Good evening.  I hope everyone is having a good week and staying dry.

I want to start out by saying that the Multi-Cultural Visitation Program went off without a hitch, and was a success.  I want to thank Commissioner Walker for helping me set up and for doing the resource round up, and Commissioner Wemer and Fardy for their help with the Rap Session.

As I said last week I am still looking for locations of the Barber Shop/Beauty Salon.  If any student has any ideas do not hesitate to tell me.  I have received some ideas from some students which I will be passing on to Dr. Geiger in the coming days.

I am still waiting the release of 2005-2006 retention rate data from the Office of Institutional equity.  Once I have this I plan to compare it to the retention rates of other MAC schools and the types of programs they have going on for diversity and retention, so I can see if we can implement any of their programs to raise our retention rates.  Brandon is currently researching MAC schools and is awaiting some replies from certain schools.

I am starting to look at when certain student organizations meet so that I can formally invite them to participate in the diversity and retention forum to happen in January.  I hope to have every invitation and an initial response back as to whether they will be participating or not before finals week begins.

I hope everyone has a good week, and End of Report.

Michael Adeyanju

Good evening.  This week I have mainly been focused on the issue of the barber shop and reaching out to students on problems they believe are here at Ohio University.

I met last Friday with Senate Intern Chauncey to discuss some problems he saw here at the university and some ideas he had on making the university and the Athens community better.  This was a very productive meeting with some great ideas that were generated.  Many of these ideas are have been followed up on this whole week and will continue to be followed up on in the coming weeks.

I also met with my intern Brandon last Friday to discuss what he wants to gain out of this experience and my expectations for him.  This was a nice meeting and an informative way to get to know Brandon and for him to get to know me.  I gave him some things to work on and we both decided that we would meet weekly to just follow up and see how everything is going with each other.

Yesterday, I met with Dr. Geiger on the issue of the Barber shop.  This was an informative meeting that really put to rest some untrue rumors about everything that was going on with the idea.  Dr. Geiger informed me that he had been working on the issue for the past year and already has barbers and beauticians who are willing to come down to Athens for 2-3 days a week and cut/style hair.  He said that the problem remains in finding a location that is affordable for the barbers/stylists.  He asked me to ask the students that if anyone has any ideas on a location that is about 250-450 square feet with reasonable pricing to contact me so I can pass the location along to him.  He is very optimistic about getting a barbershop/beauty salon down here and is continuingly working on making it happen.

Lastly I just wanted to remind everyone that the MVP is tomorrow night.  It just happens that the Resource round-up happens to be around the same time of the Intern Inauguration and that the Rap session happens to be during the social.  The resource round up is from 8-9 and the rap session is for 9:15-10:15 so if anyone is still willing to come and dedicate an hour for either one or do both please see me or Tristan after the meeting.

Have a good week and end of report.

Good evening.  I hope everyone’s week is going well.  There has not really been too much going on for me this week.

Last Friday I met with Shannon Scott, who is the retention specialist for the College of Arts and Sciences.  We talked about the retention rate in the College of Arts and Sciences and the retention rate for the university as a whole.  In the meeting Shannon mentioned many programs the College of Arts and Sciences has to help keep students at the university, if they want to be here.  One of the programs that he stressed frequently was the freshmen forgiveness program.  This program is for students who are on the verge of being kicked out by the university because of low grades.  The program has the students do a number of things to give them one last chance spring quarter, some things include meeting with an advisor, getting a certain grade point average, and singing a contract expressing that you will try your hardest.  This program is a great tool to really help students stay at the university if they are dedicated to working hard.  The other thing Shannon stressed was how we were going to define high-performing students.  He suggested that we be careful where we do this because it may exclude some people who work really hard but just can’t make it to a certain g.p.a. for any number of reasons.  He suggested I look at other universities around the country to see how they define a high-performing student.

I am currently looking at universities around the country to get a better hold on how we should define high-performing students. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has one of the highest retention

 rates in the country, so I will be focusing there to see how they define high-performing.

It was brought to my attention by S.A.A.B (Student African-American Brotherhood) that they had been hearing information about a barber shop/beauty salon coming to Athens that would specialize in doing the hair of black people mainly the students.  They would like to see this happen and were wondering what is happening with the idea, and if it is even going to happen.  I therefore within the coming weeks will be trying to contact members of the administration especially in the office of the President to see what is going on with the idea of the Barber shop/Beauty Salon.

On Oct. 26^th there will be a Multicultural Visit Program (MVP) where potential students come to the university and get tours, talk to current students, and organizations around campus.  I along with Commissioner Walker will be attending the program to represent the Senate.  If anyone else would like to help out I will be passing around a sign-up sheet. 

Have a good week and end of report.

Good evening.  It’s been just over a week since I took the Black Affairs Commissioner job.  In that week I’ve come to see that there is a lot that can be done, with time.  The first issue that I thought I would try to do something about was the retention of high performing Black students.

After deciding that was a topic worth pursing my first plan of action was to talk with the Director of Institutional Equity, Dr. William Smith.  During my meeting with Dr. Smith we discussed many things, some of it including the fact that the data that deals with retention rates will be coming back out in a couple of weeks.  We also discussed what the definition of a high performing student is.  Lastly he pointed me to some people who I should further talk with who would be able to give me better information on the topic of the retention of high performing black students.

After speaking with Dr. Smith I contacted Shannon Scott, the retention specialist for the College of Arts and Sciences to set up a meeting with him to talk about the retention rate in the College of Arts and Sciences.  That meeting will take place at the end of the week.

Per the advice of Dr. Smith I also contacted Jesse Raney, the Assistant Director for the Office of Institutional equity to discuss more issues that are pressing on the Ohio University Campus regarding Black students.  Since Jesse just graduated a couple of months ago she will still know some of the pressing issues that needed to be discussed and acted upon.

The last meeting I set up was with Kris Taylor who works in the office of Diversity for high performing students, to discuss what needs to be done to retain more high-performing students, and also to discuss the steps the university wants to take in an effort to retain more students.

I will keep everyone apprised of the information that comes out of the meeting and what my next step will be in trying to retain more students.

End of report.