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• Thursday, March 29, 2012
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OUDaily.com ››
Laney Ellisor, campus editor Kathleen Evans, assistant campus editor Chris Miller, assistant campus editor dailynews@ou.edu • phone: 405-325-3666
Historians, lawyers and social scientists will debate about the nature of religious freedom as part of a free symposium Monday on campus.
Race: Lack of faculty diversity a national issue Continued from page A1
Today around campus A workshop, “Capstone Central: Doing Library Research for Your Capstone Paper,” is open to students of all majors from 3 to 3:45 p.m. in Bizzell Memorial Library, Room 149D. A seminar about using technology for academic success, part of Student Success Series, will take place from 5 to 6 p.m. in Wagner Hall, Room 245. A lecture, “Women and Political Change in the Middle East,” will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. OU Write Club’s open mic night for writers will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at Café Plaid. An information fair for OU Club Sports will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. in Couch Tower’s social lounge. The fair serves to get out information about the club sports offered at OU. Hamburgers, chips and drinks will be provided for those who attend. The OU Juggling Club will meet from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Huston Huffman Fitness Center, Room 140. A free flute recital featuring Sarah Frisof will take place from 8 to 10 p.m. in Catlett Music Center’s Pitman Recital Hall.
FRIDAY, MARCH 30 The 36th Annual Medieval Fair will take place through Sunday at Reaves Park. Admission is free. A forum about the future of American journalism will be held at 3 p.m. at Burton Hall, Room 210. A session about citing sources using Zotero, a Firefox add-on, will be held at 3 p.m. at Bizzell Memorial Library, Room 149D. A master class taught by mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. in Catlett Music Center’s Pitman Recital Hall. The baseball team will play Kansas State at 6:30 p.m. at L. Dale Mitchell Park. The softball team will play Kansas at 7 p.m. at Marita Hynes Field.
SATURDAY, MARCH 31 The baseball team will play Kansas State at 2 p.m. at L. Dale Mitchell Park. The softball team will play Kansas at 2 p.m. at Marita Hynes Field.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1 The softball team will play Kansas at noon at Marita Hynes Field.
to the student population, more than 5 percent. Under-representation of minorities within faculties is a national problem as well, according to the American Federation of Teachers, which released a report to promote racial and ethnic diversity in faculty members. Opposition to affirmative action efforts and the national trend away from creating and filling full-time tenure faculty positions are the two major national factors that contribute to the underrepresentation, according to the federation’s report.
Diverse faculty benefits students Well-educated minority faculty members, like minority staff members and students, offer the college community varying perspectives that prepare students to interact better in the community, said human relations professor George Henderson in an email. Henderson became the third full-time black faculty member in 1967, according to his biography. He has written multiple books on race relations and diversity about OU, including “Race and the University: A Memoir” in 2010. There is a problem with racial representation in the OU faculty, Henderson said. But the solution is more complex than simply recruiting more minorities, he said. There are more black and Hispanic males in prison than in college, Henderson said. “The black and Hispanic male pipeline has shrunk disproportionately,” he said. Furthermore, there is a small pool of possible minority job applicants, and few of them are retained or promoted, Henderson said. OU is constantly working to create and maintain a diverse culture among its
Daily File Photo
George Henderson lectures Sept. 6 in Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Heritage Room. Henderson has lectured and written a book, called “Race and the University: A Memoir,” about diversity at OU.
“The black and Hispanic male pipeline has shrunk disproportionately. ... Furthermore, there is a small pool of possible applicants and few of them are retained or promoted.” George Henderson, human relations professor
students and employees, OU spokesman Michael Nash said. The applicant pool is constantly changing and only represents a snapshot in time.
Five years with little change The percentages of minorities have stayed consistent for the past five years, keeping within one percentage point, according to data from the Factbooks. OU directors select faculty and staff based on the qualifications of the applicant and the value he or she brings to the campus, Nash said. OU’s affirmative action plans are based on a formula, Provost Nancy Mergler said in an email. The formula attempts to determine the number of professors of
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a race or ethnicity or gender available in the workforce. The formula looks at currently employed tenured or renewable professors at certain universities, Mergler said. It also considers how many people are graduating with degrees. The percentage of minorities and women in each OU academic unit is compared with the percentage of minorities and women in the national availability pool for the discipline based on the formula, Mergler said. Deans, chairs and directors are informed of the number needed to mirror national availability data. Meeting the national availability is only the initial goal of enriching the diversity of faculty across the campus, Mergler said. “We are all obligated to
continue to strive for greater diversity of faculty to better help our students prepare for the workforce of the 21st century,” Mergler said. The national availability data predicts that 17 percent of the regular faculty, not including deans, should be minorities, according to Mergler’s data. About 20 percent of regular faculty at OU are minorities. It’s dangerous to focus just on ratios and percentages of minority faculty, Henderson said. Instead, the faculty should be viewed as a team that has a broad range of competence from acceptable to excellent, Henderson said. Most institutions want the best available minorities for their faculty, and OU is one of them. “It’s time for more departments to stop trying to only hire minority superstars,” Henderson said. Diversity for minorities should look like diversity for whites: average, above average and excellent, Henderson said.
