II.                       Responses to Recommendations on Student Retention

UA representatives provided responses to recommendations on student retention included Lynne Tronsdal, Assistant Vice President, Student Retention; Lynette Cook-Francis Assistant, Vice President Multicultural Programs and Services; and other staff responsible for retention activities.

The following UA representatives participated with the student retention work group during the October workshop:  Lynette Cook-Francis; Guillermo Uribe, Director, University Learning Center; and Rudy McCormick, Assistant Director, Multicultural Programs and Services. 

Recommendation 1:    Assure adequate number of essential positions by increasing funding for Chicano Hispano Student Affairs (CHSA), New Start, Tutoring, Writing Skills Program, and Success Express.

As part of its commitment to the retention of students, the University has recently formed a Retention Coordinating Committee to develop and oversee and University-wide retention strategy for all students.  A key component of the University's retention strategy has been and will continue to be the programs targeted toward under-served populations.

Over the last few years, each of the Cultural Centers has developed outreach, retention and assessment strategies for specific populations. For instance, the Success Express program of the Chicano Hispano Student Affairs office provides a 1-credit class to Hispanic scholarship, non-scholarship and transfer students on college success strategies.

With these new strategies in place, in February, the directors of DMPS programs and centers will submit budget requests, which outline the needs of the units and programs. The funds to be requested will be to further support these retention efforts and to take into account potentially increasing numbers of students served by the unit or program and/or expanded efforts to assist in the University wide retention effort.

The areas to submit budget requests include New Start, the MERITS program, the University Tutoring Center and the four Cultural Centers .  These budget requests will become a part of Senior Vice President Taylor's overall All-Funds request for Campus Life this year.  College of Humanities Dean Charles Tatum will submit a budget request for the Writing Skills Improvement Program.

Upon approval or partial approval of these requests, funds will be increased for the programs and units in the coming fiscal year.

Recommendation 2:  Sponsor workshops for high school counselors regarding UA programs, policies and procedures to increase the number and success of Hispanic students at UA. 

When students come to the UA in the fall semester following their spring high school graduation, they come with expectations concerning educational planning and assistance from Academic Advisors that more accurately reflects their high school experience with their high school guidance counselors, then the reality of university academic advisors. 

To help close the gap or at least to understand its’ impact on student satisfaction at the university, it is recommended that high school students’ last high school counselors and academic advisors work together during the students’ last high school semester and University Orientation.  This sharing could take the form of “job switching” or cross training.

Lynne Tronsdal will be responsible for overseeing a pilot program between a specific university college and a local high school with a majority of Hispanic Students. 

During spring 2004, the University’s Retention Coordinating Committee will identify the colleges that wish to participate during spring 2005 and Tucson high school(s) that wish to participate during spring 2005. 

Proposal 3:  Increase collaboration with Pima Community College to facilitate increasing the number and success of transfer students.

To expand the number of Hispanic students “in the pipeline” for entrance to UA, qualified Hispanic students (the top 25 percent of their junior high school class) who choose to enroll first in PCC instead of applying to UA, a joint admission program will result in those students being informed of the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of being a UA student who is enrolled in Pima.  Those benefits include student academic support such as major exploration offered by University School as well as academic advisors in their chosen UA college. 

The PCC-UA transfer coordinating committee will be responsible for overseeing this action, with the full cooperation of both institutions’ Admissions Offices.  The program will be piloted for fall 2004 high school graduates. 

Proposal 4:  Enhance cultural awareness and effectiveness on campus to create a comfort zone for students. Become a campus that is welcoming to Hispanics.

Numerous projects are under way to accomplish this goal, including the daily activities of the four multicultural centers. The Chicano/Hispano Student Center may be the most active.  It brings together a variety of Hispanic student organizations and provides special ceremonies and programs, especially the annual spring commencement convocation.  All four centers participate in the winter multicultural convocation.

Two important projects planned for 2004 should greatly enhance cultural awareness and services. One is a survey of students to be conducted by the Dean of Student Office and the Multicultural Programs and Services. The campus-wide effort will help administrators determine if we are fulfilling the needs of students through existing services, including diversity programs, and guide future efforts.  Another project in conjunction with Student Affairs and student leaders will convert a large lounge in the Student Union to a multicultural lounge that will feature art of many cultures. It would be a meeting place for students of all cultures, and a place where they could meet and confer with faculty of all cultures.

The survey should be launched in early 2004 and the rededication of the lounge could take place in the fall of 2004.

III.  Responses to Recommendations on Graduate Students

Graduate College Associate Dean Velez responded to the recommendations on graduate Students.

UA Associate Vice President of Research Tom Hixon and Graduate College Associate Dean Maria Teresa Velez met with the work group on graduate students during the October workshop. 

