Notre Dame and Saint Mary's actively recruit minority students to create
By NOREEN GILLESPIE
News Writer
Editor's note: In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrations on campus, The Observer explores diversity issues in a four-part series. Part one examines the challenges and successes of recruiting minority applicants.
As a junior in high school, Adriana Garces knew she was going to college.
She just didn't know how she was going to get there.
As the South Bend native sat in her classes at Washington High School, she mulled over several different plans — she could move to Texas, and try to go to school there, or attend community college at Indiana University at South Bend, close to home.
Ready to explore her educational options further, she found the Saint Mary's Encuentro program, a two-week summer camp where high-achieving Latina students have the opportunity to live the college experience. Through attending classes taught by Saint Mary's faculty, living in residence halls and participating in a mock college application process, the women learn what it takes to be a successful candidate for admission at Saint Mary's.
"I was interested in the program because it was a pre-college program," Garces said. Having already toured Saint Mary's, she was also interested in meeting "other women who were interested in higher education," she said.
Through mock college-level classes in literature, history, sociology, math and art, students meet other Latina women who are exploring the meaning of culture, identity, and their educational plans. For Garces, the program gave her the foundation to define her college future — and herself. Now a Saint Mary's senior, Garces credits the program for giving her the motivation to apply to Saint Mary's.
"We had some seminars where people from financial aid and admissions came to speak with us," she said. "They told us if we wanted to pursue Saint Mary's, we could. They answered a lot of questions — before, I didn't think Saint Mary's was a financial option."
While the program is a valuable tool to teach the college application process to Latina students, it is dually important for the College. While minority enrollment has increased by almost 4 percent in the past decade, it hovers at just 7.1 percent — numbers that are far below where many directors and administrators would like to see them.
"We have an internal goal of 10 percent," said Mona Carrandi de Bowe, associate director of admissions who specializes in multicultural recruiting. "But it takes time. It's a high goal to make that jump in one year. We're getting there — particularly with our increases in the past five years."
The Encuentro program is just one in an arsenal of tactics that helps Saint Mary's target minority students early on in their high school career — something that is critical to successfully recruiting — and enrolling — minority applicants, said Mary Pat Nolan, director of admission.
"What we really try to do with multicultural students is give them time to prepare," Nolan said. "Part of recruiting multicultural students is helping them identify what their goals are, helping them know what courses they need to take — answering the question of what would a successful candidate look like."
"We also try to be a service to the family — we want the family to be comfortable with their daughter's choice as well. You can't do that in a six month period," Nolan said.
Saint Mary's targets potential minority applicants through membership in organizations such as the National Hispanic Institution, the Lorenza DeZavala (LDZ) organization, the National Scholarship Service for Negro Students (NSSFNS) and the A Better Chance program, as well as targeting high schools with high minority populations. Through leadership conferences, camps and college fairs sponsored by membership in these organizations, admission counselors have the opportunity to reach minority students as early as their freshman or sophomore year in high school to educate them about opportunities at Saint Mary's.
The relationship between the College and the applicant becomes critical in overcoming a host of factors that are often roadblocks to enrolling minority students at Saint Mary's. Distance from home, low minority enrollment, family ties, climate, financial aid concerns and minimal knowledge of the college application process can be obstacles to successfully enrolling minority students.
The strong relationship between the College and minority applicants can help to address these issues, suggested Carrandi de Bowe.
"Traditionally, a lot of students that come from underrepresented groups are first generation college students. We're really teaching the college application process," Carrandi de Bowe said. "We're trying to provide a service for these students, even if they don't come to Saint Mary's."
Teaching the college application process is often involves more than just making connections with the student, however. Particularly when it comes to financing a college education, admission and financial aid counselors have the task of teaching the parents about the financial side of the admissions process — often through a language barrier.
"You generally find a real concern about loan indebtedness," said Mary Nucciarone, director of financial aid. "And it's not just funding the education — many parents have the concern about their daughter fitting in the community. What we try to do is talk to them about the investment of an education. We have them talk with other minority students, who can share their experience."
Additionally, the office works with the Office for Multicultural Affairs to work with parents from non-English speaking backgrounds, and the financial aid office has been developing literature in Spanish to assist parents in understanding the financial aide system.
The trust factor, however, remains critically important, Nucciarone said.
"It's important to work on the trust relationship," Nucciarone said. "If a student comes in here and tells her story, she wants to keep telling that story to the same person. For that reason, I try to work with a lot of the minority students myself."
Through a combination of work study programs, federal aid and scholarships, Nucciarone tries to help minority applicants and families make a college education affordable. But she does run into roadblocks. The financial aid office has had a high success rate in helping minority students fund their education at Saint Mary's — 95 percent of minorities receive some form of financial aid, with the average grant standing at $19,778 per year. Sometimes, the money just isn't enough to lure a student to Saint Mary's.
And that can leave Nucciarone scratching her head.
"One phenomenon that we see is even if we offer free tuition and fees, the student will still decline our offer for admission," she said. "[The answer to enrolling more minorities] is not necessarily giving more money. There's a combination of factors that play into that — the student may have been admitted to Stanford and even been given free tuition. You don't know."
As administrators continue to pursue increased multicultural enrollment at the College, they can find themselves trapped in an oxymoron. Without a high minority enrollment on campus, many potential applicants could feel that they will be isolated. One way administrators attempt to connect minority students before they enroll is by introducing current minority students to minority applicants.
It worked for Romona Parks, a first-year African-American nursing major.
"I don't see the color," Parks said. "When I came out here to visit, it was so gorgeous, so peaceful — I loved it. My hostess was black, and she'd still be out here when I got here. I didn't feel like I wouldn't fit in."
Getting minority students on campus and in contact with current students is one of the most successful ways of overcoming roadblocks to enrolling minorities, Carrandi de Bowe said.
"If we can get students here to visit, so they can see it, they can know what we're about," she said. "We have more hurdles to clear if all they know about the College is what they see on paper."
But since arriving on campus, Parks will admit that the transition was hard — and she began to see the racial breakdown of the campus more than she had during the admission process. Realizing that she was the only African-American nursing major and the only African-American student in her classes, Parks did begin to realize what it meant to be a minority on campus.
"You need to come here with your own perspective … you need to come in here with something in your heart that says you're going to give Saint Mary's a chance," Parks said.
For the minority students who have thrived at Saint Mary's, however, they are content with their choice to come to the College.
"The people that I came across during the Encuentro program were so supportive, so encouraging," Garces said. "It impressed me how much personal attention the admissions and financial aid people gave me. Once I became a student here, the atmosphere worked well for who I am."
All News Stories for Tuesday, January 23, 2001
