Steve Sartori Horace H. Smith, left, Anne L. Shelly, Barbara A. Yonai, and Barry L. Wells are among the staff and administrators who have helped guide SU’s efforts to improve student retention.

When the Syracuse University Retention and Attrition Committee released its December 1987 report on graduation rates, the news was grim: Only 40 percent of African American students who enrolled from 1980 to 1982 had persisted to graduation within 6 years, and African American students graduated at a 6-year rate 23 percentage points lower than their Caucasian counterparts.

Fast forward to today and the picture brightens considerably. “We have work left to do, but we’ve made tremendous improvement,” says Barry L. Wells, senior vice president and dean of student affairs. “We’ve shrunk the gap between African American and Caucasian 6-year graduation rates to just 6 percentage points, while improving the University’s overall rate to better than 75 percent—the highest SU has ever recorded.”

SU’s overall improvement has been assisted considerably by better graduation rates among students of color. The impact has not gone unnoticed. In a spring address to the University community, Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund moved up the time frame for meeting her retention goals for the general student population, calling for an overall graduation rate of 80 percent by next year and 85 percent by 2009.

According to the Center for Support of Teaching and Learning (CSTL), which has monitored the University’s retention rates since 1989, there are other signs of improving African American retention rates on campus as well. In 2000, for example, only about 4 percent of SU’s African American freshmen dropped out after their first year. “It’s a lower percentage than any other ethnic group and the lowest rate on record for this key indicator of future retention,” says Barbara A. Yonai, associate director of CSTL.

This vast improvement, however, faces one remaining obstacle: perception. “Unfortunately, numbers of people—parents, students, faculty, and staff—still think about SU in terms of 20 years ago,” Wells says. “This snapshot shows that we’re no longer a laggard in retaining African American students; we’re rapidly becoming a leader.”

Freund has established a peer group of 12 universities against which SU measures its performance in several areas. Since 1989, none of those peer institutions has improved its graduation rate gap as much as SU has. Not only that, but according to an NCAA survey of Division I private institutions, SU’s current gap of 6 percentage points clearly outshines the national average gap of 23 percent.

“People must abandon dated perceptions,” says Horace H. Smith, associate vice president of undergraduate studies in the Division of Student Support and Retention. “We were once average, but now we’re exceptional. For African American students at SU, the University’s core value of diversity doesn’t just mean retention for retention’s sake. It means facilitating their successful participation in the University community.”

Anne L. Shelly, director of the Center for Retention Studies, concurs. “The students really tell the stories behind these great numbers,” Shelly says. “We have talked with students who have left and those who are still pursuing degrees. In both cases, we have learned a lot about what the institution is doing or not doing that influences decisions to stay or to leave.”

Shelly credits several programs for their influential role in improving retention. For example, the Student Success Initiative is aimed toward assisting at-risk students, whether they are having academic problems or considering leaving SU for other reasons. Other initiatives include the creation of learning communities, which help students forge stronger connections with other students who share the same interests and goals, as well as with key faculty and staff members. “Staff are building strong relationships with students to understand what’s getting in the way of success and to help open up new resources,” Shelly says.

—Mathew R. Snyder

A New Home for CSD

To better meet the educational demands of the field, the Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) program moved from the School of Education to the College of Arts and Sciences this academic year. The field of communication sciences and disorders draws upon principles from biology, physics, linguistics, and psychology to investigate and improve people’s speech, hearing, and language abilities. “All four of those subjects are in the College of Arts and Sciences,” says CSD professor Linda Milosky, who helped organize the program’s transition. “The primary reason for the move was to strengthen the ties to the disciplines on which the field is based.”

Department chair Ray Colton says that, nationally, the field has shifted to emphasize a liberal arts education that better prepares students for a wider array of employment opportunities than previously existed. Unlike 30 years ago, when most CSD graduates found jobs providing speech-language therapy in schools, today’s graduates often work outside of academia, due to the introduction of such medical advances as cochlear implants, hearing aides, genetic testing, and functional MRIs. “Now a large percentage of our graduates go into hospitals and private practice, and there’s a lot more medical emphasis,” Colton says.

