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WANTED: Hispanic Students: Colleges Stepping Up Efforts to Recruit Hispanics

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Jennifer Burk, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Jun. 28--Georgia College & State University leaders want to say "hola" to many more Hispanic students in the future.

With the help of a $700,000 gift this month, the college plans to hire a bilingual recruiter to help bring in more Hispanic students to the college.

The gift from the Goizueta Foundation, a philanthropic group, also will fund a scholarship for Hispanic students, said Paul Jones, the school's vice president of institutional research and enrollment management.

GCSU is one of several colleges and universities across the state stepping up its recruitment of Hispanic students because of Hispanics' rapid population growth in recent years.

Between 1990 and 2000, Georgia's Hispanic population increased by about 300 percent, according to a report titled "The New Latino South" on the Pew Hispanic Center's Web site, pewhispanic.org.

In 2004, the nation's Hispanic population reached 41.3 million, outpacing the growth of all other groups, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Hispanic school-age population also is growing by leaps and bounds. Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Hispanics ages 5 to 17 in the South grew by 322 percent, according to "The New Latino South" report.

As these students graduate, colleges are pushing forward with measures to recruit them.

"We began to start reaching out more over the last few years, particularly because we started to see some of the growth in the state in the area," Jones said.

At GCSU, the number of Hispanics enrolled has increased from 47 students in fall 2001 to 86 in fall 2005.

Keeping these students at the college will be a "crucial" task for the recruitment specialist the college hires, Jones said. This will be done by developing new programs aimed at helping the students and making sure they know about the ones already in place.

REACHING PARENTS, TOO

Georgia Southern University received a similar gift of $800,000 from the Goizueta Foundation last year.

"They're very interested in us recruiting Hispanic students here in the state," said Nancy Shumaker, director of the Center for International Studies at Georgia Southern.

In the past couple years, the university has started a greater focus on recruiting Hispanic students, said Susan Davies, the school's director of admissions.

Recruiters from the school attend college fairs targeted at Hispanic students. The admissions office also has a bilingual counselor, and recruitment materials are also available in Spanish as well.

Although most students who are interested in Georgia Southern speak English fluently, many of their parents do not.

"We definitely had that need where (parents) felt comfortable having someone who could answer questions in their own language," Davies said.

She said she hopes the admissions office's Web site will have links in Spanish by fall.

The number of Hispanic students at Georgia Southern has increased from 191 in fall 2001 to 260 in fall 2005, but they still only make up less than 2 percent of the school's total population.

"There aren't a lot of Hispanic students at Georgia Southern, and there aren't a lot of activities for them on campus," said Maritza Ortiz, a rising junior and vice president of the Hispanic Student Association on campus. "The only time that you really do see Hispanic culture on campus is during Hispanic heritage month."

Ortiz, who is Puerto Rican, said she would like to see a more diverse campus overall. "It's a work in progress," she said.

John P. Cole, vice president for university admissions at Mercer University, said that during the past five or six years, the school has focused more on Hispanic recruitment, placing advertisements in a college guide that is targeted at Hispanic students and also awarding Goizueta scholarships.

About two dozen new students each year identify themselves as Hispanic, he said.

"We know it's going to continue to grow as more students continue to graduate from high school," he said.

Wesleyan College also has significantly increased its recruitment of Hispanics in the last four years, said Ruth Sykes, director of communications for Wesleyan, with school representatives traveling to a national Hispanic college fair and awarding scholarships for Hispanic students.

Dee Minter, associate vice president for enrollment services at Macon State College, said the school works primarily through its high school counseling network to identify Hispanic students. There is no specific recruiting methodology in place, though, she said.

EFFORTS BEFORE COLLEGE

Besides individual schools' recruiting efforts, programs across the state are helping prepare Hispanic students for higher education before they even reach college age.

Georgia Southern houses a Latino Outreach Center, which works with the local Hispanic population, helping school-age children and their families improve their language skills, Shumaker said.

"There's an awareness here at the university that we have to do more and more," she said.

The University of Georgia is home to a program called Steps to College, which helps prepare students whose first language is not English for higher education, said Christine Burgoyne, the program director.

"It tries to welcome them into the university environment, whether it's a university, a college or a technical school," she said.

Although the program is open to anyone whose first language is not English, most of its participants are Hispanics.

Steps to College began in 2001 as part of the University System of Georgia's Hispanic Pilot Project. The program concluded in 2004, and since then UGA has expanded the program and funded it through the office of the vice president for public service and outreach, she said. In that time, the program has gone from serving 15 to 30 students to hundreds.

"We need these young people to have an investment in the future of Georgia," Burgoyne said. "They need to feel that this is their state, they belong here, they're appreciated, and they're going to grow up and be contributing adults."

To contact Jennifer Burk, call 744-4345 or e-mail jburk@macontel.com [mailto:jburk@macontel.com].

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.)

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