Fisk diversity plan targets Hispanics
By Denyse Clark
Diversity Institute Fellow
10.29.02
Fisk University plans to offer a free computer course to Hispanic high school graduates as part of a goal to diversify its student body and help Hispanics to become more competitive in the local job market.
Currently, Hispanics and other ethnic groups account for less than 3 percent of the student body at Fisk, a historically black university in Nashville. Blacks account for 97 percent of the 853 full- and part-time students enrolled this semester.
“We need to be culturally diverse to compete for other non-Black students,” said Peter Woolfolk, vice president of communications and public relations.
One of the ways Fisk hopes to begin accomplishing its diversity goal is through the computer technology course, a community outreach project that is designed to improve computer literacy in Nashville’s Hispanic community, Woolfolk said. A meeting will be held in the very near future to determine when the course will begin.
The university is collaborating with Ramón Cisneros, editor of Nashville’s largest Hispanic newspaper, La Campana, to identify other specific needs that it can address to attract Hispanic students to the campus.
Cisneros said one of the basic problems in the Hispanic community is that young adults graduate from high school and fail to continue in higher education.
“Basically the reason, among many others, is that many universities in Latin America are free,” said Cisneros, “so there is not a culture of saving money for college among the Hispanic community.”
The goal of the computer technology course is to provide Hispanics an opportunity to begin enhancing their skills so they can increase their job prospects.
“There is a huge demand nowadays in corporations and other groups, particularly nonprofit foundations, that want to reach out to the Hispanic community, and there is a big demand for bilingual people for a bilingual workforce,” said Cisneros. “However, a lot of (Hispanics) need a little more than a high school education in a lot of cases.”
Fisk officials plan to meet with leaders of the Hispanic community to identity potential Hispanic students for the computer technology course. The meeting will be held to clarify certain issues including what will be expected of students enrolling in the class.
The course will be taught by a Fisk faculty member, and students will receive a certificate upon successful completion of the program, Woolfolk said.