Peterson's checked in with last year's winner, F. Douglas Boudinot, Associate
Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Georgia. Dr. Boudinot reports
some progress, and talks about ways to overcome hurdles on the road to increased
inclusiveness.
| Q: | How is it going since UGA won the award last year? |
| A: | It's going well. We've made progress, but we have a long way to go. |
| Q: | What has changed? |
| A: | Well, as you recall, as part of our program, we were planning a faculty handbook for recruitment. We developed a survey we're planning to send out to all CGS schools; we're testing it in house and so far we've had a good response. |
| Q: | What have you found so far? |
| A: | We found at UGA what we thought we'd find. Departments with faculty invested in recruitment are more effective in creating an inclusive environment. A lot of this depends on faculty initiative and efforts.
We have as a goal diversity assistantships; we're in the process of working with our legal team and we're making progress. We hope to have something definitive in January. |
| Q: | How have legal issues affected your efforts? |
| A: | At UGA, legal issues have slowed down our efforts in creating the diversity assistantship program. Anything regarding race, gender, special interests had been put on hold. |
| Q: | What effect has the court activity at UGA had on recruitment? |
| A: | Surprisingly at the graduate level and even at the undergraduate level, applications have not gone down. At the graduate level, we have increased minority enrollment 30+% over two years. This is a result of a number of programs coordinated by the graduate school as well as the direct efforts of the faculty. As I said, we are making progress, but we have a long way to go. |
| Q: | What about the award itself? How did you use it? |
| A: | We advertise it wherever we go! In recruiting, the award has really helped us. It's been a boon to our recruiting efforts. Even though we're just starting, we expect an even better year next year. |
| Q: | Any other things noted in the application process this year? |
| A: | We have a much greater number of on-line applications. We developed a new on-line application process and we expected it to go up. |
| Q: | Is it used across the board? |
| A: | Minority populations are as likely to use the on-line application as any other group. We're also seeing more international applications on-line. |
| Q: | Any obstacles? |
| A: | Everything takes a while. The biggest obstacle we face is faculty time. The faculty are interested, and they want to get involved, but we're finding that time is the biggest obstacle in getting them involved in creating a climate of diversity on campus. For the graduate school, we find it less time consuming to bring prospective students here to campus, that for us to send faculty out. The prospective students visit with current students; they are great recruiters, by the way. |
| Q: | Any unforeseen benefits? |
| A: | Well, we have high ambitions for this effort, and when you set your goals high, it's harder to be surprised. We're presently surprised at the strides we've made in increasing minority graduate student enrollment - it's going faster than we expected. In fifteen years, we increased minority enrollment by 30%, then in the last two years, we have increased it by 30%! |
| Q: | What about retention? |
| A: | We're fortunate, we have pretty good retention in our programs. Really, it starts with recruitment and acceptances. If you get the right students in, you increase your success rate in retaining them, and seeing them be successful when they're finished. |
| Q: | Any final comments? |
| A: | We are thankful to have received the Peterson's/CGS Award. It is benefiting us and we recommend that others strive for this award. |
