Wyoming Business Hit A 5-Year Enrollment High. Its Dean Isn’t Satisfied

A DEAN LOST TO A RIVAL

Beaulier, the H.A. “Dave” True Family Dean of Business, has now steered three AACSB accreditation cycles – two at NDSU and one at Wyoming – and calls the most recent one “a pretty heavy lift.” As a candidate, he says, the message he heard most was that the college needed stability from its next leader.

“We have retained almost everyone that we have wanted to keep,” Beaulier says. “You don’t retain everyone, you lose people, but those you want to have around you have largely stayed here.”

The notable exception is Ronn Smith, the senior associate dean who was named dean of Colorado State University’s College of Business earlier this year. Beaulier says Smith effectively owned the accreditation process and also handled some “sticky” work when Beaulier arrived, including deploying faculty to the right programs and folding several majors into tracks.

“He was a wonderful associate dean,” Beaulier says. “Ronn was a critical operator on our team.”

He is not letting the defection go quietly. Colorado State’s teams are the Rams, Wyoming’s are the Cowboys, and Beaulier says the team will never let Smith hear the end of the fact that “he’s a sheep now.”

THE PLAN BEHIND THE NUMBERS

Much of this was laid out in advance. The college’s 2023-2028 strategic plan sets five goals, and its vision is to combine “cutting-edge business knowledge with the trailblazing ethos of the Mountain West.”

The plan’s values list begins with “the character of the individual” and includes “the integrity of the handshake,” language that echoes the ethics pitch Beaulier says lands with donors.

Several of its lines read like a preview of what the college has since done. The plan calls for new revenue streams built around the MBA, executive education and certificates, and for recruiting working professionals, a description that fits both the online MBA and the executive MBA now in the works. It also says the college should use the MBA’s success “as a vehicle to drive experimentation and change throughout our curriculum,” which is close to how Beaulier describes the AI push, with every MBA class expected to carry an AI component.

Impact on Wyoming is its own goal. The plan calls for more internships and experiential learning “to encourage students to stay in the state,” closer ties with Wyoming-based employers, and a workforce development team that would spot new employers and tailor continuing education to their needs.

Research is another, framed as creating “knowledge with global reach.” Grants and external research contracts brought in about $1.53 million in fiscal 2026, roughly 15 percent above budget, though spending on that side ran about 22 percent over, at $1.6 million.

THE GRADUATE ENGINE

Graduate enrollment rose from 240 students in fall 2021 to 332 in fall 2025, and graduate degrees awarded climbed from 105 in 2021-22 to 191 in 2025-26, an 82% jump. Online is now the larger side, with 212 of those 332 students in fall 2025, up from 156 in fall 2021. Campus graduate enrollment grew from 84 to 120 over the same stretch.

Beaulier gives much of the credit to Cook, who became MBA director in 2019 and inherited a campus program of about nine students.

“Ben Cook was one of the real principals in driving growth there,” Beaulier says. “He pivoted hard to online education and really made it a program that is distinctive in the online market.”

Two changes did the work, Cook says: a one-year campus MBA, adopted during the pandemic under budget pressure, and an online program rebuilt under then-dean David Sprott, who had seen other online models. The online program dropped its fall-only entry and its two 16-week classes at a time for one eight-week course at a time, with rolling enrollment and no prerequisite dependencies. An outside marketing firm helped fill the funnel.

“As soon as they decide they want to get an online degree, they want to be able to start that degree,” Cook says.

The result is two programs serving two different groups of students. The campus cohort, which the college tries to hold near 30 students a year, skews toward early-career students finishing an MBA in a year. The online students are in their late 30s and 40s, and almost all are working professionals with families.

Beaulier adds a few other ingredients: targeted marketing, a competitive price point, and what he calls the Josh Allen effect, a nod to the Buffalo Bills quarterback and Wyoming alum. A cohort from Buffalo enrolled in the online MBA a few years back, he says, though he isn’t sure it continues. The trend line has flattened lately, with graduate enrollment slipping from 337 in fall 2024 to 332 in fall 2025 and 324 in spring 2026.

The stakes go beyond headcount. The professional graduate programs generate 20 to 25% of the college’s budget revenue, Cook says, and they are the only area where the college gets a direct revenue share from the university.

“It allowed us to retain faculty, avoid layoffs, really smooth things over,” Cook says.

THE UNDERGRADUATE SURGE

Undergraduate enrollment, the bulk of the college, hit 1,219 in fall 2025, up 13% from 1,077 in fall 2021, and the gains are concentrated in a few majors. Management majors doubled from 159 to 328, accounting rose 52% to 313, marketing 39% to 268, and finance 31% to 253. Professional sales, a small major, doubled from 32 to 65. (Those are counts of majors, which include students who double major.)

The largest single jump in the data is in general management, which climbed from 72 students in fall 2021 to 283 in spring 2026. The college’s consolidation of programs complicates that picture. The stand-alone human resources major went from 86 students to four over the same stretch, while a new HR track under management enrolled 20. Tydings says the college is still teaching out large groups of students under the old program titles, so it can look as if the college offers more programs when it offers fewer.

The consolidation was deliberate, and it tracks a line in the strategic plan calling for the college to reduce or eliminate offerings that “rely on a small number of faculty.” Thiel says the old “class on class” approach left students little room to specialize or to plug into the college’s centers. So the college made its majors more flexible and built concentrations in areas such as entrepreneurship, healthcare business, human resources, leadership and supply chain. Most have been in place for about three years.

The undergraduate mix is shifting in other ways, too. Online undergraduate enrollment rose 54%, from 108 to 166, while on-campus enrollment grew about 9%, from 969 to 1,053. Women made up about 39% of undergraduates in fall 2025, up from 36% in 2021.

WHERE THE ENERGY WENT

Energy was once far more central to the MBA. When Cook started as MBA director, the college ran a two-year energy management MBA tied to the university’s School of Energy Resources. The move to a one-year MBA ended those tracks, but the college kept an energy concentration online, where it has proved steadier. On campus, energy enrollment swung between 5 and 15 students as oil prices rose and fell. Online, it holds at 20 to 30.

Sustainability, Thiel says, is “less prominent now.”

“We don’t brand our degree around sustainability,” Thiel says. He notes that it still shows up across the college, including in marketing faculty who research sustainable consumer behavior and in a sustainability marketing class the college still offers. Another member of the team adds that the economics Ph.D. program, known for natural resources work, places graduates in energy roles. The program enrolled 43 doctoral students in fall 2025.

Next Page: Why Wyoming shrank its employer roster on purpose, what the accreditors told the college to fix, and what keeps its leaders up at night

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