MTSU efforts to graduate students, retain more freshmen working, president says
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — MTSU President Sidney McPhee’s State of the University speech generated the loudest applause Thursday when he said the Middle Tennessee Boulevard project would be done in December.
The road improvement work was supposed to be completed in December 2017, McPhee told Middle Tennessee State University faculty and staff members packing the Tucker Theatre.
“It seems like an eternity that we’ve endured the dust and noise that come with such a major project,” McPhee said. “However, the finished four-lane corridor, divided by a landscaped median, with bike lanes and pedestrian walks and crossings, will make it all worth the wait.”
The university begins its fall semester with about 22,000 students.
The 18th-year university president also teased Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland, who sat in the front row, about how long it has taken the city to complete the project.
During his address, McPhee also touched on improving the pay of employees and efforts undertaken to raise the university’s graduation rate.
About 52 percent of the students who begin at MTSU as freshmen graduate in six years, compared with the national sixyear completion rate of 57 percent, McPhee said.
He noted that, since 2010, Tennessee’s higher education funding has been determined by measurable outcomes of student success instead of enrollment.
“Our Quest for Student Success initiative has reshaped our approach to teaching and learning, reduced dropout rates and helped students achieve their educational goals,” McPhee said.
The university has improved its freshman retention rate from 69 percent in fall 2013 to 76.8 percent in fall 2017.
“Our unwavering efforts in this arena have become a national model,” said McPhee, adding that the freshman retention has been mentioned in stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post. “In fact, just last month, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation brought a contingent of researchers to our campus to learn about our strategies and how they could be used to enhance initiatives at other universities.”
McPhee also talked about concerns for keeping MTSU affordable. About 1,400 students were purged from the enrollment system this week for nonpayment of tuition and fees, which were raised by 2.8 percent by the Board of Trustees. According to its website, the expected cost of attendance for a student for the 201819 academic year is a little more than $23,000.
McPhee also talked about the board agreeing to provide a 1.5 percent pay increase or $500, whichever is higher, to each of the employees.
The administration and the board also are working with $3.7 million to improve the gap between employee salaries and the market rate for salaries, McPhee said.
“A plan to implement these market adjustments is currently being developed and will spread across all classes of employees,” McPhee said. “Unfortunately, due to limited funds available, these increases will not apply to adjunct faculty, temporary employees, graduate assistants or student workers.”
The trustees also raised McPhee’s pay by $52,184 to $400,000 earlier this year.
McPhee was seated while new faculty and staff members were being introduced. The event included a loud half-minute protest when about five people stood from audience seats to chant their disapproval of the conservative, pro-business Charles Koch Foundation providing the initial seed money to help establish the new Political Economy Research Institute led by director Dan Smith.
The protesters then marched out of the theater before McPhee returned to the lectern.
“Democracy and the First Amendment [are] alive and well at MTSU,” McPhee quipped, and some of the audience members laughed.