INSIDE THE NUMBERS: UNIVERSITY TACKLES PROBLEM OF LOW MINORITY ENROLLMENT

Southeast Missouri State University hopes to boost black enrollment to nearly 980 students within three years.

That would amount to an increase of more than 600 students over the current level of black enrollment.

But that could prove a tough task in a region where black enrollment historically has been low.

"It is very ambitious," said Dr. Rob Parrent, associate vice president for enrollment management at Southeast.

The university recently hired Parrent as it looks to boost overall enrollment to 10,300 from the current 8,200 level.

But a look inside the numbers show the problems Southeast faces in trying to boost minority enrollment.

The 24-county Southeast Missouri region had a total population of 728,399 in 1990. The black population totaled 26,646 or 3.66 percent of the total population. A majority of the black residents live in the region's Bootheel.

Few blacks in the region take the American College Testing Assessment or ACT, a national college-entrance examination, that Southeast and other universities require for admission.

Overall, black students lag behind white students in the ACT scores.

"We don't have enough of them taking the test and, secondly, they aren't as well prepared to take the test," Parrent said.

The high school dropout rate is high in many parts of the Bootheel, he said.

Statewide, the dropout rate for black students is nearly double that of white students. For white students, the rate is 5.4 percent; for blacks, 10.4 percent.

Parrent said Southeast must recruit more blacks from St. Louis city and county if it hopes to boost minority enrollment.

The university has opened an office in St. Louis to help with the recruiting effort.

St. Louis County had 139,318 black residents in 1990; the city of St. Louis, 188,408.

Dr. Dale Nitzschke, Southeast's president, said the outreach office will focus on recruiting white as well as black students.

Parrent said the university must work to get more black students in the region to take the ACT.

Only 166 blacks from Southeast Missouri high school graduating classes in 1991 took the ACT compared to 4,155 whites.

A majority of the blacks scored low on the test, Parrent said.

Black students from the 1994 high school classes received better ACT scores. But only 160 black students took the exam compared to 4,133 white students.

Nitzschke said Southeast needs to work with school districts in preparing students to take the ACT.

"The prospects that we get in our colleges are directly dependent upon what happens at the elementary and secondary school levels," he said.

Parrent suggested the state needs to do more to help prepare high school students for college.

"It is a quality of life issue," he said. "It is an ethical commitment for the state, I feel, to do the best job it can to help its citizens."

Nitzschke recently appointed a 37-member Commission on Minority Affairs to assist the school in boosting minority enrollment.

The commission met for the first time Thursday.

Nitzschke asked the commission members to submit written suggestions. He said Friday he would review the suggestions once he receives them, and develop and seek feedback from the commission on a set of priorities.

Nitzschke said Southeast hopes to tap private corporations for funding for minority scholarships.

For its first 82 years, Southeast operated under the state's segregation laws and barred blacks from attending the school.

It wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned such laws that the university opened its doors to black students.

The university admitted its first black student, Roberta Slayton of Cape Girardeau, in 1954. Helen Carter of Cape Girardeau was the first black to graduate. She graduated in 1956 with a degree in education.

Over the next quarter century, black enrollment grew. In the fall of 1980, Southeast had 310 black students enrolled in classes.

In 1981, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights cited Southeast and the University of Missouri campuses at Columbia and Rolla for their low black enrollments compared to the number of minorities in their service regions.

As a result, Southeast worked to recruit more black students, faculty and staff.

The number of undergraduate black students peaked at 665 or 8 percent of the total student body in the fall of 1988, school officials said.

Since then, the university has seen a steady drop in black enrollment. In the fall of 1996, Southeast had 316 black students. They made up less than 4 percent of the student body.

The numbers improved slightly this fall, with 328 black students enrolled at Southeast. But that number still amounted to only about 4 percent of the some 8,200 students enrolled.

Southeast isn't alone in having relatively few black students.

Blacks made up only 2 percent of the student body at both Northwest Missouri State University and Southwest Missouri State University in the fall of 1996.

Black students represented only 6 percent of the student body at the University of Missouri-Columbia last fall.

Southeast officials said they have made strides in minority hiring.

The dean of students and two of the five college deans are black. One of the assistants to the president, the director of the Campus Assistance Center and several program directors are black.

The university had 38 black staff members in the fall of 1991. Last fall, the number had grown to 51.

The number of minority faculty members increased from 28 to 32 over the same period.

At the same time, the number of black faculty decreased from 13 to nine. Blacks represented only 2.4 percent of Southeast faculty in 1996.