By Laura Acuff, Opinion Editor
Shortly after ACU’s unveiling of the Mobile Learning Initiative in the fall of 2007, Executive Vice President Phil Schubert found himself in the Bean Sprout, visiting with a group of prospective students for a fall preview day.
Upon meeting one family, the mother frankly said, “Pleased to meet you; we’re here because of the iPhone.”
Immediately, Schubert protested, saying, “Oh no, don’t say that.” But the woman continued.
“No, I mean that in a good way,” she said. “It’s not because you’re giving my son an iPhone. It’s because we want our son to be educated in a place that is pushing the boundaries of innovation and is going to expose him to the kind of environment where he’s going to learn how to think outside the box. When I heard about what you guys were doing, I knew that ACU was going to be the right place for my son.”
Relieved, Schubert said he appreciated the mother’s understanding of the culture the Mobile Learning Initiative seeks to support.
Whether the addition of iPhones and iPod touches to ACU’s campus has supplemented the fall’s increased enrollment numbers and subsequently high spring enrollment numbers, Schubert said he does not know. Regardless, he said he hopes it adds to the environment that attracted the largest increase in entering students in ten years.
“If it’s because kids got a phone, then obviously that doesn’t begin to touch on the substance of what we are trying to create here in our effort to lead the world in a mobile learning initiative,” Schubert said.
While Schubert said raw enrollment numbers decreased from the fall semester to this spring semester, ACU is on track, considering that spring semesters usually maintain 90-92 percent of the student population enrolled in the fall.
“Enrollment numbers are good,” Schubert said. “They’re up from last spring and right where we would have expected them to be based on fall numbers. It appears, at least at this point, that our historical trends on students for enrollment in the spring are actually right on top or actually a little bit more healthy than when they’ve been in the past, so that’s a great thing in this environment.”
Schubert said the university has been closely monitoring enrollment numbers due to the economy, but admissions do not seem to be hurting.
“There’s not any indicators yet that we have that the economic environment has had a negative impact on enrollment,” Schubert said. “Certainly there are pockets of impact that are more significant, and I know there are a number of our students that have been impacted individually. Our hope is that we create the avenues for them to get the support, help that they need.”
Financial aid counselors have received special training to assist students struggling financially to fund their ACU education, he said.
“Affordability is always a major area of importance to us, and we’ve strengthened our commitment to ensuring the resources that are necessary to make an ACU education affordable to as many families as we can,” Schubert said.
Admissions counselor Jeremy Davis said the boosted enrollment adds to the campus’ environment.
“We’re excited about the possibilities of having more students come and be involved on campus,” Davis said. “A lot of the faculty members and people I’ve talked to are excited about the new students we have on campus, so it is an exciting time.”
Despite a successful year of recruiting, Schubert said there always exists room for growth.
“We’re always trying to be better,” Schubert said. “We can never be as good as we need to be, and so we always pay a lot of attention to what we can do in the upcoming recruiting cycle to better the position of the university in the marketplace for people to truly know and appreciate what happens in this place.”
