WKU President highlights commitment to regional campus growth

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

In the early morning hours of Friday, July 26, community members and business owners gathered in the event hall at the Barren River Lake State Resort lodge to listen to Western Kentucky University President Timothy Caboni talk about the university’s Glasgow campus.

The gathering was under the guise of Barren Inc.’s quarterly networking event Coffee and Commerce. The roughly hour-long breakfast was sponsored by WKU and so, after brief comments from Barren Inc. President Matt London, Caboni ascended the stairs to the wooden podium to highlight both the achievements of the main campus in Bowling Green and the advancements of the regional campus in Glasgow.

“WKU Glasgow is important to the economic future of this region,” Caboni said. “We have been focusing on making sure we serve…the entire region by changing the way we approach education on campuses.”

Firstly, he mentioned the “sharp increase” of enrollment seen in this region of both online and in-person saying the spring semester had roughly 745 students enrolled at WKU in Barren County. He coupled that statistic with a request for attendees to be adjunct professors citing that “real-world experience” made the university’s students more job ready upon graduation.

In the vein of more students, Caboni mentioned the 24 additional course sections offered at the regional campus that would help students acquire one of the 11 degrees offered completely at the WKU Glasgow campus, which Caboni said relates directly with the needs of the regional economy.

“We are on trajectory to meet a five year enrollment high [in the fall] and more students means more class offerings right here in WKU Glasgow,” Caboni said.

In addition to briefly mentioning abstractly some improvements made to the regional campus, Caboni mentioned the upcoming students who have enrolled in the university’s Early College Program.

Announced last fall, the program allows college-ready students the chance to take college classes alongside typical college students and graduate high school with 30  hours of college credit. The program has five “professional career tracks,” which are agriculture, business, crime and legal studies, education and nursing, for students to choose from in addition to some WKU general education courses.

Caboni announced that in addition to the students who were enrolled in the inaugural class another 82 students were now enrolled with 42 percent of those being first generation college attendees.

All-in-all, Caboni’s remarks can be summarized as a hopefulness for the WKU Glasgow’s future.

“Our commitment to this region is to have a vibrant WKU campus filled with students and filled with faculty, and we are meeting that promise,” Caboni said.