In Black America; Black Student Retention; Part 2

you From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. Supportive structures that enable students in academic and financial difficulty to continue college and graduate. This includes freshman orientation and advising courses, career counseling initiatives,

and special programs established to recruit and retain Black males, an intervention area number three, preparation of academics, programs that interest talented students in academic careers and graduate school. Students include matching undergraduate with faculty mentors and specific disciplines, providing for research and teaching experiences, and encouraging students to pursue college teaching careers. We said that proposal submitted should focus on one of these three critical intervention areas, a recommendation number three, up to one quarter of the available funds in each grant should be used for student aid in the formal work study, for research and teaching assistants and small summer stipends. This age should be tied to particular programs dedicated to increasing student academic success. Dr. Edgar E. Smith, Director of Black College Retention Project. Although African Americans are enjoying a greater piece of the American pie, research indicates that over the past 16 years

there has been a decline in the number of African Americans graduating from four-year majority institutions of higher learning. Academics may not be the determining factor for African Americans graduating from these colleges and universities. Last November in the nation's capital, Florida A&M University celebrated its 10th anniversary National Higher Education Conference on Black Student Retention. More than 200 university and college administrators, faculty, minority and retention directors, and students, gather for five days to discuss issues that influence the retention of black students in higher education. I'm Johnny O. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, the National Retention Project, part two, with Dr. Frederick S. Humphries and Dr. Edgar E. Smith in Black America. An integral part of each proposal should be departmental faculty development designed to improve student academic achievement. In particular, the funding of departmental teaching and curricular initiatives was urged.

Number five, the trust should help to develop and fund small consortia of colleges and universities within each critical intervention area to exchange ideas, review problems and successes, and share technical skills. Recommendation number six, grants should include support for technical assistance, including one appropriate, funds to high external consultants for proposal writing and program development. Number seven, each proposal should include methods for documenting and monitoring the results of each grant's implementation. In addition, the trust should establish a small evaluation team to visit the projects providing ongoing evaluation feedback and obviously the processes which are outlined earlier. In 1983, Dr. Kanita E. Ford, his director of the Title III program at Florida and M. University, devised a special model for institutional strategies to increase minority student retention. The research led her to conclude that although many were concerned about African-American student retention, she couldn't find a national form that addressed the problem.

This past fall in Washington, D.C. against the backdrop of a government shutdown, the conference celebrated its 10th anniversary. The conference theme was entitled Minority Student Retention Relates to Goals 2000. The five day gathering, recognizing new challenges that may require new approaches to keep African-American students in the educational ready mode. On this week's program, we conclude Dr. E. Smith's address that focuses on what is necessary to retain African-American students on our college and university campuses. Dr. E. Smith. I'll report concluded that the Pew Trust's previous support of the HBCU significantly aided these institutions. In light of the positive outcomes, prospects, and current needs, a new initiative was warranted. No other major foundation has established the success of minority students at HBCUs as a priority, providing support in this area could present a unique opportunity for the Pew Trust. Based on the foreground recommendations, the third Black College program funded by the Pew Trust to the tune of $4.4 million, and coordinated by SCF, was launched in April of 1993.

The program was designed to increase the retention and graduation rates at participating HBCUs by helping them to analyze their current academic policies, procedures, and practices, and develop a comprehensive institution-wide strategy to significantly enhance retention rates. The third Black College program, which I might call TBC, is a two-stage competitive grants program with six-month planning grants followed by three-year implementation grants. SCF issued requests for planning proposals to 22 institutions in April of 1993, 21 institutions submitted proposals for planning grants. Six-month planning grants of $14,000 each were awarded by SCF in July 1993 to 15 of these institutions. Now, the planning process on each campus was led by a senior academic officer working with the team of administrators and faculty drawn from across the institution,

that's the University-wide approach that Dr. Arrenton referred to earlier. During the planning period, institutions were expected to undertake an institutional self-study to examine the problems it faces in recruitment and retention, providing inventory of current projects and strategies aimed at increasing retention, explaining how the funded initiative would strengthen and complement ongoing activities, and develop a self-directed plan for assessing the impact of the proposed initiatives. The planning phase was especially important for faculty and administrators at HBCUs who rarely have their financial support to spend time like this and thought for planning, time together as the team. Two technical assistance conferences were held in the fall of 1993 to help institutions prepare their proposals for the implementation phase. In January 1994, all 15 of the institutions awarded planning grants submitted proposals for the implementation phase.