The department’s move into the college creates more academic and social opportunities for students. “They are now able to take courses from other departments that build a solid foundation in physics and mathematics and are more directly related to CSD, such as linguistics, psychology, and statistics,” says Lufeng Shi, a Ph.D. student in audiology who earned a master’s degree at SU in 2001. “Also, many undergraduates in the college will be introduced to the profession and may decide to major in CSD.” To meet their natural science requirements, undergraduates can now choose from a wider range of non-lab science courses offered by CSD that address the connection between basic research and its practical applications. For CSD students, the change encourages them to interact with students from other disciplines and learn from a variety of perspectives. “They’re getting exposed to more of the University, and that’s a positive,” Milosky says.

As part of the College of Arts and Sciences, CSD faculty can collaborate more easily with faculty members from other natural science departments. “From the faculty perspective,” Milosky says, “the move reduces administrative responsibilities and allows faculty to focus more on their research.”

However, the department maintains close ties with the School of Education. CSD faculty still teach required courses for inclusive education majors, and CSD students continue to take courses through the school to earn New York State teaching certification. “We have good colleagues in the School of Education, and we look forward to continuing those relationships and developing new ones with faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences,” Milosky says.

—Margaret Costello

Sharing Cultures

At the beginning of each year, the Hong Kong Cultural Organization (HKCO) celebrates the arrival of the Lunar New Year with an elaborate dragon dance performance. This year, the HKCO Lunar New Year celebration included some new additions, thanks to a $5,500 grant from the University Encounter (U Encounter) program. The extra money enabled the student group to hire professional Kung Fu fighters from New York City and pay for additional decorations, says Stevenson Lau ’03, HKCO president. “Without U Encounter, we couldn’t have done a show like that,” Lau says. “The show definitely brought our culture to the University and showed how important this holiday is.”

U Encounter was established in 2002 by the Division of Student Affairs to award grants to student groups to help support events that demonstrate a theme of cultural or social significance. The theme will change each semester to allow different groups to become involved in the program and host events. Those events include lectures, workshops, performances, and international holiday celebrations. This year’s chosen theme is “Celebrating International Arts and Culture.” “We wanted to establish a theme that was broad enough so that numerous groups could apply,” says Ellen King, director of student events. “Now, we are getting a wide variety of programs.”

Last December, 14 groups applied to the program for funding and received a portion of the $80,000 in available grant money. The amount allotted to each group varied according to the scope of the proposal and the group’s need for funding, King says. Among the U Encounter-funded events last semester were the Black Artist League’s “Dance Explosion” and the Office of Multicultural Affairs hosting a performance by Jabali Afrika, a band from Kenya.

Besides promoting cultural activities for students, another of the program’s goals is to encourage collaboration among departments, divisions, and organizations, King says. “If two groups share a program, we would love to help support it.” More importantly, student groups that lack the necessary funding to share their culture with the campus community will now have the opportunity to do so. “U Encounter opens up a lot of opportunities for students and for members of the campus community to experience something they’d typically never be exposed to,” King says.

—Cori Bolger

Safety First

Members of SU’s College Crime Watch (CCW) created pamphlets, designed a web site, wrote press releases, rallied students, and attended a national conference—and they’re just getting started. An outgrowth of Youth Crime Watch of America—a national organization that enlists students in crime reduction efforts within their schools and communities—CCW was piloted in approximately 10 colleges and universities across the country this academic year. SU Director of Public Safety Marlene Hall discovered the program online and enlisted the help of Jill Lentz, operations manager for residential security, and Grant Williams, senior lieutenant for crime prevention, to start the initiative and serve as co-advisors to the student-led group. “One of the benefits of CCW is that each institution can customize its own plan,” Lentz says. SU’s plan focuses on a campus watch, hate crime prevention, and off-campus student safety.

