In his report to the Board of Trustees Monday, Interim President Lou Hencken detailed the efforts Eastern has made to increase next year’s enrollment.

As of now, he said freshman applications are up 31 percent and transfer applications are up 7 percent from last year, an encouraging piece of news at a time when state funding is uncertain.

Hencken resolved last fall to pump up fall enrollment by 250 students, worried that Eastern’s funding may be in danger if its enrollment continued to drop, he told the BOT.

The increase comes as a result of several new efforts in recruitment, Hencken said. Eastern published a colorful new recruitment booklet and improved the prospective student area of its Web site.

And the academic counseling staff was enlarged to tour more high schools and talk to prospective students.

Changes have also been made on the academic side to lure students to Eastern.

The process for applying to the teaching program has been simplified, but not relaxed, Blair Lord, vice president for academic affairs, said at Monday’s meeting.

“We didn’t make it easier, we made it more understandable,” Lord said.

Eastern is the second largest producer of teachers in the state.

The university is putting the finishing touches on a four-year guaranteed graduation program called EIU4.

And a new 2 + 2 program, which coordinates community colleges’ programs with Eastern’s, is making transferring from a community college easier, Lord said.

Also to attract transfer students, the Council on Academic Affairs streamlined the general education curriculum over the past year.

An increase in enrollment is especially significant this year, since much of Eastern’s budget increase for next fiscal year comes from tuition revenue.

David Radavich, English professor and president of Eastern’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois, also addressed the BOT.

Radavich said he is “cautiously optimistic” about upcoming negotiations for a new faculty contract. So far, he said he has had a good working relationship with Hencken and Lord and he is pleased with the progress made toward raising faculty salaries.

He said both UPI members and administration members will attend training sessions for a more productive negotiation process that is expected to start in March.

Sandy Bingham-Porter of the Staff Senate praised the administration for working to keep the lines of communication open with employees and for moving next fall’s commencement ceremony back one week.

She also said the university staff support the administration’s plan for dividing $2.3 million in state cuts to this year’s budget.

Student Body President Hugh O’Hara delivered a report of the activities of the Student Senate during the fall semester. He explained the new process for approving increases in student fees, remarking that students spent “countless hours” working to divide the 5.8 percent increase fairly.

To create a more constructive system of calculating room and board increases, the Student Senate teamed up with the Residence Hall Association to create the Bond-Revenue Committee, O’Hara said.

The Student Senate has tackled issues of campus diversity, expanding the Panther Card and improving Panther Express, O’Hara said.

Bud Fischer detailed the happenings of Faculty Senate for the BOT, including complex issues of the revised Council on University Planning and Budget bylaws and the parliamentary procedure used to adopt them.

Commencement became a recurring issue at Faculty Senate, and it worked to extend exceptionality so that students with 12 credit hours left to complete could participate in commencement.

“That’s something I’ve championed for about a year and a half now, and it has finally gone through,” Fischer said.