The University of Colorado at Denver is the most diverse doctoral university in the state, but the campus isn’t as successful as its national peers at graduating minority students.
CU-Denver also struggles to attract enough minority professors to mirror the demographics of its student body; 9.8 percent of the 1,410 tenured and tenure-track faculty are minorities, compared with 21 percent of students at the downtown campus and Health Sciences Center.
The statistics are part of a report the campus prepared for CU interim president Hank Brown’s blue-ribbon commission on diversity, a panel of 48 community members and several students meeting Saturday at CU-Denver. The commission met at CU-Boulder last month and also plans to meet at the Colorado Springs campus.
CU-Denver has the lowest minority population of the three institutions on the Auraria campus, which includes the Community College of Denver and Metropolitan State College of Denver. All three draw much of their student body from the Denver area, which is 27 percent minority.
CU-Denver is 0.8 percent American Indian, 3.3 percent black, 7.7 percent Asian and 8.7 percent Latino.
CU-Boulder, by comparison, is 0.8 percent American Indian, 1.6 percent black, 6 percent Latino and 6.2 percent Asian.
“We are a product of our geography,” said CU-Denver student body president Bill Simmons. “We’re naturally going to be more diverse because we are in Denver and not Boulder. The question is how much better can we do if we focus on improving?”
Simmons, a student representative on the commission, said he’s eager for the panel’s advice.
“We’re not going to be taking a defensive stance on everything,” he said. “We are just really interested in the dialogue.”
CU-Denver spokeswoman Danielle Zieg said the report is an objective look at diversity for the commission to dissect. Administrators weren’t available to discuss it Monday, she said.
CU-Denver does a good job retaining first-time minority freshmen to the next fall, but the campus fares worse than its peers nationwide at graduating them.
Almost 65 percent of black students and 78 percent of Latinos returned for their second year, but just 28 percent of black first-time freshmen and 32 percent of Latino first-time freshmen graduated within six years. That compares with 46 percent of white students.
CU-Denver ranks eighth in minority graduation rates and sixth for white graduation rates out of 11 peer institutions, including the University of Texas at Dallas and Georgia State University. One reason for CU-Denver’s low graduation rates, the report suggests, is that 47 percent of freshmen and 60 percent of seniors work at least half time.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
