When Diana Evans began looking at colleges as a high schooler, Kennesaw State University was hardly at the top of her list.
“I wasn’t really thinking about it and didn’t really hold KSU high in my mind because it’s local,” said Evans, 24.
Instead she enrolled at Berry College, graduated and received an undergraduate degree. But when continuing education decisions came along, Evans’ opinions of KSU were transformed. She enrolled in the Cobb County school last year and is working toward a degree in biotechnology.
“The more I found out about it and continued to hear good things and because it’s growing so much, my perspective is different,” she said.
One convert, many more to go.
For school administrators, changing perceptions of KSU is an ongoing job, not just individually, for students like Evans, but also nationally, with a lofty goal of making the school a nationally recognized institution.
In addition to ongoing work to bolster several academic programs, the school took another step into the big leagues last week with the announcement that KSU will field a football team in 2014.
President Daniel S. Papp keeps his intentions close at hand. He maintains two ready lists of higher education institutions, one of them comparable to KSU, like the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His other list contains his aspirations, schools such as George Mason University, the University of Texas at Arlington, Central Florida, Alabama-Birmingham, Virginia Commonwealth and Kent State, schools of similar size, offering wide-scale programs with opportunities for research and scholarship.
Papp’s to-do list to make KSU nationally prominent is six items long:
- Continue to increase high quality teaching, education and service while improving retention, progression and graduation rates.
- Expand community connections.
- Expand an emphasis on research, scholarship and creative activities.
- Create at least one area of recognized national excellence within each college.
- Attract better and better students.
- Continue striving to make KSU a destination campus for students, faculty and staff, as well as the broader northwest Georgia and Atlanta communities.
The competition for the best and brightest students is ongoing in the university's backyard.
KSU was not Jonathan Hendrata's first choice. The sophomore information systems major from Indonesia had the University of Houston along with Georgia State and Georgia Tech atop of his list.
"Georgia Tech has too high of standards and Georgia State is too expensive and Houston is too far," said Hendrata, 21, a transfer from Georgia Perimeter College. He settled on KSU after hearing from other students that it was a viable alternative with a "homey" feel.
Sitting in his office with a panoramic view of the campus, Papp reels off a number of hallmark moments in the school’s history and its recent academic successes. Notably, he cites decisions to increase the number of available graduate degrees as well as the transition about seven years ago from a full commuter campus to a more residential campus with dorms, a determination Papp credits to his predecessor, Betty Siegel.
Since the school opened in 1963 as two-year Kennesaw Junior College, it has grown into the fourth-largest school (22,389 enrolled in fall of 2009) in the state’s university system, behind the University of Georgia (34,885), Georgia State University (30,427) and Georgia Perimeter College (24,549).
Adjunct professor Yvonne Wichman likens KSU’s evolution to raising a child.
“You watch all these stages of a child, when he learns to walk and crawl, from newborn to full-grown,” said Wichman, the immediate past alumni association president and a 1993 and 1999 KSU graduate. Her ex-husband attended the school in 1969, when it was a two-year school of only five buildings. “It’s just been so miraculous to watch, almost like the process a mother goes through.”
In August, KSU was among 23 schools recognized for its first-year experience program for new students by U.S. News and World Report. Also in August, the school opened a $56 million health sciences building housing KSU’s Wellstar College of Health and Human Services. The first doctoral program was approved in March. And a state-of-the-art dining hall, The Commons, opened just over a year ago.
Despite the milestones, KSU has some ground to gain in admissions. Among the nine research, regional and state universities that historically have been the most popular choices for students among metro Atlanta high schools, Kennesaw had the seventh lowest average SAT (1,076) for freshmen enrolling in 2009. KSU ranked right behind Georgia State (1,080) and just ahead of West Georgia (1,000).
As well, old perceptions remain for those people who still view KSU as the little school off I-75.
“They don’t realize we are a doctoral institution with over 23,000 students playing Division I athletics, so we’ve got a lot of folks we still need to help learn about Kennesaw State,” Papp said.
