Further discussion and action on enrollment management was postponed at Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting.

The senate met with Frank Hohengarten, dean of enrollment management, and faculty representatives on the enrollment management advisory committee to discuss what type of students Eastern wants to recruit in the future, as well as how to control enrollment numbers.

Hohengarten said the optimal enrollment is not maximum enrollment, and the university needs to come up with a number that is reasonable for the campus and sustainable for the amount of resources it has.

Although Eastern is now accommodating the largest freshman class in its history, Hohengarten said the school is nowhere near record enrollment.

With the recent inception of the Illinois Prairie State Examination Program, every high school junior takes the American College Test. Hohengarten said this captures a larger number of high school students who wouldn’t normally take the test and puts them in the running for college.

“It looks good for the next seven or eight years in higher education, at least in terms of more students,” Hohengarten said.

However, this growth in college-bound students can be a problem for enrollment. Hohengarten said the issue has now become when to stop taking students and how to shape the academic profile of prospective students.

Gary Ayelsworth, member of the enrollment management advisory committee and chair of the philosophy department, said Eastern needs to change what it has been doing in terms of recruitment, especially if the school is interested in shaping the academic profile.

“We can’t simply throw a broad net and see who shows up,” Ayelsworth said.

The current method of recruitment focuses mainly on an applicant’s grade point average and composite ACT score, but Ayelsworth said these are only part of the profile.

The enrollment management committee needs to get together with administrators and then figure out what kind of student body the university wants, said Steve Scher, committee member and psychology professor.

Scher proposed a motion in which the Faculty Senate would request that Blair Lord, vice president of academic affairs, and interim President Lou Hencken give direction on whether the university should be addressing not only the number in enrollment, but the shape or quality of the student body.

After discussions ran long, the senate postponed a vote on the motion until a future meeting.

The Faculty Senate also postponed action on resolutions presented at yesterday’s meeting, including a resolution that recently passed with the Student Senate.

Ronnie Deedrick, student vice president of academic affairs, asked the Faculty Senate to approve a resolution recommending students to be included in faculty hiring searches.

Students have been invited to serve on other search committees, such as last year’s presidential search advisory committee, but have never been represented on faculty search committees.

“Who better to serve on these committees than students?” Deedrick asked.

Senate Chair Anne Zahlan, professor of English, distributed a draft resolution for the Board of Trustees regarding the next presidential search.

The resolution, to be voted on at a future senate meeting, asks for the BOT’s assurance that faculty will be adequately represented in the next search, including naming a faculty member as chair of the presidential search committee.

A draft resolution on Central Management Systems funding of university employee insurance also was distributed for future action.

This resolution urges the BOT and the administration to take the necessary legislative steps to provide quality health care to Eastern faculty and staff as well as other state employees of public universities.

This resolution will be discussed at the next senate meeting.