Springfield—The Board of Regents discovered the need to recruit and retain more minority students at NIU after studying data revealing a decrease of graduating minorities over the last six years.

The Student Retention Study was conducted at the regency universities over a six-year period in order to follow one class of students through their college career, Board of Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves said.

egent Clara Fitzpatrick said her main concern after reading the study was the sharp decrease in the number of black males graduating from NIU compared to the number of black females. The study showed in 1986 that 78.9 percent of blacks enrolled at NIU were female, leaving 21.1 percent males.

Fitzpatrick asked what the university would do to change this. She said 30 percent of NIU’s starting athletes are black males, “so you (NIU) do know how to recruit them.”

Provost Kendall Baker said a higher percent of minority students in special admissions programs (such as NIU’s CHANCE program) leave school because they do not have the persistent, close tutoring and monitoring an athlete has.

“We aren’t doing the monitoring we could be doing,” Baker said. He suggested having older students assist the newcomers by tutoring them.

To address the issue of recruiting and retaining more minority students, Baker said, “The first step has already been accomplished.” That step was the Student Retention Study. He said to offset the “overbalance” of female blacks, a program will have to be developed to seek out and recruit more minority students, emphasizing black males.

“To my knowledge, there has not been a retention study done (by NIU) in over 10 years,” Baker said. He said this was another important step to find out why minorities are leaving NIU.

Baker said he would like to conduct studies on a regular basis. Some things the studies would focus on would be why special admissions students leave the university, social climate and curriculum.

Fitzpatrick said she did not agree with the funding of NIU’s special admissions program, CHANCE, because of the low retention rate. However, Baker said he would like to strengthen and improve the program.

Another question regarding the study asked about the number of minority students who left NIU without graduating. Groves said the study does not show whether those students have transferred or quit school.

Academics is not the only issue needed to be addressed. While average ACT scores and class ranking were also a part of the study, Jon Dalton, vice president for student affairs, said, “We know role models, social climate and financial aid all play important roles in retaining minority students.”

e said some issues that can be addressed to help the problem of retention are financial aid, peer counseling and positive social climate. “Unity Through Diversity was certainly a part of that (positive social climate),” Dalton said.