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UF takes 'One Florida' to heart

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Minority-recruitment overhaul improves campus

David Colburn

Special to the Sentinel

September 11, 2005

Gov. Jeb Bush's office released last week the most recent freshmen enrollment figures for the State University System. It is the fifth such report since the implementation of "One Florida," which ended the use of affirmative action in 1999 in evaluating students for admission.

The results indicate that more and more Hispanic students are gaining admission to the state's universities but that the number of African-American students has slowed. At the University of Florida, where competition for admission is most demanding, the number of African-American freshmen students declined only slightly for the first time in five years, while the number of Hispanic students increased significantly.

It is not fully clear at this date why the number of African-American freshmen has declined, although it is a troubling development. Clearly, the Board of Governors will want to determine what happened.

Despite this development, there has been dramatic progress at UF on a number of fronts since the implementation of One Florida that we believe makes UF more attractive to students of color than ever before.

Shortly after Bush announced One Florida, a UF task force appointed by then-President Charles Young reviewed the university's admissions policies, the environment facing students of color on campus and its relationship with minority communities in Florida.

The university began by changing the application process for admission so that it would be fairer and more transparent for all students. We made a commitment to reading a student's full application file and grading it based on a student's core curriculum, class standing, answers to two essay questions, the applicant's status in the "Talented 20" (which reserved a state university seat for the top fifth of graduates from Florida high schools, and other race-neutral measures aimed at maintaining or increasing minority enrollment on campuses), extracurricular activities in high school and in the community, and the student's SAT score.

We brought in teachers/counselors from 50 high schools each year to assist us in reading the 22,000-plus files of our applicants. This had two benefits for us. First, it provided a core of able professionals who could add value to our admissions-decision process. And second, these teachers were free to share information with their students so they understood the process and could compete more effectively for admission.

During the application period, the university leaders, including trustees, actively pursued students of color because we believed it was fundamental to the educational process and because we believed UF should reflect the diversity of our state.

Simultaneously, we worked to improve the multicultural environment on campus for students and our off-campus programs. On campus, we focused on a series of educational and social programs for students and emphasized the university's commitment to diversity and mutual respect in a multicultural environment.

With the assistance of faculty and academic advisers, we focused on improving our retention and graduation rates for all students, and especially students of color. Today, the University of Florida has the highest four-year graduation rate for all students in the State University System, and its graduation rates for Hispanic and African-American students rank among the top 10 universities in the Association of American Universities.

Central to our off-campus efforts was the Alliance Program. At the same time that Bush launched the One Florida initiative, he also sought to strengthen Florida's public education system. We thought we could assist in the latter and simultaneously improve our relationship with the state's minority communities. A central aim of our strategy was to promote access to a university education by Florida's minority high-school students.

Since the fall of 2000, UF has developed partnerships with Jacksonville Raines, Jacksonville Ribault, Miami Senior High School, Miami Carol City, Orlando Evans and Orlando Jones. The university provides a staff person for each city who is assigned to work with teachers to assist them and their students. Through this partnership, we have developed three major initiatives for all the schools: awarding five scholarships to the top five graduates of each high school; a summer program at UF for ninth-graders who have a special interest in the sciences; and a faculty leadership-development program, including the Summer Leadership Institute at UF, for eight faculty members from each school. President Bernie Machen is currently examining ways to strengthen this initiative and other UF outreach programs to minority students.

In retrospect, the One Florida Initiative has helped the University of Florida. Our university relied almost exclusively on affirmative action to diversify its class, but had done little else to build a lasting relationship with minority students, parents and minority communities, or to sustain a multicultural environment on campus.

Moreover, while UF contributed significantly to the needs of the state in higher education, it was also clear that we could do more. We found in responding to the Bush initiative and to the state's needs in public education that it advantaged the university and was consistent with our mission as a land-grant institution.

David Colburn, a professor of history at the University of Florida and the director of the Askew Institute, served as provost of UF until December 2004. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.