乐播传媒

One kind of progress at 乐播传媒 is eye-catching, what with that 180-foot crane looming over the new Commons next to Garcelon Field and, across campus at the new student housing, sky-blue weather barrier outlining all the windows and doors. But another kind of transformational and intense work 鈥� to increase diversity in racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic enrollments 鈥� tends to manifest itself in less conspicuous ways.

Julie Wagner ’09 places a phone call to a prospective 乐播传媒 student as Director of Multicultural Recruitment Marlyn Scott looks on.聽 Wagner was one of the eight 乐播传媒 students who spent the evening giving support and advice to students going through the financial-aid process.

Take the fledgling program developed by 乐播传媒鈥� admissions and financial aid offices. On a recent February evening, eight 乐播传媒 students, backed by six staff members, took to the phones in Lindholm House to contact a segment of the current applicant pool: multicultural students and first-generation college aspirants who intend to apply for financial aid but who鈥檝e not yet submitted the required paperwork (FAFSA form, CSS profile, and tax returns).

Armed with FAQs and other information, the 乐播传媒 students offered support and advice to the applicants, whose hometowns ranged from Presque Isle to Los Angeles. 鈥淭his is a friendly call,鈥� Catherine Ganung, interim director of student financial services, reminds the students. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about making a bridge to 乐播传媒.鈥�

A little past 6, Liz Greenwood 鈥�07 phones a student who lives in a working-class Boston neighborhood. Reaching the student鈥檚 Spanish-speaking grandmother, Greenwood deftly shifts to that language, honed during a semester in Seville. Leaving a message, Greenwood heads to a nearby computer. 鈥淚 need the Spanish word for 鈥榝inancial aid,鈥欌�� she says. After a brief Web search, she finds beca, meaning 鈥渟cholarship.鈥� Greenwood calls back later in the evening and chats with the student, learning that the girl鈥檚 parents don鈥檛 live with her, thus filling out the complex documents will be daunting. Greenwood informs Wendy Glass of the 乐播传媒 financial-aid staff, who makes a note to follow up.

Understanding each family鈥檚 financial-aid situation is a 乐播传媒 hallmark, and that means taking into account a range of family customs and circumstances when it comes to money, says Director of Multicultural Recruitment Marylyn Scott, who has done doctoral work in multilingual and multicultural education. In some families, it鈥檚 not acceptable for a child to broach the topic of family finances, even for the purpose of applying for financial aid. 鈥淲e鈥檙e working with such a family now, in the Southwest. The student is one of our top recruits, and we鈥檙e hoping his parents decide to file the forms,鈥� says Scott.

While 乐播传媒 has a longstanding, humane practice of helping any family to navigate the financial-aid process, some families, regardless of demographic, remain unaware of how need-based aid programs work 鈥� hence the phonathon in Lindholm House.

And if a family does not fill out the forms in time, 乐播传媒 will still mail an acceptance letter on March 31 鈥� it just won鈥檛 be a thick envelope with the financial aid award inside. This happens about 150 times each year, and while these families remain eligible to receive aid, College officials worry that when a family doesn鈥檛 know their financial-aid award right away, they鈥檙e liable to be scared off by the $45,000 sticker price. 鈥淚n fact, some of these families are eligible to have the full cost met by need-based aid,鈥� says Scott.

Unlike the daily progress seen in campus construction projects, it will be months before 乐播传媒 knows the good results of that evening鈥檚 work (191 phone calls, 70 student contacts, 43 contacts with a family member, 69 messages left, seven no-answers, and two out-of-service numbers). The same goes for other emerging initiatives in admissions to identify, recruit, and matriculate talented students of limited means.

One such tack to raise 乐播传媒鈥� visibility is to partner with certain high-achieving secondary schools, and a new example is 乐播传媒鈥� affiliation with the public Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in Brooklyn. Scott visits the school monthly to conduct admissions sessions, and some 20 Urban Assembly sophomores will visit 乐播传媒 in May. 鈥淭here are highly motivated, high-need students out there,鈥� says Ganung. 鈥淏ut as is often said, they will typically know about two colleges: Harvard and their state school.鈥�

The drive to improve 乐播传媒鈥� demographic palette coalesced in 2005鈥�06 with the Campus Climate Project, a faculty-staff-student endeavor convened by President Hansen. The report concluded that in the broad realm of diversity and campus life, 乐播传媒 was falling short of its founding ideals.

In response, 乐播传媒 has begun moving ahead on many diversity fronts. Admissions is just one area, because although recruiting and enrolling students by definition focuses on numbers, the College鈥檚 redeployment of resources around diversity hopes to move beyond simply counting faces.

鈥淎t any institution, structures of unequal power 鈥� around race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality 鈥� are bred into the bones. Even a place with abolitionist roots, like 乐播传媒, suffers from those flaws,鈥� notes Sue Houchins, an associate professor of African American studies since 2003 and now in her first year as President Hansen鈥檚 special assistant for diversity. 鈥淪o if our mission is truly to 鈥榙iversify鈥� our community, then we must be vigilant in discerning every place that these structures exist.鈥�

Houchins talks about how 乐播传媒 might adopt an attentive and mindful approach to the issue. 鈥淎 Carmelite monk, Brother Lawrence, once wrote about how one could keep a certain kind of spiritual mind,鈥� she says. One would practice and deliberately cultivate a state of mindfulness until a desired habit took hold.

鈥淚t is that kind of practice of being mindful that, I think, we need at 乐播传媒,鈥� says Houchins, who was herself in the novitiate of Carmelite Monastery of Baltimore in the 1990s before returning to academe. 鈥淥ne has to be mindful of diversity, and that habit is very difficult to develop.鈥