In a Tuesday news story, “Courses challenge students’ abilities,” an infographic comparing the number of A’s given in rigorous and gen-ed courses was mislabeled. The labels indicating which line is which were erroneously swapped. A Tuesday news story, “Restaurants bid for space,” incorrectly stated the number of restaurants that submitted bids for the space in Adams Center currently occupied by Burger King. Nine restaurants, including Burger King, bid for the space before the March 16 deadline. Visit OUDaily.com/corrections to see an archive of our corrections
Continued from page A1 in Burr Park in 1997, he said. “Molly Boren is the person who kept talking about it ... and getting students involved from the beginning,” he said. “[The inaugural event] happened right here on the day that we also dedicated David Burr Park.” Since 1997, students have taken the mission of Arbor Day to heart and stepped up in remarkable ways, Boren said. When ice storms struck campus in December 2007 and damaged more than 3,600 trees, students took the initiative to begin cleanup, Boren said. “The campus was devastated ... it looked like bombs had literally been dropped on campus,” Boren said. “Students came forward on a very cold, rainy day, and they turned out as volunteers. They picked up limbs. They helped us repair trees.” The work students did on that one day alone is estimated in value at over $150,000, Boren said. “The work they did on that day helped us bring the campus back to the beauty we’d had before,” Boren said. “Many of us thought we’d never get back to where we were before, and it happened because everyone joined in together.” That communal spirit has taken root in the Arbor Day ethos, and Wednesday’s participants were able to take part in the planting of Arbor Day’s 1,000th tree, a water oak, which could someday grow to be one of the largest trees on campus, Boren said. “Planting a tree is an unselfish act because you’re planting them for those that come after you,” Boren said. “It’s an act that ties you here, brings back memories of your time here.” After the speeches, participants were invited to walk
Above: UOSA President Hannah Morris (left) and OU President David Boren share a laugh after Clarke Stroud, vice president for Student Affairs, encourages members of Omega Psi Phi to do their signature barks during Wednesday’s Arbor Day opening ceremonies. The fraternity was among seven recognized for outstanding work on adoptan-area locations on campus.
Photos by Melodie Lettkeman/The Daily
to the College of Continuing Education, where trees were waiting to be planted. When volunteers arrived at the site, university-provided shovels and saplings resting on their sides were already positioned for the coming work. As groups began digging and planting, OU Landscape and Grounds Director Allen King described his annual
Arbor Day preparations. “I start [planning] right after the first of the year, trying to find an area that’s in need of trees, some place that’s really good and functional like this wide-open area right here,” King said, m o t i o n i n g t o t h e l aw n where the sounds of volunteers putting shovels to dirt echoed behind him. King tailors his Arbor Day
Left: Huston Huffman Center staff member Tyler Webb prepares the ground for a new tree during Wednesday’s Arbor Day celebrations outside the Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education. Students, faculty and staff came together to plant 75 trees on campus.
purchases to each year’s planting site, he said. “I usually put my order in for trees according to what the ground’s like, what’s been growing good here,” he said. “With this big of an area, I’ve selected trees that will grow to be monstrous. I mean, we want big, big trees for this area.” The trees purchased by OU for Arbor Day events are
part of the landscape department’s annual budget and come, whenever possible, from local nurseries, King said. “We purchase as close to home as we can, and these are trees we would have planted anyway,” he said. Since participating in a tree-planting ceremony in sixth grade, King said similar events have always held a special place in his heart. “When I go back home, I get to see this tree I planted,” King said. “I may be telling my age, but it’s amazing how large it’s become.” King’s landscaping employees welcome the help improving the look of campus, but he said he also hopes students take pride in their work. “Of course, we’ll come out tomorrow and do a little cleanup, but the bottom line is the students planted [trees],” King said. OU Outreach Advanced Programs employee Debbie Bergman was among the participants who took time after completing her work to pose for pictures with her now-upright sapling. Bergman had not participated in Arbor Day before and said the proximity of the planting site to Kyle McCarter Hall of Advanced Studies, where she works, encouraged her to take part. “I like the idea of coming back to the tree again in a couple of years and keeping an eye on it,” Bergman said. “One of our students was out helping us too, so he can come out and see it as well. I told him he can bring his kids some day.” Bergman and Nguyen’s experiences are not uncommon, King said, and that’s why he enjoys the event. “The planting of trees, when I watch students plant them, I reminisce about what me and my sixth-grade class did that year,” King said. “It kind of gives you an ownership of the campus.”
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Continued from page A1 database, Scott said. “We are the go-between between students and employers for internships and full-time positions,” Scott said. “Every day some employer is going on and posting jobs.” If students get job offers, they should consider more than just the pay, Scott said. “ You should choose your first job not by how much you will get paid but from how much you will learn,” Scott said. “You’re not going to retire with your first job, or at least you hopefully won’t.” Students without job offers can consider applying for graduate school to make them more competitive when the market is better in the future, said Clay Wesley, OU Graduate College recruitment and engagement liaison. Graduate school enrollment during the past 100 years has spiked when there is a major war or depression, which happened in 2008 and 2009, Wesley said. “You’re starting to hear a lot more that a master’s degree is the new bachelor’s degree, so a lot of jobs are more easy to secure by going on a further two years,” Wesley said.
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A multimedia concert, performed by the OU Symphony Orchestra and featuring music from Disney’s “Fantasia” and “Fantasia/2000,” and Disney costume parade for children will be held from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Catlett Music Center’s Sharp Concert Hall.
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ARBOR: Event beautifies campus, creates lasting changes
Here we treat you like Family . . .
The baseball team will play Kansas State at 1 p.m. at L. Dale Mitchell Park.
Corrections
Thursday, March 29, 2012 •
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