To recruit, retain and graduate a diverse and successful student body is one of the specific goals of the strategic plan developed over the past year by WSU’s Office of Equity and Diversity (OED).
To help achieve that objective, an OED benchmark has been created to measure the graduation rates of students of color. The aspiration is to bring that number up to a rate equal to or exceeding that of the WSU student body as a whole.
The overall graduation rate for WSU students — usually calculated over a six-year span — is about 61 percent. If you look only at students of color, the rate is closer to 49 percent. Among WSU peer institutions that are also members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the mean graduation rate for students of color is significantly higher at 57.5 percent.
“The data show that concerted efforts are imperative for the increased retention of multicultural students,” said Manuel Acevedo, director of the Office of Multicultural Student Services. “And this is especially important for African American students (with graduation rates at 42.3%), Native American (47.9%) and Chicano/Latino (51.5%), as well as some specific groups within the Asian American and Pacific Islander populations.”
Retention summit
The complex issue of retention and graduation rates for students of color will be discussed in depth at the Multicultural Student Retention Summit on Nov. 10, sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Student Services, Student Affairs and the Office of Equity and Diversity. Participants will try to distill the data and progress, gleaned over the past few years, into a concise “package” of information for both internal and external audiences.
“We are trying to build a culture of evidence.” said Melynda Huskey, assistant vice president, OED. “We look at data and use it to target our intervention and decision making to specific needs, rather than just doing what was done in the past — or has been done by other schools.”
For example, one OED tool, the Equity Score Card, assesses data to help OED understand how students experience their time at WSU.
“If we see a pattern of students leaving the university (and failing to graduate) that deviates from the norm — and if it is associated with ethnicity, race or gender — we can be sure it’s not the incapacity of that entire group that is driving the deviation,” said Huskey.
Once a problem has been identified, steps can be taken to rectify the situation.
Tools available
“One of our best structured retention tools is the Multicultural Student Mentor Program,” said Acevedo. “It has helped raise the retention rate for first- to second-year students to very close to the overall average.
“In addition, there is support from the academic enrichment center and the four ethnic student centers located at Multicultural Student Services, where students are eligible to receive free tutoring and access to computer labs. We also offer the Intercultural Leadership Initiatives and Student Development Program that assist students in enhancing their leadership skills,” he said.
WSU offers a variety of other programs that strive to ensure a successful journey through college. Among those are the TRIO program, Student Support Services, McNair program, Minority and Women Engineering Program, Student-Athlete Mentoring Program, the Women’s Resource Center and more.
