Kate Duby – The Razorback Reporter

December 16, 2019December 16, 2019

Black students face lower retention rates statewide

By Kate Duby
The Razorback Reporter

Although first-year retention rates for black students in Arkansas have increased nearly 7% since 2015, black students still face substantially lower retention rates than white students statewide, according to recent data compiled by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.

From fall 2016 to fall 2017, black students at four-year Arkansas institutions had an average retention rate of 65.4%, compared to a white student retention rate of 75.6%, according to the 2018 Arkansas Department of Higher Education Student Retention and Graduation Report.

Retention rates generally increased for both white and black students from fall 2014 to fall 2016, but the gap remained significant, according to the report.

Kennedy Djimpe, 21, from Little Rock, withdrew from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock after his freshman year in spring 2017. After withdrawing, he spent a year out of state at vocational school completing prerequisites and certifications. He returned to UALR in fall 2018, but tuition was too high for him to re-enroll in the spring, he said.

Djimpe said he encountered personal hardships at UALR that made him not want to attend school there anymore. He also struggled to pay for college out of pocket, he said.

The average in-state tuition for the 2019-2020 academic year at UALR was around $9,530, according to the UALR bursar’s office.

During his two semesters at UALR, Djimpe accumulated between $5,500 and $6,000 in student loan debt. He is still in the process of paying off his student loans, he said.

If Djimpe could take student debt out of the equation, he “would still be in,” he said, “getting ready to finish my degree.”

Djimpe entered college as a music major but now plans to get a degree in radiography, he said.

Between fall 2011 and fall 2016, the first-year black student retention rate at UALR decreased overall from 64.9% to 60.4%, with fall 2015 having the highest rate at 68.5%, according to the 2017 ADHE Minority Recruitment and Retention Report. The report also indicates, however, that the graduation rate for black students at UALR increased by 9.7% from 2010 to 2016.

These retention patterns occur against a backdrop of declining minority enrollment at public institutions across the state.

Black students make up 25% of UALR’s undergraduate population, according to 2018 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

This makes UALR diverse compared to the UofA, which has a black student population of 4.4%, according to the UA Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Both the Fayetteville and Little Rock campuses have seen a decline in black enrollment since 2015; UALR saw its black enrollment fall 2.7 percentage points to 27.7% in fall 2015. Between fall 2015 and fall 2016, African American enrollment at the UofA decreased 1.9%, according to the 2017 ADHE Minority Recruitment and Retention Report.

John Post, the director of academic communications for university relations at the UofA, said declining minority retention rates at the UofA are influenced by numerous factors, including financial stability, academic success, physical and emotional wellness and social engagement.

November 26, 2019November 26, 2019

AccessABLE

Campus Organization Aims to Connect Faculty, Staff to Disability Resources

“If we as a society recognized the value that [people with disabilities] have because of the limitations they were born with –– if we recognized the critical thinking and problem solving skills that they have had to develop –– the need for access would disappear overnight.” — George Turner, Division of Student Affairs

By Kate Duby
The Razorback Reporter

George Turner was born paralyzed from the waist down, but he taught himself to walk by the time he was 5 years old. He uses a wheelchair to navigate the UA campus, where he works in the Division of Student Affairs.

Since Turner arrived at the UofA 10 years ago as a student, he has seen accessibility improve greatly. He thinks the university has grown in acknowledging the need for accessibility, and officials have gone out of their way to meet his needs, he said.

Turner now serves as staff adviser for AccessABLE, the UofA’s first disability resource group for faculty and staff, which met for the first time in October.

What began as a project in one graduate student’s service learning class evolved into AccessABLE.

Co-founder Kelly Dundon, who is getting her master’s degree in social work, noticed that while the UA campus offers many resources for students with disabilities, it offers few for faculty and staff, she said.

“We found that there are more resources for other, sort of, identity or diversity groups, but there wasn’t really a collective group of individuals when it came to the topic of disability,” Dundon said.

The group, which meets the first day of every month, aims to create a centralized body that engages in disability education, Dundon said.

“When we founded this group,” Dundon said, “we knew that our expertise started and ended with bringing people into the same space.”

Rather than being an advocacy group, AccessABLE serves as a platform for connecting members to available resources and starting a discussion on disability education.