Courtney Bell ’03 joined CCW last fall because of safety issues she encountered as a resident advisor. “Our members include a variety of students who are involved in different campus activities, from residential security aides to graduate students,” she says. “Having such widespread membership helps get the word out to more people.” Spreading the word was the goal at the 2003 International Youth Leaders Crime Prevention Conference in Miami this spring. Throughout the group’s trip, which was sponsored by Anastasia Urtz, dean of students in the Division of Student Affairs, Bell and several other members introduced SU’s CCW program and encouraged high school seniors to initiate campus watch programs once they enter college.

Rigaud Noel ’04, who helped CCW become a registered student organization this year, believes everyone should be active in promoting campus safety. “People care, but they need to be willing to do something about it,” Noel says. To encourage student involvement, CCW members also collaborated with the R.A.P.E. Center to place hundreds of stickers bearing safety tips and the CCW phone number in academic buildings and residence halls. In the fall, the CCW team plans to partner with the Division of Student Affairs and other departments to present orientations to incoming students. “We’ve been fortunate to have so many student leaders in the SU community who want to see College Crime Watch succeed,” Lentz says. “Our goal is to get the entire campus involved.”

—Kate Gaetano

Disabilities Advocacy

A man in Mexico, fearing persecution because of his mental illness, fled to the United States to seek asylum. His lawyer in California contacted law professor Arlene Kanter, a disability rights expert. Kanter worked on a legal brief for the man, writing that people with disabilities in Mexico are institutionalized and treated so poorly that the man would likely die if he were returned home. She argued the United States should grant asylum to this man and others with mental or physical disabilities, just as it does for individuals who face persecution based on their religious beliefs, political views, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Although the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled against granting asylum to this particular man because of improving conditions in Mexico’s mental health institutions, the board’s decision established the right of people with disabilities to seek asylum in the United States. “This was the first such case,” says Kanter, director of the Office of Clinical Legal Education. “Since the case was decided two years ago, at least a dozen other cases have been filed throughout the United States.”

To strengthen research and knowledge in the disability area, the College of Law and the School of Education created a joint degree program this spring that gives students with an interest in law and education—especially disability studies—the opportunity to receive a law degree and a master’s degree in education in three years. “This unique program will build upon the well-established and internationally renowned strengths of SU in the disability field,” says Kanter, who was instrumental in developing the program with School of Education professor Steve Taylor G’77. “Few universities have such a long and successful track record in disability research, academic programming, advocacy, and faculty productivity.”

As a group, people with disabilities have been deprived of fundamental rights, including liberty, education, privacy, family, and employment, Kanter says. More than 600 million people worldwide have some kind of disability; two-thirds of these individuals live in developing countries where they may suffer from abuse, segregation, and discrimination.

Kanter, who has worked in the disability rights field for 20 years, became interested in asylum for people with disabilities several years ago when she began working with Mental Disability Rights International, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that advocates ending abuse of people with disabilities. She was recently appointed to the United Nations’ International Watch Committee to work on a proposed UN convention on the rights of people with disabilities, and she was hired by the National Council on Disability, a federal executive agency, to draft a paper on disability and foreign assistance.

Kanter invites students in her Disability Law class to work on independent projects as part of the course, and many of them conduct research comparing disability laws in various countries. “There are many reasons to do this kind of work,” she says. “Legal advocacy and scholarship with and for people with disabilities can actually save lives, while bringing attention to the abuse and discriminatory treatment of people with disabilities that continue to exist in many countries.”

