Ball State improves faculty diversity

MUNCIE -- The College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University has created a task force to improve diversity among its faculty members.\nBall State employed 868 faculty members in the fall of 2002. Just 15 people were Hispanic, 17 were African- American and 39 were Asian-American.\n"Hopefully, once we get this up and running, other colleges on campus will recognize this as an effective mechanism to do this work, and we can do similar things across campus," said Michael Stevenson, a psychology professor and director of Ball State's Diversity Policy Institute.\nThe College of Sciences and Humanities is the largest college on the Ball State campus, with departments for chemistry, English, history, math and political science.\nBecause each university college handles its own hiring, a university-wide task force to improve diversity would not have worked, Stevenson said.\nSharon Bowman, chairwoman of the department of counseling psychology and guidance services, said just the presence of minority faculty members helps give students role models and provide "broad experiences."\n"Minority students don't see us unless they happen to be taking courses in one of our departments," Bowman told The Star Press last year. "It's very easy to assume that only Caucasian people become professors if you never see anyone who is not a Caucasian professor"