A campus melting pot
During the past decade, there has been a trend of new coaches, new programs, new buildings and, overall, a new sense of diversity.
With the establishment of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center in 2002 and the growing popularity of the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs and its various groups, the past decade has brought a heightened awareness about the importance of a diverse student body on the U’s campus.
According to the U’s Office for Equity and Diversity, there has been a gradual increase of black students enrollment since 1971, with the most notable jump beginning with the 1999-2000 school year. In 1999, only .7 percent of the undergraduate population was made up of black students, but that number has risen to almost 1 percent of the population in 2009.
“Collectively, our programs serve over 3,000 students annually who self-identify as LGBT and/or historically underrepresented students of color,” said Jennifer Molock, assistant vice president for the Office of Student Equity and Diversity.
Although there hasn’t been a massive increase of black students enrolling during the decade, there has been a great movement of establishing groups that these students can be involved with. The U has made efforts to increase support and programs while helping to create opportunities for minority students to be successful at the U, according to a statement on SED’s website.
“We do have some terrific programs that are impacting diversity here on campus,” said Colleen Casto, a spokeswoman for the associate vice president of diversity. Such programs include the Black Student Union, Intertribal Student Association, the Asian American Student Association, MEChA and the Pacific Islander Student Association, she said.
Most of these programs began in the mid-1990s, but have gained great popularity in the past decade, according to CESA. These groups have many resources for students, including tutoring, networking, advising and scholarship opportunities.
Not everyone has seen the racial demographics change for themselves, but they’ve seen the faces of the U change in other ways.
“I have been teaching for the better part of six years now, and I haven’t seen a huge change in the diversity on campus,” said Tiffany Jo Merrill, a gender studies graduate teaching assistant and staff specialist in the School of Medicine. “What I do see, though, is that there is a great mix of young people and older students, and of men and women. This helps aid to a more diverse population.”
Other student groups not determined by race have seen an increase in numbers throughout the decade, including the U’s LGBT group, Merrill said.
“I don’t know if that has impact in terms of attracting more LGBT students,” Merrill said. “But I do know that the center is doing better than ever, it has more support than ever, and people are more involved than ever, and that is saying something.”
Quick & costly academics
Despite the rising cost of education, students attending the U in recent years are more likely to graduate within four years than students from 10 years ago, according to the U Office of Budget and Institutional Analysis.
The numbers from the 2000-2001 academic year show that only 3 percent of the 1994 freshman class8212;adjusted for deaths, military service and religious missions8212;graduated within four years, according to OBIA. Twenty-four percent of students were able to graduate within five years, and 54 percent graduated in six years.
The most recent numbers from the 2009-2010 year show that those from the entering freshman class had a better chance of graduating in a shorter amount of time. Of about 1,900 students who entered the U in 20038212;also adjusting for students who died, entered military service or left for religious missions8212;22 percent of students were able to graduate from their programs within four years, which is a 19 percent increase, according to OBIA. About 44 percent of students graduated within five years, and 58 percent graduated in six years.
Brian Coburn, a freshman in biomedical engineering, said taking his 15-credit course load and working part time is stressful. But for the most part, he doesn’t have a problem, he said.
But not every student fits the bill.
Josh Bailey, a senior in geophysics, is taking 9 credit hours this semester. Bailey said he decided to take fewer credits because he works full time and was unable to devote his full attention to his classes. Bailey said he predicts he will graduate by summer 2011.
“I used to go full-time back at the beginning,” Bailey said. “Working full time and going to school full time, I was doing too much. My grades began to suffer.”
Jess Dalton graduated from the U in 2002. During her time here, she took an average of 12 to 15 credit hours per semester, she said. With that course load, Dalton was able to graduate in four years, only taking some courses during Summer Semesters, she said. One semester, she took 17 credits and felt overwhelmed from the amount of work she had to do, she said.
Many of her friends who attended the U at the same time took similar course loads.
“As a senior, I got a full-time internship that really took a lot of time,” Dalton said. “By that time though, I was only (taking) major classes.”
The rising cost of an education can’t be ignored. Like Bailey and Coburn, Annie Stoddard, a junior in health education, said she has had to apply for financial aid to get through the semester.
In 2000, loan dispersals from the U financial aid office was only $45 million8212;now they’re at $100 million, said John Curl, associate vice president of enrollment management.
Advances in transportation
For some students, life without campus shuttles is hard to imagine. However, there was a time when transportation on campus was limited to a single vehicle.
The initial concept for shuttle service on campus began with a station wagon driven by medical students, said Ken Searles, associate director of Commuter Services.
Medical students used to drive paperwork from the University Hospital to the Park Building. The route was eventually upgraded to include bus services, Searles said.
After 1988, shuttle service expanded as more and more people needed access to the rest of campus, said Alma Allred, director of Commuter Services.
Today, Commuter Services boasts 21 routes and 28 shuttles, Searles said. One of its main stops is the Residence Halls, completed at the beginning of this decade, where hundreds of U students wait for the shuttles as their main form of transit between home and class.
Any expansion of routes or additional buses would rely on revenue that isn’t going to increase anytime soon, Searles said.
“But you never know,” he said.
Before the university TRAX line was completed in 2001 in preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympics, commuting to campus was left mainly to cars and city buses. That quickly changed. The TRAX lines have serviced more than 110 million riders since its inception, according to the Utah Transit Authority.
Last Friday marked the 10th anniversary of the TRAX line’s presence in the Salt Lake Valley. It was initially designed as a way to connect Sandy and downtown Salt Lake City, and UTA extended TRAX to Rice-Eccles Stadium in December 2001, just before the 2002 Winter Olympics.
An additional extension from the stadium to the U’s Medical Center took place in 2003, Allred said. In total, TRAX stops at four locations on campus. Any additional stops would take a significant construction revision, Allred said, so the stops are pretty permanent.
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r.totten@chronic
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Andreas Rivera contributed
to this article.