Dr. Jane Torgerson, director of the Brown-Lupton Health Center, knows how long a month and a half can be – especially when a student’s mental health is on the line.

“In a setting  where you have to do well right now, you don’t want to have to wait six weeks to get help,” Torgerson said.

That is sometimes the case, though, with the Counseling Center lacking a full-time psychiatrist, but this could change.

Recent tuition increases would allow on-campus departments, such as the counseling and health centers and individual colleges, to hire more faculty and staff.

Torgerson said the most recent increases, which were announced in November, would go into effect this fall. This could include the addition of a new campus psychiatrist — or at least one that would be available full-time.

The current psychiatrist only worked three-fourths of the time, Torgerson said.

Chancellor Victor Boschini said in an interview with TCU News Now last semester that hiring a new psychiatrist was on the list of student requests he had heard.

Boschini indicated the increase, which would raise tuition 6.5 percent to $34,500, would address that need.

Counseling Center Director Linda Wolszon said in an email that the university’s current psychiatrist, Dr. Daralynn Deardorff, was available 30 hours a week.

Wolszon said those hours of availability were above average for schools TCU’s size, which, according to the National Survey of Counseling Centers is 23 hours a week.

Still, Deardorff’s time was in high demand, forcing some students to wait several weeks for an appointment. If more hours were made available, students would “definitely use them,” Wolszon said.

The Counseling Center currently staffs four psychologists and is looking for a fifth, Wolszon said.

Torgerson said the Health Center had enough staff members at the moment but could need more in the future as it transitioned to an electronic medical record system this summer.

But the effect of the tuition increases would not be limited to hiring university staff.

The increase would also have a significant impact on academic departments across campus, enabling them to hire new faculty to cope with expanding enrollment. Part of that meant keeping the student-to-faculty ratio at a desirable level.

Boschini said in an email that the “overriding goal” of the university was to keep that ratio between 13-to-1 and 14-to-1. Despite campus enrollment nearing 10,000, the current ratio is 13.6:1, Boschini said. 

The decision of how much faculty to hire and which areas to hire in would be up to the individual academic deans. They would submit individual budget requests to Provost Nowell Donovan, Boschini said.

Andrew Schoolmaster, dean of the AddRan College of Liberal Arts, said in an email he expected tuition money to help add faculty in areas hit hard by increasing freshman enrollments.

“From the perspective of AddRan College, the tuition increases are being directly used to hire more full-time faculty,” Schoolmaster said.

The growing number of incoming students has placed a strain on the AddRan College which houses a number of TCU Core Curriculum courses typically taken by freshmen, Schoolmaster said.

According to the Office of Institutional Research, TCU’s freshman enrollment has increased 25 percent over the last decade, jumping from 1,493 incoming freshmen in 2000 to 1,869 last fall.

Schoolmaster said AddRan College was currently interviewing for positions in the geography, economics and English departments, which added faculty with tuition money last year.

Neeley School of Business Dean Homer Erekson said the business program had also seen a boost in the number of students and that the tuition increase would “absolutely” help compensate for that growth.

“We have significant increasing enrollment needs,” Erekson said. “So, to maintain high-quality instruction, you have to add faculty. Obviously, the tuition increase would help that.”

More faculty would strengthen the business minor program, which had continued to grow, Erekson said.

“We want to make sure we have a strong, separate program for business minors,” Erekson said. “Over time, we have added faculty and need to continue to add faculty to surplus that program.” 

Erekson also said the ability of the AddRan College to hire more faculty will in turn benefit business students, who needed a “very strong liberal arts foundation” in order to be successful.