Dear Editor,

Thank you for the open discussion you have engendered with your retention article from the Jan. 30 edition of The Maroon.

The retention of students, their persistence at the university, is something to be excited about and to rally around.

Ours is a wonderful community, made better by improved persistence of students. The changing costs for students when they choose to transfer are astronomical. So, retention is good for everyone.

Retention improvements are usually the results of strengthened programs, services and communications.

Marketing only gets us so far, so I’m thrilled that you interviewed our deans to glean their insights in helping Loyola become greater in its overall enrollment performance.

Together with them, the faculty and the administration, we are working hard on a series of exciting new retention initiatives.

In addition to thanking you, I am writing to correct two errors in the article.

The first is that you write that Loyola had 495 new first-year, first-time students in the fall of 2008.

This is not true. Due to the outstanding efforts of the admissions and financial aid teams, along with the help of faculty, students and many other staff, the university saw a 40 percent increase to 695 new first-year, first-time students.

We will not know how well we retained this group until fall 2009, but it’s a brilliant and convivial group of students who are making mighty contributions to Loyola each day, and I am proud of them.

The second error is a matter of semantics. The article title reads “… deans … combat retention” and then, in the continuation, “deans try to lower retention in their colleges.”
 
No, the opposite. A high retention rate is good. Persistence is good.

The deans’ plans, the provost’s plans, the Office of Enrollment Management’s plans are to serve students better and strive to build on our traditions of individual attention and connectedness.

We’ll reach out to each and all of our students — commuters, West Coasters, students with high financial need, Catholics, non-Catholics, everybody — with the full weight of our shared experiences and towards the same end that this newspaper has sought since its inception, a greater Loyola.

Collectively, then, we will be successful.

Sincerely,
Salvadore A. Liberto
Vice President for Enrollment Management and
Associate Provost
[email protected]