After careful review of these proposals, 10 institutions were awarded grants of up to $290,000 each for the implementation and evaluation of their proposed projects. Now, a word about the projects, although the projects developed under the Third Black College Program, represent the common theme of, quote, improving retention, academic performance, and graduation rates, unquote. The approaches on individual campuses vary, dependent upon graduation rates on their campus, financial resources, existing retention practices, and selectivity with respect to students. Institutions have achieved different stages of development ranging from the implementation of basic tutoring and counseling programs to the much more sophisticated and difficult to achieve, changes in academic programs and involve changing faculty behavior. Recognizing this difference in stages of development, the HBCUs were encouraged to place themselves at a particular stage and to design a project program.

And they did. In addition to the institutional requests, we also recommended that might as be awarded to SCF to support the evaluation of the program, and this was done. The evaluation is designed to serve three purposes. First, it will provide technical assistance to each institution in measuring its accomplishments in the areas of academic achievement, retention, and graduation rates. The evaluator will assist each institution in developing an internal evaluation plan designed to meet this end. Second, the evaluation will monitor the success of individual projects and report on the progress of each institution in realizing its efforts to measure student achievement and retention. And finally, the evaluation will provide staff with an assessment of the program's long-term capacity to meet the subjectives. The staff for the Third Black College program consists of myself as project director. I took an eight month leave of absence from the program from January 1 of 95 to September 1 to be acting president of Tuble College.

The senior consultant on the program, the SCF program coordinator, Gene St. Clair, evaluators of Dr. Michael Nettles and Susan Euren, Susan is with Pew, Michael is an University of Michigan. And the Pew program officer is Ellen Burbank. In addition to staff, we also have an advisory committee for the program consisting of persons who provide national leadership and high education. And who are knowledgeable about HBCUs. The current members of the committee, we are, and the committee has changed because a couple of people have to drop out. Dr. Ann Cole, senior vice president of the Education Information Services in Boston, Dr. Barbara Haddon, former president of South Carolina State. And I see Dr. Tento has made on this committee also, this advisory committee, Dr. Vincent. Dr. Vincent Tento, professor of education and cultural foundation at Syracuse, and Dr. Israel Ike Trouble, president and CEO of the Florida Endowment Fund for Education. These are our advisory committee members.

And just to worry about some of the activities today, so this program actually started in June, the implementation stage started in June of 1994. We've had, we have workshops twice a year on one of the campuses. To me, I think this has been one of the most important products of this effort so far. Because these, these provide an opportunity for mutual beneficial interaction between the project staff of the 10 institutions. We invite that actually it's almost mandatory, the directors of the projects of the 10 projects together with the appropriate staff attend these workshops. And it provides interaction, exchange of ideas, discussion, and the exchange has really been phenomenal. It's just amazing. At the outset, when we were discussing the implementation grants and brought the campuses together, when they were still in the competitive stage, they were quite standoffish, obviously, because no one wanted to tell the other people as secrets.

And once the decision was made as everyone to get the grants, they realized the importance of coming together. And this, I think, has been a tremendous fallout. It also provides us, those of us who comprise the third black colleges program staff, an opportunity to assist in the provision of technical assistance to the grants. So, these occur twice a year. We've had three to date. And the fall of 1993, we held one at Fisk University, Spring of 1994 at Howard, fall of 1995 at Hampton. And our next one is scheduled for Spring 1996 in New Orleans, just happens to coincide with the jazz festival. To be hosted by Dillard and Xavier, I cannot only emphasize the importance of this coming together of the individuals who are involved in the project.