Recommendation 1: Establish a support network, which includes faculty, community, students, and professionals to provide support for Hispanic students and increase retention and graduation rates. 

Goals for this effort include the following: Identify supporters, use 3-D Memo to get more groups involved across campus; use Hispanic Coalition as a resource and develop a mentoring program especially at the master's level; include faculty, community, and alums as mentors; and set specific goals/targets to be assessed during annual review.

The Graduate College agrees that increased network support to Hispanic graduate students to promote graduation is an important objective.

Hispanic graduate enrollment has increased from 460 to 622, or 37% in the last six years, partly as a consequence of a very aggressive recruitment and funding strategy employed by the Graduate College .  Likewise, graduation rates have increased markedly, doubling the number of Hispanic Ph.D.s in one year, from the average of 15 to 30 Hispanic Ph.D.s.

In addition to financial and emotional support provided through an open door policy, email conversations and by appointment, Dr. Velez has created a Ph.D. Completion program, which ensures that Ph.D. candidates do not remain ABDs but successfully complete their dissertation.  Fifteen students, most of them Hispanic, have already completed their Ph.D.s in the year and a half that the program has been in existence, with approximately thirty others still in the program who are making excellent progress toward completing their dissertations. This program is partly responsible for having doubled the number of Hispanic Ph.D.s in May 2003 to 30 students, for the 14 additional Hispanic students who completed their dissertations from August to December 2004, and for the approximately 10 who expect to complete by May, 2004.

At the master's level, however, there are so many Hispanic students presently enrolled (500+) that our office is not able to provide an optimal level of support.  It is this group that we would like to emphasize so that, in addition to finishing their master's degree, they will finish with grades and skills that are strong enough to enable them to enter Ph.D. programs if they so choose.

To this end, the Graduate College will:

·        Establish contact with all Hispanic graduate students currently enrolled.  We will ask the students' permission to include them on a listserv that will be staffed by a Graduate College employee.  Through the listserv, we will make all the students aware of Graduate College services and funding opportunities; student support groups that already exist such as Aqui Estamos and Women of Color; encourage the establishment of additional peer support groups among those interested; and ensure that students know how to obtain specific problem-solving help and/or mediation through the assistance of Maria Teresa Velez and her staff, the UA Ombudsperson Program, the Office of Affirmative Action, the Hispano/Chicano Cultural Resource Center, the Diversity Office and other already existing mechanisms at UA.

·        Fund a graduate student position to facilitate the establishment of mentoring networks for Hispanic graduate students.  This network will include members of the Hispanic Coalition, the Hispanic alumni, community professionals and other mentors, as well as UA faculty and professional staff.

·        Re-establish a policy that was discontinued a couple of years ago due to lack of staffing, of following up each semester on each minority student whose GPA falls under a 3.0.  Graduate students have one semester to improve their GPA before their graduate program can petition the Graduate College to demote them to Non-Degree status.  The Graduate College will ask each of those students to come in for a chat with Dr. Velez and Dr. Dianne Horgan, the two Associate Deans, who will then develop individualized plans that may include tutoring, funding, mentoring, etc., to assist them in improving their grades,

Recommendation 2:  Link community interests and needs to graduate programs offered.

Proposed goals include:  Make programs more amenable to the schedule needs of the community, enable community to have more input on schedule and program content, identify target programs, identify who perform evaluations and how.

The Graduate College wholeheartedly supports this recommendation and has already started to work with different academic graduate programs in planning for the implementation of programs that not only have high interest in the Hispanic community, but also have great employment potential in Arizona .  Most of these programs' course work will be offered in the evenings to accommodate the needs of working adults.  Some of these programs are closer to implementation than others.  They include:

·        A master's program in Educational Leadership offered in the evenings

·        A master's program in Public Administration

·        A master's program in Community Planning

·        A master's program in Bilingual Speech & Hearing

·        A combined BSN/MS in Nursing

The Graduate College has also begun to work with the College of Science and the Hispanic Alumni in identifying funds to support Hispanic graduate students that desire to enter the already existing applied master's programs in biochemistry, physics and mathematics which, at the present time, do not offer funding support to any of their students. 

The Graduate College also is working with the Hispanic Alumni's president in reinvigorating El Patronato, a program of graduate scholarships provided by the Hispanic Alumni with matching funds from the Graduate College . 

Proposal 3: Increase the numbers of Latino Teaching and Research Assistants

Proposed goals include:  Develop a comprehensive strategy to attract in-state Latinos; partner with the Latino community to increase numbers of Latinos on campus; develop annual target to reflect the percentage of Latinos from both the metro and non-metro areas; develop strategies for innovative outreach; and use community forums to establish a UA presence.

The Graduate College does not control the number or the funding of teaching and research assistantships.  Teaching assistantships are filled by each department in accordance to the number of lower division courses they are responsible for teaching, as well as the availability of funds.  Research assistantships are created by faculty through the generation of federal and other research grants.