Dundon and classmates Gonzalo Camp and Adam Laffiteau, co-founders of AccessABLE, organized an event for disability education and advocacy for their service learning project in the spring, Dundon said. The event featured a short film and a panel of four speakers who offered perspective on disability and shared their experiences.

Building from the momentum of the event, Dundon and her co-founders began partnering with the UA Office of Diversity and Inclusion to create AccessABLE, she said.

Turner thinks AccessABLE allows people with varying needs to connect with resources more easily, he said. He looks forward to seeing how the program will grow and in what direction the founders will take it in the future.

Turner also thinks the general demand for accessibility would decrease if more attitudes shifted to understand that people with disabilities have value to offer because of the limitations they were born with, he said.

“If we recognized the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that they have had to develop, the need for access would disappear overnight,” Turner said.

Turner thinks many qualified people are overlooked for job opportunities because of their disabilities, he said. He has seen it become a pattern in hiring practices, and he thinks that although employers might list a multitude of other reasons someone is disqualified, it speaks to a greater bias.

University employees seeking workplace accommodations can initiate the process by sending a request to their dean, department head, director or supervisor, or by contacting the ADA Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance (OEOC).

The OEOC provides information on accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and regulates accommodations for university employees.

November 26, 2019November 26, 2019

NWA Businesses Seek Ways to Increase Workplace Diversity

By Kate Duby
The Razorback Reporter

Corporations such as Walmart, J.B. Hunt and Arvest Bank are hiring executives who are training in diversity education, creating resource groups for minority employees and releasing annual reports that assess workplace diversity.

At 14.9%, Arkansas joins Missouri, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania in the second-highest percentile for African-American labor force share, according to 2016 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Representatives from the three businesses took part in a panel that highlighted workplace diversity initiatives.

Ebony Wyatt, director of sales at General Mills in Rogers, moderated the September discussion.

Tiffany Smith, corporate human resources business partner at J.B. Hunt, said the company is one of the first in the transportation business to implement a formal diversity and inclusion team; it focuses on self-awareness and training. Employees participate in executive diversity and inclusion coaching, which starts at the corporate level and moves down, Smith said.

J.B. Hunt executives also are working to increase minority recruitment, Smith said.

“So, we’ve made intentional efforts to target, for example, historically black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions and veteran groups where our college recruiting plans actually include those efforts every semester,” Smith said.

Diversity and inclusion are important to Smith because she is part of a diverse group, she said. She thinks minorities have been underrepresented in the places she has lived and worked.

“I want it to be kind of a consistent conversation that’s going on, where people show that interest and you seek out opportunities to say, ‘hey, I know we don’t look like each other or we don’t speak the same language, but I’m genuinely interested in who you are, what your background is, so that we can find out how to come together,’” Smith said.

Carmen Goncalves, senior director of merchandising strategy at Walmart, said company executives have begun actively engaging a more diverse base through community outreach and diversity education.

In 2017, 43% of Walmart associates worldwide were people of color, and 55% were women, according to the 2017 Walmart Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Report. Twenty-one percent of corporate-level officers were people of color, and 30% were women. Thirty-one percent of managers were people of color, and 43% were women.

Goncalves said her coworkers have been involved with area public schools by creating mentorship programs and open dialogue sessions.

“We make an intentional effort to invite everyone,” Goncalves said. “If we haven’t been, we have discussions.”

Goncalves thinks employers should be culturally competent and mindful of demographics-based workplace dynamics as industries change to become more diverse, she said.

“I think the feeling of exclusion is real for a lot of folks in underrepresented groups,” Goncalves said.

Panelist Latricia Hill-Chandler, Arvest Bank’s first-ever chief diversity officer, started her career in a traditionally male-dominated industry where she often felt excluded, she said.

“I found my voice because I was excluded,” Hill-Chandler said. “I was in a room with all white guys over the age of 40 at the time, and I was in my 20s, and I was overlooked on decisions.”

Hill-Chandler uses her role as chief diversity officer to help others have a voice and a place at the table, she said.

“Regardless of how educated you are, how much money you have or your family has, regardless of who you love, regardless of if you have a disability seen or unseen, regardless of anything – you should make sure and always feel like you’re included,” Hill-Chandler said.