Oklahoma State University Increases Diversity Efforts

OKLAHOMA CITY

      Oklahoma State University officials will meet this weekend with others across the nation to discuss efforts to increase racial diversity on college campuses, officials say.

      “We’re working extremely hard internally to diversify our campus,” says Dr. Cornell Thomas, vice president for institutional diversity at OSU. “We want to make sure that we can provide more scholarships and garner continued support from the community.”

      Of the 20,000 students attending classes on OSU, about 88 percent are White, about 7 percent are American Indian and about 3 percent are Black. Of 1,000 faculty members, about 20 are Black, Thomas says.

      “This is a major challenge across the nation, but it’s changing,” he says.

      About 80 percent of Oklahoma’s population is White and about 8 percent is Black, according to 2004 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

      Thomas and several other higher education officials met in Los Angeles recently for the first conference of a new organization called the National Association of Diversity Officers in Education. The group will exchange ideas on how to increase diversity on predominantly White campuses.

      Currently, OSU is adding three positions to its Affirmative Action Office, implementing mandatory diversity classes for all incoming freshman beginning in the fall of 2007 and making efforts to aggressively recruit professors and students of color, Thomas says.

      The three positions in the Affirmative Action Office include an intake specialist to monitor complaints, a seminar coordinator to host diversity workshops and a women’s program coordinator.