Faculty Governance Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid

President Mitchell's October 26, 2004 email to the faculty

Thank you to the numerous faculty members who provided feedback on the scholarship via written statements, the open forum on September 29 or both. Thank you also to CAFA for taking on the responsibility of soliciting these comments and organizing them in a way that facilitates my response.

The respondents clearly considered the program thoughtfully and there are some specific statements to which I will respond. Several responses were directly related to the details of the program. Rather than respond here, I suggest that the authors contact Kurt Thiede to arrange a time for a conversation about these very specific questions and issues. Several broad areas of concern emerged and I will address each individually.

1. 3:1 Ratio

   Let me state unequivocally that the 3:1 ratio (non-athletic:athletic) for spending scholarship funds is inviolable. In fact, as observed by some, by instititutionalizing merit scholarships, we can control expenditures to meet this important goal. The suggestion that one pool of merit scholarships be formed is exactly what this program does.

   This program is not about athletic versus non-athletic aid, though the comparison is an easy one to make. Bucknell is a university that is strong because it attracts students with varied interests and numerous abilities. We are one university with the goal of attracting the best students to the university to reach their potential.

2. Maintaining Socioeconomic Diversity

   This issue has been echoed in student publications. The percentage of students receiving need-based scholarships has risen in the last 15 years from 28% to its current 50% level. The commitment by the Board of Trustees to increase socio-economic diversity, backed by a capital campaign that aggressively raised endowed scholarship funds, continues to be a key contributor to this increase. In approving this scholarship plan, the Board of Trustees added the strong caveat (noted in the plan) that student scholarships must be an emphasis of the upcoming comprehensive campaign. The scholarship program is focused on enrolling a greater number of very high quality students at Bucknell. These students, regardless of their levels of financial need, will be accepted and offered scholarship packages that will make Bucknell an attractive and affordable option. On the other hand, fewer average students, regardless of their financial need will be offered admission to the university. Socioeconomic diversity will suffer only if students from low income families are average students. To financially support an average student with very high need at the expense of not being competitive with a very high quality student with low or medium need seems to run counter to our desire to increase the quality of the learning experience at the university.

3. Questionable Impact of Program on Student Quality

   In the feedback provided, a statement was made that we will not get better scholars with this program. Although SAT scores and class rank do not consistently predict academic performance, the 10 students receiving academic merit scholarships in the Class of 2008 had an average SAT of 1421 (against an all-class average of 1303) and ranked in the top 4% of their high school class. I agree that we need to look beyond these data as we identify students who will enrich the intellectual life of the campus. This brings me to the point raised by a few faculty about wanting to identify these types of students and cultivating their interest in Bucknell and its learning environment similar to the way coaches identify and cultivate the interest of strong student-athletes and the performing arts find outstanding singers, musicians, actors and dancers.

4. How Can Individual Academic Departments Benefit from the Scholarship Program?

   The strongest, most strategic way to cultivate promising students is for faculty to become more engaged in the admissions process. The admissions staff can and does identify early in the admissions process those students who could bring the desired level of intellectual engagement to the campus. These students are most interested in interacting with faculty and current students as they move through the college search process. Such an effort will require greater faculty involvement in the process. Allow me to provide some examples of what this involvement could be:

   • Participate in the admissions open houses that are offered twice each fall and the accepted student day held in April.
   • Be available to meet with prospective students when they visit the campus. This could range from a 30-minute individual meeting to inviting several students to sit in on one or more of your classes.
   • Participate in the Presidential Fellows Program directed by Sally Koutsoliotas of the Physics Department that includes four years of internship experiences offered to 20-25 of the brightest and most motivated students in each entering class. The number of students we can bring into this program is currently limited by the number of internship experiences available.
   • Participate in the faculty email cultivation program designed to enroll the best and brightest in the accepted class.
   • Consider being part of delivering the admissions message to prospective students and their families. This is a way to represent the centrality of the academic mission at Bucknell and at a key point in a student's college search.
   • Identify interesting things that are taking place in your particular classes and labs that can be profiled for our admissions publications and website. You might have noticed that the Bucknell message is currently being delivered through actual Bucknell stories. Let the Communications Office know of a story or two that can be featured.
   • Consider participating in the planning and implementation of a summer academic institute designed to bring highly motivated talented and gifted high school students to the Bucknell campus at an early stage of their college search.

   Please feel free to contact Mark Davies or Kurt Thiede if you have questions and/or ideas about any of these ways in which you can be involved.

I will ask CAFA, the committee charged with the responsibility to ensure that admissions and financial aid policies are being carried out appropriately, to work closely with the administration to finalize the various award and renewal criteria. Also, there were a few questions about goals for the program. Although these are implicit in the document and in the daily work of the admissions office, CAFA should work with Kurt to ensure these goals are made more explicit. I will leave it up to CAFA to determine when to report to the faculty as a whole on these issues.

Thank you once again for the time and effort you gave to evaluating the scholarship program. I look forward to moving ahead with this program and to reporting on a regular basis the results of these efforts in the future.

Sincerely,

Brian C. Mitchell
President