The Graduate College , through Dr. Velez, has created approximately 50 Research Assistantships and Fellowships per year, specifically for minority students.  They include the following:

·        10 new $20,000 fellowships in biomedical sciences programs each year, which also provide in-state and out-of-state tuition, and a guarantee of 5 years of funding given adequate progress on the part of the Ph.D. student.  During the first year, these fellowships include $1000 for travel to conferences, a "survival skills" seminar taught by a minority faculty in the sciences, and a cultural immersion experience that makes these students keenly aware of minority health disparities.

·        20 new $8,000 fellowships for students pursuing masters degrees in Public Health, Mexican American Studies/Latino Health, and Epidemiology.

·        10 plus $3200 scholarships per year for graduate students in Computer Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering.

·        Approximately 10 $36,000 UA/Sloan Foundation fellowships to students pursuing Ph.D.s in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Renewable Natural Resources, Soil, Water & Environmental Sciences, Geosciences and Optical Sciences.  These fellowships are supplemented that other funds provided by each of the Departments involved and by the Graduate College .

·        Several other fellowships in NSF-funded interdisciplinary initiatives.  Although they are not minority-specific, there is a great emphasis on funding minorities through these $27,500 per year fellowships.  

·        In addition, the Graduate College supplements the funding provided to underrepresented graduate students by all graduate programs.  Dr. Velez has also garnished over 6 million dollars in federal and foundation grants to create and support a "minority pipeline."

These programs currently include the Minority Access to Research Careers, the McNair Achievement Program, the Summer Research Institute, and the Minority Health Disparities Summer Opportunities program.  At present, 100 students per year, mostly Hispanics, receive mentoring, research funding and other services through these programs to ensure that they finish with the grades, skills, and motivation to enter graduate school.  Approximately 90 percent go on to graduate and professional schools.  Approximately 320 students have participated in these programs in the last seven years.

The Graduate College commits to monitoring on a semester-by-semester basis the number of teaching and research assistantships awarded to Hispanic students.  The Graduate College will alert departments and college deans of the need to increase the number of these assistantships to support graduate students and provide outstanding role models to undergraduate students in these colleges.

The Graduate College has started workshops for UA employees who may be considering starting a graduate degree.  The Graduate College also participated in City of Tucson workshops providing such information to their employees, as well as in recruitment fairs provided by local employers such as Raytheon.

We welcome the advice and collaboration of the Hispanic Coalition in finding other venues to talk to prospective Hispanic students from Southern Arizona about graduate school opportunities at the UA.

IV. Responses to Recommendations on the College of Education

Responses to recommendations on the College of Education (COE) were provided by COE Dean Ron Marx and Richard Ruiz.

UA representatives who participated in the COE work group included Ron Marx, Dean, College of Education (COE); Richard Ruiz, Head, Teaching & Teacher Education; and Bob Hendricks and Luis Moll, Associate Deans.

Proposal 1:  Enhance the access of potential undergraduate and graduate students to the College of Education .

The plan to enhance access includes three parts: Set aside financial aid to recruit Hispanic students; Increase participation of Hispanic students in funded research projects; Create faculty support groups to orient and mentor students; and Identify and mentor UA and Pima Community College undergraduates who show an interest in the College through work with the Chicano-Hispano Center, Faculty Fellows, and other campus groups. 

Bob Hendricks and Richard Ruiz are responsible for undergraduate students; Luis Moll will be responsible for graduate students.  In addition, all Departments in the College have Student Committees that will be responsible at both the graduate and undergraduate levels to identify strategies for giving greater access to Hispanic students.  In all cases, Ron Marx will be involved in all of these activities.

The proposed timeline for this action is March, 2004 to develop preliminary policy guidelines and have guidelines approved by Dean Marx by June, 2004.  The application of guidelines to admissions for graduate studies and undergraduate programs is proposed for fall, 2004.

The College is collaborating with Mathematics in the preparation of a proposal, to be submitted to NSF, seeking $10 million to establish a joint center for the mathematics education of Hispanic students.  The proposal will fund doctoral and post-doctoral students, and faculty research and service.

In addition, the College is collaborating with Pima Community College to enhance its teacher preparation programs to be of greater service to Latino students.

Finally, the Department of Teaching and Teacher Education, through work initiated and developed by Dr. Toni Griego Jones, is discussing the establishment of an Institute of Research on Teacher Preparation for Latino Students.

Proposal 2:  Recruit and retain Latino faculty.

The College of Education is currently engaged in short and medium term planning for faculty recruitment.  These plans are being made in the context of the MROC program at UA that includes explicit attention to the recruitment and retention of a diverse faculty.  After the plan is approved by the Provost’s Office, all search committees will be instructed by the dean to engage in widely-based searches that attend to the recruitment of Hispanic faculty.  Composition of search committees will be sensitive to these goals.

