A tuition increase and a new minister to the university were recently announced at Samford University in Birmingham.
Samford’s board of trustees has approved a $679-per-semester tuition increase for full-time undergraduate students the 2006–2007 academic year. Housing will increase about $42 per semester and board about $45 per semester, depending on the housing and meal plans selected.
At the same time, trustees approved adding more than $1 million in scholarships and need-based grants for 2006–2007. Better than expected investment earnings and new scholarship gifts provided the additional scholarship funding, according to university officials.
Tuition for part-time undergraduate students will increase $49 per credit hour. Students in Samford’s Metro College, an adult-learning evening program, will have an increase of $24 per credit hour.
An increase of $741 per semester was approved for Samford’s Cumberland School of Law, while students in the McWhorter School of Pharmacy will see an increase of $633 per semester. Other graduate programs will have slight tuition increases based on program-specific fee structures.
All increases are effective June 1. Complete financial information for the 2006–2007 academic year will be available later in March for current and new students.
The additional tuition revenue will support an anticipated operating budget of more than $115 million for 2006–2007. Michael D. Morgan, Samford’s vice president for university relations, said tuition increases will not be used for building projects underway on the Samford campus. Costs for those projects will come from other sources.
In other Samford news, Matthew S. Kerlin, senior campus minister of Baptist Campus Ministries at the University of Alabama (UA), has been named minister to the university. He will assume those duties March 27.
Kerlin succeeds James Barnette, Samford minister since 1994 who moved to the Samford religion department as associate professor and director of ministerial formation this spring.
Kerlin, a member of Calvary Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association has served in his present post at UA since 2001. Previously he was university minister at Belmont University in Nashville from 1999 until 2001, Baptist Student Ministry director at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas from 1992 until 1995 and college minister at Southside Baptist Church, Baton Rouge, La., from 1990 until 1991.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in music from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, a master’s degree in theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and a doctorate in historical theology from Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
He and his wife, Jonlyn, a labor and delivery nurse, have three children. (SU)
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