Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1994 [PAGE 573]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1996]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

561

tation by stating that access refers to the original land-grant mission, diversity refers to efforts to recruit a diverse student body, and inclusiveness refers to the social climate on campus. Dr. Manning cited several significant statistics showing increases in student enrollment and faculty growth for some minority groups and women. She also cited numbers showing declines in representation of African-American students at UIC. She quickly pointed out that the retention of African-American students has improved over the last ten years. The explanation given for this was that more community college students were being encouraged to stay in those institutions longer, acquire more credit hours, then transfer to UIC. Dr. Manning emphasized that increased retention is more important than greater numbers of transfer students who do not stay once admitted. Ms. Lopez asked if the increases shown by these numbers over the last several years were significant, since the representation had been very low for a long time. Dr. Manning assured the board that the growth was significant. Discussion among the board members on these statistics ensued and some board members admonished the administration to redouble efforts to recruit more minorities and women to the top ranks of the University. The trustees also questioned the effectiveness of the large number of programs at all three campuses designed to address the issue of representation and retention of minority and women students and faculty. In conclusion, Ms. Lopez advised that a uniform reporting format for all campuses to report their gains and losses in these areas would be helpful for sake of comparison. The trustees also asked the administration to prepare a report for the next year that focused on representation of minorities and women on the faculty of the University.

MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE ON STUDENT AFFAIRS

Trustee O'Malley, chair of the Committee on Student Affairs, opened this meeting of the committee and indicated that the purpose for the meeting was to receive reports from each of the student trustees. She then noted that it is important for students to engage themselves in extra-curricular activities on the campuses because these are important sources of leadership expedience. She mentioned that prospective employers are usually anxious to learn of a student's participation and involvement on campus, outside of the lecture hall and the laboratory. She then spoke of some of the activities that the student trustees had undertaken in the past year and asked each of the three to elaborate on these. Trustee Malone reported on a forum he had organized at the Springfield campus that included the other members of the board and student leaders at that campus. Next, Mr. Mathew made remarks about an advisory committee that he had formed at the Chicago campus that had a three-fold purpose: to create a forum for students to discuss