In January 2018, Umpqua Community College announced an addition of three new sports programs (men’s and women’s track and field and baseball). These new teams were added in an attempt to boost UCC’s enrollment.
Athletic Director Craig Jackson stated that new teams are “enrollment driven”, and the goal is to use the teams to bring in additional students to UCC.
Over the past five years, UCC’s enrollment has been on the decline. In the 2011-2012 school year, enrollment exceeded 4,000 students. During the 2016-2017 school year, UCC was struggling with less than 3,000 students enrolled. As of March 7 2018, Roseburg’s High School had 1,502 students enrolled, just for comparison.
The lack of students is a worry for the college; however according to Missy Olson, UCC’s director of college transitions and enrollment management, “Across the nation, enrollment in higher education continues to decline.”
New teams have been added in hopes of getting more students to enroll at UCC. According to a presentation report drafted for the new teams the wrestling, OCR (obstacle course racing) and cross country teams “brought the total number of athletes at UCC from 30 at the conclusion of spring term of 2017 to 95 at the beginning of fall term of 2017.”
The report continues to claim that after “phase II of our strategic enrollment plan… the addition of these two sports (track and field and baseball) will add another 75 student athletes over the next two years.”
Aside from enrollment, the track and field team is expected to make $30,810, while the baseball team is expected to cost $10,060.
Lastly, the proposal states, “Research shows that we would be bringing in on an additional student population that possess the following traits: a higher g.p.a., retention rate, pass rate, persistence rate and rate of matriculation/transfer than the general student body.”
Readers can find the report by going to UCC’s website, and click the resources and services tab. After that find the board of education link and go to the board meeting tab on the right. Find the January 17 meeting of 2018 and click the UCC Athletics link at the right.