With his contract coming to an end on June 30, WKU President Timothy Caboni sat down with the Herald Editorial Board to discuss a variety of initiatives and issues facing campus, as well as his hope to serve another four-year term leading the university.
While Caboni said negotiations between him and the Board of Regents won’t begin until later in the spring semester, he is hopeful the board asks him to return for another four years.
“I’m very happy and don’t have any interest in being president anywhere other than WKU,” Caboni said.
During the meeting, Caboni also discussed the university’s recruitment efforts, new and current campus construction projects, WKU Football Head Coach Tyson Helton’s contract extension and the NCAA transfer portal, coming changes to the Mahurin Honors College and accountability for units that have previously overspent their budget.
Enrollment, recruitment and retention
According to WKU’s 2024-2025 Common Data Set, the university enrolled 16,291 students in the fall of 2024, a 2.79% decrease from the previous year. Since the university’s peak enrollment of over 21,000 students in the 2012-2013 academic year, there has been a 22.83% decrease in enrollment. This includes a 19.58% decrease since Caboni’s first semester as president in the fall of 2017.
Caboni attributed this in part to the national birthrate decline following the 9/11 attacks and a previous emphasis on recruiting international students.
According to the 2015 WKU Fact Book, international student university enrollment peaked at 1,402 students in the fall of 2014. During Caboni’s first semester as president in the fall of 2017, the number dropped to 832, according to the 2018 fact book. In the fall of 2023, the number of international students dropped to 163.
“When I arrived (at WKU), while I appreciate the recruitment of international students and we still do some of that, I turned my focus to the students that we were built to serve, and those are the students in Bowling Green, our 27 county service region, the commonwealth,” Caboni said.
Caboni also emphasized the university’s focus is not on increasing the number of students enrolled at WKU but is instead on improving the accessibility and quality of education while retaining degree-seeking students and increasing net tuition revenue.
“What we have to do is maximize the amount of tuition dollars we are able to generate by also continuing to shape that class and to deploy scarce resources on folks that are most likely to be successful,” Caboni said.
To increase the number of opportunities for both current and prospective students, the university is pursuing Research II (R2) institution status.
Rep. Michael Meredith (R–Oakland), whose district includes a part of Bowling Green and Warren County, introduced a bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives allowing WKU to provide up to five research doctoral degree programs.
Currently, there are no R2 institutions in Kentucky, and Caboni hopes to fill that gap.
Becoming an R2 institution requires hitting a level of research funding – which the university has already doubled, according to Caboni – and hitting a threshold of students graduating from doctoral programs. Currently, WKU does not offer any qualifying doctoral programs and is unable to do so under Kentucky law, but Meredith’s bill could change this.
“What’s important for the university is it really changes who we are in a way that we’ve been moving toward for obviously 20 years,” Caboni said. “Having PhD students able to run labs and be part of research projects, mentor masters degree students and also continue to engage undergraduates and complexifies the kind of work we’re able to do at the graduate level. It also changes the kind of faculty we’ll be able to recruit.”
Generally, Caboni noted that a continued increase in enrolled students is not what the university is pursuing. Instead, keeping enrollment stable while increasing degree-seeking students is the administration’s focus.
“Flat, in terms of enrollment, is the new up,” Caboni said.
Campus construction
Caboni said discussions surrounding the renovation of Cherry Hall are ongoing to create more accessibility for community engagement and an updated space for “modern-day students.”
”We want to create places for students, not against the walls, but in nooks and crannies of the building where they can sit, they can work together,” Caboni said. “If they have projects, they don’t have to go to the Commons (at Helm Library) to work on a project. They have places within the space that will support them.”
Despite possible changes, he said it is important to ensure the building’s history is preserved. To do so, Caboni is adamant the winding marble staircase won’t be touched.
“I want our students to notice that the generation of Hilltoppers who climbed those stairs before you have etched those steps so they are concaved as you walk up floor to floor,” Caboni said. “And we need to preserve that history. We need to celebrate it. But everything else might be on the table.”
The new Gordon Ford College of Business building will be open and “ready for business” for the fall 2025 semester, despite slight delays due to recent winter weather. Caboni emphasized his goal to foster a community for business students within the building and hopes students will spend their four years feeling at home.
“I don’t want to just replace buildings on our campus, and we have not done that,” Caboni said. “We want to create and take every opportunity to create engaging spaces that are sticking for students.”
Architectural plans for the building include a glass facade on the exterior of the building which will face South Lawn, similar to the glass facade of the Commons at Helm Library. He said additions such as Bloomberg terminals and an immersive sales training lab will “transform the kind of education and applied learning that students can do that Grise [Hall] was never set up to support.”
Construction on the Hilltopper Fieldhouse, which will house spaces for the Big Red Marching Band, WKU Forensics and WKU Varsity Esports in addition to the football and baseball teams, is on schedule to also open next fall, Caboni said.
He also noted that the Student Life Foundation continues to make progress on the Hilltopper Hall restoration but, beyond that, did not have any other additional details. The building is scheduled to reopen in fall 2026.