—Kristen Swing

Turning Conflict into Opportunity

The Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters—one representing “threat” and the other “opportunity.” That understanding of crisis as opportunity serves as the foundation for the Conflict Management Center (CMC) at the Maxwell School. “Conflict can be threatening because it is potentially hostile,” says Lina Svedin, the center’s coordinator and a political science doctoral student. “That’s why people run away from conflict.” However, through such conflict management techniques as those practiced at the CMC, difficult situations can be resolved through mutual agreement. “We view conflict as a situation that provides possibilities for finding an equitable solution for meeting the needs of opposing groups,” Svedin says.

An educational project of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC), the CMC offers training programs in interpersonal conflict resolution, negotiation, meeting facilitation, and supervisory mediation to the University community and beyond. “We’ve had unprecedented opportunities this year to offer training and help resolve conflicts,” Svedin says.

The center’s recent activities included mediating conflicts between individuals, working with the Eastside Neighbors in Partnership to teach conflict resolution skills to at-risk youth, and training members of two fraternities that were suspended for fighting. “In working with the fraternities, we focused on the leadership of the houses, discussing with them the issues underlying the dynamics of conflict,” Svedin says. The fraternity leaders worked with the center to develop a joint plan for training other house members, and executed that training themselves with guidance from center staff. As former president of one of the fraternities involved, Marc Klein ’03 found the experience valuable. “The members came away with a much stronger understanding of the severity of the events that transpired and how they could be avoided in the future,” he says.

The center also trained mediators for the Office of Human Resources’ new staff complaint process, offering custom-designed sessions that covered the basics of mediation and featured skills demonstrations and role playing. “It went very well, and the center’s staff members were very accommodating,” says Curlene Autrey, director of resolutions processes. “Mediation is so important to this process, because we hope most staff complaints will be remedied at that level.”

Established in the late 1980s, the center—which is staffed primarily by volunteers from across the University—conducts “Train the Trainer” sessions each fall and spring. A 25-hour mediation training is offered during the spring semester for individuals interested in serving as volunteer mediators with the CMC or qualifying to mediate in the New York State court system. “This year there’s been more interest in volunteering than ever before,” Svedin says. “It’s a positive experience that provides good, basic, applicable skills, whether or not you want to pursue this as a profession.”

—Amy Speach Shires

International Planning

While visiting Syracuse University last September, six officials from the Indonesian National Center for Family Planning (BKKBN) took an unscheduled—but inspiring—trip to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. The officials were here to receive assistance from the School of Education’s Training Systems Institute (TSI) to enhance the quality of their organization’s human resources. Professor Philip Doughty encouraged them to tour the landmark during their stay. “You couldn’t get them out of there,” recalls Doughty, executive director of TSI, which provides educational training to local, state, national, and international communities. “Here were these Indonesian women learning about American women who improved the lives of other women—just as they’re doing in their country. It was a powerful experience.”

The experience underscored the mission of BKKBN, a government agency that employs 50,000 people to provide quality reproductive health services in Indonesia. It also dovetailed with the purpose of their visit—to develop a proposal to partner with TSI in creating an international training center for BKKBN’s staff and other family planning workers from around the world. The center would be modeled after what’s known in the United States as a corporate university—a facility that provides training and staff development to increase productivity, motivation, and professionalism in the workplace.

Drawing on University and community resources, Doughty and his team of students, faculty, and administrators arranged for the Indonesians to visit the BlueCross BlueShield corporate university in Seneca Falls. The group of Indonesian officials, which included two SU graduates, also met with the University’s human resources office, a local family planning agency, and a mental health center in Utica to observe the inner workings of these related organizations. They participated in numerous workshops, seminars, and discussions that culminated in a final proposal to be submitted to the Indonesian government. If the proposal is accepted, TSI will consult on the project and help BKKBN develop its corporate university.

Doughty believes the project exemplifies SU’s push for multidisciplinary initiatives—a component of the Academic Plan. “This project is a community venture,” he says. “One department doesn’t own all the knowledge, which makes the larger University a critical factor in terms of helping BKKBN. We built upon expertise from other departments and good relationships with outside organizations, which is what a university should be about.”

