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Academic standards surge as DePauw increases campus minority population

When Bob Bottoms assumed the presidency of DePauw University in 1986, one of his goals was to diversify what he describes as “fundamentally an all-white school.” His timing was right, and his arguments were convincing. National demographics showed sharp increases in the Hispanic and African-American communities, but DePauw’s minority population remained stagnant at one employee and 3 percent of the student body at the college in Greencastle, Ind.

Bob Bottoms: "We don't learn very much from people just like ourselves."

His rationale for change was that colleges have a responsibility to educate underrepresented groups and that schools benefit from diversification efforts as dramatically as do the underserved students.

“My feeling is that we don’t learn very much from people just like ourselves,” says Bottoms, who admits some constituents feared diversity might translate into a quota system that could lower the school’s academic standards. He assured them that it would not, and he’s made good on his word. Eighteen years after announcing his goal in his inaugural address, Bottoms is pleased with DePauw’s progress, which is reflected in the following facts:

Minority students now constitute 15 percent of the undergraduate population.
The number of minority faculty and staff has soared to 50.
The retention rate last year among minority students was even higher than among majority students.
First-generation college youth make up a fifth of the campus community.
Applications are pouring in at a record rate, allowing the school to be the most selective in its history.
US News & World Report has cited DePauw as a top-tier national liberal arts college for four consecutive years.

Bottoms downplays his personal role in the school’s success and is quick to emphasize that some ideas have worked better than others. A pre-orientation program to help underserved students realize the academic expectations of the school was phased out after “we found the kids didn’t need it; they could hold their own,” says Bottoms. Another experiment, special recruitment weekends for minority students, drew mixed reviews. The program conveyed the message that DePauw welcomed youth from all ethnicities, but it also created the impression that “there were more minority students here than we actually had.” What proved to be a more effective recruiting tool was an outreach program to high schools with significant minority enrollments in New York, Chicago and Atlanta.

“We met with guidance counselors and principals,” says Bottoms. “At one point we even rented buses and brought students to our campus who were interested in looking at DePauw. We were able to recruit several young people who, in turn, had good experiences and went home and told their friends.” A similar program, set to launch soon in Cleveland, will invite to campus several gifted urban teenagers who simultaneously have juggled high school classes with science and math courses at a local community college. “These are top-flight young people who are uncertain about attending a liberal arts school because of economics,” explains Bottoms.

Paul Booth is typical of the kind of student that DePauw wants to continue to attract. Booth, a senior from Cincinnati who has dual majors in political science and religious studies, leads a minority student organization on campus. He landed an internship with Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao after Chao visited campus to deliver a speech. “I researched a lot of schools and heard a lot of talk about how they give you leadership opportunities, but DePauw really delivered,” says Booth. “I call DePauw a ‘mighty powerhouse’ because it’s small and selective, but its alums have had a huge impact in the world. As soon as I got here, I knew it was the right place for me.”

DePauw's ability to offer generous scholarships, financial aid packages and work-study opportunities is a key to enrolling students of Booth's caliber. “Some people ask, ‘What do you get for your investment?’ The answer is that you get a wonderfully diverse campus, so it’s a sound educational expenditure,” says Bottoms.

One program that requires significant scholarship support but ensures an influx of talented and diverse students is Posse, a New York-based initiative that began in 1990 and has had a presence at DePauw since 1996. The program, run by the Posse Foundation with partial support from Lumina Foundation, identifies and trains youth leaders from urban public high schools in several cities and sends them in 10-member groups (“posses”) to 19 colleges across the country. Each fall DePauw welcomes two posses — one from Chicago and a second from New York City.

“These students not only bring ethnic diversity but because they’ve grown up in the city, they bring a different perspective,” says Bottoms, who serves on Posse Foundation’s board of directors. “They have the potential to have a dramatic impact on a campus, particularly a small college. In fact, the (2002-03) president of our student body (Edmond Krasniqi, ‘03) is a Posse student who probably wouldn’t have found his way to DePauw if it weren’t for the program.”

After almost two decades of steady progress toward his goal, Bottoms believes that diversity is “institutionalized enough so that when the college hires its next president the candidates will be asked questions that I was never asked.” Among those questions: What is your commitment to diversity? The school’s decision makers are likely to give the issue priority because minorities are well represented on the board of trustees, and 60 percent of the university’s minority alumni earned their degrees in the past 18 years. The result, says Bottoms, is that “anytime the college gathers, there is a certain richness of diversity.”

Learn more about Lumina Foundation's support of the Posse Foundation.