MinerAlert
MinerAlert
STRATEGIC GOALS
In 2020, UTEP began the development of a comprehensive undergraduate and graduate enrollment plan, implementing strategies and activities that will enable the University to enroll more students and confer more degrees over the next 10 years.
UTEP has a deep commitment to, and an outstanding record in, local and regional outreach. We will continue to strengthen recruitment in our primary Region 19 market, maintaining our commitment to educate the community in which we are located. Strengthening our partnerships in the region, we will encourage dual credit and early college high schools, and smooth the pathway to a bachelor’s degree for transfer students. We will seek to expand enrollment from populations within our region that we are currently underserving.
As we move to the next decade, the number of high school graduates in our region will plateau, while the population of Texas as a whole will increase. To continue to serve the needs of the state and region, we will expand our primary recruitment market beyond Region 19. In doing so, we will emphasize themes that resonate based on market research, including access to excellent education; our unique binational, bicultural region; our good value; community-engaged education; and the strength of particular academic programs.
We will develop specific messages for both the current Region 19 market and the expanded primary market through market research and a comprehensive marketing plan. Our location, culture, academic programs, and emerging partnerships give us an advantage to attract students from areas of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
As we solidify our expanded primary market, we will prioritize target secondary markets including Arizona and Southern California, as well as other Texas cities, with particular focus on our high-demand undergraduate and graduate programs. We will emphasize our differentiating characteristics, including our success in supporting low-income and first-generation students, high academic quality, affordable tuition, and community-engaged education.
Lack of student housing is a barrier to attracting new students from secondary markets. Because only a small percentage of UTEP students have historically lived on campus, we have a unique opportunity to enhance and expand the high-quality on-campus living, dining and learning environment to attract students from outside Region 19. UTEP will develop and implement a plan to enhance the on-campus living experience as we expand our primary market outside of El Paso.
One of the most prominent opportunities to broaden access and grow enrollment is to continue to impact student persistence. UTEP’s holistic advising model for undergraduate students is designed to support their unique personal circumstances by offering various academic and non-academic supports. Along with advising and academic support services, UTEP will also continue to promote affordability and simplify the process of paying for college.
We will keep college affordable by controlling costs while enhancing access to financial aid. We will prioritize development of scholarships of all kinds for incoming and persisting students and make systemic improvements to the scholarship awarding process.
We will recruit and enroll the first class of mining engineering students in Fall 2027, growing to a first-year enrollment of 167 to graduate about 100 mining engineers by 2034 in the largest and best mining engineering program in the country.
We will develop more professional degree programs in areas of strong demand, identified through market analysis, to bring in more self-funded master’s degree students. This will include the development of new program modalities, such as online or hybrid options, for new and existing programs to serve a broader range of students.