Springfield, Missouri is “significantly whiter” than Monroe, Louisiana, where James Cofer, the new president of Missouri State University, last served as a university president.
In fact, according to the U.S. Census 2000, it is the sixth “whitest” city of 100,000 people or more in the country.
“That’s an issue that we’re trying to address very specifically and aggressively – both in the university and in the community,” Cofer said.
Missouri State University had a “huge” increase in applicants of African-American prospective students this fall, he said. But few of them signed on.
“They came down here and weren’t comfortable,” he said.
Cofer said that he will put “whatever it takes” financially towards changing the university into a place where students can prepare themselves culturally to be part of a global community.
“There’s not enough diversity for a student of the 21st Century,” Cofer said of his Springfield campus. “They need to learn to be around people of different perspectives,ethnicities, gender, religion – the whole nine yards.”
His diversity make-over shopping list includes:
• Sending recruiters for faculty and students in St. Louis and Kansas City
• Creating a cabinet position for the vice president for student inclusion
• Beefing up the multicultural office into a center
• Awarding scholarships for students to obtain their doctorates if they stay on and teach at MSU.
“If it’s a priority, you work other priorities around it,” Cofer said.
Out of 16,685 students, about 3,500 MSU students come from St. Louis. A majority of the university’s 608 black students also come from St. Louis.
Cofer served as president of University of Louisiana at Monroe, which had an undergraduate student population of 7,800 and about 2,000 were African American. The town had a black mayor. Many of the black students came from east of Monroe, which was a rural, poor area. As a result, the students were highly under-prepared for college.
Springfield is a different place, he said. Students study hard, but the students themselves recognize that perhaps there is one lesson they are notlearning at MSU.
“I don’t know if students feel that there’s anything missing from their education,” said Jacob Swett, president of the Student Government Association. “But they feel that if we had more diversity, they’d get more out of it.”
Recruiting efforts for more students of color will be fruitless if the Springfield community is not welcoming, Swett said. Fortunately for Cofer, the community leaders realize that business owners and professionals won’t relocate to a city with such a homogeneous population.
Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce chairman Tim Rosenbury is a white, 53-year old male. And in his nine months as chairman, he has made about a dozen “pitches” to the community that the city’s lack of diversity is a threat to its long-term economic wellbeing.
“The brightest and the best in the future don’t always look like me,” he said. “All of us can agree that we want the brightest and the best. We need to be open to accepting people with different backgrounds.”
In four different studies that looked at Springfield’s strengths and weaknesses, Rosenbury said that all four pointed to the city’s lack of diversity as a serious problem for its sustainability.
Both the chamber’s and the university’s diversity initiatives attracted Springfield native Wes Pratt, who left the city to go to law school in California 32 years ago. Pratt is now MSU’s coordinator of diversity outreach and recruitment.
He was one of the few black students attending college in Springfield in the 1970s. From 1969 to 1973, he attended Drury University, which is across town from MSU.
Now five higher education institutions have formed a group called MODES. That stands for Missouri State University, Ozarks Technical College, Drury, Evangel University and Southwest Baptist University. The group aims at fostering diversity.
At MSU, Pratt said the board directors have been the true movers.
Orvin Kimbrough, the senior vice president of major gifts and planned giving for United Way of Greater St. Louis, joined the board two years ago.
“When I joined the board, there was a lot of conversation around diversity,” Kimbrough said. “Sometimes we say diversity is important. But I like to say, ‘Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your priorities.’”
Back in the 1970s, MSU professors helped to organize the students, Pratt said. These progressive people on campus faced many challenges over the years, but they stuck it out and were able to build an African-American studies department.
“Growing up here, I had several issues with MSU for its lack of sensitivity and lack of diversity,” Pratt said. “Knowing its history, it’s exciting to see Missouri State leading the region in diversity initiatives.”
