Lowering standards or allowing more applicants from the application pool is a common tactic in higher education to make up for low-
“We haven’t dropped our standards. We’re trying to raise the kids up.” - Chris Dearth, director of admissions ering enrollment. The University of Illinois has accepted 11 percent more students to improve their yield. Chris Dearth, the director of admissions, said Eastern only accepts roughly 50 percent of the people who apply. “It is a good thing when your selectivity is there. We are hoping to have 5,000 students admitted in yield,” Dearth said. “They are all going to be academically strong students.” Instead, Dearth said admissions is working the applicant pool harder this year. “We are working with more students in that applicant pool to get them to an admissible lev-
el,” Dearth said. “We haven’t dropped our standards. We are trying to raise the kids up.” Admissions is doing this by keeping in contact with those who apply. Anyone under university admission requirements is encouraged to retake the ACT test if they have lower scores. They are also encouraged to send mid-term grades, allowing the university to see if their GPA has shown a major increase. “We have been working a little bit harder with our applicants and its been working,” Dearth said. “We have admitted more students than we have in the past.” Freshman applications are just more than 8,100 and freshman acceptance offers are just over 4,000, as of press time. Both numbers represent a 2 percent increase over the last cycle. “Both of these numbers will grow as we continue through the admissions cycle,” Dearth said. “We operate on ‘rolling admissions’ so we will receive applications throughout the cycle and admit students as soon as the application is complete.” Dearth said lowering standards has typically been the old model to increase enrollment in higher education, but is ineffective in the long run. He added that model has not been used as much now because there are actually fewer students to chose from in the application pool.
ADMISSION STANDARDS, page 5