Published: July 02, 2009 12:09 am      

Morehead State loses bid as site for 2010 program

The 340 rising high school seniors at Morehead State University for the Governor’s Scholars Program this summer will be the last on the campus for at least three years.

GSP is a five-week program in which students attend classes and take part in class-related activities and residential life. The program is free to those selected.

The program’s board of directors decided in May that GSP campuses for the next three years will be Bellarmine University in Louisville, Centre College in Danville and Murray State University in Murray.

Bellarmine and Centre are current GSP campuses.

GSP Executive Director Aris Cedeno said the cost of bringing the program to MSU was the reason the campus was not selected.

Cedeno said cost was an important concern for the program this year because state budget cuts will impact funding. He won’t know how much the program will be losing for a few weeks.

He said MSU’s bid was very competitive and there have been no complaints from students or faculty.

“Morehead has been an extraordinary campus,” Cedeno said.

GSP has been at MSU for four years.

MSU was one of five institutions to bid to host the program. Pikeville College also bid.

Bids to host the program included the cost of things such as room and board and any incentives the institution offered to offset costs.

MSU offered incentives including paying for long-distance calls for the GSP office.

MSU’s bid was about $15,000 higher for the first year than the bid of the most expensive campus chosen for the program, Cedeno said. Costs usually increase after the first year.

All five campus bids fell between about $285,000 and about $327,000 for the first year of the program.

He said the board of directors has consistently chosen the campuses with the lowest bid as GSP hosts.

Alan Baldwin, a member of the Morehead City Council and retired assistant to the provost at MSU, helped to compile Morehead’s bid.

“I was certainly disappointed,” Baldwin said. “I was angry, too. I still am.”

He said Morehead set a new standard for the program because the community and the university view it as the most important thing going on at the campus during the summer.

“We know how to do this,” Baldwin said. “We have the willingness, the dedication and we’ll get the contract back.”

He said the city will lose tourism dollars because parents of children come to stay and eat in Morehead and MSU will lose marketing opportunities.

While Mayor David Perkins said losing the program is disappointing, it won’t affect the city’s economy.

“We made do before they came, and I guess we’ll make do after,” he said.

Baldwin said moving the program from MSU to Murray was a bad idea because it means there will be no GSP campuses in the eastern part of the state. He said program officials should try for even distribution of campuses.

Cedeno said the program reflects regional differences by having participants from 113 out of 120 counties. MSU’s campus has students from 96 counties.

Charles Myers, GSP director at MSU, said GSP should be viewed as one program instead of as three separate campuses.

The campuses have a lot of similarities including most areas of study available, he said.

GSP was created in 1983 with one campus at Centre College. A second campus was opened in 1984 and a third in 2001. This year 1,033 students were accepted into the program.

KATIE BRANDENBURG can be reached at kbrandenburg@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2657.