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Academy not satisfied with minority rates

The Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors, acknowledging the academy’s uphill battle to draw more minority students at a May 8 congressional meeting, reiterated its commitment to attract a diverse body of cadets.

The mostly white institution, a breeding ground for future Air Force leaders, is mindful that a dearth of minority cadets will likely mean few minority generals in decades to come. Still, the academy is finding it increasingly difficult to attract black and Hispanic cadets, especially as Fortune 500 firms are also courting the best and brightest young minorities, said Chuck Garcia, chairman of the Board of Visitors.

“They’re going to a lot of our competitors and not going to the academy,” Garcia said.

The academy’s youngest class, graduating in 2011, is roughly 77 percent white, 5.5 percent black, 7.5 percent Hispanic, 8 percent Asian and 1.5 percent Native American. This represents a slight minority increase over this year’s graduating class, which is 81 percent white, but the board wants larger gains.

“This is something we’ll never finish,” said Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Duncan McNabb. “We’ve got to constantly watch.”

The present strategy for recruiting minorities is multi-pronged. There are diversity advisory panels, officers reaching out to largely minority school systems, admissions officials scouring research and more. The academy also relies heavily on roughly 1,700 volunteer liaisons — many of them former grads — who are responsible for reaching out to local high schools to find academy-quality teenagers.

These are often the first academy representatives a potential cadet will meet — and they’re mostly white males. The academy is doing what it can to add more diverse liaisons, said Col. Chevalier Cleaves, a black academy graduate who last fall was appointed director of admissions.

Many minority high school students “don’t necessarily know us ... don’t know that they can trust us,” Cleaves said.

Last year, Garcia said, about 20 U.S. congressional districts produced no academy enrollments, and 83 districts produced two or fewer cadets. He also noted that only one of the 36 liaisons in heavily Hispanic Arizona is Hispanic. Liaisons entering largely Hispanic high schools who don’t speak Spanish have little hope of recruiting, Garcia said.

“You’re dead meat,” he said. “You’re not going to connect.”

Garcia also urged congressional members to spread the word in their home districts. “They bear some of the burden,” he said.

Still, other strategies have produced results. In fiscal year 2007, the academy flew in about 20 minority high school students to tour campus and meet top leaders. They repeated the effort in 2008, bringing in 50 teenagers. More than 90 percent decided to attend the academy. They plan to invite 100 minority prospects in fiscal 2009, Cleaves said.

Low-income schools lacking high-end education probably won’t produce as many cadets as more advantaged schools, Cleaves said. “But it doesn’t mean [those students] don’t have potential.”