A $50,000 planning grant awarded in January 2018 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support a five-college investigation of best practices for teaching and advising its increasingly diverse student bodies, with a special focus on the rapidly growing Latinx/Hispanic populations. The planning grant, led by Ivonne García, associate professor of English and Kenyon Educational Enrichment Program (KEEP) Faculty Co-Director at Kenyon College, was developed over the past three years by the deans of diversity and inclusion at the College of Wooster, Denison University, Kenyon, Oberlin College, and Ohio Wesleyan University.
The number of Latinx/Hispanic students enrolled at Ohio Five institutions represent the most rapidly increasing demographic in the colleges’ student bodies, tripling from 2.1% in 2000 to 7% in 2015. This shift, reported in the grant narrative, reflects the national trend in student enrollment, when, in 2014, students of color became the majority in public schools, with approximately 20% who are are non-native English speakers.