Educators Explore Best Practices In Black Student Achievement

CLEMSON, S.C.

As academicians anxiously await the outcome of the University of Michigan case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and what will be a precedent setting decision for higher education admissions procedures, more than 200 academic professionals, admissions officers and diversity advocates from around the nation gathered at a recent conference on best practices in Black student achievement.

Sponsored by Clemson University's office of the president and provost, the conference focused on practices and ways to legally continue the commitment to diversity and help minority students qualify for admission as well as succeed at our nation's colleges and universities. The program coincided with Clemson's 40th anniversary commemoration of the desegregation of higher education in South Carolina, which was marked by the enrollment of Clemson's first African American student, Harvey Gantt, in 1963.

Among the conference presenters were admissions officers from the universities of Texas, Georgia and Michigan, all who recently have faced high-profile litigation surrounding their admissions policies. Other distinguished education leaders and keynote speakers included Dr. William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland; Dr. John Brooks Slaughter, president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering Inc. (NACME); Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County; and Dr. Arnold Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, an advocate of equal educational opportunity for low-income and disabled Americans.

Dr. Bruce Walker, director of admissions and associate vice president for student affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and Nancy McDuff, director of admissions at the University of Georgia, both said their institutions experienced a drop in the number of Black students and those from other minority groups in the years immediately following lawsuits that prevented them from using the Bakke model, which allowed for the use of race as one factor in admissions decisions.