06-04-19 Diversity

Dear Friends:

The College of Liberal Arts and Texas A&M University have made the creation of a diverse educational environment a major priority for the past several years.  Dr.  Gates, for example, offers a particularly compelling statement about the value of a diverse body of learners:

Some argue that promoting diversity itself is a mistake.  I believe they are mistaken.  Getting to know people from different cultures, from different economic circumstances, from different regions and countries, with different beliefs and backgrounds, significantly enriches learning.  This, and the need to educate future leaders for the nation, were explicitly recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.  Exposure to a diverse learning environment also better prepares students for the real world beyond college.

My own view is that if we fail to provide a diverse learning environment for our students and for scholarly inquiry, then we will have failed our students and our professions, and we will have short changed our State and Nation. 

Creating a diverse environment requires a number of initiatives aimed at increasing the number of diverse faculty and students who work at and attend Texas A&M.  And, it also means broadening the diverse perspectives taught and researched in the University.  As you know from my previous letters to you, we have pursued vigorously several initiatives to strengthen Texas A&M University by enhancing its diversity.  Permit me, if you will, to outline in this letter some the results of these initiatives.

Hiring and Recruitment

Five years ago the College initiated new processes to assure that faculty searches produced diverse pools of candidates for faculty openings.  Departments made a concerted effort to generate diverse pools of highly qualified candidates as well as to make long lasting connections to underrepresented groups in their disciplines for faculty openings.  We have hired 98 new faculty to new and replacement positions over the past four years.  All of these new hires are exceptional teachers and scholars.  Of this number, 30 percent have been minority scholars and 48 percent were women.  Very few colleges and universities have achieved diversity at this level.

We have joined the University in attracting underrepresented students to A&M by increasing our presence at the regional outreach centers that were created to support the University’s targeted recruitment plan.  That and increased financial assistance through university programs and the Foundation Excellence Awards (FEA) has helped the College increase its enrollment of Hispanic students by more than 800 over the past four years and by more than 200 African-American students over that same period. 

To give a personal example, a Foundation Excellence Award scholarship and impressive campus visit helped psychology major Edgar Villarreal make up his mind.  The Laredo native found that he enjoys the “small town, big college mood” that surrounds the university, which he said made him feel more comfortable.  Edgar was sure about his major and plans on earning a Ph.D. in psychology.  In fact, psychology is the major of choice among Hispanic, black, and white liberal arts students.  Three other top majors among all three groups are political science, economics, and history.  Among Hispanic students, international studies and speech communication are also among their favorite majors.  Among African-American students, sociology and English were included these students’ list of top majors.

The University has extended its recruitment efforts to the graduate level as well.  The Office of Graduate Studies has created a graduate enhancement program that provides much needed financial support, which is a critical factor in Texas A&M being competitive when recruiting highly qualified graduate students.  This year, the College nominated 31 new recruits for minority fellowship awards, and the quality of their applications resulted in 25 fellowship awards from the University – nearly 1/3 of all the competitive awards made by Texas A&M.  We are now working very hard to bring these wonderfully bright students to our campus for graduate work. 

To encourage minority undergraduates at Texas A&M and from other Texas A&M University System schools and other minority-serving institutions to consider graduate study, the College provided matching or full funding for “Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)” programs.  We are pleased to report that our Departments of Sociology, Psychology, and Political Science have received a National Science Foundation grant to continue this program.  The genesis of this program began 12 years ago in the sociology department.  Sociology Professor Rogelio Saenz, a first-generation college graduate who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, has been the catalyst.  He experienced first hand the impact a faculty mentor can have in one’s life when a professor encouraged Rogelio to consider attending graduate school.  These efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.  This past November, Associate Dean Larry Oliver and representatives from Prairie View A&M University, Texas A&M International University, and Northeastern Illinois University delivered a panel presentation on the summer program at a national meeting of colleges of arts and sciences.

