Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University has achieved continuing progress status on seven of the eight diversity goals in the Kentucky Plan for Equal Opportunities.

Kentucky’s public universities must meet at least six of eight goals each year to seek Council on Postsecondary Education approval to offer new academic programs. Three universities -- Louisville, Northern Kentucky and Kentucky State – showed continuing progress on all Kentucky Plan objectives for 2006, which was based on data from 2004-05 academic year.

“We are pleased at our progress and will continue to work diligently to meet and exceed the Kentucky Plan objectives,” said C.J. Woods, director of WKU’s Office of Diversity Programs. “It is encouraging to see that our academic, programmatic and recruitment efforts are positively impacting our campus.”

Among the goals are increasing the number of black students from Kentucky, improving their graduation rates, and employing a certain percentage of blacks. If continuing progress is lacking in more than two categories, a university must seek a waiver from CPE before seeking approval for a new degree program.

WKU achieved continuous progress status on Kentucky resident African-American undergraduate enrollments; retention of first-year Kentucky resident students; retention of all Kentucky resident undergraduate students; six-year graduation rate for degree-seeking Kentucky residents; employment of African-Americans in executive, administrative and managerial positions; employment of African-Americans as faculty; and employment as African-Americans as other professionals.

The only category where continuous progress wasn’t achieved for 2006 was Kentucky resident graduate student enrollments.

The CPE’s Committee on Equal Opportunities discussed the Kentucky Plan report at its meeting Monday (Feb. 20) in Frankfort.

More information on the committee is available online at http://cpe.ky.gov/committees/ceo/.

The report materials are available by clicking on http://cpe.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/C03DE7FD-75C8-439B-B360-B04A2BFDEDF0/0/DegreeProgramEligibility2006feb.pdf and http://cpe.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/1DC27837-DCE7-43F1-9EB4-5BADC486820A/0/DegreeProgramEligibilityAttachment20606.pdf

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact C.J. Woods at (270) 745-5066.