IU black faculty, staff ready to welcome new IU president

Kevin Brown, co-president of the IU Black Faculty and Staff Caucus and a law professor, says new IU leader Michael McRobbie will be a good president who has a solid sense of what will be best for the University in the long run.\nOne of McRobbie’s long-term goals for the University is making the campus more diverse.\nAccording to his Jan. 23 speech to the Bloomington Rotary Club, titled “Seven Directions of Change: The Next Decade at Indiana University,” McRobbie wishes to double the enrollment of minority students by 2013.\nThe fall 2006 student enrollment was made up of 38,247 students, but only 4.4 percent were black, according to the Office of the Registrar Enrollment Report. That percentage is less than the 8.4 percent of blacks who make up the state’s population, according to 2000 U.S. census data.\nBlack student enrollment reached its peak in 1981, but the black student population increased during Adam Herbert’s presidency, Brown said.\nCharlie Nelms, vice president for institutional development and student affairs, held conversations with McRobbie when he was serving as provost. McRobbie indicated that diversity was a priority, Nelms said.\n“Things that got started under Herbert’s reign will hopefully be carried out by McRobbie,” said Brown, of the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus.\nD’Anna Wade, president of the Black Student Union, said she was sad to see Herbert’s departure because he was such a strong figure for blacks on campus, but she said McRobbie seems approachable.\nWade is encouraged by McRobbie’s diversity goal of 2013 and hopes he has what it takes to reach that goal, since he is not a minority himself.\n“Even though it’s a noble thought, he really needs to evaluate what he feels is attainable,” Wade said. \nAt the news conference Thursday in Indianapolis, McRobbie fielded questions about diversity on the IU campus. He spoke of his proposal that will fund the first year of his diversity goal.\nAlvin O. Chambliss, a professor in the School of Education and the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, said the hiring of McRobbie is a “disaster” that has “compromised the integrity of higher education.” McRobbie’s plan to raise admission standards at IU is detrimental to public education, Chambliss said.\nEric Love, director of diversity education, said it will be “business as usual” with McRobbie as president.\n“I know we still have challenges to face. We are going to keep doing our jobs, doing what we do so IU students graduate with diversity education,” Love said. “I imagine the new president will be supportive, (because diversity) is part of the IU mission statement.”\n–Staff writer Alberto D. Morales contributed to this story.