Ohio University sophomore Garret Kisner's father pushed him to apply to 12 colleges his senior year of high school. OU, a school he did not know existed, was just another application he picked up from his counselor's office.
After being accepted, Kisner said he was unsure about enrolling in a school in the middle of nowhere.
There's not going to be anyone here I can relate to
he said at the time.
But after the school offered him nearly $14,000 a year through the Urban Scholars Program, Kisner changed his mind.
The program, an initiative OU President Roderick McDavis detailed in his inaugural 2004-05 year in office, is designed to fund at least 10 students a year from urban-area high schools. The privately funded scholarship has provided $14,000 a year and an annual book stipend for the 23 recipients in its first two years. Nearly $1.8 million has been donated to the program.
More than a year after its inception and with retention that trumps the campuswide rate, the program highlights the challenge the university is facing in trying to increase campus diversity.
'A process, not an event'
Sherrel Davis, a sophomore middle-childhood education major and urban scholar, said she feels like she's been treated fairly by her professors despite some minor, seemingly racist incidents with other students.
She added that she sometimes feels uncomfortable in some classes where she is the only black student.
The struggle is to make black students feel welcome in Appalachia, said Christine Taylor, director of the office of diversity.
In the late 1960s, when McDavis was a student, the campus was more diverse. In 1976, the earliest year for which statistics are available and six years after McDavis graduated, black students made up 6.3 percent of the student body, a number that has since declined to about 4 percent.
McDavis said the decline in diversity can be attributed to a decline in recruitment in cities. As a student of the '60s at Ohio University the majority of the students of color that I remember came from the city schools.
Taylor said she travels across the state giving recruitment presentations in urban areas. She added she finds that many people in urban cities have never heard of OU and are surprised when she shows a picture of McDavis.
From 1976 to 2003, the number of black students declined from 809 to a low of 627. Since then, the number of black students has grown with a 30-student gain in 2004, a 73-student gain in 2005 and an 80-student gain in 2006.
That's huge Taylor said. It takes time to reverse a trend G? It's a process
not an event.
The process of raising donations for the program so far has been a success, said Larry Lafferty, executive director of OU's office of development.
People are interested in it
he said, adding alumni are often surprised about the lack of diversity on campus.
Donations so far have included $16,000 from McDavis and his wife Deborah, $20,000 last year from mathematics professor Abdol-Reza Aftabizadeh and $500,000 from the William O. and Margaret T. Hieber Loving Trust. Today, F. William Englefield, a 1952 OU graduate, and his wife, Janet, pledged $40,000 to the Appalachian and Urban scholarship programs.
Hands-on approach
While one in five students of last year's freshman class left the school, only one of the Urban Scholars Program's first class of 13 students did not return for sophomore year. Urban scholars say that's because of a high degree of interaction between them and the office of diversity.
Students meet weekly with Taylor, listen to speakers and attend conferences, an important part of scholars' academic success, Davis said.
We also have individual meetings and that especially keeps us on track
she said. If we do bad on a test
they are able to tell us.
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Sean Gaffney
