Saturday, Sept. 23, 2006

President Martin C. Jischke made these comments to the Purdue Black Alumni Organization.

University will continue to seek more diverse campus

Good morning. It's great to have you all on campus today. We are in the middle of a big weekend of Homecoming activities.

This includes what we hope will be a big win over Minnesota. I love college football and I'm looking forward to a great game.

I hope you are all enjoying yourselves and will take advantage of the Homecoming displays at the Mall.

I especially appreciate the opportunity to speak with you not only this year but at previous Homecoming events and at other times throughout the year.

The Purdue Black Alumni Organization and this university share common goals.

We all want to increase diversity at Purdue, and this specifically means enrolling and graduating more African-American students.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings make it illegal for a university to have race-based programs. We are working within the laws to accomplish our goals.

I believe Purdue should at least reflect the diversity in our state. Nationally, African Americans are 12.3 percent of the population. In Indiana, African Americans are 8.4 percent.

About half of African-American high school graduates in Indiana enroll in a college.

At Purdue this fall, our African-American numbers are up, as they have been throughout our strategic plans. This fall the African-American enrollment is 3.5 percent of the entire student population or 4 percent of our U.S. domestic student population.

We have a record number of African American undergraduate, graduate and professional students on campus - 1,385. The number of African Americans in our freshman class this fall is 10.6 percent higher than last year and 30.4 percent higher than five years ago.

Our initiatives are succeeding, they are working and we are moving steadily in the right direction. This is clearly at the heart of my agenda as president of Purdue, but beyond any one individual at Purdue, diversity is among the highest priorities of our Board of Trustees.

Our diversity governance report to the Board of Trustees every spring is the longest and most detailed of the year. I encourage you to examine these reports. They are archived on our Board of Trustees Web site. The reports are presented at open, public meetings. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Our diversity concerns go beyond students and African Americans alone. We are increasing diversity in our faculty and staff, as well as students.

The number of African Americans on our faculty increased 112 percent from 1995 to 2005. It has increased 63 percent since 2000 when I arrived at Purdue. The number of African Americans on our staff increased 36 percent from 2000 to 2005.

Total minority employment at Purdue in 2005 was 12.1 percent. Total African American employment in 2005 was 2.2 percent. We expect these numbers will continue to rise.

We are increasing diversity among the companies that do business with the university. In the past two years since we launched the Purdue Office of Supplier Diversity Development, we have had professional construction, procurement and sponsored contracts with minority owned businesses totaling $60.9 million. That is 7.6 percent of the two-year total.

African American firms that are included in this are Smoot Constuction Inc., the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, a $43 million contact; Professional Data Deminsions, a One Purdue Project subcontractor, $600,000; and Payton Wells Chevrolet Inc., automobiles, $363,000.

Smoot Construction Company on the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering is the first African-American prime contractor in Purdue University history.

The Purdue Office of Supplier Diversity Development, led by Jesse Moore, cultivates opportunities for qualified minority- and women-owned businesses to partner with Purdue as the university continues to grow.

We are increasing the number of women in administrative roles and tenure-track faculty positions. Tenure and tenure-track female faculty grew 13.9 percent from 2000 to 2005.

The number of women on our professional staff grew 4.3 percent in that period.

We are increasing the number of Hispanic, Asian American and American Indian students, faculty and staff. Diversity hit record numbers in our freshman class this fall in all underrepresented areas.

We are succeeding. We are succeeding because we are very aggressive in this effort. Diversity is an overarching initiative in our Strategic Plans. It is part of everything we are doing.

For example, one of our Strategic Plan goals is to increase the size of our faculty by 300. To date we have hired 249. Sixty-four percent of our Strategic Plan hires have been women and minorities. If you add in hires to replace people who retired or left for other reasons, 59.5 percent of all our faculty hires have been women and minorities.

Our Strategic Plans have a major focus on retention, student success and graduation. Diversity is a key point in this.

African-American retention and graduate rates lag behind the overall student numbers. African-American four-, five- and six-year graduation rates are staying fairly constant. The six-year rate is 59 percent compared to 65 percent for all minorities and 72 percent for the entire West Lafayette campus.

African American one-year retention in 2005 was 71 percent, down from previous years. Total minority one-year retention was 78 percent and the overall Purdue number was 83 percent.

