AU prepared to welcome displaced students: St. Joseph’s College announces sudden closure for fall 2017

Kate Siefert

After 127 years of Catholic tradition, Saint Joseph’s College in Indiana announced it will temporarily shut down and suspend their academic programming after graduation in early May.

Ashland University officials are reaching out to undergraduate and graduate students impacted by this sudden closure and to help create an easy transition for those students who decide to transfer to AU.

Provost En Woo Chang said they really want to be proactive in this situation and have reached out to St. Joseph’s to offer assistance to their administration and students, although they do not want to be too aggressive because this is a very sensitive situation.

St. Joseph’s is a victim of deteriorating finances that have hit many small colleges nationwide in the past few years. No new students will be admitted and all of next year’s seniors, juniors and sophomores will have to transfer next fall.

There are just over 900 students who attend Saint Joseph’s and in the university’s attempt to help those students who will need to transfer, officials from the college have reached out to universities in the Midwest to see which would be most readily available to welcome their student’s in the fall.

This is where Ashland comes in Chang said. This transfer is part of what is called a “teach out” arrangement in which one school enrolls students from a different school and enables them to finish their degrees.  Many of the credits these students currently possess will transfer AU for a variety of programs in hopes that the education these students already possess will not be lost. 

“In terms of credits they have taken, we will do the best that we can to make sure they transfer based on our policy,” Chang said.

Even though it is a negative for St. Joseph’s, Chang said it can be a positive in helping AU achieve its goal of increasing its enrollment and also attracting students from outside of Ohio.

“We need to recruit more students from outside of Ohio,” Chang said. “Because St. Joseph’s is in Indiana and their students may be coming from different states, this can be a good way to show potential students from outside of Ohio that we exist, we have a solid academic program and we have a solid faculty.”

According to Chang, AU’s marketing department has created a webpage specifically linking St. Joseph’s College with AU in hopes of creating ties with the students who will be displaced after this semester. 

AU President Carlos Campo said Ashland is encouraging student-athletes who want to stay in collegiate athletics to contact the AU coach of their sports to see if they have the opportunity to get involved in AU athletics. 

Campo also said the university is willing to work with these individual students to get them enrolled with no application fees or a required deposit. 

Some other schools are preparing to take on some of these potential transfer students as well. These institutions include: Lewis University in Rensselaer, Marian University in Indianapolis and the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne.