With its largest student body ever and almost $200 million in capital projects in the works, Western Carolina University knows the meaning of the word growth.

This year more than 8,000 students are slated to start classes Aug. 26. That’s a 15-percent increase in overall headcount since 2002. About 1,600 of those students are incoming freshmen. That’s 31 percent more than two years ago.

The enrollment increase is tied to several changes at the university — new majors, better recreational offerings, more housing, and Western’s designation as one of seven campuses targeted for growth in the 16-school University of North Carolina system.

The question is no longer if the school will grow, but how that growth will affects its students, the faculty and the community that surrounds it.

Reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic and more

Western Carolina University was never the first place that came to mind when someone uttered the words “cutting edge.” The school was founded as a semi-public school in August of 1889, attracting a modest 20 or so students. Academics focused on teacher training, with the first state appropriation establishing the school as a teaching school in 1893.

State support gradually increased, but it wasn’t until 1929 that the school was authorized to become the four-year institution known as the Western Carolina Teachers College. Additional academic expansion didn’t come until after World War II.

In 1967, the General Assembly recognized the school as a regional university, bringing about the name Western Carolina University. In 1972, the school became a constituent institution under The University of North Carolina system.

Things have changed a lot since then. With the appointment of Chancellor John Bardo, academics have moved toward the technical and the fine arts. Several new programs have been added in the past two years — athletic training, commercial and electronic music, computer graphics, construction management, electrical engineering, emergency management, entrepreneurship, environmental science, forensic anthropology and musical theatre. This year, the new course offerings spawned 52 new faculty positions.

Teacher education remains a primary focus with elementary education topping out the list of majors with the highest enrollment. Criminal justice, communication, marketing, computer information systems, business administration and law, art, English, management and psychology follow.

With the addition of new programs comes the deletion of others such as degrees in physics, health services management, child and family studies and economics.

“We have to do a balancing act,” said Fred Hinson, senior associate vice chancellor for academic affairs.

Bardo, however, said there is no relationship between adding some new majors and dropping others.

“There was a long history of the programs that we dropped not having any students,” he said. “Those decisions would have been made whether or not we were adding new majors.”

Every year academic affairs reviews the school’s course offerings, looking at those that are essential to the institution, those producing the most graduates and those lagging behind. For example, physics, with its heavy emphasis on the theoretical, had fewer than 10 students, which couldn’t match the system requirement of graduating eight or so students per year, Bardo said.

Physics though, may evolve into an applied sciences format and make a comeback with the continued addition of engineering programs.

“Because the engineering department will grow, the first-year physics courses will have to grow to support that,” said Kelly Holzknecht, a visiting assistant professor in the department of chemistry and physics.

However, eliminating a pure physics major is not a good idea for a university focusing on developing its science offerings, Holzknecht said.

“For me personally, I think its fine; but for the university, it’s not a good idea,” she said. “Any time you take away a basic science you’re hurting the arts and sciences as a whole.”

Even an applied physics major would not facilitate the same type of analytical thinking skills that a theoretical physics major would, Holzknecht said.

Although a physics major is no longer offered, a physics minor comes into play with the school’s new environmental science program. That curriculum incorporates physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences, natural resources management and environmental health — essentially the program is an amalgamation of classes the school already offered.

“It’s very economical, but it also gives students much more flexibility,” Hinson said.

Such flexibility also comes in handy for the school, as majors like environmental sciences capitalize on the area’s natural surroundings, making the Appalachian Mountains not just a location, but an experience.

“With this big, beautiful natural laboratory, we should have done this 30 years ago,” Hinson said.

Supply and demand

Thirty years ago, the old N.C. 107 business community thrived with more than 40 stores along the banks of the Tuckasegee. Western students, faculty and staff relied on these stores for simple daily goods and services. Things were quieter — fewer students, fewer faculty — but lucrative.

Today, there are only seven businesses on old 107, said Zoo TV owner Herb Potts.

“The population of the university has grown, but the businesses have not,” Potts said.

Potts would been the eighth old N.C. 107 merchant, but after 10 years on the scene he closed up shop this year.

A Western graduate, Potts opened his video store with the intent of capitalizing on the somewhat captive audience a university could provide. The store was within walking distance, making it a sure bet.

But as competing stores popped up and students were able to get cable TV services in their rooms, business dropped drastically. Last year, revenue dropped from almost $90,000 to $30,000. Curious, Potts and Zoo TV co-owner Eric Chalk polled the few students coming in and out of their store, asking them about their experiences while attending Western that didn’t occur on campus, about just exactly what they were doing if they weren’t renting movies.

Of the 200 or so respondents, about 65 percent said that their college careers both began and ended at Wal-Mart. With that, Potts and Chalk packed up their videos and headed north.

“One reason we chose this location is because it’s right beside Wal-Mart,” Potts said of his store’s new location. “Unfortunately, it’s been successful doing so.”

