Engage, Excite and Educate to Recruit and Retain Students of Color

Cyndi Freeman

Director

Graduate Student Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives

The Graduate School

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“Everyone talks about the weather”

• We must change the discourse when we speak about diversity and inclusion.

• We must reframe it to have action.

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Historically, higher education and graduate

education were viewed as a public

good~~~~~now higher education and graduate

education are viewed as PRIVATE good.

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Graduate School

A record number of Americans now hold bachelor’s degrees 33%

The leaking pipeline begins before kindergarten, continues from K-12, throughout the undergraduate experience dumping into graduate education in an ever decreasing number of candidates.

Bachelors Degrees

People of color24%

Masters Degrees

African Americans9.3%

Latin@s5.2%

Native Americans0.5%

PhDs

African Americans6.2%

Latin@s4.4%

Native Americans0.6%

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Students must do the work

• It is an individual experience• Do your homework• Do the work• Connect with faculty

Students actually make post-bac choices based on their perception of succeeding.

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You must engage, excite and educate students to shop at your “boutique.”

If they do not know you exist, they are not likely to stumble into the program on their own.

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What does Diversity and Inclusion look like?

• Efforts for achieving faculty diversity must be directly connected to achieving diversity and inclusion in the undergraduate experiences: first year seminars, academic advising, mentoring, undergraduate experiences and developmental programming.

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What does Diversity and Inclusion look like? (cont)

• Inclusion is a psychological dimension• Integrating diversity into institutional processes• There must be an implicit connection between

diversity and excellence in the academy.

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