More than 2,800 students are enrolled in the eight-week summer session at Southeast Missouri State University. The session began Tuesday.

Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast, said that headcount enrollment for the first day stood at 2,828, an increase of 139 over the 2,689 students enrolled as of the first day of the session last year.

A total of 2,295 undergraduates and 533 graduate students are enrolled in the session.

Wallhausen said the number of undergraduates is up 246 over the same period last year, when 2,049 were enrolled.

The number of graduate students is down by 107 from the 640 who were enrolled in the regular summer session last year.

The full-time equivalent enrollment stood at 1,997 Tuesday, an increase of 99 over last year, Wallhausen said.

Summer enrollment, he said, doesn't change much from year to year. "It is usually fairly constant," said Wallhausen.

But while summer enrollment doesn't begin to compare with fall and spring enrollments, Wallhausen said that the number of students who attend summer classes is still sizable.

"You have 3,000 people here. That's a pretty good size little college" in terms of just the summer enrollment, said Wallhausen.

The eight-week session ends with final exams on Aug. 8 and 9. Summer commencement will be held Aug. 9.

The regular summer session follows the four-week pre-session. A total of 1,308 students were enrolled in the pre-session as of the first day of classes last month. That total consisted of 1,190 undergraduates and 118 graduate students.