by Leslie Rasimas
Staff Writer

Crowded residence halls and a continuous lack of parking has not dissuaded University of North Carolina system President Molly C. Broad from pressuring Appalachian State University to grow.

Appalachian has prepared an enrollment target plan until 2012 in conjunction with the office of the UNC system president.

Director of Institutional Research and Planning Dr. Bobby H. Sharp said he maintains a projection model that advises the office of admissions how many students the university needs each year to maintain steady growth.

According to Sharp’s model, 15,198 undergraduate and graduate students will attend the university in fall 2006. In fall 2012, there will be approximately 16,731 students at Appalachian.

“The university will accept an additional 25-50 freshman each year to get us to those target enrollments,” Sharp said.

Sharp said the target numbers might shift over the next 10 years.

“We’re dealing with human behavior. Students transfer or take time off, so there’s no way to know how the numbers may change,” he said.

According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the graduating high school class of 2008-09 is projected to be the largest in history, with approximately 3.2 million students in the United States.

The number of high school graduates in North Carolina is steadily increasing, with approximately 72,250 graduates expected in 2012.

Sharp said Appalachian must be responsive to the needs of graduating high school students by offering increased access to higher education.

Carter Hammett-McGarry, director for academic advising in general studies, said she believes the university has been responsive to the needs of general studies as enrollment increases.

“We don’t want to jeopardize our institutional effectiveness. We haven’t had to turn students away from their advisors, but we don’t want ratios [of counselors to students] that decrease our efficiency,” she said.

Currently one full-time advisor has 350 students, she said.

Hammett-McGarry said academic advisors in general studies use e-mail to communicate with students, which has made advising more efficient.

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Paul N. Hiatt said the university will be able to meet the demand of increased enrollment while increasing the quality of students.

“Appalachian is becoming more and more popular. We work diligently at developing the applicant pool, and the number of applications continues to increase,” Hiatt said.

Sharp said current construction projects on campus are attempting to play "catch-up” to the current enrollment.

“There is a belief that our growth is out of hand. People see so much construction and think the university is exploding with students, but looking at the history of our enrollment, we have not grown that fast in the past decade,” Sharp said.