Caboni is also encouraging the foundation to speed the process along for the second half of the First Year Village, including future plans to replace Douglas Keen Hall and Hugh Poland Hall. He hopes the foundation will have an announcement on those plans within the next six months to a year.
“To be candid, all of our cruciform buildings, I hope, go away sooner rather than later,” Caboni said.
Cruciform buildings include Minton and Rodes Harlin Halls.
It is his goal to complete the First Year Village to then focus on expanding Living Learning Community options for second-year students.
The project in the earliest stages, according to Caboni, is the construction of a new Academic Complex. Planning has begun with construction activities expected to begin this summer. Discussions are ongoing about the utilization of space in the new building and what will be needed to house the programs currently located in the Academic Complex.
WKU football and the NCAA transfer portal
After making a bowl game in each of his first six years, WKU extended football Head Coach Tyson Helton through the 2028 season. Helton is 48-32 in his tenure at WKU.
When asked about interest in Helton for Power 4 jobs, Caboni said “there are always rumors floating around.” Before the extension, Helton was listed as a candidate for the Purdue head coaching job by CBS Sports.
“The number of bowl games we’ve gone to and won, the winning records we’ve had through the regular season are both indicators that he, in a very difficult time for collegiate athletics, is doing a tremendous job,” Caboni said.
WKU football had 37 athletes enter the transfer portal during the December window that ran from Dec. 9 to Dec. 28, 19 of whom have already committed elsewhere to continue their college careers. Starting quarterback Caden Veltkamp, wide receiver Easton Messer, tight end River Helms and kicker Lucas Carneiro highlight the former Hilltoppers who transferred elsewhere.
Caboni said he “appreciates” how Helton approaches the portal even after losing talented players.
“If you want to test the portal, test the portal,” Caboni said. “You’re still a Hilltopper until you’re not a Hilltopper.”
Football Bowl Subdivision head coaches voted on Jan. 14 in favor of shrinking the portal to a 10-day window in January, a proposal yet to receive NCAA approval. Caboni, former chair of the Conference USA Board of Directors, said the proposal could affect the educational opportunities of student athletes.
He said the proposed window would stop students’ ability to enroll at their new schools in January.
“What we can never lose sight of is that our athletes are students,” Caboni said. “I appreciate their concerns about playing bowl games and staying with the team, but the reality is, these are students.”
He said he is concerned that collegiate athletics is moving away from the importance of getting a degree.
“I appreciate the dollars that are going directly to athletes,” Caboni said, “But I want to focus on the ‘student’ part of student-athlete.”
Mahurin Honors College revisions
During his annual WKU Faculty and Staff Convocation in August, Caboni detailed plans to appoint a task force to consider revisions regarding curriculum and programming within the Honors College, expand the honors self-designed studies process, look into replacement options for the Honors College LLC and more.
Caboni told the Herald Editorial Board on Thursday a committee, chaired by Assistant Provost for Institutional Effectiveness & Engagement Molly Kerby, was formed in the fall and has had a couple of gatherings, and said a description of “Honors 2.0” will be ready by the end of spring semester.
“They are on track, but they have a lot of work to do between the 21st and the end of the semester,” Caboni said.
Caboni said that he hopes to expand the honors program beyond the Honors College, integrating it into each of WKU’s colleges.
“So, thinking about what the honors program is today and as we continue to shape our undergraduate student body, how do we make honors more accessible to more people,” Caboni said.
Caboni also said the university is likely to begin a search for a director of the honors program this spring so a new director can be implemented next fall.
Fiscal year 2024 overspending
In September, Caboni announced to the university’s Staff Senate that three university units overspent their budgets during fiscal year 2024, which ran from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. These units – the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, the Division of Enrollment and Student Experience and WKU Athletics – caused the university’s budget to be overspent by nearly $4 million.
Renaldo Domoney, WKU assistant vice president for budget, finance and analytics, told the Herald in November that “every other unit spent less than 100% of their budget.”
At the September meeting, Caboni said those who overspent would be held accountable by the university in a transparent manner.
“If you do that, you’re going to have to pay it back,” Caboni said in September.
In his meeting with the Herald Editorial Board on Thursday, Caboni emphasized his appreciation for accountability.
Caboni said there are plans for Athletics to reimburse the university for half a million dollars this year following its recent overspending, but he did not explain what those plans were. In FY 2024, Athletics overspent its budget by over $2.7 million.
“Stability is important, we want everyone to be successful, and at the same time make choices within the budgetary constraints we all face,” Caboni said.
Now in the third year with the university’s decentralized budget model (RAMP), Caboni said he thinks the university learned a lot last year about how the budget office works with units to “keep a close eye on expenditures.”
“It’s a learning process,” he said.
Caboni also emphasized growing university budget managers into strategic partners with their unit leaders which, he said, means having to sometimes push back on those unit leaders when expenditures are on pace to come in over budget.
“They need to be able to provide good advice for their deans and their VPs and their Director of Athletics, and I think you’re seeing that process unfold,” Caboni said. “I’m confident that we’re going to have a good year and a good outcome.”
Caboni restated his belief that the university would have a good budget year in 2024-2025.
“In the first quarter we have done well and are on target … to come in under budget this year,” Caboni said.
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