As other state universities struggle to get back to pre-pandemic enrollment levels, a North Alabama college has managed to grow its student population, year after year, for nearly a decade.

The University of North Alabama, located in Florence, hit a major milestone in 2022 when it enrolled more than 10,000 students for the first time. Officials project that number to reach 10,600 this fall.

The college is now in the middle of an ambitious $100 million plan to improve campus facilities, grow course offerings and, yes, build a football field – while aiming to stay true to the school’s regional roots.

AL.com sat down with President Ken Kitts to talk about the school’s track record and plans for the future.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Q: Y’all hit a big enrollment record last year and have continued to break records. Can you talk about your strategy for making that happen?

A: We’re going to land almost squarely on 10,600 students, and we know with certainty that that is another enrollment record for us this year. Last year, we were just below 10,200. [Editor’s note: This includes both on-campus and online students.] So that gives us seven consecutive record years of enrollment increase. We’re obviously really proud of that and thrilled with our continuing growth. And if you think about that seven-year period, it includes the pandemic. And so we were one of the few institutions that were able to establish growth before the pandemic, keep it going during the pandemic, and now even as we emerge, continue on a really good trajectory.

We have a beautiful campus and a historic campus that’s fairly small in terms of the footprint and we’re in city limits. So doubling the size of campus is just not an option for us for reasons you can well imagine. So when we started thinking about the need to grow and how we were going to get there, that was all part of the calculus. We finally settled upon a plan called smart growth. And it basically refers to growth that makes sense for UNA, and what it envisions is modest and manageable growth in the traditional campus-based population and somewhat higher growth rates in those student populations that don’t tax this small infrastructure – so online programs, and many of our graduate programs have a healthy online component if they’re not entirely online. So our graduate growth has been faster than our undergraduate growth, by design, because they’re not fighting for parking places with an 18-year-old and otherwise taxing the infrastructure here, and it’s been really successful. It’s been by design, we use the playbook to great effect each year, and that’s been the reason for our success.

Q: It’s getting more expensive for colleges to keep up with building expenses, let alone start new construction. But you’ve got some big plans coming up – you’re building a football stadium and have several new capital projects lined up. Can you talk about how those projects fit in with your vision for the university, and why now?

A: We wouldn’t be into this very new and ambitious capital campaign without donor guidance and donor support. We’ve kind of very quietly been knocking it out of the park with private gifts and donations in a way that’s really as impressive as the enrollment growth. Last year in terms of total fundraising, we brought in over $20 million in a year, which is really good for a regional university, and we thought, maybe that was a bit of an anomaly. Then this year we brought in over $30 million.

We closed our last capital campaign in 2018, and that was the first one in the history of the university. So we were maybe a little later getting to this business of capital campaigns than some of our peer schools, but it was successful. We met our goal, which back then was $25 million. And so it was time to take a deep breath and say, “Do we want to do this again?”

But as we began to look at the reaction that we were getting from our alumni base and from our community, that’s what really gave us the confidence to say not only can we do this, but we should do this – that the time is right.

It is doable, and I think we will get there sooner rather than later. The multipurpose athletic facility is a project that obviously gets a lot of attention, but it’s certainly not the only one. And the priorities that are built into the campaign are there because those are the priorities that the donors told us they wanted. Everything from scholarship programs to student support centers to athletics, and the new academic building and the Music Performance Center as well.

Q: Most of your student population is in-state. Do you see your population changing as the university grows?

A: We’re always going to be true to our mission of being a state university, and we know who we are and what we’re here to do, and that we’re supported by Alabama taxpayers, and so that’s always going to be the first place we look.

