NIU is awaiting a decision from the Illinois Board of Higher Education to pass a proposal which would fund a program to recruit 100 more minority transfer students annually.

Lynne Waldeland, NIU assistant provost, said the proposal stemmed from a Board of Regents study which showed the graduation rate of minority transfer students is higher than that of minorities who attended NIU as freshmen.

Waldeland said the Regents suggested that all the universities in the Regency system address the issue and target more recruitment toward students who already are in college.

Robert Burk, NIU associate director of the Office of Admissions, said the minority transfers have a higher retention rate because they already have succeeded at other colleges. “We want them to continue their success (at NIU),” he said.

Waldeland said the idea of the program is to retain minority students as well as recruit them. “We’re all very anxious to increase the number of minorities who will graduate … It doesn’t do much good to recruit them if we can’t get them back out into the world with their degrees.”

The program will place most recruitment emphasis on community college students because if they want to get further than an associate’s degree, they will have to transfer to a four-year university, Waldeland said. She said it would be difficult to recruit students away from another four-year university.

Burk said the program will begin with the admissions office. “We would first earmark a counselor to recruit minorities in the Chicago area,” he said.

The most difficult task the counselor will have will be to make the potential students aware of NIU’s advantages, Burk said. He said many of the students who graduate from community colleges in Chicago tend to transfer to colleges in the same area.

Burk said the counselor will try to recruit students through direct mailings and personal visits.

Tendaji Ganges, NIU Educational Services and Programs director, said his department will give support to the transfer students through counseling and help them make the transition from the atmosphere of a community college to a large university campus.

Waldeland said the College of Education will correlate with the Kennedy-King Community College in Chicago to particulate the interests of the transfer students for teaching careers. She said, “It’s a creative idea. These minorities could go out into society and have a big impact on their students.”

NIU still has a long wait to know whether the program will be funded, Waldeland said. “But we’re all hopeful because (Illinois) is very committed to increasing the number of minority graduates.”

Ganges said although the proposal is not yet in the talking stages, it has received “good marks” for its potential. He said the number of minority transfers out of Chicago is “miniscule.”

An institutional research survey conducted by the IBHE revealed a total of 83 minority students compared to 1,361 white students transferred to NIU in 1987.