Turner Business

The Turner College held its September 2026 monthly faculty and staff meeting yesterday. Interim Dean Tesa Leonce opened the meeting by discussing the search for a new Dean of the Turner College. Leonce recounted that two listening sessions have occurred, and the CSU community has provided responses to an online survey. She also noted that TSYS School Chair Rania Hodhod has been approached to provide two or three names of computer science faculty who can be added to the search committee. Regular followers of Turner Business will recall that computer science faculty were intentionally passed over for committee membership due to Provost Dustin Anderson's desire to have them assist with the search for a new Director of the new Institute for Emergent Technologies. Leonce concluded her portion the meeting by discussing CSU's current enrollment slide, the new 2026 AACSB Standards, and the TSYS School's progress toward attaining ABET accreditation. Computer science professor Amj...

The current enrollment challenges facing CSU are a cause for concern across the institution's two campuses and beyond. To provide some historical context to what is going on now, Turner Business examined total enrollment at CSU from its beginnings as a two-year institution operating from a hosiery mill to its current position as a four-year university offering doctorate degrees. CSU's historical enrollment series is presented below, as depicted by fall enrollment reports provided by the University System of Georgia. As shown in the diagram, Columbus College took flight as a two-year institution enrolling several hundred students in the late 1950s. In 1963, the main campus in Midtown Columbus was established, a move that was followed by two years of robust enrollment growth. At the end of this period, in 1965, Columbus College became a four-year institution. Five years later, in 1970, the institution's first bachelor's degrees were awarded, and it began offering master...

Now facing a fourth consecutive academic semester of declining enrollment, many in the CSU community are asking what the institution is doing to course correct. Some indication of steps being taken was provided by CSU President Stuart Rayfield at the August 2026 CSU Faculty Senate meeting. There she encouraged faculty and staff to reflect on bandwidth and the impact of what they do, suggesting that they consider taking things off their plates in order to be more effective at key things. She also relayed a story of a student who earned a C instead of an A in a summer course due to a misunderstanding of assignment requirements listed in third-party software and the failure to read an e-mail from the professor alerting the student to the missing assignment. In this case, a student who arrived at CSU with the Zell Miller Scholarship left the institution with only the HOPE Scholarship. To combat situations like these, Rayfield stressed the need to issue Early Alerts so that CSU's academ...

After a brief investigation, Turner Business has determined that the winners of the 2026 CSU Faculty Awards did indeed receive financial stipends. In fact, the line item for the stipend on the winners' May 31, 2026, pay stubs stated, "Exceptional Performance Incent," indicating that these stipends were (are) viewed as incentive pay. As such, the decision to disallow the Turner College's nominal stipends for its own 2026 Faculty Awards on the determination that they violate the USG's rules against use of incentive pay seems misguided. With this news, stay connected for the Turner College administration's response.

University of North Florida alumnus Mike Harrell will be kicking off the Turner College's 2026-27 Distinguished Speaker Series on September 17th at 11:00am in the Synovus Center Theater. Harrell, who is the owner of both 11th and Bay Southern Table in Uptown Columbus and the New York Butcher Shoppe in North Columbus, will be speaking to Turner College students and faculty about entrepreneurship and servant leadership. The Turner College is the editorial office home to the American Journal of Entrepreneurship and Servant Leadership: Theory & Practice , academic journals covering the topics that Harrell will discuss. Hope to see you there. We reported in our 21-August-2026 edition of "Turner College News & Notes" that the Turner College is no longer allowed to attach monetary stipends of $500 to its annual faculty and staff awards, and that this decision was delivered by CSU's central administration to current Turner College officials after the 2026 Turner Col...

CSU President Stuart Rayfield corresponded with CSU faculty and staff yesterday about the increasingly worrisome enrollment trends at the university level. She noted that one month into fall semester 2026 has her turning attention to budget planning for next year, and that CSU's " financial picture depends heavily on . . . enrollment, which is why [there is always] talk about recruitment, retention and graduation . . ." CSU's  Fall 2026 enrollment numbers will not be official until next month, but, according to Rayfield, "the data we track daily tells us that the gains we saw over the summer are now gone, and we will likely be down in overall student headcount again this semester. As of Friday, fall enrollment was just over 7,420 total students, down about 3% from the same day last year. This will impact this year’s budget and our budget for the next two years, based on the state’s higher education funding formula." Rayfield went on to state that the data  a...