Schools focus on efforts to recruit, retain minorities students

Significantly lower graduation rates for minority students are causing Penn and universities across the country to institute programs in an ongoing effort aimed at retaining minorities.

Although there are more minorities enrolled in higher education than there were 10 years ago, the disparity in enrollment between white students and minorities remains substantial.

As of the year 2000, the U.S. Department of Education reported that while white students made up 68 percent of those enrolled in higher education, minority students accounted for only 32 percent. Out of that 32 percent, 13 percent were black, 12 percent Latino, 6 percent Asian and 1 percent Native American.

Alan Seidman, editor of the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice, said that the prevailing theory behind the disparity relates to students' initial assimilation to campus life.

According to Seidman, too many colleges frontload their orientation services into the first year when students become adjusted to the institution, but often expect students to overcome deficiencies much quicker than they are able.

"For intervention programs and services to be successful they must be powerful enough to effect change," Seidman said. "Retention equals early identification plus early and intensive intervention until [students] demonstrate they have overcome" problems with assimilation.

Although drop-out rates for minority students among Ivy League universities are much lower than the national average, the gap between minority and white students remains.

The six-year graduation rates for Penn's Class of 2001 demonstrate the remaining disparity between minority graduation rates and white graduation rates.

The rate of graduation for black students was 79.2 percent for men and 82.7 percent for women, compared with 93.2 percent and 92.1 percent for male and female white students, respectively.

The gap between white students and both Asians and Latinos exists, but is not as large.

However, Penn has made an effort to retain minority students through a variety of strategies and mechanisms.

The principle coordination body is the Committee on Minority Success and Retention, chaired by English Professor Herman Beavers.

The committee is made up of students, faculty and staff from offices including Student Financial Services, as well as representatives from the college houses. It meets regularly to discuss both policies and practices.

College senior Darcy Richie, former head of the United Minorities Council and a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist, serves as a student representative on the committee. Although Richie acknowledged that the University has made strides in facilitating minority retention and success, she still said that "we are working like a think tank."

"The people and staff on the committee are spread so thin that they can't initiate the change needed in order to make big strides," Richie added.

The University also operates cultural resource centers dedicated to providing a sense of support and solidarity to the groups they represent.

"Our hope is to signal the University's commitment to the success and flourishment of all our students," Deputy Provost Peter Conn said.

Sean Vereen, associate director of the Greenfield Intercultural Center, noted that he has seen definite progress in the different kinds of services the University has been providing to minority students.

"President [Judith] Rodin and Provost [Robert] Barchi's response to student demands has resulted in progress in terms of minority retention and the numbers bear that out," he said.

However, he acknowledged that there is a need for better communication in order to continue making progress.

Newly elected UMC Chairman and College junior Carlos Rivera-Anaya sees further progress in the retention of minority students as a question of student life on Penn's campus.

"Diversity at the University of Pennsylvania will not be secured until it becomes an environment in which students of color want to become part of a community they will enjoy staying in," Rivera-Anaya said in an e-mail interview.

"Retention efforts come in many ways, not just with mentorship programs or dinners, but with the administration putting our ethnic studies programs and cultural centers at the forefront of their vision."

Penn has experienced results in recent years as the gap in graduation rates between minority students and white students has dropped. Penn has the highest rate of improvement in minority graduation rates in the Ivy League.

Anaya-Rivera cautioned against becoming complacent.

"We certainly have a long way to go," he said.

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