Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
PART II
SECTION 12
Appendix: Department recruitment plan; Campus Affirmative Action plan
1. Attach a report of the unit's written plan to reach its diversity and inclusivity goals.
If the institution has its own plan, please attach a copy of that.
(See Appendix, Section 12)
A review of Standard 12 should begin with a review of minority representation on campus as addressed by the accreditation team report of the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges. While the report is seven years old, it provides a good historical background for the campus. From the journalism department's vantage point, we think the campus, but not community, has become more inviting to minority students and faculty, yet many of the underlying problems still exist, fueled in part by state politics.
The W ASC report clearly outlines some of the important issues that the journalism department faces as it works to meet the requirements of Standard 12. Following are some relevant excerpts from the 1996 W ASC accreditation team:
"If it were easy to achieve larger enrollments of minority students, then CSU,
Chico would have accomplished its goals of minority participation many years ago. Efforts to diversify have not been more successful, in part, because there are barriers. There are historic patterns of enrollment and a lack of critical mass of minority students that may tend to deter others. There are some conditions in the town of Chico, where 90 percent of CSU, Chico students live, that may be uninviting to minority students. There has been a resistance in the academic community at CSU, Chico to the use of some affirmative action strategies that have been successful elsewhere. Finally, there are legal issues that may complicate admissions, scholarship, and employment decisions. California is one of the states that has sought to redefine civil and racial rights.
"Despite these barriers, CSU, Chico has increased minority enrollment in recent years, at a time when the general enrollment was declining. The Visiting Team applauds this progress, but believes that the CSU, Chico leadership should place an even higher priority on recruitment of minority students. This may be necessary to prevent CSU, Chico from becoming a smaller, 'whiter' campus. If the law changes to make some forms of affirmative action more problematic, it will be important to mount an aggressive admissions and recruitment process. CSU, Chico should continue to build a strong marketing program that will reach out into minority communities and show minority students how it pays to go to CSU,
Chico.
"As part of the site visit, the Working Group on Student Issues conducted focus group discussions with CSU, Chico minority students. Team members' voices are in the first person plural;
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
'We heard some observations about the experience of minority students that differ from the experience of other students. The comments surfaced in two meetings with minority students. The dominant reactions were predictable. There are too few students of color here and even fewer within any given group. There
....................................................................................................................... '"
The W ASC team made two recommendations: 1) "Try to create an environment in
'greater Chico' that is safe, free from harassment and intimidation and welcoming, friendly, and respectful for all students, staff, and faculty. The climate that minority faculty, students, and staff have described has a deleterious and chilling effect on the lives and scholarship of people of color at Chico. It is not learning-centered;" and 2)"Greater efforts should be made to describe the minority student experience accurately" even if such descriptions are "painful for the university and the Chico community to acknowledge."
2. Describe how the unit fits into the overall diversity/inclusivity plan for the university. Show that efforts to recruit and retain women and minority faculty members and minority students are not discriminatory but are part of an overall program that recognizes contributions of all underrepresented groups.
As part of the self-study process, it is necessary to go beyond the university's plan. While faculty understand that the department's efforts are restricted by university policy, the challenge is to work within the legal restrictions of the state constitution and court reviews of that document, which prohibit: preferential activities in the hiring of people because of their race or gender; preferential admissions based on race or gender; or activities such as awarding or establishing scholarships to or for minorities or women.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has no effect on the
California law that goes beyond federal law and forbids preferential treatment in public agencies. This law, passed by referendum, requires that we use creative approaches to meet Standard 12. For example, in awarding scholarships, we have used low income as criteria, which has resulted in an increase in department scholarships for minorities. In the hiring process, we have taken aggressive steps to expand the hiring pool to attract qualified candidates who also happen to be women or minorities.
Two points may also be of interest. The referendum campaign that led to the banning of preferences has also been cited as creating a hostile atmosphere for minorities in the greater Chico area, which is 90 percent white. We are seriously concerned about a proposal to amend the state constitution in spring 2004 to make it illegal for public agencies to gather data on race and ethnicity. It is unclear what the fallout of the campaign might be; we can only hope that the divisiveness of the 1996 campaign to ban racial preferences is not repeated.
A commitment to having and maintaining a diverse and multicultural faculty and student body requires aggressive attention and methods. After we were found in non-compliance with Standard 12 in 1997, the department focused on the following specific goals:
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1. to employ at least one faculty member who is a minority . We accomplished this with the first faculty opening we had after the last accreditation visit. The Hispanic male who was hired through a search process that reached out to many different groups was also the most highly qualified candidate for the job.
