Wichita State President John Bardo revealed the next phase of the university’s strategic plan Tuesday afternoon at Charles Koch Arena. The goal of the plan is to make the university one of the elite in the country.

Bardo started his presentation by addressing the current construction on campus. He said the new residence hall construction is on schedule and that steel uprights are planned to go up in October.

With the new residence hall construction, parking issues are another concern for university officials. Bardo said that the new shuttle system is working better than expected, even leading to increased student interactions with each other.

“I’ve been hearing from my student assistant about how people have been exchanging phone numbers on the shuttle and it has become quite the social activity,” Bardo said.

To continue combating the parking issue, Bardo said a parking study will be conducted later in the year to examine the possibility of parking expansion on campus.

Perhaps the biggest new addition to the strategic plan was the initiative to develop a one-stop student center to assist students in both physical locations and online.

Bardo had noticed an issue of student confusion on where to go for general information and assistance on campus. He hopes creating a one-stop student center will help improve student-university relations and retain enrollment.

“Without this support system, people don’t go to school,” Bardo said.

He added that select offices will be open until 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday; a tactic that Bardo said the university has tried once before but failed due to a lack of advertisement.

He said the longer hours will provide full-time workers with more time to come and get help.

“We know that if you are an hourly worker and we ask you to leave before your shift ends, you lose money,” Bardo said.

Bardo said that enrollment is down by 250 students from last year, but is seeing the highest number of credit hour enrollment in its history. He said the university has lost a lot of part-time students. Many of those are adult learners.

To increase enrollment in students over the age of 24, Bardo said the university will look at new ways to market to adults.

Another tactic to increase part-time enrollment is to improve the long distance learning options available through the university.

Bardo said he is anticipating offering distance education degrees from the university. The first offered will be the Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in 2014.

Kim Sandlin, Assistant Director of Student Success, said that the presentation was what she expected after attending the Strategic Planning reveal in April. She was glad to see that it was an open forum for people to discuss what they like and dislike about the plan.

“I think if more people participated in them [forums], they would feel more comfortable with the strategic plan and the mission and their role in that,” Sandlin said.

There were concerns with the challenges of funding and how to implement the plan in such a short amount of time, but Sandlin didn’t see them as insurmountable problems.

“I think they’re real concerns but something we are certainly capable of working through as an institution,” Sandlin said.

For more information on the WSU Strategic Plan visit www.wichita.edu/wsustrategy/.