JACKSON - Representatives from Veterans Affairs told the College Board on Wednesday that before the Gulfport VA hospital could be used as a clinic and research facility for the University of Southern Mississippi, two VA campuses would have to be consolidated and the Biloxi site would have to be expanded to accommodate Gulfport services.

That isn't likely to happen for six to nine years.

The VA also will have to spend about $100 million to expand the Biloxi site to make room for all of the Gulfport patients.

Southern Miss wants to use the veterans hospital on the 90-acre Gulfport site as a clinic and research facility to help veterans and other patients in South Mississippi.

The property would be used to expand the university's health programs, not to create new ones, school officials told members of the state College Board on Wednesday.

The board held committee meetings Wednesday, and this was the first meeting of the USM/VA committee since the group was established in November.

Dr. Robert Lynch, who oversees 10 VA hospitals in Mississippi and surrounding states, told the board that an independent commission is reviewing plans for VA properties throughout the country, including the proposed consolidation of the two Coast campuses.

"This is a systemic look at what we have and what we will need in the future," Lynch said, adding that the commission's report likely will be released early next year.

Southern Miss isn't waiting to see if the plan is approved before forming one of its own. Representatives told College Board members Wednesday they want to have a formal partnership with the VA in programs such as psychology, nursing education and disabilities research.

The university also wants to do research at the VA campus in areas such as Alzheimer's, obesity and dementia.

Angie Dvorak, vice president for research and economic development at USM, said research could bring in money to run all the programs.

"We anticipate no additional state funding, and we anticipate not being able to raise tuition," she said. "So our only avenue for raising funds is research."

Dvorak said the university's next goal is to develop a concept plan and prepare a financial model to fund that plan. It would cost about $50 million to develop research and clinical programs at the Gulfport VA.

"Our primary funding will be through competitive dollars," she said. "We think that research funding goal is realistic."

Some board members said that while they want to help veterans, they believe the state would have to provide some revenue for the project in the future.

"I've only served on this board for seven years, and I've seen plenty of things that weren't supposed to cost us anything but ended up costing us a bunch of money," member Roy Klumb said. "That doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic and don't care about veterans."

Member Amy Whitten agreed.

"It's really important to me that no one walk out of this room thinking we're not for veterans," she said.

Bill Felder from Rep. Gene Taylor's office said Taylor wants to help veterans and students.

"We're not asking for money from the state," he said. "We want the (College Board) to give USM and our office permission to work with the state to help those who have served us and to get more young people in the health care profession.

"This would be very beneficial to the Coast, veterans and the community."

JACKSON - The University of Southern Mississippi is no longer the largest university in the state, according to enrollment figures released Wednesday by the state College Board.

The school's enrollment is 15,919 for the Hattiesburg and Coast campuses, down from 16,662 students the university reported in September.

USM President Shelby Thames blames the decrease on a problem with a graduate course that had students enrolled who weren't supposed to be in the class.

"I definitely think that's the problem," he said Wednesday.

The state's eight public universities report preliminary enrollment figures on the 10th day of class in the fall semester and the official count in November. This year's report was delayed because several universities had computer problems.

University officials reported last week that they have been investigating a problem with the continuous enrollment policy for graduate students. The investigation began in early November, and they attributed the problem with student count to "human error."

Continuous enrollment refers to a school requirement that graduate students who have completed their course work but not their thesis or dissertation must enroll in at least one course each semester until they graduate.

Last week, Tim Hudson, provost at the Hattiesburg campus, said the director of Institutional Research did a computer query for graduate students but did not ask for those who had completed course work but did not finish their dissertation or other postgraduate work. Susan Siltanen also did not give the list to college advisers for them to make sure the correct students were enrolled.

Students were not notified they had been enrolled in the course, and some had already graduated and moved to other states.

Hudson said last week he did not know how many students were in the class, so he wasn't sure how the error would affect enrollment numbers.

Thames said Wednesday that he believes the university's enrollment figures will increase once the problem with the continuous enrollment policy is fixed.

"There are students who did not get enrolled in continuous enrollment courses but should have been," he said. "So I think it will even out."

Members of the College Board received two sets of numbers for each university, duplicated and nonduplicated.

"Duplicated enrollment includes students counted once for each on- or off-campus site where they are taking a course," said David Potter, commissioner of higher education. "Therefore a student can be counted more than once if they are taking courses at multiple locations. This number is useful because it provides a measure of resources needed for each location a student attends."

This is the first year members received nonduplicated numbers, said Pam Smith, spokeswoman for the board. She said the planning committee wanted to know the exact number of students at each university.

However, the duplicated enrollment figures are the official count.