A Message from President Mortensen

As a dual-mission university, Weber State maintains an open enrollment policy where we accept students with all levels of academic preparation. We are proud to preserve this opportunity as we embrace ACCESS as one of our core themes.

With this approach, we also accept the challenges of retaining students. The truth is that we historically lose nearly half of our new students between their first and second years of school. At right, the retention rate graph shows the numbers over the past decade.

If you’re an idealist, like me, and you enjoy celebrating the achievement of 6,000 Weber State graduates a year, you not only believe we can do better, but you hope that we do better. The more students we retain, the more students have the opportunity to fully realize their potential to lead meaningful lives.

As we strive to grow our enrollment, the best way to grow enrollment is to retain those increasing numbers of enrolled students until they complete their degrees.

Increasing our enrollment through recruiting and retention, and subsequently realizing increases in our number of completions, benefits WSU as well as our students. The Legislature’s increased emphasis on performance-based funding rewards steady enrollment growth fueled by recruitment and retention strategies. These factors improve Weber State’s performance metrics and increase the share of higher education funding that comes our way.

It’s also important for Weber State to recruit and retain out-of-state and international students. In addition to bringing in out-of-state tuition dollars, these students provide more diversity of culture and perspective, contributing to a richer learning environment and opportunities for inclusive excellence.

What We're Doing

In the fall of 2017, the university committed to a major new endeavor, Weber Thrives. This endeavor aims to grow our enrollment, retain our students and, ultimately, see them persist to fulfilling their dream of graduating from college.

I am excited to continue these efforts and look forward to seeing how they will benefit our students. I ask every member of our Weber State family to join me in helping our students, and our university, thrive.

There are a variety of ways you can be involved:

• Join a student success subcommittee to contribute your ideas.
• Subscribe to our Tuesday Tips newsletter for timely information on student support.
• Come back to the Weber Thrives site for initiative information and updates.

I know our faculty and staff are up for — and in many cases are already — answering this call. Thank you for everything you do to support our students and helping them make their dreams happen.