—Lindsay Beller

Competitive Cooperation

Patricia Longstaff looks to a pack of wolves to help understand why the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Telecommunications Act of 1996—legislation that was created to encourage competition—actually led to more cooperation among cable, telephone, and other communications companies. In her book The Communications Toolkit: How to Build and Regulate Any Communications Business (MIT Press, 2002), Longstaff explains how wolves banding together to protect themselves from danger correlates to media companies like Time Warner and AOL merging to pool their resources and remain competitive in a technologically advancing global market. “If you look at ecological systems, you could have actually predicted those corporate mergers and partnerships,” says Longstaff, professor of television-radio-film and communications. “Introducing new competition into a system encourages cooperation.”

Drawing on examples from such disciplines as ecology, economics, theology, and world history, Longstaff’s book introduces revolutionary theories to help businesspeople and policy makers around the world keep up with the constantly changing communications industry. She creates a new framework for communications businesses and explains how all media are constructed from the same building blocks and follow a similar set of rules. “Instead of regulating newspapers, radio stations, or cable companies, we should regulate senders, channels, coding and decoding, and receiving devices,” says the former communications and corporate lawyer. “Then we’d apply the same regulations to everyone regardless of the medium or the technology used.”

Her book is already being used in classrooms at Harvard University, where she is a research associate at the Center for Policy Research. A supporter of the Academic Plan’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies, Longstaff is working with SU statistics faculty on a study to help predict the characteristics that make for a top grossing Hollywood movie. She also hopes to participate in a project with SU’s Systems Assurance Institute to examine how such complex communications systems as telephone and Internet connections can be safeguarded against terrorists. Longstaff shares her expertise on communications issues as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Committee on International Communication and Information Policy. “I like to think of myself as a pivot point between disciplines,” she says. “I look at a lot of disparate information and see what it all has in common to understand the bigger picture.”

—Margaret Costello

A Spiritual Picture

When the Reverend Kate Bell arrived at Hendricks Chapel last fall, the new chaplain of the Interdenominational Protestant Campus Ministry (IPCM) embraced the challenges of serving a campus of diverse students with unique religious and spiritual needs. It didn’t take Bell long to realize that not only did she need to guide the spiritual paths of campus members, but she must also ensure the ministry’s financial future. “We’re utterly dependent on donations,” Bell says. “We’re running on a deficit budget, so I spend much of my time fund raising and promoting our work to our sponsors instead of building spiritual relationships with them.”

To help ease the burden of fiscal concerns and refocus on ministry work, IPCM has launched a $1.5 million campaign to endow the chaplain’s chair through the sale of limited edition prints of Syracuse University landmarks. The prints, created by local artist and retired Syracuse adjunct art professor Francis Sweeney, feature black-and-white images of the Saltine Warrior sculpture located in front of Shaffer Art Building, Hendricks Chapel, Crouse College, and the old University commercial area. The 8-by-11-inch matted prints are being sold in sets of four for $175 and can be viewed online at hendricks.syr.edu/ ipcm.html. (Orders can be made online or by calling 315-443-5040.) Only 100 sets will be produced, and each will be numbered and signed by the artist. The owners’ names will be recorded in a permanent registry maintained by Friends of the Arts, a local business.

The ministry also intends to commission a set of limited edition color prints by Sweeney that will depict a variety of activities within and around Hendricks Chapel. “People have so many memories associated with Hendricks Chapel,” Bell says. “We want to capture those special memories of the chapel in their seasonal settings.”

The IPCM represents the interests of four Protestant denominations: the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Churches, and the United Methodist Church. Bell leads the 11 a.m. Sunday service in Hendricks Chapel, which often attracts non-Christians and Christians from other denominations. “My first priority is to be loving and welcoming to everyone on campus,” Bell says. “I would like to be able to devote more time to that goal. Having an endowed chair will enable me to do so.”

—Margaret Costello