2. to achieve a departmental percentage of minority enrollment that matches or exceeds that of the university overall. This also was accomplished. We would note that while the university average has grown about 25 percent in the last decade (from about 16 percent in
1992 to 20 percent today), the journalism department has grown from about 9 percent to
20 percent, nearly 110 percent.
3. to achieve a departmental graduation rate for a percentage of minority students that matches or exceeds that of the university overall. This also has been accomplished.
4. to prepare students for working in a multicultural society, while emphasizing that fair and accurate representations of all people are part of the foundation for practicing excellence in journalism. To that end we have started a new course that focuses on diversity. Further, we passed a department resolution that urges faculty to keep track and document their efforts to include diversity in all classes. Also, based on recent work at the
Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a faculty member will lead faculty workshops on ways to include diversity throughout the curriculum. Samples of recent changes in the curriculum--the first fruits of this Poynter experience--are in Appendix, Section 3.
Service Area: The following counties in Northern California make up the CSU, Chico service area: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter,
Tehama, Trinity, Yuba.
Based on the most recent census figures, what percentages do the following groups represent of the population of the unit's geographic service area as described above?
Group
White
Black! African American
American Indian/Alaskan native
Asian
Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander
Other race
Two or more races
Hispanic/Latino (any race)
Female
% of population
82.4
1.6
2.4
3.6
0.15
5.9
3.9
12.1
50.5
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
Table 7. High school population
For the most recent year for which data are available, how many students in the following categories have been graduated from high schools in the unit's service area? It is possible to obtain this information from state departments of education. Please indicate source( s) and year of data.
Group
Black! African American
American Indian/Alaskan native
Asian
Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander
Other race
Two or more races (includes no response)
Hispanic/Latino (any race)
White
Source of data: California Department of Education Web site
Year of data: 2000 number graduated
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343
512
32 n/a
27
946
6073
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
Table 8. Student populations
Show numbers of male, female, minority and white students enrolled in the unit, the percentages they represent of total journalism and mass communications enrollment, and the percentages these racial/ethnic groups represent of the total institutional enrollment.
Use figures from the most recent academic year for which complete data are available.
Academic year: 2002-2003
Group
Black! African American
American Indian/Alaskan native
Asian
Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander
Other race
Two or more races
Hispanic/Latino (any race)
White
Male Female
4 7
0
2
3
0
2
2
3
3 n/a
9
52
28
142
% of total in unit
3.6
0.7
1.3
2.0
1.0
12.1
63.6
% of total in institution
1.8
1.3
4.4
1.0
2.3 n/a
9.8
65.2
4. If your unit's percentage of minority student enrollment is lower than the percentage of minorities in the population of your service area and lower than your universitywide percentage, what plans do you have to increase the percentage of minority students in the major during the next six years?
During the last decade the journalism department has more than doubled its number of majors who are minorities, matching the university percentage and exceeding the percentage in the service area.
As the W ASC report outlines, CSU, Chico faces special circumstances and complex barriers as it attempts to increase minority enrollment. The university undertakes an ongoing program to recruit students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The journalism department has benefited and should continue to benefit from those recruitment efforts
(See recruitment section of university plan in Appendix). Recruitment materials from the journalism department are carried by the outreach program representatives as they visit urban high schools throughout the state. The department has mailed requests for information to dozens of students through this effort (there is no formal way to identify minorities, but a high percentage of the contacts come from high
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico schools that are in urban areas). We will continue those efforts along with direct outreach to high schools and community colleges.
The department's growth in minority enrollment is due also to its efforts to target scholarships to needy students, to provide leadership opportunities to minority students who excel on the student newspaper and student-managed public relations agency, to encourage minority students to apply for and receive national scholarships, and to encourage student editors to focus on diversity issues.
The department will maintain a program of recruiting minority students who attended community colleges and to identify transfer students who are minorities and applied for admission to the department. This may be particularly effective because students may have a choice of campuses, but few other campus journalism programs will attempt to recruit those students.
However, the reality of the CSU system is that a large percentage of minority students will opt to attend one the 21 urban CSU campuses near their homes. To continue to meet Standard 12, the best plan for the journalism program is to tie its minority recruitment efforts to the universities and to go beyond that effort. The steady growth in minority enrollment for the department suggests that its action plan is effective and should be maintained.
5. Assess the unit's effectiveness in retaining minority students from first enrollment through graduation. Describe any special programs developed by and/or used by the unit in the retention of minority students. Note the role of the advising process.
