In a year that began with an increase in freshman minority enrollment, Ohio University has a new director of undergraduate admissions who says he hopes to make OU more regionally diverse as well.
T. David Garcia, who will make $90,000 this year, replaces interim director of undergraduate admissions Jean Lewis, who had served since May 2004.
OU President Roderick McDavis said the admissions office plans to focus on attracting more students from the East Coast and the Chicago area, a goal that will bring geographical diversity to a school where 86 percent of the on-campus population was from Ohio in fall 2004.
We have to be careful how we define diversity
Garcia said. We are not just focusing on ethnicity.
The admissions office also will be instrumental in achieving key goals of Vision Ohio, the university's strategic plan that calls for increases in minority, out-of-state and urban enrollment, OU President Roderick McDavis said.
McDavis said he appointed Garcia because of his experience as director of undergraduate admissions at Western Illinois University and his knowledge of Ohio and said he is pleased with Garcia's progress in connecting with the OU faculty since his introduction at the Faculty Senate meeting in June.
David mixes with people very easily McDavis said. We needed someone who brought a unique set of experiences.
A northwest Ohio native, Garcia has a master's degree in interpersonal communications from Bowling Green State University and a bachelor's degree in Spanish business from the University of Findlay.
Garcia entered the college admissions profession in 1992 as an admissions counselor at Bowling Green State University and left his native northwest Ohio for Western Illinois University in 2003.
At WIU, he established the Minority Recruitment Advisory Board, through which minority students helped recruit students from their underrepresented high schools.
On-campus minority enrollment at WIU increased from 11.4 percent in 2003 to 12.3 percent in 2004, according to www.wiu.edu/irp. This is the trend McDavis said he hopes he will continue to see at OU, which welcomed 307 minority freshmen this fall as opposed to 225 last year.
Garcia said the most important thing he learned in working at the two previous universities was that recruiting is a campuswide effort.
For a while people would look at the admissions office as being on an island
he said. There was a lot of recruiting going on that we didn't know about and could have helped out with.
McDavis said he hopes Garcia's work in undergraduate admissions can return OU to its recruiting reputation from decades ago.
In the '60s
this university really set the pace for recruiting students from urban centers
McDavis said. We have to recommit ourselves to that effort.
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