By Lisa-Marie Martinez

As with all colleges, getting and keeping a diverse faculty and student body rests in the hands of the administrations. The Metropolitan State College of Denver is no exception.
“Metro [as it is locally called] has more students of color than the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado State University combined,” said Metro President Stephen M. Jordan. Since he took the reins in July of 2005, Jordan has vowed to “create an academic environment where students of color feel comfortable, challenged and independent.”
In the case of Metro State, “whose students-of-color population is 24 percent, diversity is one of the key planning themes,” said Assistant Vice President of Communications Catherine B. Lucas.
Jordan has taken steps to restructure the college in an effort to support and recruit a diverse population. When he began his presidency, he said the faculty, staff and administrators would become more diverse.
“The administration was predominately white when I arrived, and we recognized that we needed to change the face of the administration,” said Jordan.
Added Vincent C. de Baca, chair of the Chicano Studies Department, “Metro now has Latinos in important administrative positions, which it had never done in recent years.”
“We’re going to be the best at what we do,” said Jordan. “We will be, as a college, engaged in helping to solve problems of this urban community. It’s important that we are representative in our student body and in our faculty, that the faces of the student body be the faces of the community that we serve, and that the faces of the faculty mirror those of our students.”
Jordan said improving retention and graduation rates means having full-time faculty who advise students all along the educational track.
“Our goals have to be to both increase the total complement of full time faculty and to raise the percentage of the faculty of color, because we had fewer faculty of color as a percentage than we did students of color as a percentage,” he said. “What we want to do is increase our faculty of color across all our disciplines so that students of color will see the opportunity to become a major [earn a degree] in any area.”
Jordan plans to add 60 new faculty members every year for the next five years. Since 2006, the school has hired 20 people of color, including 10 African Americans, eight Latinos, and two Asians.
“We have asked all of our faculty and staff to help us identify new candidates for positions,” said Sallye McKee, associate to the president for institutional diversity. “Some key faculty and staff have attended national conferences to recruit high quality faculty, including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.”
“One of the important factors about retention is a student having a [feeling of] belonging to something,” said Dr. Jordan. “To try to remedy that problem we’re going to begin doing a concept that has been done in other institutions and shown to be very successful; and that is to create and put students into Learning Communities,” said Dr. Jordan.
Once students are enrolled, the school will register them in two or three courses together in a semester, said Jordan. Starting in the fall, the school will require every conditionally admitted student be a part of a learning community. Eventually, Jordan wants all freshman be a part of this community.
“The classes themselves become their sense of place, and the faculty in those courses works together, collaborating on how to put that course work together,” said Jordan. “The data is very clear; it’s true at Metro and it’s the same as it is nationally. If you can get students through the first two years, after that the retention rates are always very good. The first two years are the hardest part of getting students through, so we’re putting a huge emphasis on that whole concept.”
Metro has a federal grant from the Department of Education. It is one of the largest federal education grants for a college with an urban school district. With the grant, Metro is partnering with Denver Public Schools on curriculum reform, particularly around math, sciences and reading.
“We’re working on our curriculum reform so that our students are better prepared to work in an urban school district,” said Jordan.
Between June 2004 and April 2005, the New York State-based Garrison Institute mapped the status of K-12 educational settings. The group’s 2007 Mapping Project sought to identify similarities and differences in program ideas and methods. The Garrison Report recommended several changes in curriculum development that Metro took to heart.
“The text Before the Mayflower was replaced with African Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora,” said Ronald Stephens, professor and chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. “Academic credit for travel and study in various regions of Africa is available to students. We hope to establish an international institutional partnership with the University of Cape Coast in Ghana to develop a range of faculty and student exchange opportunities.”
Jordan has also launched an initiative to become a Hispanic serving institution by 2010.
“What that does is open up a whole array of federal funding. The funding is not dependant upon it going to any particular student or group of students, or any particular faculty member,” said Jordan. “Any institution that has that designation is eligible to compete for certain set-aside funds within a whole array of academic areas. We think that what is most important is that this campus be viewed as an absolutely inclusive campus from the perspective of any person who wants to be here.”

Metro’s Administrative Changes Under Stephen Jordan:

Hired Latina Rodolfo Rocha as provost and vice president of academic affairs.
Hired African American Sallye McKee to lead the newly created Office of Diversity, bringing her in from a similar position at the University of Minnesota.
Hired Judi Diaz-Bonaquisti as associate vice president of enrollment management.
Promoted African American Cherrelyn Napue from director of alumni relations to assistant vice president of alumni relations.