A second activity that I think is very important is when the site visits. Once or twice a year, to each one of the projects, depending on the individual needs of each campus. And these are conducted by the project director, the senior consultant, and the evaluators. And during these site visits, we meet with key administrative arts and project staff, students, et cetera, to assess the progress and provide technical assistance was necessary. Finally, just a word about the measurable objectives. The purpose of this program is to promote systemic change. Ultimately, the goal is to improve graduation rates at the institutions involved. In this context, each college or university was asked to establish a specific target to be achieved over the three year period. Obviously, an institution's past history, as well as the economic, political, and demographic characteristics of the community, was taken into account in the establishment of each target.

The program as a whole will have the following measurable objectives. To improve graduation rates at each college and university. To develop computer systems for the tracking of students. To promote institutional analyses of when students wrap out and why. To encourage departmental faculty to work together on curriculum development. To strengthen faculty advising. To encourage presidents to continue consortium meetings. That is those workshops beyond the life of the projects. And finally, we wish to develop a document on what works and how to do it. A specific outcome of the implementation phase will be the development of policies and practices on what works and how to do it. A document will be developed on the basis of the semi-annual visits to the institutions, the site visits I spoke about. The consortium, the workshop meetings, as well as additional information gathered. Dr. Edgar Eastmith, Director of Black College Retention Project, the Pew Charitable Trust. Dr. Frederick S. Humphries, president of Florida A&M University, has made significant contributions to higher education in general and for African Americans in particular.

Since becoming president of the university in 1985, Florida A&M has reached an all-time high in federal and state research funds, more than tripling to nearly $20 million under his administration. Dr. Humphries has also found the formula that attracts and retain African American students in higher education. So you're going to be dropping in and dropping out. So now, with the dropping in and dropping out, people dropping out the work gets the money to get a comeback to school and doing 24 excess hours in addition to $140 million in the majors. They end up 10 years getting out of university. So what the legislature said is that you've got to find a way to do education better than that in terms of getting the kids through and so that there will be improvements in the retention rates and graduation. Now, we developed a system which is called a SAS system. It's a student academic advisory system. It's a computer activity.

And we place every major on that system. So when you go to advise, you put your courses in as you complete your degree. So you can look and see every, when you go to be advised, you can look and tell every time exactly where you are taught, getting your degree and what courses you have to take. This computerized system, we think will be extremely helpful with getting kids out quicker with the contract on the computer in terms of what courses you have to take to graduate and advise them and you can get a printout while you're there. And to be advised, you know what you're taking, what grades you've gotten and then you can put in the courses that you're being advised to take. Now, we got Sterling Adams, who is our director of institutional research and planning. And he has this idea that we can lock that in. You know, students get advised, but then they go take what they want. And so, so we're going to put a stop to that with the computer.

If you get advised to take a certain kind of courses, we're going to mark on the computer that you were advised to take these courses. And if you try to take anything other than what you've been advised to do, you get locked out, you can't register at all. So, if you want to change what you're taking, the system will force you to go back to your advisor to get approval. So, this outside of the system is a is a bad problem. With the time saved, part of the reason why students don't graduate on time is that not enough sections are offered of classes. So, people can't get what they need to graduate. So, that's part of the retention problem. That's part of the movement through the system is offering more sections of the classes so that students will have more access to what they need to take to graduate on time. And so, they can get those courses. So, we simply have to offer more courses.

Now, money is still a big factor in retention. Still a big factor. If you cannot provide for the students, then they, if you cannot help them with the wherewithal to stay in school, take a full of loads, then they're going to take time to get a degree. Now, keeping students in school making progress through the green and making good grades is a tough proposition. And here's what I think can do to help that, right? So, I want to talk a little bit about the kind of things that we don't necessarily do at Florida in all of the way. But the kind of things that I think are important, part of it learn in the 13 College of Rooking Program, and part of the new way of doing things.

What I find, and what I mean, we started the Graduate Theater Program at Florida A&M University because we discovered that going to graduate school was not a proactive process. It was a reactive process. If students wanted to go to graduate school, they come ask a professor, how do I go to graduate school? But we were not proactive by working with students to tell them as a plan part of what we were doing, calling attention to graduate school. So in talking to kids, all the way along the line from freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, telling them about graduate school and what the benefits of going to graduate school and what a responsibility they had to go to graduate school. So we changed that at Florida A&M. Going to graduate school is no longer a reactive process at the institution. It's a proactive process.