The department of journalism has no formal retention program and instead depends on the highly effective retention program of the university, which provides tutoring and support services for minority students (See Appendix, Sect. 12, p. 2). The program is well known and popular with minority students, as noted by the W ASC report. It is expected that retention rates for journalism majors are the same as the general student body.
The journalism department's mandatory advising program requires students to meet with their advisers when they declare journalism as a major, and they must meet with their advisers each semester until they graduate. Such attention often can allow students to develop close relationships with faculty members as they assure students are making adequate academic progress. In that informal but highly effective retention effort, faculty members have helped and guided numerous minority students toward internships, scholarships, graduation and employment.
Among the efforts of the department to retain minority students:
1. The department uses scholarship money and work-study funds to help those students who are in financial need. We also have funded, through The Orion, students' travel to minority job fairs. We also encourage minority students to apply for national scholarships. During the past six years, minority students have won competitive
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico scholarships/internships from the Freedom Forum (Chip Quinn), Associated Press,
Pulliam, Los Angeles Times and NAHJ.
2. The department has hired a Hispanic male who serves as a role model for students from the largest minority in the state. It may be that the department's increase in
Hispanic students since 1996 is due in part to this teacher's influence.
3. The department has an active and successful internship program that has provided minorities with the training and professional experiences they need to succeed.
4. Courses in the curriculum have expanded since 1997 to address minority issues and points of view. The department has instituted a policy that asks all instructors to document those efforts. The hope has been that these efforts make the climate of the department more friendly than the surrounding city.
5. In seeking guest speakers and visiting professionals, the faculty has sought women and minorities to fill those roles.
6. In programs in which admission is selective or varies from general university admission requirements, units should document considerations given to the effects of selective requirements on minority enrollment.
There are no selection criteria to become a journalism major. Students, however, must earn at least a C- in the Mass Media Writing Course (requirement to change to a C in
2005) as a prerequisite to other journalism courses, and students must earn at least a C- in the writing proficiency course, Ethics in the Mass Media, to graduate. The department does not think that either of those requirements should affect minority enrollment (the writing proficiency course is a universitywide requirement).
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
7. Tables 9,10,11.
Table 9. Faculty populations
Show numbers of female, male, minority and white faculty members and the percentages they represent of the unit's total faculty.
Academic year: 2002 - 2003
Group
Black! African American
Female
% of total faculty
Male
% of total faculty
American Indian/Alaskan native
Asian
Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander
Other race
Two or more races
Hispanic/Latino (any race)
White 6 46.2%
1
6
7.6%
46.2%
Table 10. Full-time faculty recruitment
Provide the following information for any searches for full-time faculty members conducted by the unit within the past three years.
Openings
Academic years: 2000 - 2001 2001 - 2002 2002 - 2003
0 0 1* *Search suspended due to budget cuts
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
Table 11. Part-time/adjunct faculty recruitment
Provide the following information for any searches for part-time or adjunct faculty members conducted by the unit within the past three years.
Academic years:
2000 - 2001 2001 - 2002 2002 - 2003
Openings 0
Note: we do not conduct searches for part-time faculty
0 0
8. If the unit's percentage of female or minority faculty are lower than the percentage of females or minorities in the population of the service area or lower than the percentage in the student population, describe the unit's plans to increase their representation on the faculty during the next six years. Please specify separate plans for minorities and females.
When considering percentage of faculty representation, it is noteworthy that the employment of just one more woman or minority would cause a great increase in percentage points. Because of the small number of faculty in the department, it would be virtually impossible to have a full-time faculty that mirrored the percentages of the department's service area or matched the student body. We have little flexibility because we are a small department.
During the next six years, the department expects to advertise for two openings. The department is committed to maintaining gender balance and to seek increased minority representation on faculty.
Females. The department is nearly represented adequately by females when part-time faculty are included.
Minorities. Although the pool of minority faculty is small and the competition strong, the faculty believe the campus and location should be attractive to many minority candidates seeking a high quality of life. Chico has clean air, excellent recreational opportunities and a diverse city with low crime. Housing costs are low when compared with other campuses in the CSU system, which has a systemwide salary structure. On the downside, the predominately white Chico community lacks a cultural support system for minorities and has been characterized by minority students and faculty as "uninviting."
The department needs to sell its advantages when it recruits minority faculty. This strategy was successful in attracting the Hispanic male who is now part of the full-time faculty. The department will use strategies to expand the pool of applicants by actively seeking minorities. Providing that the department has no budgetary restrictions placed on recruitment efforts, it will seek minority candidates by:
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
PLANS:
A. Sending announcements to all U.S. journalism and mass communication schools.
Those announcements can be followed with phone calls to faculty at locations likely to produce minority candidates who meet the requirements.
