High Performance

The Class of 2007 rocks.

Selected from a record-breaking applicant pool, it’s the biggest class in Moravian history: 386 students. The previous high mark for enrollment was the Class of 2004, when 378 freshmen were enrolled.

It has the highest median SAT score. More than half these incoming freshmen were in the top 20 percent of their high school class, and more than 30 percent were ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
It has an unusually large number of up-and-coming leaders:

• 187, nearly half the freshmen, were members of the National Honor Society.
• 126 were team captains in an athletic program.
• 106 were high school class officers.
• 41 are Comenius Scholars.
• 40 are students of color (an unprecedented 10 percent of the new class).
• 18 were editors of their high school newspapers.
• 3 have performed at Carnegie Hall.

“This is one of the strongest classes ever to enroll at Moravian,” said James Mackin, director of admissions.
And it has the College bursting at the seams. There simply is not enough dorm space for so many students!
But fear not: no one is sleeping in a tent on the Quad. Other facilities have been pressed into service.

There are students on the top floor of the Health Center building. There are students in the house at 1319 Main Street, whose former tenants were International Studies and Institutional Diversity/Multicultural Affairs, now in Monocacy Hall. Five other houses have been pressed into service to hold students: three on West Greenwich Street (including one next to the Office of Campus Safety, so the students can feel very secure), one on Iron Street, and one on Monocacy Street.

“Everything was ready for the start of the new term except the house on Monocacy Street,” says Robert Windolph, dean of student life in the Office of Student Affairs. “The students assigned to this location had to spend the month of September in the Hotel Bethlehem waiting for the unit to be ready for occupancy.”

There also are students on the top floor of little Hamilton Hall. Formerly, the Philosophy Department was on the first floor and the Sociology Department on the second. Philosophy has moved to Zinzendorf Hall and Sociology to the Priscilla Payne Hurd Academic Complex. Now the faculty of the School of Nursing have on-campus offices on the first floor, and seven students occupy the second floor, which still has a working bathroom and shower from the long-ago days when it was a Seminary residence.

The College points to a number of reasons for its recent success in admissions. The most notable are the expanded campus facilities, aggressive use of merit scholarships, and surge in national college rankings.

“Moravian College has the unique opportunity to deliver the message of a high-quality and rigorous undergraduate academic program, fostered within a caring community and provided by an outstanding faculty. It’s a simple message, and students and their families have really responded to the ‘no bells and whistles’ approach,” said Bernard Story ’80, vice president for enrollment.

“This new milestone is part of a greater success story at Moravian that reflects the hard work and commitment of an entire campus community,” said President Ervin J. Rokke. “So much of our achievement during the past few years—in bold strategic planning, sweeping improvements to infrastructure, and the remarkable qualitative and quantitative growth of our student body—is both cumulative and highly interdependent.”