UI to honor more than 1,300 top minority high school students

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The University of Illinois plans to honor more than 1,300 of the top black, Hispanic and American Indian students from Illinois high schools Thursday, as part of its annual Salute to Academic Achievement.\nIf the pattern of recent years holds true, university officials say, more than half the students honored will choose to attend college at one of the university's three campuses as part of the President's Award Program for outstanding minority students.\nThe program, created by former U of I president Stanley Ikenberry, has more than doubled the minority enrollment of the university since the mid-1980s, said Tom Eakman, executive assistant vice president for academic affairs. About 2,500 President's Award Program students are enrolled this year.\nBefore the program, U of I was losing top minority students to other universities, many of them out of state, Eakman said.\n"That program and everything we did that followed it set a new tone for the University of Illinois in how it looked at diversity in general," Eakman said.\nIkenberry announced the award program during a Salute to Academic Achievement ceremony. He told the students being honored they were welcome at the university and that financial issues would not keep them from coming. The first group was admitted to the university in 1985.\nThe Urbana-Champaign campus now enrolls a larger percentage of underrepresented minority students than any other Big Ten school, Eakman said. In 1986, the campus had about 580 Hispanic students, compared with more than 1,700 now, and 1,200 black students, compared with about 2,000 now.\n"What the President's Award Program provided me with was a merit scholarship. It was a little push," said Sylvia Caballero of Berwyn, an English major at the university's Urbana campus.\nThis is the 20th year for the Salute to Academic Achievement. High schools identify their top minority students, and the university also considers those who score well on college entrance exams.\n"The primary reason for the event is to encourage everyone in the room to go to college," Eakman said. "It's also to honor them and ask that they at least think about one of the three campuses of the U of I"