Photograph by Soham Parikh | The Wright State Guardian |
With 2020 just around the corner, it’s a good time to look at some of the changes Wright State University has gone through within the last 10 years.
Enrollment
In the fall of 2010, the total student population of WSU was 19,793. After just nine years, this number has fallen to a total population of 13,742.
Although the university’s enrollment has fallen, WSU is slowly but surely on its way to a more diverse campus.
In 2010, the percentage of students that registered with Asian descent was at 3 percent. Now, almost 10 years later, it has risen to 3.5 percent. The percentage of Hispanic students was as low as 2 percent but has now risen to 3.4 percent.
Currently, the total minority enrollment at WSU is at 21.2 percent.
International Students
International students are also a changing factor as 2019 comes to a close. In 2010, there were a total of 630 international students attending WSU on student visas; 64 total countries were represented.
As of 2019, there are 597 total international students with 59 different countries being represented.
With this fall in enrollment of students in general as well as international students, WSU has some catching up to do.
Changes since 2010
Ten years doesn’t seem like a lot, but when put it into perspective, many things can happen in such a span of time.
In the past nine years, Wright State has gone through three presidents, transitioned from quarters to semesters, and gone to an official tobacco-free campus as of 2017.
In 2012, WSU changed from a quarter based calendar to a semester-based calendar.
The Veteran and Military Center opened in 2014 to give assistance to the many veteran and military students attending WSU.
The Student Success Center opened in 2015 and provided students with lots of wide open study space and support for writing and math.
In 2016, Tom Hanks visited Wright State to dedicate the Tom Hanks Center for Motion Pictures as well as to give a speech to the community.
In 2017, Cheryl B. Schrader became the University’s seventh president and the university’s first woman president.
In January of 2019, Wright State University experienced one of the longest strikes at a public university in U.S. history. It lasted nearly 20 days and the university is still feeling the effects.
Now, as 2019 is coming to a close, Wright State University has another decade to make history.
