Elite students don't wait anxiously around the mailbox at college admissions time these days, says Kenneth Durgans. Admissions officers do.
The best and brightest, especially if they happen to be members of racial minorities, are so much in demand that colleges have had to become aggressive about recruiting and winning the most coveted students.
“No longer can institutions of higher education just sort of wait for students to get to their senior years and to apply,” said Durgans, vice provost for institute diversity at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “We are losing too many students, not just minorities, but students in general, to other fields. They are not going into science. We have to catch up as an institution.”
People like Durgans, who has been coordinating minority student recruitment and retention at Rensselaer since 2003, are becoming more common on college campuses both in the Capital Region and the rest of the United States.
With the supply of children produced by white baby boomers leveling off, and the numbers of Hispanics and other minority groups growing, the future pool of college-age Americans promises to be more racially diverse than ever.
“We have a new strategic plan, which has a very strong diversity goal,” said Anita Steigerwald, associate dean of student affairs at Skidmore College. “We want to become a more diverse institution–racially, socially and culturally. We know that we need to become more racially diverse in this global community we are now living in.”
To that end, Skidmore is currently searching for a director of student diversity programs, an administrative position, and a faculty post called director of intercultural studies. Both jobs are aimed at making Skidmore's student body and curriculum more culturally diverse and the Saratoga Springs campus more welcoming to students of differing race, ethnicity and cultures.
Not only for minorities
“We also know that we have to engage our white students a lot more in these [diversity] dialogues and conversations and learning activities,” Steigerwald said. “We think we have to do a lot more in helping them understand what diversity means. Many of our students who come from the upper socioeconomic backgrounds have gone to white schools all of their lives.”
Albany Law School is also in the midst of a search for a director of diversity. Dean Thomas Guernsey said it is part of his overall strategy of making the college more selective by accepting fewer students from a wider geographic area.
“Hiring a diversity coordinator would help in attracting the students … and would help us retain those students,” Guernsey said.
About 17 percent of Albany Law's students are minorities. When the percentage of minorities in last year's freshman class dipped to 15, Guernsey said warning flags began to go up about the need to diversify the college.
Admissions officers sought out minority students. They were identified in various ways, including their checking of a box indicating their race on the LSAT examination.
The school also checked the mailing addresses of its applicants and if they were from zip codes of traditionally black colleges, Albany Law redoubled its recruitment efforts with more direct mailings. They included a personal letter from Guernsey.
Of the students who have sent in deposits for the incoming fall 2006 class at Albany Law, Guernsey said 24 percent are minorities.
Casting a wider net
Skidmore's recruiters have also tried to zero in on minority candidates. Now, when visiting high schools, recruiters will often also go to community groups in hopes of finding prospective students, said Mary Lou Bates, Skidmore's dean of admissions.
She said the college has also had luck with a program where Skidmore pays the expenses of all accepted students to come to Saratoga Springs to live on campus for a few days each April before they commit to the school.
Skidmore's incoming freshman classes had been averaging about 13 percent minorities in recent years until the college started focusing on improving its numbers.
Last year, minorities comprised 17 percent of the freshman class. For incoming freshmen this fall, the school expects to hit the 20 percent mark for the first time.
Steigerwald said that number is particularly important.
“From what I am hearing, 20 percent is kind of a tipping point,” she said. “If you have 20 percent, then you have a visible, diverse population and students are more likely to think they are learning and living in a diverse atmosphere.”
At Rensselaer, Durgans said his job is doubly tough. Past getting qualified minorities into an expensive school with stringent admissions standards, Durgans said he's also working against a traditional shortage of black and Hispanic youngsters gravitating to math, science and technology.
Rensselaer is the oldest technological college in the United States.
“There is no question that the pool available is not what we'd like it to be,” he said. “It is a challenge. But as an institution, we have chosen to be a part of trying to improve on all levels the pipeline, the number of students who would be academically eligible. We spend a lot of time with pipeline initiatives on campus. We reach all the way down to elementary school.”
Twenty-one percent of Rensselaer's students are minorities.
Hector Leon, director of multicultural recruitment for Union College, said he works closely with Union's financial aid office to try to defray the $43,000-a-year costs of the Schenectady school.
Minority students will typically get a somewhat better aid package offer than other students, he said.
“You have to go out a lot, you have to create different [cultural] programs and you have to spend a lot of money,” Leon said of recruiting minority students. “We are doing all those things.”
The University at Albany brought James Anderson on board last fall as vice provost for institutional assessment and diversity.