Although the story about big, bad Wal-Mart is nothing new, Potts said the university could have done more to support its local businesses, namely not going into direct competition with them. For example, allowing students to have cable TV and putting in a new theater that shows second-run movies at the University Center interferes with the movie rental market.

“Being a small business owner, I really struggle and feel real threatened by some of the things they do,” Potts said.

Western’s Vice Chancellor of Administration and Finance Chuck Wooten said that the school never tries to directly compete with local businesses, rather it simply offers the goods and services students are looking for these days. For example if students didn’t have cable, or a recreation center, or a laundry room, or a cafeteria — all things they could feasibly get in town — they would simply choose another college that did.

“We are very sensitive to local businesses and try to make sure that things that we do are directly related to the student experience on campus,” Wooten said.

Campus services cannot advertise to attract non-university related customers. If a non-student really wants a cup of coffee from the school’s new Hunter Library coffee service, no one’s going to stop him. But no one’s going to ask him to come either.

And when it comes to coffee, and sandwiches and cookies, Mad Batter owner Jeannette Evans said that her business has flourished in the six years she’s been open, largely a result of community support. The store is on the university’s campus, but is located on a narrow strip of privately owned land.

As for the university’s growth affecting business, she said it was hard to tell.

“It’s kind of difficult for me — because business has been really good — to separate how much of it is the (WCU) growth and how much of it is the growing business,” Evans said.

The university’s hands mostly are tied in terms of facilitating growth in the private business sector, as it cannot funnel funds into improvements or make investments.

“Interested? Yes. Can we do something with it? Not very well,” Bardo said, referring to the old 107 corridor. “The issues that surround that area have to do with the fact that Cullowhee is not incorporated and therefore there are not a lot of planning activities that can go on and do go on.”

Additionally, the downtown Sylva area has become much more inviting with its shops and restaurants such as In Your Ear and Nick & Nate’s, both of which Bardo said he knows are extremely popular with students.

“If you’re going to get in a car and drive to old 107, you can just as easily drive to new 107,” Bardo said.

However, In Your Ear owner Lauren Calvert said that in her 10 years of business she has not really noticed a trend in increased student enrollment equaling increased business. Because the school has placed such an emphasis on technology and all students are required to have computers, more of them are downloading digital music.

“They don’t really need me for music any more,” Calvert said.

Students still make up a major portion of In Your Ear’s business, but oddly enough, the months of June, July and August — when students are gone for the summer — are the store’s busiest months.

If you build it, they will come

The sound of hammers, drills and backhoes is music to administration’s ears, as every bang, grind and dig is a step closer to completing another project.

The school recently opened the Center for Applied Technology, where engineering students use lasers and optical transmissions equipment, CNC robots capable of milling and producing goods, rapid prototyping procedures to manufacture actual examples of conceived products and precision metrology equipment that allows for fine measurements of three-dimensional objects. Just down the hall, electronic media students have access to a SSL C2000 mixer, the world’s first all-digital audio mixer in the public sector, Spielburg-esque Kurzweil K2600 XS speakers and a 24p TV system — the kind of stuff they used to do “Star Wars.”

Now, with $194 million in major capital projects in the design or construction phase, the school is finishing up the $30 million Fine & Performing Arts Center, adding a $12.5 million student recreation center next to Reid Gym, and is planning a $4.9 million renovation to Dodson cafeteria and the school’s entire food services system.

A hospitality facility, currently in the design phase as an unfunded project, would be a three-story addition to the school’s football stadium, featuring meeting rooms, a restaurant, and hotel rooms that would most likely serve as a training ground for hospitality management students, said Joe Walker, associate vice chancellor for facilities management.

The construction projects have put several million dollars back into the state’s economy, as most of the contractors used have come from Hickory west.

“We’ve had very few out of state,” Walker said. “Our location lends us to get more local contractors.”

But as construction continues, Western’s existing footprint is taking on a feeling of bursting at the seams, with one-time green spaces and intramural fields being replaced by brick buildings.

“We’re pretty much there,” Walker said, referring to the school’s current 332-acre footprint capacity.

The dam, it seems, is about to burst, and the flow will head westward, across N.C. 107, toward the Jackson County airport, where the school plans to acquire an additional 200 acres for its Millennium Campus.

Since the university has not yet closed on the property, Bardo said that he has been holding off on the planning process for the Millennium Campus. But, once the area’s master plan is in the works, the community would get its chance to weigh in.

“As we get closer to actually doing this work and having some sense of how it’s going to play out, we would open the door to a public forum,” Bardo said.

Community residents are keeping an eye on Western’s growth plans, particularly the growth that is outside current university bounds. The Cullowhee area is known for its mountainous beauty, not its yearly brick tonnage, said Cullowhee resident Mark Jamison, who was formerly chairman of Jackson County’s Smart Growth Task Force and was also a member of the Jackson County Planning Board at one time.

“The idea of creating ‘silicon holler’ or an academic Pigeon Forge might be attractive to some, but there ought to be at least some serious soul searching done before we impose this kind of growth on such an environmentally and culturally sensitive area,” Jamison said.

