The Black & Magenta Blog

In conversations with Vice President of Enrollment Jeff Zellers, and other area college officials, the Times Recorder found that each has been expanding its diversity among college students, and also how diversity is defined.

From the article in Sunday’s paper:

When people think about diversity, people tend to think only of race and ethnicity, Muskingum Vice President of Enrollment Jeff Zellers said.

“We do believe it’s important to have racial and ethnic diversity, but sometimes people get hung up on those and forget about others. We have socioeconomic diversity within the student body, geographical diversity and then we have our learning disability program, so we have students who have learning challenges and that’s a diversity as well,” Zellers said.

More than 40 percent of Muskingum’s students are from Appalachia, which makes them diverse, Zellers said.

About 9 percent of students are minorities at Muskingum — 7 percent are African American, and about 2 1/2 percent are Asian, Hispanic and/or Native American.

Muskingum’s 9 percent is considerably higher by comparison to 3 percent at Zane State, according to the article.

Sophomore Landel Shakespeare is quoted in the article, and said Muskingum might be able to attract more minority students by creating more minority-focused programs. Zellers said the college is actively recruiting minorities, and during visits, tries to pair minority prospects up with minority faculty members to make them feel more comfortable.