MMA class tops record

CASTINE – Maine Maritime Academy again is poised to start the academic year with an all-time-high enrollment.

Based on current deposits, academy officials expect to start the year in September with 850 to 860 students.

“That would be the highest we’ve ever been,” President Leonard Tyler said Friday.

Those projections are based on an incoming freshman class that also would be a record class, Tyler said.

As of Friday, the college had received 281 deposits from the freshman class. Although Tyler said the school generally expects to lose some of those students by the time classes start, it still expects to start the year with a freshman class of 270 to 275, up significantly from the 230 students who entered the college last year.

The increased interest in MMA is the result of increased recruiting efforts that have seen the college’s admissions office visiting more college fairs, more high schools and conducting more open houses on campus. That effort has attracted record numbers of applicants. For the first time in its history, the college stopped accepting applications for the coming school year in May, according to Nicole St. Pierre, the student representative on the MMA board of trustees.

St. Pierre reported to the full board Friday that deposits were up 45 percent for incoming female students; up 50 percent in the marine sciences program; and up 45 percent in the international business and logistics program.

Those increases are related, according to Tyler. Most of the growth at the college, he said, is taking place in the international business and logistics, small vessel operations and marine sciences programs. Most of the applications from women, he added, are for the IBL and marine sciences programs. Of the 48 women who have sent deposits for the coming year, 43 of them are for those two programs.

Enrollment in the traditional programs at the college has remained fairly steady, Tyler said.

The relatively large number of women in the incoming class will boost the female population at the college to record numbers as well.

“We anticipate we’ll have between 140 and 150 women students this year,” he said. “That the highest number ever at Maine Maritime Academy.”

The growing number of women at the college is a positive sign for MMA, and an important factor for the future, in the face of changing demographics, Tyler said.

“We’re seeing more and more women coming to MMA,” he said. “With the student-age population declining, it’s important that we get more women students here.”

The total enrollment of 850 students is slightly above the goal of 800 the trustees set for the college. But, with midyear graduations and students leaving for other reasons, MMA will end the year with 780 to 790 students. That will work out to an average of about 800 students over the course of the year, he said.

Those numbers do not include graduate students or students at a satellite program at Bath Iron Works.

Housing should not be an issue this year, Tyler said. The college is making renovations to the residence hall that will provide 20 to 30 new beds, he said. The college, however, is considering developing nearby off-campus housing in the near future that would add about 150 student beds.