If you received the 2005 issue of Pathways to Discovery, the College’s annual magazine, you may have read about the graduate training program in the Psychology department’s Behavioral and Cellular Neuroscience (BCN) program.  Approximately a dozen students are supported during their graduate training through research grants, a Life Science Training Grant, and the Texas Consortium in Behavioral Neuroscience, which promotes graduate and postdoctoral training of individuals from under-represented populations (Hispanic, African-American, Native-American).

Academics and Research

The College has sought to broaden academic offerings and extend the current curriculum to enhance diversity.  With the new faculty hiring initiative, the College allotted faculty positions in such areas as race and ethnicity and comparative border studies that have high potential for bringing greater diversity to departments in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity.  The College supported faculty efforts to create a new Ph.D. program in Hispanic Studies that coordinates courses with three Texas universities that primarily serve Hispanic students.  It also has supported the creation of an Africana Studies minor.  Finally, the College funds a program that supports developing new courses or revising courses in departments or programs to introduce greater diversity and international perspectives.  This initiative is vitally important for all our students.  Over the past three years, 31 courses from six departments (psychology, political science, history, English, French/Classics, and Spanish) have either been created or revised through this program with 15 more courses (that include courses from Religious Studies and sociology) scheduled to be introduced in the 2006-2007 academic year.

These efforts in hiring, recruiting, and academics have boosted research in areas with a diversity theme.  One of the newest research centers in the College is the Mexican American and U.S. Latino Research Center (MALRC).  The center’s mission is to foster partnerships between faculty members from different disciplines leading to distinguished scholarship in critical areas of interest to the Mexican American/U.S.  Latino population.  Sociology Associate Professor Edward Murguia, the center’s founding director, announced in mid-February that MALRC has joined the Inter-University Program for Latino Research consortium.  This is a key association for the Center and will provide a national presence for the Center’s research projects.  The College has committed over $50,000 for each of three years to start this new research center – a commitment has has been matched by the Provost’s office and the President’s office, with additional support coming from the Colleges of Education and Human Development, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Architecture.  We fully expect that this Center will contribute to our new knowledge about Mexican Americans and U.S. Latinos through externally funded research. 

It is worthwhile to note the impact private support has had in this area as well.  The Carlos H.  Cantu Hispanic Education and Opportunity Fund was created to address the Hispanic dropout problem in public schools.  The Cantu endowment found a home in a political science research program that focuses on issues of educational equity for ethnic minority students.  Researchers with the Texas Educational Excellence Project (TEEP) have spent the past seven years studying a broader set of standards other than just test scores to determine the effect educational policy has on equitable and quality educational achievement for all Texas public school students.  Political Science Professor Kenneth J.  Meier directs the effort with a staff of about a dozen graduate students.  The results of this research can be found in a series of papers at http://teep.tamu.edu/. In one key finding, Meier and his students have demonstrated that reducing the level of teacher turnover can have a dramatic influence on the performance of students.  These impacts are even larger for disadvantaged students.  Teacher turnover is affected by a variety of factors, but one is teacher salaries.  These data were used during a previous Texas Legislative session in the debate surrounding teacher pay raises.

Challenges

Even with these and other successes to create a more diverse learning environment, challenges still remain.  We must retain and increase the number of faculty who build their careers at Texas A&M and the number of underrepresented students who come to and graduate from Texas A&M.  And we need to continue building a welcoming environment for all who come to our campus and community.  The College of Liberal Arts will continue to grow and mature, and with that will come increasingly more diverse learning opportunities for all our students and especially our majors.  One of our responsibilities as a College is to prepare students to thrive in a global society and economy.  And, as a research university, it is our obligation to create new knowledge about diversity through scholarship and creative work.  You won’t be surprised to know that we are in the vanguard of colleges and universities who are dedicated to making a difference in this area.

Thank you for your interest in and support of Texas A&M University.  I hope you find this information useful and of interest.  I would welcome your thoughts and comments.

Sincerely,

Charles A.  Johnson

Dean