We are concerned about minority retention. We are addressing it. One example: Learning Communities. The goal of these communities is to enhance levels of learning and facilitate the adjustment to university life, which really go hand in hand. The result of this is increased retention rates for all participants.

In 2005-06, there were 1,329 first-year students participating in all of our various Learning Communities at Purdue, including Multicultural Learning Communities. Seventeen percent of these participants came from one of the four federally impacted minority groups.

Minority students in Learning Communities have a 10 percent higher first- to second-year retention rate than those not in the program. The most recent analysis of Multicultural Learning Community participants at Purdue shows that minorities who participated had a 93.9 percent first- to second-year retention rate.

In another initiative aimed at retention, the Committee for Student Access and Success was formed in late spring 2005 to create a coordinated college preparation and student success plan for the University. A major focus of this work is on low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students.

In West Lafayette, CASPiE is a multi-institutional, collaborative effort to address barriers to providing research experiences to younger, more diverse populations of undergraduates.

The Purdue Diversity in the Classroom Project has awarded small grants to professors based on their work in integrating diversity into their curricula.

Our Strategic Plans focus on further increasing enrollment of African-American students at Purdue. We are increasing the number of African American high school students we contact, the number that apply to Purdue and are accepted.

We are increasing scholarships, grants and aid. Undergraduate Gift Aid for African-American students at Purdue in 2005-2006 was $6.75 million. This was an increase of 4.8 percent over the previous academic year. The $6.75 million does not include summer school grants and scholarships. Therefore, the final total gift aid for African-American students will be a little higher when numbers are reported in October.

We are aggressively reaching out in other ways.

The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Indiana project is a collaboration among Ball State University; Indiana University, Bloomington; Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis; Purdue University Calumet; and Purdue University West Lafayette. The goal is to double the number of minority graduates in the science, technology, engineering and match disciplines in five years. Since the fall of 2002, African Americans in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines taking part in LSAMP has grown from 5 to 35 last year.

At the graduate level, Purdue University, Indiana University and Northwestern University compose the National Science Foundation Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate. This program focuses on encouraging students to pursue advanced degrees and ultimately to work at universities.

All of this is working. People such as Jackie Jimerson in Pharmacy and Cornell Bell at Krannert have had a major impact on diversity and African-American success at Purdue.

Ninety-two percent of African Americans and Latinos admitted to the professional pharmacy program have earned degrees.

Programs such as Science Bound and the Purdue Opportunity Awards offer wonderful opportunities for African-American students.

Purdue plays an important role in programs such as Black Expo in Indianapolis, reaching out to high school students in our state.

Top university administrators including Provost Sally Mason, Executive Vice President Morgan Olsen and me participate in many African-American programs on this campus every year including events at the Black Cultural Center, the Black Graduate Association, the Black Caucus and minority programs in pharmacy and other colleges and schools.

We are working hard at diversity awareness across the campus. Workshops and diversity training are sponsored throughout the university.

Diversity is a major aspect of Boiler Gold Rush for our incoming freshmen the week before classes begin.

We are working to make this a campus community in which everyone feels welcomed and counted as part.

We have a Diversity Leadership Group chaired by the Provost, Sally Mason. It consists of a broad spectrum of faculty, staff and students from across the university. This group was formed to assist the provost with developing a plan for campus-wide diversity efforts. A plan is has been drafted and is now being discussed before being finalized.

Sally Mason is here to tell you more about this and how you can participate in the final draft.

Kauline Davis is an assistant to the provost with specific responsibilities for diversity. She is responsible for various diversity-related initiatives that will originate from this plan.

I believe the Purdue of 2006 is a much different university than what many of you who are alumni might have experienced years ago. We are proud of the successes we are having. I encourage the Purdue Black Alumni Organization to be an important part of our work.

We welcome the opportunity to work with you. Together, we can make a difference.

Thank you. I'd like to take your questions and comments.

There are a number of Purdue administrators who work in diversity here this morning. I welcome them to join me in this discussion. I am sorry that I will have to leave this meeting at 8:30 to speak with another group. Sally Mason will speak and answer questions when my part of the program has concluded.

Related Link:
Provost Sally Mason's comments to the Purdue Black Alumni Organization at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/uns/html3month/2006/060923SP-MasonPBAO.html

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