In a field on the outskirts of the University of New Hampshire campus, a council of nations was held in September. The people who attended and coordinated this council where mostly brown, but bodies of all colors came to observe the customs. The council members spoke rarely-heard languages. They wore headdresses of brightly colored feathers and played drums in a rhythmic fashion, stomping leather moccasins to the beat as they moved in a circle.

On the outskirts of their dancing circle were teepees, which served as exhibits and artifacts of how their people used to live. Beyond those tents was the university of 12,000 students, largely oblivious to these Native American people who make up the greatest percentage of minorities in the state of New Hampshire, but the smallest percentage of enrolled students and faculty at the school.

 “We used to be the ‘Native (American) Hub’ of northern New England for a while,” says former UNH Native American Council Association member Chris Charlevois, a consulting coordinator of the NACA Powwow. “(NACA) had a superb national program on campus in the 1990s.”

Five percent of the student body at UNH is comprised of ethnic minorities. In 2002 the national average for minority students in higher education institutions was 29 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

In recent years, university officials have stepped up recruitment and retention plans for students and faculty of color, including developing and implementing a Diversity Strategic Plan this fall that will be assessed and monitored through 2009. Diversity programs and enhancements have been a slowly evolving and growing trend at UNH since the 1960s.

Sharon Demers, assistant vice president of Human Resources, enrolled at UNH in the early 1970s. As a black teenager from Virginia, this was one of the last places she expected to attend college. A teacher at her high school, who had been offered a job as a minority recruiter by the University, told her about scholarships the school was offering to minority students.

“I came at a time when the federal government had indicated to predominantly white institutions that they had to diversify if they wanted federal funding.” Demers remembers the school had basic minority recruitment and retention programs back then, including minority advisors and a professor in Student Affairs whose objective was minority retention.

“There have been times when the university has been sincerely committed to retainment and recruitment of a (diverse) student body and workforce,” says Demers. “What has been lacking is a support structure for that commitment.”

In 1971 the university developed the first draft of an affirmative action plan and program. In 1989 the UNH Affirmative Action Office was created and academic departments began five-year affirmative action goals and plans. In 1991 the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs opened its doors to provide a safe haven for students of ethnic minority groups.

The goal of the five-year Diversity Strategic Plan is to increase recruitment and retention of faculty, staff and students at the University for ethnic minorities, as well as female faculty in traditionally male-dominated fields. According to Wanda Mitchell, vice provost for diversity, no specific numbers have been determined as a goal for the plan, but each year the schools and colleges of UNH will present an annual report of the initiatives they’ve implemented to advance diversity. These practices will be overseen by the Diversity Council, made up of 26 faculty, student and administrative members responsible for planning and assessing the Diversity Strategic Plan. “We’re looking for a positive increase (in the numbers) which means we’re headed in the right direction,” says Mitchell.

The numbers in recent years do show a steady increase in minority students and faculty at UNH. According to data provided by the University’s Institutional Research and Assessment department, minorities made up 1.74 percent of the graduate and undergraduate student body. Fourteen years later that number had risen to 5 percent.

Mitchell’s position was created by the Diversity Strategic Plan. Her job, in a nutshell, focuses on university-wide recruitment and retention of minority students. Mitchell also served on the 24-member Diversity Strategic Planning Task Force that created the Diversity Strategic Plan. That group began meeting in 2004 to address recommendations from study circles and an external consultant who had looked at faculty diversity earlier that year.

According to Mitchell, the study circles showed that UNH “needed to engage in a greater effort to recruit and retain faculty, staff and students of color,” as well as to take steps within the community to make the climate of and around the university more engaging for minority students.

“People who had been doing this for 20 or 30 years are happy about this first diversity plan,” says Mitchell.

According to Princeton Review, UNH was voted the 11th most homogenous campus in the country and ranked fifth for little race/class interaction out of 361 colleges.

“We hired 16 new faculty (this fall) and out of those 16, six of them were faculty of color,” says Mitchell. “Next year at this time we hope to see an increase in those numbers.”

The Discover UNH conference in November, hosted by the admissions and residential life offices, brings 45 to 50 potential multicultural students to the school for several days to participate in undergraduate life. The potential students attend social events and sit in on a class to get a feel for what it’s like to go to school at UNH. Robert McGann, director of admissions, says they’ve assigned diversity ambassadors, whose goals are to identify host students for the multicultural visitors to stay with and introduce them to student life.

The admissions office has also established programs with national organizations like the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA, setting up workshops about going to college and the financial aid available for college students, and bringing potential students to campus for tours.

McGann says that the admissions department is already seeing results. Last year they had an 11.5 percent increase in applications received from multicultural students and a 4 percent increase in enrollment of multicultural students.

Former NACA member Charlevois remembers when NACA had 17 full-time members during the time he was active in the group in 1994. Now the group, after being defunct for several years, has only three members. He says that the school has to lend more support to the needs of Native American students coming to UNH. “It’s hard to attract native students here if (the school) doesn‘t have what they want,” Charlevois says. “These are people who grew up in a whole different culture, in different parts of the country with different customs.” 

“I would like to see them start looking at Native students as independents and add their needs … and to step out their cultures to look at a Native’s culture,” says Charlevois.