The president has begun to notice small changes.
“When I came here four years ago, students wore some other university or schools’ sweatshirts and T-shirts on campus rather than Kennesaw shirts,” Papp said. “That’s because years ago, students would come here with the intention of transferring. Now they come here with the intention of staying here.”
During the 2008-2009 school year, just 893 KSU students transferred from the school, according to USG statistics. By comparison, Georgia State University saw 941 students transfer during the same time. A total of 3,543 students transferred into KSU that year, including nearly 1,800 from other USG institutions, primarily two-year schools Georgia Perimeter College and Georgia Highlands College.
KSU officials say student retention rates are improving as well. The retention rate for first-time, full-time freshmen has been in the 70th percentile since fall of 2004, reaching 75 percent in fall 2008. That 75 percent matches the national norm for public four-year school, according to an annual survey by ACT, Inc. At the same time, KSU enrollment for the same group has also increased from 1,658 students in 2004 to 2,732 in 2009.
School officials anticipate the new football program will deliver KSU to a bigger stage, in hopes of attaining more visibility, community connections and money. Students still must approve a fee increase of about $100 a semester Papp estimated, outside sponsors will have contribute about $10 million to get the program off the ground and the regents must approve the plan. But if the stars align, KSU could be playing football games by 2014.
Freshman nursing major James Geiger was initially excited when the school announced a football program.
"And then I heard they have to up the athletic fee, I was like, no," said Geiger, 28, an Iraq war veteran. "I'm not here to see football games. I'm here to learn and study and get the best I can out of college, which is a new experience for me."
In May, the school opened a new $16.5 million, 8,300-seat soccer stadium — the same stadium where the football team would play — and secured a partnership with the Atlanta Beat women’s professional soccer team to play at the stadium. The project was part of an overhaul and expansion of athletic facilities on 88 acres purchased by the KSU Foundation over the past two years.
“There are some folks who might argue that the university should only concentrate on things intellectual and at a different time and place, they might be right,” Papp said. “But this is the American south and in the year 2010, you need to have those opportunities to enhance [your school].”
Staff writer Laura Diamond contributed to this story.
By the numbers:
•Fall 2009 enrollment: 22,389 (20,304 undergraduates, 2,085 postgraduates)
•Fall 2010 enrollment: approximately 23,300
•% minority: 21
•Fall 2009 incoming freshmen SAT score average: 1,076 (based on math and verbal only; perfect score is 1600)
•Fall 2009 GPA of incoming freshmen: 3.19
•23 master’s degree programs
•4 doctoral degree programs
Bricks and mortar: capital projects on tap for KSU
•Science lab addition -- $19 million in state funding approved by General Assembly; expected to break ground in November
•Education building addition -- $20.7 million project on Board of Regents’ legislative priorities list for FY12; KSU’s major funding request for 2011 legislative session
•Student learning center – multi-purpose facility of classrooms, offices, space for business college expansion; expected date 2013
•Student recreation center – pool, climbing walls, other recreation facilities; expected date 2013
•Residence halls – KSU Foundation’s goal to add 1,900 new beds over next five years for total of 5,000 beds
•Shuttle system – possible start spring 2011
Source: KSU, University System of Georgia
SAT scores
Kennesaw State University competes with other public colleges for many of the same Georgia students. Here's how the SAT scores for freshmen who entered Kennesaw State in fall 2009 compare with the research, regional and state universities that have historically been the most popular choices for students from metro Atlanta high schools:
College ... SAT score*
Georgia Tech .. 1,336
University of Georgia ... 1,237
Georgia College & State University ... 1,139
Southern Polytechnic State University ... 1,131
Georgia Southern University ... 1,106
Georgia State University ... 1,080
Kennesaw State University ... 1,076
University of West Georgia ... 1,000
Clayton State University ... 969
NOTE: Score is math and verbal only. Perfect score is 1600.
Source: University System of Georgia
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