Economic Impact Report
President's Message
Western Connecticut State University is celebrating our 103rd year of contributing to the growth and vitality of the economy of our region. From our beginnings as a normal school to our evolution into a doctorate granting university, we have educated knowledge workers who have created the stock of human and intellectual capital that forms the basis for the economic development in our region.
The returns to the region’s investment in Western Connecticut State University are varied and enduring. As this report demonstrates, the University created 2,165 jobs and produced $213.6 million in goods and services in the past year. Our student expenditures generated $17 million in local output, and spending by visitors to the University produced an additional $3.5 million.
Western Connecticut State University positively impacted the region’s future economic growth by awarding 3,900 degrees over the past five years and by providing 100,000 hours of student labor and internships to area businesses, schools, agencies and other organizations during the past year. Concurrently, the University is engaged in numerous partnerships that address critical workforce shortages, develop management training programs, and assist businesses and nonprofit organizations in assessing their plans for growth and organizational priorities.
The University also plans to use three relatively new initiatives to enhance its contribution to regional economic development. Our new state-of-the-art Science Building will enable us to educate students and forge industry and academic partnerships that are essential to maintaining the region’s economic competitiveness. The new School of Visual and Performing Arts will serve as a focal point in the development of cultural activities and related expenditures in this area. Lastly, the University’s business school was recently named as a Small Business Development Center subcenter under the auspices of the Small Business Administration. This designation will allow the University to train and educate entrepreneurs and managers for small businesses, who in turn will create jobs for the regional economy.
I hope that our economic impact statement will help you understand our optimism about our regional economy and will contribute to the building of future partnerships that will enhance this economy.
Economic Impact
WCSU and the Regional Economy
WCSU, through the operation of its two campuses, contributes significantly to the economic strength and vitality of the region. Western’s impact arises from the goods and services it purchases from local suppliers and from the wages it pays to its employees. These expenditures circulate in the regional economy, creating additional demand for goods and services and for labor. An organization’s economic impact is estimated by totaling its regional purchases of goods and services, the number of jobs it directly creates and the wages it pays to its employees. These figures are then applied to multipliers provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, to produce estimates of the total impact on regional jobs, income and output.
WCSU’s Economic Impact
Western’s expenditures in the region during the past year produced a total regional output of goods and services of $213.6 million. The number of jobs produced in the region was 2,165, and the total income generated was $71.6 million. These impacts reflect Western’s importance in contributing to the economic vitality of the region.
Operating Expenditures
The major portion of WCSU’s impact comes from its total operating expenditures. In 2005 these expenditures totaled $85.6 million, of which $74.1 million was spent in the local region. Operating expenditures produced an output impact of about $116 million.
Construction Expenditures
WCSU spent an annual average of $23.2 million on capital and construction over the past four years. In addition to benefiting the region economically, these expenditures have allowed WCSU to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities for teaching and learning and the enhancement of campus life. The Midtown campus has undergone a significant renovation of its buildings and grounds, and has seen the construction of a new library, science and social science buildings, and a parking garage. There has been an expansion of dormitory and athletic facilities on the Westside campus, and the newly constructed Westside Campus Center opens in early 2007. WCSU’s capital and construction expenditures resulted in an output impact of approximately $47 million.
Employee Expenditures
A portion of the $36.2 million in wages paid directly to University employees in 2005 was spent directly on goods and services in the region, resulting in an estimated $30 million in regional output of goods and services.
Student and Visitor Expenditures
More than 6,700 full- and part-time students attended WCSU in the past year, bringing expenditures of about $11.2 million into the region. The University attracts visitors from the surrounding area for a wide variety of events. Approximately 180,000 people visited both campuses in the past year, bringing in expenditures of $2.3 million. The regional outputs produced by student and visitor spending were $17 million and $3.5 million respectively.
Student Internships and Cooperative Education Programs
Western students and regional organizations mutually benefit from a wide range of student internships and work-related experiential learning opportunities. In the past year, students provided approximately 50,000 hours of labor to local organizations for which they received academic credit, earnings, and the opportunity to gain valuable work experience in their chosen fields. In addition, Western programs incorporating student internships provided another 50,000 hours of free labor to area businesses, schools, agencies and other organizations.
Degrees Granted
Over the past five years, Western has granted more than 3,000 bachelor’s degrees and 900 master’s degrees, preparing these graduates to assume productive and responsible roles in their communities. Since most WCSU graduates remain working and living in Connecticut, they provide area organizations with a well-educated supply of labor.
State Revenue
The earnings of WCSU employees, students and alumni add to the state revenue base. In 2005, WCSU employed 1,240 full- and part-time faculty and staff, and over 500 students. Surveys indicate that about 75 percent of Western’s alumni remain in Connecticut, earning, on the average, over 1.5 times the median earnings of high school graduates.
State Appropriations
The annual state appropriations to Western in 2005 totaled $35.3 million. This money goes to support ongoing University operations, which generated a total economic impact of $167 million in the past year. Therefore, each dollar the state invested in Western assisted in the generation of an additional $3.73 in regional output.
About the University
WestConn serves 4,641 full-time students and about 1,000 part-time students on two campuses in Danbury, Conn. Small class size provides individualized attention; 80 percent of our full-time faculty hold a doctoral or terminal degree.
WestConn is one of only 12 institutions in the country to offer an Ed.D. in Instructional Leadership, and our Low-Residency M.F.A. in Professional Writing program is the first and only low-residency program dedicated to training career writers for the contemporary marketplace.
Our health and music education students passed both the Praxis I and II exams at a 100 percent rate. And for the third year in a row, Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates received a 100 percent passing rate on the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses.
WestConn takes advantage of its proximity to New York City. Our global consciousness is mirrored in a special series of projects called the President’s Initiatives Fund, which in the past year sent students to study in Puerto Rico and Germany; allowed students to perform in theaters in New York, Scotland and Ecuador; and financed a trip of professors and administrators to build ties with a university in China.
WestConn's new Science Building was the first government building in Connecticut to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver Certification. During design and construction, the University followed a set of criteria to provide for energy efficiencies after the building was occupied, and even mandated recycling of construction debris while it was being built.
The School of Visual and Performing Arts, the only school of its kind in the Connecticut State University system, establishes more fully the University as the premier regional center for cultural, intellectual and artistic excellence. This new school will allow the University to better promote and grow the visual and performance arts disciplines.
The Center for Financial Forensics and Information Security completed its first full year of operation and formed various subcommittees to help fulfill its mission to serve as an educational resource center for: community organizations; teaching faculty, students and professionals in the fields of financial fraud and identity-theft prevention, valuation and economic loss issues, information security, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, economic terrorism identification and prevention, and prosecution of fraud and terrorism perpetrators.
In 2004, WestConn was named a member of the Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium, a network of the leading teaching and research institutions nationwide that focus on promoting education and research in security, especially as it pertains to homeland security and defense.