B. Advertising in minority publications and job hot lines including NABJ Journal, a monthly publication of the National Association of Black Journalists; Noticias newsletter and weekly job bank phone line of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; a weekly job newsletter published by the Asian American Journalists Association that is sent to its membership; and Medium Rare, a quarterly newsletter of the Native American
Journalists Association.
C. Targeting potential minority candidates and contacting them directly by phone and letter. One faculty member has developed various contacts through his service work with
AEJMC. We expect that these contacts will expand our hiring pools.
D. Although current law in California restricts the department's ability to give preferential treatment to minority candidates, the majority of faculty understand they have a professional and educational responsibility to have a diverse faculty. To that end and within the limits of state law, the faculty will continue to view minority candidates as possessing positive attributes that the department seeks in a faculty member.
RESULTS:
Since our last accreditation visit, there were two successful searches, both in 1999. In the first search, a woman was hired for the tenure track news-editorial slot. In the other search, a Hispanic male was hired for the professional in residence public relations position.
9. Document substantial good-faith efforts to find and recruit minority and female candidates to full-time faculty and administrative positions.
Since the last accreditation visit, the department has had three nationwide searches. The first in 1999 ended with the hiring of a Hispanic male to serve as a professional in residence for public relations, a full-time, non-tenure track position. (The union contract provides tenure-like protection for full-time teachers after six years). Also in 1999, a woman was hired for a newly created full-time tenure track position to teach news editorial courses.
A third search sought to replace a tenured woman professor in public relations who retired. This 2002 search ended before an offer could be made because of budget problems in the state. Two white women and one Asian woman were interviewed before the search ended. The department's only administrative position, chair, is now held by a woman.
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
10. If your unit hires adjunct faculty members, document a diligent effort to hire minority and women professionals.
In the 2002-2003 academic year, six part-time instructors were hired; five were women.
Faculty members are constantly on the look out for minorities new to the area who could be recruited. But four barriers make it challenging to finding a minority professional who might be hired as an adjunct: 1) as outlined in the W ASC report (Appendix 12.1d), the nature of the Chico area discourages minorities from moving here; 2) none of the local media has a minority newspaper reporter or editor or public relations professional who could be recruited to teach one of the department's classes; 3) Chico is isolated from the major urban areas of the state; and 4) the current mix of part-time faculty have rights to their jobs based on a union contract, so in effect the department cannot seek "new" parttime help unless a current part-timer would quit. The greater Chico area is nearly 91 percent white, and it is nearly 90 miles from Sacramento, which would be the best source for part-time minority faculty. But few people of any race would drive 180 miles round trip to teach part time twice a week.
As a result, the department has been sensitive to the lack of diversity on the faculty and has attempted to supplement the faculty mix by seeking diversity in guest speakers. In the past three years, more than a majority of the guest speakers were minority or women.
We also are optimistic that a proposed university plan will be adopted that would allow departments to levy a student fee that could only be used for student services such as equipment, guest speakers or visiting professors. This would help us fund a visiting professor for a week, providing a stipend and living expenses, a perfect tool for inviting minority professionals to campus. It is likely, however, that this program will not go forward until the current round of budget cuts and fee increases comes to an end.
11. Document efforts to enhance opportunities of minority and female faculty members to earn tenure and promotion.
Only one female faculty member fits this question. To help her earn tenure she has received assigned time, a one class smaller teaching load, for five of the last seven semesters so she can work on class development and research. The Hispanic faculty member has been awarded a second, three-year contract, which in effect gives him tenure-like security.
12. List visiting professionals, visiting professors, and other guest speakers invited or sponsored by the unit during the past three years whose background or expertise served to introduce students to diversity in the media.
When The Orion celebrated its 25th anniversary, the department recruited Diana Griego
Irwin, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist to be keynote speaker. The vast majority of speakers in our classes and clubs have been women or minorities.
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Department of Journalism CSU, Chico
Here is a partial list of noteworthy women and minorities who have visited in the last three years:
1. Lindajoy Fenley, who publishes a bilingual Spanish-English music magazine.
2. Jose Luiz Gonzalez, the Hispanic Resources Council.
3. Darcia Johnson, alumna, African-American
4. Kerri Center Chavez, development director, alumna
5 Kristen Petersen, the outreach coordinator for Project AIM, alumna
6 Alex Rocha, reporter, alumna
7. Denice Rios, assistant city editor, The Sacramento Bee.
8. Nam Nguyen, graphics for The Sacramento Bee.
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