So typically about 80% of our freshman class will be from the state of Alabama. And we do especially well in south central Tennessee – that’s a growth area – so we bring students in from that area as well as others. But what’s interesting is that so many of the students from that part of Tennessee who come here, they end up staying. And the most telling evidence of that is we ran some data last year on the students in our teacher education programs at UNA, and last year 100% of those who graduated stayed to teach in Alabama. And I guarantee those were not all Alabama residents, which is a wonderful commentary, especially with the teacher shortage in Alabama, that we’re recruiting Alabama students, and then the others who aren’t still choose to make careers here. I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s that way every year, but I think it’s broadly indicative of our service to the region and our service to the state and we’re really proud of that. And with our growth in the online programs, you probably touch a few more out-of-staters for obvious reasons, but again, the data we’ve looked at suggests that a good number of our online students still come from within a 100 to 200 mile radius from our campus because they know us and they know the quality of a UNA degree.

Q: UNA froze tuition, like most colleges, during the pandemic. Do you plan on increasing it in future years?

A: Undergraduate tuition did not go up this year. We did have an increase in graduate tuition and we also repackaged some fees – we eliminated over 600 course fees. We’re trying to get to a clearer presentation for our students and our parents about actual costs. And so we eliminated those and went to a more streamlined model of college fees, which allows us to also get at the reality that some degrees are simply more expensive for us to offer than others.

Q: Your trustees are predicting a funding deficit this year, which has been the case over the past few years as well. How are you feeling about going into the academic year, funding-wise?

A: We did go into the year with an operating deficit. At the same time, the university’s very financially stable because we have some one-time money coming in to fill some of those holes. But our budgets are always tight here. And that’s just part of the reality that is unique to UNA. We have never fared as well in the competition for state dollars as some of our peer schools. If you look at the way that the state funds K-12 education, it’s really a formula – it’s based on average daily membership in a district and if that enrollment goes up, the funding for the district goes up, and vice versa. With higher education, there is no formula and most of the states do use some type of objective criteria. I worked in a state previously where there were 12 criteria. And so based on your performance, that’s what your state appropriation would be the following year. But in Alabama it’s not tied to enrollment. It’s not tied to graduation rate, retention rates, it’s not tied to any of that. It’s really almost completely an arbitrary or a political process.

And so, just because we’ve grown a lot in the last 10 years doesn’t mean that we automatically get more money from the state. Every year, we have to remind the lawmakers that we have grown at a faster clip than our peers. And then, you know, point out that it takes money to continue to do that. And when we’re growing we’re doing great things not only for our graduates but for the state. We’re invested in these workforce development programs. We’re starting engineering and nurse practitioner programs, wonderful things for the state, but it costs money.

And because there’s no formula, you have to make that case every single year, and what I found out when I arrived here as president is literally you look back over the last 100 years, UNA has been in the bottom quarter, if not dead last, on a per-student funding basis for the better part of the century. And so a lot of what I’ve tried to do as president is kind of wave arms and say, “Don’t forget about us.” And we’re getting there but wow, that hole was really deep and it remains deep for us. We remain underfunded as we have this conversation today.

Q: With the legislative session coming up, can you share more about any conversations you’ve had lately about funding?

A: I want to stress that I do feel like we’re being heard. The chairs of the funding committees, our local delegation, they’ve always been willing to take a meeting with me and I’m very grateful for that. But again, it’s just when you start this far back, the aggravating part is it just takes you a long time to catch up.

Our graduation rate is up significantly. Our retention rate this fall is at an all time high. Our retention rate looks like something you’d find in a much larger school than a regional university. We were the first university in the state to openly embrace workforce development as an academic priority. We started calling ourselves Alabama’s Workforce Development University at a time when people were still kind of warming up to the term. But we got on board and it wasn’t a bumper sticker. I mean, we started emphasizing new programs and developing new programs: applied engineering, which then became engineering, expansion of our nursing program, nurse practitioner, respiratory care – I mean, really listening to the governor, listening to the lawmakers about what Alabama industry needs. I got a brand new building going up here on campus, it’ll open at the end of the year, for computer science and mathematics, and we doubled the number of computer science majors here in the last two years. When you look at the growth in North Alabama, and especially in the Huntsville market, we can’t crank out computer science majors quickly enough. Most of those students have two or three job offers by the time they walk across the stage, same with our nursing graduates, same with our teacher education candidates. So we’re listening to the state. I’m biased, but I think we do as good a job as anyone in aligning our priorities with state priorities. And that’s a really good message for me to be able to share with lawmakers.

