According to Vice President for Student Affairs Darren Fullerton enrollment at Missouri Southern is down about 3 percent this semester.

Fullerton said at last Friday’s Board of Governors meeting that the fall headcount sat at 5,417, down from last year’s 5,591.

One possible explanation the University offered for the overall decrease in enrollment is the students are still financially strained due to tornado displacement. 

In addition, last academic year more graduates left Southern than ever before in the past decade.

Many areas, though, are seeing an increase in enrollment. Fullerton said the number of international students at Southern had nearly doubled this semester.

He also said out-of-state enrollment has increased 8.9 percent and attributed that largely to the University’s new Lion Pride Tuition Plan.

“This increase has been an encouraging sign to us that expanding our in-state rate was a good thing for students,” Fullerton said in a University release. 

“It has made getting an education more accessible.”

The Lion Pride Tuition Plan allows students in over 120 surrounding counties outside of Missouri to receive Southern’s in-state tuition rate.

Other notes from from the Board meeting included JoAnn Graffam, vice president for development and executive director of the Missouri Southern Foundation, saying that Southern will soon be putting up 10 new billboards around the Joplin area. 

Graffam also formally announced the resignation of Kevin Greim, a major gifts officer with the Foundation, and formerly of the athletics department. 

Graffam said Greim left Southern for his alma mater, Missouri State, taking a job as a gifts officer in the Bears’ athletics department. Southern’s Foundation will be seeking two new Major Gift Officers to replace him.

Student representative David Sigars said Student Senate President Jonathan Saunders plans to focus the senate’s capital improvement budget on residence hall life.

Sigars also said greek recruitment numbers were up in both campus fraternities and sororities.

Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, Pat Lipira, said two professors, Dr. Victoria Dubuis of the foreign language department and Dr. Hyunjung Kim of the communication department, will no longer be employed at Southern due to visa issues.