Doc, see you Smith carries out that program. And so we have seminars and we call people together to talk about graduate school and how you go to graduate school and how you can get funded to go to graduate school. And then when I didn't create a pathway for students to go to graduate school, then the Hudson who's the back there is the coordinator of Florida A&M Graduate Theater Program. Other thing, there are departments in our university that never meet with their students as a total student body. I mean, still a student group, majors. Never call a major's meeting. They, I mean, if you would ask them, they would know who the majors are in that apartment. Because they never get together with the majors to talk about the professional requirements of the department or other discipline that the student has chosen to participate in. So they never meet. I describe the situation of what we do is that we teach whoever shows up.

So when kids register for class, they go to class and we teach them. But if, if a student is in math, 301 and the sequel is 302 and the person who completes 301 does not get to 302, the second member never knows that that person is not there. Because they only teach who shows up, not much is done with the ones who are absent and missing out in the sequence. So what we started doing, this was really interesting and good, right? I mean, I told three deans they had to report on what happened for the students in that school from the first semester to the second semester. In other words, they had to account for everybody who was in school the first semester in the second semester.

So I had a report. We have what we call a Management Council. We all get together. I see them. And we've got all of vice presidents, all the dean, all of the directors, all come together. And we talk about the university. So in those meetings, I asked the three dean, Dean of College of Science, Dean of Business and Dean of Engineering, to account for what happened from the students who were in the first semester. These will be the ones who enrolled in the second semester. And the accounting for them meant that they knew where every person was. So we gave them the exceptionalists. When the second semester came, we printed out from the computer, a list of kids who were in school, the first semester were not that a second semester. Then they had to call find out what happened to them. And it's interesting when you talk to these kids, right?

I call them. Like you said, I always do a little bit of that myself to show that it can be done. So I call, I took a list of kids and I call them. And I'll tell you one story. I call a kid who was an engineering major. And he didn't come back to school. And I call, and I got his father. And his father, Dr. Humphrey, he said, I didn't want to talk to you. I said, his son was a kid who had a thousand fifty SAT out of high school, had a good GPA. And he didn't come back to school. He said, well, my son thinks he ought to be a hairdresser. And he's trying to go to, he's trying to go to beauty school. And right now, he's in Washington trying to go to beauty school. So he said, I said, that kid needs to stay being an engineer. And he said, I agree with you.

He said, what can we do? I said, well, I'll tell you what. If you get him to come up here, I'll talk to him. And I'll pay half of his tuition if he will return to school. And the kid came up there. And I talked to him. I talked to him. I told him it's too smart not to be an engineer. He had all the requirements to be an engineer. And I told him we would give him support, academic support if he needed help. But just as an incentive to return, I'd pay half of his tuition in the semester in which he returned. So he got him back. He finished. He's an engineer today. Now, one of the stories, we had a student who had a 1350 SAT school computer science major, a 3 out of high school by 3.8. He got to school and he got a girlfriend. And he was on full scholarship.

But he lost his scholarship because his average dropped below a B average, 3.0. Now, I have a notice student. So I didn't see him the second semester after his grade dropped below 3.0. So I called a computer science department and I asked her, where is Butler? And the guy said, I don't know. And I said, you better find out where Butler is. Butler is a 1350 SAT 3.8 GPA. You better find out. Well, they went scurrying and they found Butler in pamphlet, washing dishes. So I told him to get him back to FAMU. We did. Butler finished as an honor student. He's pursuing a PhD in computer science.

Well, what I'm saying is, is that you got to know why your students are. Dr. Frederick S. Humphrey's president, Florida A&M University. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, write us. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. I would like to acknowledge Florida A&M University for their assistance in the production of this program. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America Cassettes. Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712.

That's in Black America Cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. The rate of progress, though, I think it's a function of the individual institutions, those institutions that have more resources to really begin to implement what it is and the city we're going to do. I'm going to be at a much faster rate, others I'm moving more slowly. The National Retention Project, part two this week on in Black America.