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By Sharron Hannon
Some 150 deans, directors and department heads met at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Oct. 4 for a three-hour session to discuss ways to recruit more minority students and faculty to the university.
Provost Karen Holbrook welcomed the group to the first administrative special topics workshop of the academic year and challenged them to think about ways to create a recruitment pipeline to build diversity at UGA. The workshop, organized by her office, included an admissions update by Nancy McDuff, director of undergraduate admissions, and Gordhan Patel, dean of the Graduate School, followed by a panel presentation of recruitment ideas that have been successfully tried in various UGA schools and colleges.
These ranged from offering summer programs or internships on campus targeted to selected high school students to reaching out to potential students through special recruitment initiatives. Panelist David Knauft, associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, said his college is exploring ways to get information about UGA admissions distributed through 4-H, an existing network that reaches students at a young age. Minorities make up about one-third of 60,000 students who are 4-H members.
Bonnie Yegidis, dean of the School of Social Work, said her school has created a pipeline with historically black colleges and universities in Georgia to identify potential graduate students. The school sponsors an annual minority visitation day and does follow-up work with those who apply. Since 1997, the school also has sponsored an annual Institute on Strengthening African American Families. The institute assists in faculty recruitment by “communicating the message that we value the research of African-American scholars,” Yegidis said.
Marie Chisholm, a faculty member in the College of Pharmacy, said that campus role models are very important in recruiting students and faculty, who want to see others with whom they can identify. Associate provost Tom Dyer reminded the audience that in the mid-’80s the university doubled the number of AfricanAmerican faculty to 42 as a result of a concerted two-year recruiting effort and new money to make it possible. “It takes an individual and institutional commitment,” he said, stressing the importance of presenting a community that is “inclusive and inviting.”
Familiarity with the campus because of family or friends is one of the most influential factors in determining where students will apply, according to McDuff, so increasing minority-student enrollment creates a self-perpetuating cycle.
But if minority enrollment drops, the effects continue to be felt in subsequent years. The “yield”--or the percentage of accepted students who actually enroll--dropped this year for African Americans, she noted, perhaps due to media attention to lawsuits over the university’s use of race as a factor in the admissions process.
Both McDuff and Patel stressed the importance of more financial assistance for minority students, both because they are likely to have more need and because the competition, especially to recruit high-achieving minority students, is intense.
“It’s all about scholarships,” said Patel. “We need scholarships at all levels.”
UGA currently has no need-based scholarships, but offers a $1,000 merit scholarship--on top of the HOPE scholarship--to approximately 5 percent of each incoming freshman class.
Following the presentations, the audience broke into smaller groups to continue to discuss and generate ideas, then reconvened to share them. Recommendations included an increased focus on potential minority transfer students, visiting faculty programs and more personal contacts, especially using minority alumni and current students as promoters of the university.
Holbrook closed the meeting promising additional follow-up.
“This has been the easy part,” she said. “Now we have to pull all these ideas together and figure out what’s next. This responsibility is not to be relegated to specific offices and programs. It is everybody’s responsibility to work toward the goal of a more inclusive environment at UGA.”
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