In efforts to better meet the needs of minorities and non-traditional, college-going populations, the University of California, Berkeley is hiring additional staff for many of its student resource centers.
University officials hope the six full-time professionals will be on board by the start of the spring semester. These new positions are part of an $800,000 initiative aimed at boosting the campus experiences of various subsets of the 25,000-plus undergraduates and improving their chances of academic success, says Dr. Gibor Basri, UC-Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion.
Half of the new staff positions have been designated for multicultural student development, one each in African-American, Chicano/Latino and Asian-American offices. The others are positions earmarked for serving students who are military veterans, parents and undocumented immigrants, respectively.
Currently, only one full-time staff person works in each of the three resource centers focused on racial minorities. That has been the case since Basri, a longtime faculty member, became the university’s top diversity officer in 2007.
“It’s impossible for one person to handle all the priorities,” he says. “The person is supposed to run programs, supervise interns and advise students who drop in at all hours. In my first year in this job, the offices were already under-resourced.”
In spite of the bare-bones staffing, the resource centers offer students an array of opportunities aimed at retention and empowering them as leaders. For example, the African-American Student Development center pairs undergraduates with faculty and alumni mentors. It also runs a semester-long, undergraduate exchange program with Howard University.
