WSU PRESIDENT OUTLINES GOALS

Open house offered today gives families a chance to look around.

Wright State President Susan Edwards on Friday told the university’s board of trustees her goal is to regain the trust of the community.

“We have suffered enormous losses year after year and that is a result of a loss in confidence by our community in our institution,” Edwards said. “We have to make a lot of headway to win back that confidence. Trust is something that is earned and it takes 20 years to gain that trust. It takes five minutes to lose it.”

Edwards said the university will focus on the three R’s — recruitment, retention and relationships — over the next 20 months.

“Our situation does remain serious,” Edwards said. “Everything that we are doing around this institution will be focused in those three frames. It’s simple, it’s straightforward and it really gets us back to basics.”

The goal is to build the school’s enrollment, which has been declining for the past few years. Last fall Wright State’s enrollment reached a more-than-37year low. Around 13,742 students

were enrolled at Wright State in the fall, an 11.7% decline from 2018-19.

The school has been pushing an open house it will hold today for high school stu- dents. On Friday, Edwards thanked the board for the recent advertising push promoting today’s open house. Edwards said registration for the event was 20% over goal.

“I just want to highlight that enrollment is still a problem,” Edwards said. “We are still tracking below where we need to be tracking for the fall. That’s why the open house is incredibly important. Making sure that students feel welcome ... whether it’s out of high school students, transfer students or adult students ready to come back.”

Today’s Raider Open House runs from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Interested families can tour campus, explore any of the university’s 150 programs, learn about financial aid and more.

“We are pulling out all stops to make recruitment our number one issue as we move toward the fall,” Edwards said . ... “We are laser focused on getting those numbers up.”