Turning Up the Heat in the Windy City - Chicago State University

Black Issues in Higher Education, Feb 1, 2001 by Hilary Hurd

Chicago State University President Elnora Daniel makes no apologies for raising the academic bar.

It's 8:30 a.m. and Dr. Elnora D. Daniel, president of Chicago State University, is already three hours into her day. She sits in her office, sipping green tea and preparing to face yet another full schedule of meetings and engagements that will continue at a steady pace until well after sundown.

Daniel spends the mid morning in meetings with the staff of Tempo, the student newspaper, as well as with members of her executive council. She then presents welcoming campus, including Career Awareness Day.

Compared to the way her days usually begin, Daniel says this morning's schedule is relatively light. Despite her pre-dawn start and long string of appointments, Daniel, 58, appears to be full of energy, one of the three characteristics she says college presidents need, long with perseverance and courage. Possessing a turbo-charged spirit certainly is an asset for Daniel who, so far, has spent her presidential tenure pursuing an ambitious agenda of institutional improvements in the areas of academics, infrastructure and finance.

Long considered the stepchild of Chicago's public university system, Chicago State University had historically been allowed to languish, often going without badly needed resources, Daniel says. The university is situated on the South Side of the Windy City and serves a predominantly minority population.

One of Daniel's first orders of business has been to raise the admissions level, focusing on quality rather than quantity. Some consider the strategy a controversial move for a university that traditionally had more liberal admissions criteria that, according to one university official, were not strictly adhered to. One consequence of "raising the bar," however, is that the university has seen a 3 percent decline in enrollment.

"I'm not playing a numbers game," Daniel says. "I'm into providing a quality, value-added education for the young people that come through the doors of this institution. After 31 years of educating minority students, I know that there is a threshold that one must pass in order to be able to achieve a college education."

Daniel points to test scores as one indicator. The average ACT score of a CSU applicant is 19. (The average national score was 21 last year out of a possible score of 36.) Before Chicago State tightened its standards, many of its students had below-average scores.

"Some of the ACT scores of students admitted were not really scores that would allow them to have the wherewithal to achieve a university education," Daniel says. "So we have raised the admission level."

For example, students with ACT scores of 15 had historically been granted admission. However, the school now requires that students score at least a 17 on the ACT or at least 830 on the SAT [the national average SAT score is 1,000] and have a grade-point average of 2.0.

"Faculty are never going to be opposed to raising academic standards," says Dr. Phillip Beverly, president of CSU's faculty senate and assistant professor of political science. "But the problem was the process. Enrollment was impacted and there were no policies in place to address that."

Daniel says she's not worried about the decline in enrollment, but would like to maintain it at the current level of 8,000 students. In order to minimize attrition, the university has contracted national retention consultants Noel-Levitz to help develop a comprehensive enrollment management plan. Part of that process involves working with students who almost make the grade, Daniel says.

"We say to [under-qualified applicants], `We will admit you, but not now. Here's what you need to do. We found through our assessment that you have weaknesses in these areas. If you go to a community college, take care of these weaknesses and re-present yourself to this university, I will guarantee you admission.'"

But Beverly says there is a risk that as the university raises academic standards and improves academic programs, CSU still will not be able to go after the type of students that they want because of the school's history of being underfunded, adding that a declining enrollment in an enrollment-driven type of institution is an issue.

Dr. Charles Smith, who was associate vice president for student development during the administration of previous CSU president Dr. Dolores E. Cross and now is vice president for enrollment management and student affairs at Delaware State University, says the declining enrollment is not a negative. He supports Daniel's statement that many of CSU's students Should have been enrolled at a community college prior to entering the university. Enrollment was approximately 10,000 during Smith's tenure. But he says the previous administration was also concerned about the quality of the student body and thought scaling it back to approximately 8,000-8,500 would have been more manageable.

Cross says although she had a wonderful experience at Chicago State, she faced many of the same challenges as Daniel-- improving the student applicant pool; improving retention rates and communicating the university's mission to both the corporate and local community.