BUCKHANNON – For the first time since 2020, West Virginia Wesleyan College has over 1,000 students in attendance.  

The president of West Virginia Wesleyan College, Dr. James Moore, attended the Sept. 12 Buckhannon-Upshur Chamber of Commerce meeting to reflect on the college’s enrollment and the challenges higher education faces now and in the future.

“The thing everybody asks me all the time is, ‘How’s enrollment?’ As you all are aware, that’s been a challenge for colleges and universities everywhere the last several years, and we are no stranger to those challenges,” Moore said. “I’m happy to say we’ve had a second year in a row where our incoming class of new students has been higher than it’s been in many years.”

Last year, the college brought in its highest class of new students since 2017.

“That included 32 transfer students from Alderson Broaddus University when they closed last year, so I think our final numbers were somewhere around 368 new incoming students,” Moore said. “This year, we have 362 new incoming students without 32 transfers from Alderson Broaddus University, so we’re very excited about that.”

Moore aims to continue growing the college’s graduate programs to fill different needs throughout the State of West Virginia, including ensuring those programs are robust.

“I have a vision that we will be a school that has not just a couple of graduate programs with a couple of students, but that we’ll be able to grow those programs in a big way,” Moore said. “I want to see us have a population of between 125 and 150 graduate students on our campus by 2030.”

“Last year in the fall, we had 54 grad students; this fall, we are enrolling 82, so we’re growing, and the addition of our Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at the master’s level is driving that graduate enrollment,” he added. “We’ve also started to see a rebound in our nursing graduate enrollment that took some hits for a couple of years.”

The total number of students enrolled is 1,057, but the college has a goal to reach 1,100 students by the 2027 fiscal year.

“We think we’re about a year ahead of schedule, and then the next horizon would be 1,250 total students by 2029, and we’re maybe a year ahead of schedule on that as well,” Moore said. “One of the big reasons that we’re seeing this growth is that we have realized we’re going to have to continue to be aggressive with scholarships and undergraduate students — but to do so responsibly, we’re also going to have to continue to look to partners within the region to help us create programs or revise our programs the market’s needing.”

WVWC alumni engagement has also been on the rise in recent years.  

“Last year, our alumni participation rate went up from 8 percent to almost 13 percent,” which is in line with other small institutions, Moore said.

“When you [look at] the large institutions like [West Virginia University], their participation is higher because of all those athletic participation avenues they have.”

Moore said West Virginia Wesleyan, like most higher educational institutions, WVWC is facing some challenges.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to come in here and say everything’s easy –

everything’s hunky dory in higher education in 2024 – because it’s not,” Moore said. “It’s perhaps the most challenging time higher education has experienced since the Great Depression, and I think a lot about the struggles of President McCuskey, who was the president of Wesleyan during the Depression.”

“I do draw a lot of strength from the papers of his that I’ve had the chance to read,” the college president added. “He showed resolve and determination in leading the college through those challenging times.”

Moore emphasized the college is not in danger like Alderson Broaddus University, but the demographics have continued to work against it.

“One of the things we’re doing that’s helping us in that enrollment space is that we continue to be strong supporters of the arts, and that’s not just because they made a jazz musician the president,” Moore said. “One of the things that has helped us in the past couple of years is our robust arts program and also our Center for Community Engagement; those are two scholarship programs that we have that not every college in the region has.”

Moore said the college’s arts program will help WVWC through the ‘demographic cliff,’ coming up in 2026.

“We have this year coming up – 2026 – and the experts have called the culmination of the demographic cliff, which is to say there are 30 percent fewer 18-year-olds in 2026 than there were in 2008 when the market crashed, and a whole bunch of people like me decided they couldn’t afford to have kids,” Moore said. “The arts will help us to get through those challenging enrollment times and the community service program we have will help us.”

Moore said WVWC’s 2026 enrollment projection is not dire.

“That’s because we have robust and varied entry points for students to choose our institution,” he said. “But we must be more aggressive at serving adult learners, at being intentional about creating opportunities for continued and lifelong learnership.”

Moore concluded by saying he looks forward to achieving the college’s goals despite higher education challenges.

“I feel like our future is bright,” he said. “In spite of the headwinds we’re facing, we have a very energized campus, we have a very competitive leadership team that likes to win, and I really enjoy that about the people that we have placed in those positions. I’m excited about what we’re chasing for the next couple of years.”