But commitment and leadership beyond the letter of the law will be needed, and the institution s goals cannot be accomplished by the effort of an affirmative action officer alone. The team found no incentives in place for recruiting Black faculty and staff, and indeed a habit of authorizing faculty positions very late in the recruiting year has the inadvertent effect of weakening the opportunity for departments to recruit minorities and women. Minority students also report little in the way of institutional programming intended to improve the general environment for minorities on campus. As noted in chapter 3, the racial composition of UALR s non-academic workforce now reflects the composition of the workforce pool for the first time. There has been an increase in the number of African American and other minority students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Programs are in place to serve the special needs of many of the minority students.
Three former students, all African Americans who earned master s degrees from UALR, received financial support during their years of doctoral study and are now back on campus in tenure-track positions as assistant professors. The next two returned in fall 1999, one a woman with a PhD in public administration and the other a man with a PhD in writing. Again, all three are African Americans who earned UALR master s degrees. Two are men, the other a woman. They are pursuing degrees in economics, social work, and health science.