In the end, the situation is like wrestling an 800-pound gorilla: he’s going to do what he wants to do, Jamison said, despite its context within the community.

The upside is that Millennium Campus plans will most likely incorporate a fairly significant amount of green space in an effort to provide a buffer zone between the residential communities that surround it and its academic facilities.

“We’re going to try to grow with some sensitivity,” Bardo said.

With all the growth comes the added effect of a rise in student fees as the university works to pay for buildings such as the new student recreation center and renovations to Dodson, projects which are not funded by the state. In 2000, student fees collected to fund construction projects totaled $230 per student. Today, they are $366.

“Our debt service fees are the highest in the system,” Wooten said.

Appalachian State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington round out the top three most expensive schools in terms of students fees. However, Wooten said that student fees are only a small part of what students actually pay to attend. Western still ranks as one of the cheapest schools in the UNC system. According to 2003 UNC system statistics, Western’s tuition totaled $2,610, putting it 11th on the list of 16 schools in the system, between N.C. Central University and N.C. Agricultural & Technical College. Fayetteville State University is at the bottom of the list at $2,052 per year.

Home is where the heart is

As this year’s school start date nears, crews are putting the finishing touches on a new 300-bed dormitory. Set up in suite style, with four rooms to one bathroom and living area, the dorm is the first built on Western’s campus in 32 years.

But with Western’s steadily increasing student body, those 300 beds are going fast.

“We may be faced next year with needing another dorm online,” Walker said, referring to the planning process used before actual construction.

The fact of the matter is that the school can not house all of its students, most schools can’t. Off-campus living in apartments and houses is figured in, but the Sylva-Cullowhee area has been a fairly dry well in terms of rental properties, said Norman West of Norman West Real Estate.

“In the Sylva Herald, you never would have found anything for rent,” West said, referring to the local newspaper.

Now, private investors are building several off-campus apartment complexes, but the concept has yet to really catch on.

“They’re building them faster than the students can come on,” West said.

Apartments may sit empty, waiting for upper classmen to tire of bunk-bed and micro-fridge living, or perhaps the adventurous family looking to reclaim their youth to sign a lease.

But the apartments may make a difference is in Western’s reputation as a “suitcase college,” West said. Instead of using their weekends for nights on the town, students at Western notoriously have packed up and headed home, leaving parking lots dotted with out-of-state plates, sports arenas vacant and local restaurants in the hands of families and tourists.

Students from Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties have traditionally made up around a quarter of the school’s overall population. But that trend is changing. In 1994, students from that four-county area constituted 23 percent of Western’s enrollment, or about 1,561 students. In 2003, they represented 19 percent, or about 1,436 students.

Add to that the three counties that generate most of the school’s freshmen — Wake (113), Mecklenburg (111) and Buncombe (84), all of which are within an afternoon’s drive — and the mass exodus homeward is understandable.

Even if the Cullowhee community had a nightlife of its own, the suitcases would still come out, West said, citing the recently closed SoHo, a bar and restaurant located across N.C. 107 just down from the Cullowhee Post Office that was allowed to sell beer and wine through a membership requirement.

“I’m not so sure that would be the success people think it would be,” West said of a nightlife in the Cullowhee area.

And as for Cullowhee ever incorporating and approving the sale of beer and wine on its own, West — who was chairman of the committee that investigated incorporating Cullowhee in 1972 — doesn’t see that happening any time soon.

The suitcase college reputation, though, is not something specific to Western, Bardo said. In fact, there seems to be a sort of unofficial weekend student exchange program going on between system schools, as students travel to visit friends and loved ones. Bardo said he once received a phone call from a fellow system chancellor asking what was going on at Western that weekend because so many of his students seemed to be headed there.

The university is working to create its own small town. Nothing like Chapel Hill, but more a self-contained system of goods and services within walkable distances. More students will stay on campus by choice and some almost by force as the UNC system plan calls for the gradual introduction of Saturday morning classes as student enrollment rises, Bardo said. Increased enrollment also means more people with whom to do things.

The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades

Western’s plan is to build for a campus 10,000-students strong. That’s not counting the students living off campus, commuting or enrolled in distance education. The school has to be that size in order to truly have an effect on its community’s economy and quality of life, Bardo said.

As Jackson and Macon county — the two Western North Carolina counties currently experiencing the most rapid population increases — continue to grow, that growth will reciprocally affect the university.

“If these counties’ populations start exploding, you’re going to see an increase in commuter students that we’ve not really seen in the past,” Bardo said.

That increase will place additional strains on already crowded Sylva streets, something which the Jackson County Transportation Task Force is addressing. But there is no pre-existing plan for exactly how to grow a mountain town and a mountain college, together, peacefully.

“The county doesn’t have a lot of norms about how to cope with a changing university,” Bardo said.

In this case, at least to Bardo, change means growth, and growth is the only way to go.

“If you don’t grow, you shrink,” he said.