PROVOST HOPES TO SEE 10,000 AT UNIVERSITY

Southeast Missouri State University officials said Thursday they would like to see higher enrollment.

Provost Charles Kupchella said he would like to see the school with an enrollment of 10,000 in four or five years. Southeast's fall enrollment on the first day of classes last month stood at under 7,900.

Kupchella and university President Kala Stroup spoke to about 300 faculty members in a meeting Thursday in the University Center Ballroom.

Stroup said the university wants to increase college attendance and retention of students.

Only 34 percent of students who entered the school in 1986 graduated from Southeast within six years, Stroup said.

But she said admission standards have risen since then. "Eight hundred people in that class would not have been admitted today," said Stroup.

"We were taking large numbers of students who did not have adequate preparation to do college work."

Stroup said the university has made "tremendous strides" in faculty salaries.

She said the university has been able to increase salaries through internal reallocations, reductions in positions and improved operating efficiency.

For 1993-94, the average salary for a full professor at Southeast is $50,624; associate professor, $43,090; assistant professor, $35,748; and instructor, $29,620.

Kupchella said, "At Southeast, students are going to be taught by faculty who practice what they teach."

He said the university's academic deans will be spending at least one fourth of their time engaged in teaching or scholarship.

"The deans are all in favor of this. A lot of them have been teaching all along; all have been engaged in scholarship," he said.