Saturday, February 25, 2012

Sacramento State U. tracks recruitment and retention of Pacific Islanders, includes them with other Underrepresented Minorities

This week The State Hornet, Sacramento State University's student newspaper, published an article about the school's progress at retaining underrepresented minorities.  How do they define "underrepresented minority?" To quote the paper:

"Underrepresented minorities consist of African-Americans, 
Latinos, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans."


I was pleased to see Pacific Islanders included, given that U.S. Census data shows that Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are currently underrepresented, and have been for at least the past 20 years.

Digging deeper into the sources, I visited Sacramento State's website for their Office of Institutional Research.  (It was their data that the State Hornet was citing in its article on underrepresented minority retention.)  I was impressed! By visiting their website, you see the university's retention and graduation tracking for underrepresented minorities, as well as 1.) confirmation that they include Pacific Islanders as an underrepresented group, and 2.) even have tracking data specific to the retention and graduation of Pacific Islanders.  

You can see how it's done by visiting their website here

Kawika 

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