Texas Tech Officials: Diversity to Play Role in Recruitment Goal

Increasing diversity among the student population may play a pivotal role in Texas Tech’s goal to reach 40,000 students by 2020,  officials who work with Texas Tech to promote diversity said Nov. 11.

Jobi Martinez, director of Texas Tech’s Cross-Cultural Academic Advancement Center, said the Center works with faculty, student organizations and the student population to accomplish the 2020 increased enrollment goal each day through a ‘two-prong’ approach

“We work with the classrooms to engage students in discussions regarding diversity themes in the curriculum,” Martinez said. “Anything from partnering with faculty that study the history of certain populations or partnering with faculty that are dissecting or examining social justice themes, diversity and equity themes or race and ethnicity.”

Along with the goal of increasing students to 40,00 by 2020, diversity should also grow during that span.

Martinez said the Center also provides students with resources, multicultural programing  and student engagement while also focusing on academic recruitment and retention efforts with students.

“We provide scholarships. We provide internships,” she said. “We work with graduate students and give them some professional development opportunities here in our office. We just feel that the programs that we provide such as the Mentor Tech program partners students from minority populations with faculty and staff.”

Leticia L. De Larrosa, unit coordinator at the advancement Center, said diversity comprises a broad spectrum and believes Texas Tech covers that spectrum well.

“It includes everything, not just cultural, race, ethnicity,” De Larrosa  said. “It’s now gender, students that have needs like handicapped and just other needs, whole diversity. Diversity includes everything you can think of, any kind of special need of a student. So it’s trying to think of all those needs.”

Apart from focusing on students, Texas Tech has also tried to increase diversity by hiring prominent minority faculty and staff, Martinez said.

“I think President (Guy) Bailey was having an interview the other day and he made the point that when we bring in outstanding faculty, which Alberto Gonzales is an outstanding faculty member, students follow those faculty members,” she said. “So that assists in the recruitment of additional students.”

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began his term as a speaker, professor and recruiter for the Texas Tech system for one year  Aug. 1, according to the Texas Tech Web site. Gonzales teaches  a junior-level seminar course, Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch, in the Department of Political Science.

According to diversity statistics from the Office of Institutional Diversity Web site, the number of non-white students attending Texas Tech increased from 4,775 to 7,540 from 2000 to 2008, representing a 57 percent increase.

The highest increase in student enrollment came from Hispanics, which had 1,251 more students enrolled in 2008 than in 2000. That number is more than the increase in White students during that same span, which was 1,099, according to the Web site.