Q: A lot of college students really struggled during the height of the pandemic. Can you talk about your efforts to retain students?

A: Typically, for a regional university in UNA’s classification, you’d expect around 70% to be the average retention rate, and some schools make that and some schools don’t. This year we’re going to set a new record at around 78%. It’s a huge point of pride for us because that’s a key indicator of students’ satisfaction with the overall experience that we’re putting forth.

Q: It’s also been a pretty stressful time for student borrowers. Y’all have got a good portion of students on Pell grants, and a lot of others are receiving some other type of aid. Can you talk a little more about supporting low-income students?

A: That’s been one of the fastest growing parts of our budget in terms of our commitment to our students. We were up about 70% in scholarship outlays since I’ve been here, which means that our scholarship support is actually outstripping the growth in tuition and fees.

Q: You rolled out a plan a few years ago to improve diversity and inclusion on campus. Where do you stand on those efforts?

A: I’m really pleased with where we’re at. Our kind of campus mosaic is as rich as any you’ll find in the state of Alabama. We’ve always defined diversity here in its broadest possible terms. You know, we want a campus where students are going to be interacting with peers from any number of different backgrounds because that’s the reality of the world that they’re getting ready to graduate into in the workplace.

But if you look at the objective data on campus diversity, we are now a more diverse campus than we were 10 years ago. Again, that’s intentional. We have decentralized our diversity efforts here, which means that we work with individual offices and colleges and departments to kind of meet them on their terms and see what their needs might be. Are there areas in which they’re underrepresented? Where we perhaps don’t have enough women in a certain major, or students of color. We can address those much better at the individual level. And I think that the other beauty of a decentralized approach is that it makes it clear that maintaining a welcoming, inclusive campus is everyone’s responsibility, and we want everyone to take ownership of that.

Q: Nationwide, those retention numbers lag for Black and Hispanic students. What have you done to address those gaps?

A: One of the programs we have here is the Presidential Mentors Academy, which is a program that targets students from underrepresented groups, broadly, and it’s a scholarship program, but it not only brings students to campus, it offers programmatic enhancements and kind of intrusive advising to try to get at that problem. Sometimes students from marginalized groups don’t persist in the same numbers as the rest of the student population, and that’s not good for anyone. It’s not the kind of university we want to be. And what we found is that through PMA, with that level of advising and programmatic enhancement, that the retention rate for those students is actually better than it is for the student population as a whole. So we have expanded the size of PMA. And my view is we’re going to continue to grow it because I think it’s a program unique to UNA in a way that fits us and it addresses exactly the issue that you’re talking about.

Q: So this is your ninth year at UNA – Are you planning on sticking around for a while?

A: I’m very much enjoying what I’m doing at UNA and when I came here, my wife and I had two very young school-age children. And the President’s home here is right on campus. And it’s right next to the lion enclosure. I’m talking 20 feet from the lion enclosure. So it’s been a very unique environment to raise a family, but we’ve done just that. And our boys don’t know anything else. I mean, I’ve got one who’s a high school senior and then the other is an eighth grader at Florence Middle School. And growing up on a college campus, interacting with college students and faculty and staff on a daily basis and hearing a lion roar every morning at 5 a.m. which we do is just part of their life and they don’t think twice about it. But it’s been a great journey for us. We love UNA and we have absolutely fallen in love with the place. We feel like we’re doing some good here and we feel like it’s a journey that’s not yet complete for us. So, you know, we’re taking it one day at a time, one year at a time. But I would love to land this campaign and get some of these large projects that we’ve started finished.