DIVERSITY

Members present: Michele Eodice, Eric Grospitch, Claudia Mercado, Santos Nunez, Lisa Pinamonti, Jake Preston, Trina Ramirez

The group reviewed profile projections. Members provided their projections.

Discussion points:

What is realistic? How does the Office of Admissions and Scholarships (OAS) recruit students of color? Claudia mentioned that OAS currently recruits quality –not quantity. There are individual territories and each recruiter sets goals. The goals must be the same or higher than the previous year.

Michele provided these statistics on students of color from other universities:
Nebraska has 7.2% in freshmen class
Utah has 9% in freshmen class
Princeton’s projection for 2006 is 29% in the four ethnic groups.

Claudia: KU is doing better than KSU and MU. In Big 12, OU is doing the best.

Eric looked at headcounts of enrollment in the secondary schools. The numbers are stagnant in most ethnic groups. He looked at that information to determine his counts. Hispanic population is the only one that is growing.

What will happen with non-documented student populations if the bill passes for in-state tuition? Claudia said it must be coupled with scholarship dollars because students will still not be able to apply for federal financial aid.

Pinamonti expressed concern with large growths and discussed other goals that the University is striving to achieve.

Michele would like to see 20% students of color by 2020. She provided a good book to read for reference: Beer and Circus. Michele would like to summarize what this committee has done.

This committee has interpreted the charge as defining the numbers of the four ethnic groups for the incoming freshmen and transfer classes of 2006, 2011, 2016. The initiatives will lead to achieving the goals determined.

Initiative ideas:

• Expand/pursue idea of continuous county tuition idea with Kansas City, Missouri.
• Need scholarship dollars, resources such as budget and people on the Admissions and Scholarships staff in order to do additional recruitment efforts

The meeting concluded with the staff agreeing on numbers for 2006, 2011, and 2016 for the freshman class. The transfer numbers still need to be discussed.

Review before next meeting:

Since all committee members were not present, it was suggested that all members review the proposed numbers (attached to this document) and come to the next meeting with additional initiative ideas.

Next meeting is:

March 12th– KU Visitor’s Center Conference Room at 1:30 pm