The Board of Regents spoke heavily on the state of student enrollment and campus usage during the first day of a two-day meeting Wednesday at Iowa State. 

The regents began by allowing each public university to present facilities governance reports.

Kate Gregory, senior vice president for university services, presented on the current usage of Iowa State classrooms and collaborative spaces.

Out of the 215 available classrooms on campus, only 65 percent of total seat capacity was utilized. This number is lower than Iowa State’s projected goal of 67 percent usage. Iowa State also fell behind its goal of seat utilization in the available 400 teaching labs, with 63 percent filled behind the 80 percent goal.

“This number perplexed us because [since] we’ve exploded in population since 2008, where are our students?” Gregory said. ”So we looked to the data and found that many are online.”

Since 2008, Iowa State online course offerings have increased 184 percent, with enrollment in the courses increasing by 111 percent. Gregory also pointed to more classes shifting to after-hour time slots — those that are not available between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. — as a reasoning for the lowered reports.

Gregory’s team hopes to “optimize the space we have to make the most useful classrooms for our students and teachers.” This vision is being implemented into several new and current classroom renovations on campus.

Renovations include larger classrooms found in the 11,000-square-foot Pearson Hall project, mobile furniture for collaborative learning with the newly-renovated Marston Hall and two large-scale classrooms to be featured in the upcoming Bessey Hall update.

Gregory also expressed interest in using book storage spaces in Parks Library for 108 capacity team learning spaces.

Iowa State hopes that upgrading smaller classrooms with modular furniture, bigger spaces or increased quality will lead to less wasted space on campus.

The Reiman Gardens improvement was recommended for approval by Gregory with a $3.4 million projected budget. Looking to begin construction this summer, the southwest corner would receive new updates, such as water pools and new rock walls.

Reiman Gardens will look to host more commemorations as well as match the aesthetic of the other updated sections. The additions are expected to be completed in summer of 2018. 

Iowa State ROTC presented briefly on both the Navy and Air Force branches, citing their students’ achievements. Iowa State is unique to the upper-midwest because it features all four military branches within ROTC. The Navy and Air Force both feature an average grade point average higher than 3.2. 

Rachel Boon, director of academic and student services for the Board of Regents, discussed online learning. She spoke about the difficulties with growing distance education across all three public universities.

“There’s costs with training faculty and making sure that everything is up to date,” Boon said. ”[…] as well as difficulties with accessibility through disability because as enrollment grows so does the array of student we have in courses.”

A total of 201 new courses were added online across all three regent universities. Iowa State added 27 of those classes in the 2015-16 academic year. In total, there are 1,968 online courses available for Iowa public college students.

Digital accessibility has remained a key topic for Iowa State. Zayira Jordan, web accessibility coordinator, explained her awareness and educational campaign. This effort can be seen in the 2016 digital accessibility informational session. There were more than 200 staff and faculty present at the session. 

Iowa State launched an online Master of Business Analytics program in 2015, with a total enrollment of about 45 students. Along with this program, the first swine science undergraduate degree began at Iowa State. The College of Business introduced ten new online courses in the 2015-16 academic year.

Graduation rates were examined for the past 10 years. Iowa State hit a new high of 88.1 percent retention rate after one year of schooling in 2015. Because Iowa State retained 87.6 percent of its students in 2014, students tend to stay with Iowa State longer compared to both the University of Iowa (87.1 percent) and the University of Northern Iowa (85.9 percent).

Six-year graduation rates were reported at 87.3 percent in 2015. These rates have steadily increased across all three institutions over the past 24 years. On average, 85.2 percent of all public university students in Iowa begin a second year immediately after finishing their first.

An internal audit was performed by the Board of Regents. This was due to a request by Iowa State University to investigate President Steven Leath’s use and possession of weapons.

The audit deals not only with Leath storing weaponry at the Knoll but also transporting weapons through university planes on hunting trips.

Iowa State policy prohibits the possession of weapons on campus as well as unauthorized transportation of firearms and explosives.  

Storage of the weapons at the Knoll was reviewed by the Department of Public Safety. After safety concerns were ceased, a verbal agreement was reached to allow weapons within the Knoll; however, a written agreement could not be reached and transportation was not discussed. 

Gregory created a written waiver that was sent to the Office of Internal Audit to continue storing weaponry at the Knoll.

The Board of Regents will resume its two-day meeting at 9 a.m. Thursday, with Leath scheduled to report on Iowa State’s progress.