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Appalachian State Sets Goal Of 20,000 Students In 2020

An overhead view of Appalachian State University in Boone. Courtesy: Appalachian State University.

There is a record number of students at Appalachian State University this fall, and school leaders are hoping to hit a big milestone next year.

Chancellor Sheri Everts says the goal for 2020 is to have an enrollment of 20,000 students.

The Watauga Democrat newspaper says it would take about 700 additional students to hit that mark. 

Everts's comments came during a quarterly meeting of university trustees where she discussed enrollment and retention numbers. She said continued growth is vital to the university's financial stability.

The university has also boosted its number of rural students and says the student body is more racially and ethnically diverse than it has ever been.

Students are not just coming to App State in high numbers, but they're also staying. About 88 percent of first-year students returned. That's the third-highest retention rate in the UNC system.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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