The Central Michigan University Board of Trustees met on Thursday to hear updates from various faculty, staff and students. The committees discussed the status of admissions, 2026 construction projects, programs within the College of Medicine and updates from different student associations.

Academic and Student Affairs Committee

In addition to the decrease in the university’s total international enrollment, CMU is also seeing a decline in applications from both international undergraduate and graduate students.

At the Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting, Executive Director of Admissions Bob Garcia informed the trustees about the decrease and that other institutions are facing similar issues.

“This is where there’s some cloudy weather for us,” Garcia said.

Here are the decreases:

Graduate Applications: -60.2%
Graduate admissions: -52.5%
Undergraduate applications: -50.4%
Undergraduate admissions: -21.9%

Garcia said that his department has been looking to recruit students currently enrolled at community colleges on visas. At this time, only 19 students have obtained visas for the spring semester.

However, the university’s domestic undergraduate applications and admissions have seen an increase, Garcia said:

Undergraduate applications: 47.9%
Undergraduate admissions: 27.5%

He said that the early deposits from applicants have also increased.

“You can see (we’re) up 42% in freshman deposits year over year, up 31% transfer deposits,” Garcia said. “It’s great to see students having such strong feelings at this point in the year. That they want to go ahead and send their commitment deposit.”

The university’s online campus has also seen an increase, with both its graduate and undergraduate applications and admissions being up by more than 15%.

Director of CMU Cares Andrea Roggenbuck also spoke to the committee, sharing that the university’s CARES program has received 513 referrals since the beginning of the semester.

She shared that the top three concerns have been academic concerns (241 cases), mental health concerns (119) and general student health concerns (52), which is when a student is dealing with two or more situations, according to Roggenbuck.

She said that the team is continuing to address these concerns, but that it’ll take the whole university to help resolve them.

“This truly is a campus effort and requires everybody from referral to the handoff,” Roggenbuck said. “Any time a reporter, faculty or staff member is able to say, ‘Hey I’m concerned about you. I’d like to connect you to this resource …’ That increases our chances that the student will engage with us.”

Finance and Facilities Committee

Associate Vice President of Facility Management, Johnathan Webb, gave a presentation on seeking approval for seven items related to facility and construction for 2026-2027. They were:

Deferred maintenance: $2.4 million in mechanical, $1.4 million in architectural, $1.1 million in electrical and $800,000 in civil matters
Renovation of the South Residence Hall community, starting with Merrill Hall, then Sweeney, Beddow and Thorpe
Renovation of Ronan Hall in May to allow for better utilization of the facility for student services, general administration and a new food pantry
Maintenance and infrastructure improvements in Combined Services, Grawn, Sloan, Powers and Warriner Hall
Construction for a Women’s and Men’s Golf Training Facility near Theunissen Stadium
Renewal and update of CMU’s 10-year contracts for natural gas and electricity
Consumer energy utility easement for their electrical distribution to run parallel to the railroad near campus

In addition, Mary Hill, vice president of Finance and Administrative Services, presented the following requests to the board:

State capital outlay report and project revised request for Brooks Hall
Approval to implement a required deposit of up to $2,500 during the first semester for international students to filter students who commit to CMU or want to transfer
Temporary delegation for President Neil MacKinnon to review and execute leases for the public broadcasting Atlanta tower
Request for delegation for MacKinnon to review and execute leases for the Wet Labs in CMU Research Corporation
Request to delegate authority to MacKinnon to review and execute revenue-generating ground leases for our smart zone area
Increase in 2026 marketing funds to support student enrollment initiatives to $2.5 million

All of the marketing funds would go to help jumpstart things forward in enrollment for 2026-2027 students, Hill said.

“If we don’t use $2.5 million in base funds for that, then we will pull that back," Hill said.

Jennifer Cotter, Vice President for Advancement, finished the session with the last two agenda items. She said CMU has raised $5.4 million from private gift and passed three new endowments.

Trustees-Faculty Liaison Committee

Robert Bouwman, manager of the College of Medicine’s standardized patient (SP) simulation center, presented to the Board of Trustees on Nov. 20. He talked about how the SP simulation provides medical students with experiential learning and practice opportunities.

SPs are actors who portray patients for students to learn how to treat illnesses in medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy fields, Bouwman said.

Masha Smahliuk-Bootz

College of Medicine Student Mikayla Holli Horsley practices with Standardized Patient Jamille Schlafley in front of the Board of Trustees at their meeting on Nov. 20.

SPs provide students with verbal feedback on their performance, connectedness with the patient and physical exam techniques, he said.

"It's not about watching the video and piecing things together, it's about realizing something right in the very moment that it happened,” Bouwman said. “That's something I find is to be more impactful.”

Tejas Bhat Kakunje, a second-year medical student at CMU, said working with SPs changed the way he cares for patients.

“My SP ... commented on my tone, my word choice, my pace,” he said. “They showed me how my body language could make someone more comfortable or even more anxious.

"It's the first time that I truly understood that medicine isn't just about learning the facts, the pathways, the drugs. It's about connecting with the human being in front of you."

Trustees-Student Liaison Committee

Three different organizations sat down to talk about their goals and updates. They were the Residence Housing Association (RHA), Student Government Association (SGA) and Program Board.

President of RHA Max Fusaro discussed several goals the organization has. These goals included:

Looking to fund the installation of bike racks in both entrances of the South community
Reach more people working with multi-cultural registered student organizations to get their voice heard
Working with the executive director of residence life to find ways to improve campus life.

SGA President Akua Acheampong said SGA’s main goal this year was to “center students” through increased engagement.

Looking ahead, Acheampong said SGA is hoping to:

Increase engagement
Listen to student feedback
Complete projects, like creating a potential scholarship
Documenting SGA’s impact with a historian and finding ways to keep SGA’s legacy going

“We’re really looking into having things that are able to last, like having events that continue on even after people graduate,” Acheampong said. “We really want SGA to have a lasting legacy.”

President of the Program Board Kendall Fowler said the Program Board is looking to expand outreach to connect with more students.

“We want to touch students that aren’t really engaging and different activities,” Fowler said.

Fowler said the board is hosting more events with lower commitment and higher engagement.

“We’ve seen a trend of students that they really want to do things, but they just don’t want to commit fully to things,” he said. “We have adjusted event planning to create these events that are low commitment. You can come and go as you want, but when you’re gonna be there, you are gonna be so highly engaged working on stuff that you may want to stay for longer.”

Here is a list of the Program Board’s upcoming events: