Salisbury University: A Great Value in a Tough Economy
Salisbury, MD---In a tough economy, there are many things for parents and students to consider when choosing a college or university.
“There is a growing trend among this group to opt for a public school that feels like a private—one that provides a high-quality education, but with a lower price tag,” said Jane Dané, dean of enrollment management at Salisbury University.
Salisbury University offers academic excellence and is a great value. Here are the Top 10 reasons why:
Time is money. SU has the fastest time-to-degree average in the University System of Maryland. That means, on average, SU’s first-time, full-time, degree-seeking undergraduates take the least number of semesters to complete graduation requirements.
Private school feel. All four of SU’s schools are endowed—a rarity among public institutions nationwide. The only comprehensive university in the nation to twice host the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, SU’s creative curriculum emphasizes faculty-student interaction and undergraduate research. Reformed curriculum for the Fulton School of Liberal Arts was modeled after that in strong private liberal arts colleges.
Excellence at the right price. SU has one of the lowest tuitions in the state of Maryland, providing a quality education with a reasonable price tag. More than $3 million in academic scholarships are awarded annually—many going to the top 25 percent of incoming freshmen.
Outstanding faculty. With a student to faculty ratio of 16:1, SU students get to know their professors—many of whom have earned Fulbright Fellowships and the highest faculty honor given by the University System of Maryland (USM): the Regents Award for Excellence. Dr. Ernie Bond of the Teacher Education Department was named Maryland Professor of the Year and recently, The Daily Record named two faculty in art and marketing among Maryland’s Top 100 Women. Dr. Brian Polkinghorn of the Center for Conflict Resolution has been twice honored this semester, winning his second consecutive $80,000 Elkins endowed professorship from the USM and a $460,000 grant from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to examine conflict management.
Alumni Network. An SU diploma is the passport to success for more than 30,000 alumni worldwide. Notable grads include actress Jennifer Hope Wills, who starred as Christine Daae in Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera; Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti; New York Jets defensive line coach Dan Quinn; international poultry magnate Jim Perdue; Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Seidel; and Michael Scarborough, owner of the Scarborough Group Inc., which manages international investments valued at $2.5 billion. Since 1996, more than 40 SU alumni have been finalists for Maryland’s Teacher of the Year (some years, as many as one in four have been SU grads). Three of the past six winners have held close SU ties.
National Distinction. In national guidebooks in surveys, SU has been a U.S. News & World Report’s Top Public Universities—Master’s category, North—for 12 consecutive years. For 10 years, SU has been among The Princeton Review’s The 368 Best Colleges. More importantly, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine named SU one of the “Top 100 Best Values in Public Colleges” for its combination of “top-flight academics and affordable costs.” On the playing field, SU’s NCAA Division III program has earned eight national championships in the past six years, including three in field hockey and five in men’s lacrosse. That’s just one reason why Men’s Fitness magazine named SU one of the nation’s 15 fittest campuses.
Internships That Work. If given the opportunity to gain practical, hands-on experience, how many students would work with marine animals at the Ocean Mammal Institute in Hawaii? Train tigers at the Siberian Tiger Conservation Association in Ohio? Stand in the same room with the next president of the United States? SU students have done all this and more. This year, SU’s Kasey Wright saw candidates Barack Obama and John McCain face off in person while working for the Commission on Presidential Debates. Former business student Adam Miller so impressed his supervisors at the Seaford, DE-based Trinity Transport, Inc. (ranked one of the nation’s 5,000 fastest-growing businesses) that the company created two annual $10,000 scholarships to encourage future SU interns. In addition to internships for pay or credit, SU students in more than 100 organizations volunteer some 35,000 hours in the region each year.
World Views. From studying marine ecology in Honduras to gaining conflict resolution experience in Kosovo, SU students travel the world in pursuit of global education. For more than a decade SU has championed international education and community service in countries such as Ecuador (where SU President Janet Dudley-Eshbach joined students in 2006) New Zealand (where education students intern at elementary schools) and villages outside Tanzania, Africa (where nursing students provide AIDS awareness and prevention training). In 2008, Honors students studied British literature in England—SU’s first course with a Spring Break experiential learning component.
Career and Grad School Placement. Not only can SU students cross boundaries when picking a major, like one management and marketing student who also took glass blowing and eventually established his own glass studio in Baltimore, but SU’s Career Services Network will help students put their education to work. From resume building to welcoming recruiters to campus, getting a job post-SU is a group effort. SU also prepares for success in grad school: students have been accepted into such prestigious programs as Virginia Tech, Johns Hopkins and Columbia University. Alumnus Anthony Boughman, for example, earned a National Science Foundation fellowship at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Justin Gallo, received $70,000 to attend the University of Florida’s theatre graduate program following his title role in SU’s Hamlet.
Formidable Facilities. SU is building for a better tomorrow. Its new $65 million Teacher Education and Technology Center opened this fall, combining cutting-edge technology with the best practices in teaching and learning. The 165,000 square-foot environmentally-friendly facility features $5 million in new technology, including an Integrated Media Center, a 24-track audio recording studio, 15 editing suites, a digital exhibition gallery, a digital photography lab, SMART classrooms and one of the few campus-based high-definition digital video production studios in the nation. Also this fall, SU broke ground on a four-level parking garage that is expected to add some 850 parking spaces to campus, and opened a University Fitness Club, giving students access to a new comprehensive recreational facility for the first time in 30 years. Construction on a new home for the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business is scheduled to begin in 2009. By 2011, SU plans to have a new 600-bed residence hall and commercial complex on its main campus.
The faltering economy is forcing many high school seniors to take a second look at public colleges and universities. So far, applications at Salisbury University for fall 2009 are up 15 percent, at a time when the number of high school graduates is beginning to decline nationally, Dané said. Located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore only 30 miles from the beach and 2.5 hours from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., SU offers academic excellence at a great value.