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responded that the only comment he would make is that this would complete the university's compliance with all of the best practices that were recommended by NACUBO for colleges and universities as they relate to the provisions of Sarbanes Oxley. With the implementation of PR 4, UK should be in full compliance with all the best practices.
James Hardymon called for a vote on PR 4, and it passed without dissent.
Dr. Todd stated that he wanted to give an update on some diversity actions that have occurred since the Board of Trustees meeting in October. In the area of student recruiting and enrollment management, UK has under way a full analysis and an external review of its recruitment efforts. External consultants will present a professional market analysis for helping us with our recruiting process. We want to analyze the quality and the quantity of the scholarships that we offer. UK has the lowest relative percentage of our education dollars in general budgets for scholarships, and we need to look not only at increasing that but also at how to target the provision of a diverse and competent student body. A comprehensive analysis of student success will be conducted to determine what factors are important for student success, an effort to improve retention across the board. UK will try to close the gap for African American retention. Vice President for Institutional Equity Terry Allen conducted three diversity training workshops for the entire enrollment management staff. Over 200 members attended.
In the recruiting area, Dr. Todd has created a diversity enrollment team which combines Dr. William Turner's multicultural group's recruiting efforts with those of Admissions Director and Registrar Don Witt's group. Six of eight new positions have been filled. Fifty-five candidates have applied for the position of diversity enrollment coordinator, a joint position shared by the Turner and the Witt recruitment groups. A committee will select 10 from that group of applicants, and the position should be filled soon. We have increased the operating budget for student recruiting. We have also hired an additional 7 students of color to work in the Visitor's Center at UK, and the university has already felt an impact from this action because 500 students have visited the university in what is called the Come See for Yourself Program. The staff is now making personal calls as follow-up to those 500 students to see what their reaction is and to see if they have any remaining questions or anything we can help them with. We are looking at a new holistic review process that is being implemented to increase the parameters that we look at, so that we go beyond the ACT and the GPA to include such factors as leadership, special talent, and contributions to community diversity.
We have added three new admissions officers because that process is going to be time consuming. We will look at all applications, not just the African American ones. The University Senate has approved our revised admissions process and the criteria.
President Todd met on October 31 with approximately 40 members of the African American faculty. He stated that he plans to announce during the week of the Board meeting a task force on racial diversity and equity. Bill Turner will be asked to chair the task force, and he will be appointing members to that task force shortly thereafter.