By DeAnna Hines
The Bloomington campus of Indiana University has begun a new minority student recruitment effort, according to Kenneth Gros Louis, vice president for academic affairs and campus chancellor.
The new program, headed by Herman Hudson, professor emeritus, will work toward enhancing the ethnic diversity of the student body. Primary recruiting areas will be Indianapolis, Gary, East Chicago and Fort Wayne.
"A long-standing campus goal has been to provide the kind of multi-ethnic environment here which is a microcosm of the real society and one that will give our students the rich experience of interacting with people from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds," said Gros Louis.
"The Strategic Directions Charter calls for the university to achieve ethnic diversity throughout the institution, and this is one way we hope to accomplish that," he continued. "The program has the strong backing of Edwardo Rhodes, who agreed earlier this year to serve as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and who will work closely with Herman Hudson as the program develops."
The program will rely on five teams of faculty, staff and students to perform the basic recruiting functions. Each participant will attend a training seminar to learn more about the university and the purposes of this specific effort. A standard procedure will be offered for team visits to targeted areas.
In his original proposal for the program, Hudson stressed the importance of working with key people in the local communities at churches, community centers, fraternities and sororities, and media outlets, for example. Activity began last month.
Rhodes said the program is crucial because "we must make a stronger and more coordinated effort at developing the tradition of minority student attendance at the Bloomington campus."
He added that, though some negative stereotypes about college life exist in certain minority communities, there are numerous minority success stories that need to be told. "This program can re-emphasize the many and varied ways that students from under-represented groups can come to Bloomington and find whole new vistas of opportunity open to them. I'm committed to that."
The program will utilize public service announcements, personal visits, a toll-free telephone number and newspaper stories, and is planning the development of a video "infomercial" to run at the Black Expo and at other appropriate settings.
|
| Edwardo Rhodes joined the Bloomington faculty of the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs in 1985. He is an expert on management and applied economics and recently served as chair of the university's Strategic Directions Task Force on Under-representation. He is currently associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at IUB. |
| Herman Hudson came to IU in 1968 to teach linguistics. During his career, he founded and served as both vice chancellor and dean of Afro-American affairs, was founder and chair of the IU Department of Afro-American Studies and founder and director of the Afro-American Arts Instititute and the Minority Achievers Program (MAP). |
Return to Table of Contents