Proposal 3:  Enhance the college of education’ curriculum, especially the Teacher Preparation Program, to help COE students learn to work with diverse student populations.  

Dean Marx has begun a series of regular meetings with junior faculty in order to maintain open communication with them and to enhance their understanding of their roles at UA and ways in which they can craft their careers in order to be successful.  Four of the 18 junior faculty members (22%) are Hispanic; their success is very important to us.  They will have access to Dean Marx’s advice and support as part of the more general junior faculty career program.   Dean Marx and the COE department heads are the parties responsible for overseeing this action.

The timeline for this action is as follows:  Mentoring of junior faculty has been ongoing for the past year, and continues. Recruitment and hiring plans depend largely on the faculty recruitment cycle.  Some of this might be able to begin during the spring 2004 term, but more likely this will begin in the 2004/05 academic year.

Proposal 4:  Enhance the College of Education ’s curriculum, especially the Teacher Preparation Program, to help COE students learn to with diverse student populations.

The Department of Teaching and Teacher Education Curriculum Committee is currently discussing how to reconceptualize our curricular program to be of greater service to a diverse community into which our students are moving. This will include a greater awareness among all of our faculty to address cultural and linguistic diversity in their courses, including disciplinary, foundational and methods courses.

Our process for hiring Clinical faculty members who work in our methods block already includes requirements for teaching a culturally and linguistically diverse population.   Richard Ruiz is responsible for overseeing this action.  These activities are on-going.  We will have a more definite plan for re-conceptualizing the curriculum by the end of spring 2004.

V.  Recommendations on Faculty and Staff Recruitment and Retention

The UA representatives who met with the work group on faculty and staff during the October workshop and provided responses to the recommendations included Provost George Davis, Interim Vice Provost Beth Mitchneck, and Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of Human Resources Allison Vaillancourt.

Proposal 1: Utilize/increase the use of relationship recruiting to deepen the pool for current and future hiring.  Improve the external perception of the University of Arizona .  

The Provost and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs will work with deans and unit heads to communicate the concept of relationship recruiting and to identify resources to use, on a regular basis, to enable units to bring to the UA campus speakers and collaborators that may one day become recruits. 

Resources will be identified from all levels – units, colleges, and the Office of the Provost.  Human Resources will also help with communicating the concept to the campus community, in part, by adding the concept to our search manual and by developing educational materials for distribution and for posting on the HR website. 

As an example, deans will be asked to identify Ph.D. candidates in the pipeline at peer institutions (e.g., Pac-10 schools) and build relationships with some of them before they even enter the job market.

The Provost, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and the Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of Human Resources are responsible for overseeing these actions.  Work on this has already begun and should continue in earnest through the spring 2004 semester.   It is important to note that Relationship Recruiting is a long-term process and must be recognized as a recruitment strategy that should be assessed with over a longer period of time (e.g., five to ten years).

Recommendation 2:  Recruit UA graduates to become faculty here and retain them, especially in areas where the potential pool of applicants from underrepresented groups is small.

This proposal is loosely a “grow your own” strategy and can be viewed in several ways.  First, we can recruit our own graduates either into the unit from which they received their degree or into another UA unit by encouraging our own to apply for open positions. 

Second, we can develop a post-doctoral fellow or research program in collaboration with other universities (e.g., Arizona state universities, PAC-10 universities) where we recruit back to the University of Arizona our own graduates who spent several years as a post-doctoral fellow or researcher at another university.  This second component reduces the likelihood that faculty will be reticent to hire their own graduates because of a lack of experience at other universities (often a stated reason for not recruiting our own).  

This latter action will require coordination with other universities lead from the Office of the Provost and could lead to third project where the same universities share lists of post-doctoral fellows and researchers already employed at the institution as well as individuals nearing completion of degrees.  The Provost and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs are responsible for overseeing this action.   Work will begin during spring 2004 and continue until programs are in place.

The Office of the Provost will work with deans to identify shared resources for the post-doctoral programs.  A potential pilot is under discussion with the College of Fine Arts for a post-MFA fellowship program.

Recommendation 3:  Use cluster hires to recruit underrepresented faculty and improve the external perception of the UA.

Develop a pilot topic related to the Academic Leadership themes.  The Provost will allocate funding for two to four new positions over the next two to three academic years (2004-2005 to 2006-2007).  Funding also will be allocated for relationship recruiting related to cluster hiring (funds for bringing in speakers and having a small conference on the cluster hiring theme). 

The Provost will encourage deans to allocate funding in a similar way to augment the centrally allocated funding.  Themes for consideration are evolving from Focused Excellence activities and planning, and from the Cluster Hiring Workshop.