Advisory Committee on Diversity releases update report for fall semester

The Advisory Committee on Diversity progress update for the fall semester is available online. Provost Deba Dutta established the ACD in Fall 2015 to help improve Purdue's student, faculty and staff diversity.

The 30-member ACD includes faculty, staff and students charged with identifying specific goals and metrics to enhance diversity and inclusion at Purdue. The committee focused specifically on recruitment, retention and climate. The ACD identified 10 strategic directions and continues to help develop ways to diversify the campus.

The report shows that among undergraduates, new enrollment by underrepresented minorities (URM) rose 16.7 percent in Fall 2016 over Fall 2015.

"The increase can be attributed to hard work on the part of many people in the Office of Admissions, in colleges and departments, and in a number of university units on campus,” says Mark Smith, member of the Diversity Leadership Team and dean of the Graduate School. "Having a broadly diverse and inclusive campus benefits students both academically and culturally."

Purdue is fortunate to have many programs that support URM undergraduate students, such as the Academic Boot Camps in the College of Engineering, the College of Science and the Polytechnic Institute; the Business Opportunity Program in the Krannert School of Management; and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program, which is open to students in all colleges, he says.

Also worthy of mention are the relatively new Emerging Leaders (EL) and BoilerMentor programs, he says. The EL program is an institutionally funded scholarship program that attracts, on average, 83 high-achieving URM first-year undergraduates to Purdue. The program connects students to peer mentoring, academic support and tutoring, and career development workshops.

The Purdue University BoilerMentor program is a peer-to-peer mentoring program for first-year students who are recipients of the Emerging Leaders scholarship, as well as other students who wish to participate in the program.

The total number of undergraduate URM students on the West Lafayette campus increased by 5.4 percent.

Diversity in the Graduate School also saw an increase for the fall 2016 semester. Many factors in combination contributed to this success, including recruiting trips by college and Graduate School recruiters to graduate fairs and university recruiting events; Purdue campus visitation programs, such as the Multicultural Historically Black Institution program (M-HBI) and Grad Expo; and summer programs, such as the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) and the Alliance for Graduate Education and Professoriate (AGEP) Bridge Program. The number of new URM graduate students increased by 30 percent, according to the report.

Programs such as AGEP along with the Office of Fellowships and Professional Development in the Graduate School provide financial support, mentoring, and career development opportunities for URM graduate students.

Total URM enrollment in the Graduate School increased by 14 percent, according to the report.

Improving faculty diversity is equally important, as it affects URM recruitment and retention, and enhances the multicultural educational experience for all students. The combined efforts of colleges and departments and university-level initiatives such as ADVANCE and the Big Ten AGEP program have improved Purdue’s faculty hiring practices, enabling the university to attract a more diverse pool of applicants.  

The number of URM faculty hired for the 2015-16 fiscal year increased by 42 percent over 2014-15 hires.

The University also has taken steps to improve faculty retention. Examples of those efforts include departments actively mentoring new faculty; ADVANCE providing support to new professors through its Center for Faculty Success; and the Division of Diversity and Inclusion in the Office of the Provost investing in a National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity membership to support faculty success.

For fiscal year 2015-16, the overall number of URM faculty increased by 11.8 percent over fiscal year 2014-15.

The ACD also considered ways to improve the campus climate, an example of which was endorsing the expansion of the Diversity Catalysts program. Diversity Catalysts are high-impact senior faculty who engage Purdue faculty and staff in their units and across campus in conversations about diversity and inclusion issues. The program's goal is to effect positive institutional transformation with regard to women and URMs. There are 17 new Diversity Catalysts this year.

The ACD will provide further information on campus diversity in subsequent updates.

Writer: Megan Huckaby, 765-496-1325, mhuckaby@purdue.edu