Dear Southern Alumni,

Recently, I had the honor of being present among the cheering supporters of our women’s basketball team as it claimed a national championship title in Kearney, Neb., over previously undefeated Florida Gulf Coast University. The victory capped an outstanding 34 and 2 season for the Lady Owls. Their discipline, team spirit, and inspired play was a wonderful advertisement for our women’s basketball program, the athletics program at Southern, and indeed the caliber of our students as a whole. Not only are these young women superb athletes, they are also excellent performers in the classroom, with a combined grade point average of more than 3.0 — true student success stories.

This triumph, the first women’s team national title in our history, continued a notable trend in which Southern students have excelled in competition with peers from institutions with national reputations and, often, far greater resources. This issue of Southern Alumni Magazine features a number of these accomplishments: from an award-winning business plan and theater productions to prestigious scholarships and fellowships.

These and other student achievements are among the reasons why interest in a Southern education is at an all-time high. Our fall enrollment of 12,326 was the largest since 1992; the fall full-time freshman class of 1,516 was the largest since 1978. And a recent state study showed that, after the University of Connecticut, Southern is the most popular choice for Connecticut residents.
However, these excellent numbers also carry with them a sobering reality — namely, that while our tuition and fees are among the lowest of any four-year institution in the state, our students graduate with an average debt of more than $18,000. Our students’ debt level would be even higher if they were not working while studying for their degrees: almost 80 percent of Southern seniors work off campus, with more than a quarter of them working 30 or more hours per week.

Faced with these realities, we have joined with our sister Connecticut State universities in lobbying state legislators to increase our need-based financial aid allocation, and we continue to ask Southern alumni and friends to support our scholarship programs. If you haven’t yet done so, I encourage you to visit www.SouthernCT.edu and make a gift to help ensure our students’ continued success as we prepare them to become key contributors to society.

Dr. Cheryl J. Norton
President