CHARLOTTESVILLE – Between outreach programs and countless campus groups, it seems easy for a minority student to find one’s niche at the University of Virginia.
Not so for Monty Johns Jr.
Part Cayuga Indian, the sophomore computer engineering major noticed faces like his were scarce at the Charlottesville campus, where American-Indian undergraduates and graduate students number roughly 40 among more than 20,000 students.
“It’s hard to increase numbers for a group that’s so small, but that’s what I’m trying to do,” said Johns, head of a newly minted American-Indian Student Union, and the creator of a mentoring program, welcome reception and other outreach efforts geared at enticing American-Indian students.
The school has joined colleges such as Virginia Tech in expanding outreach for this micro-minority, often overlooked as administrators push to diversify student bodies.
Census officials recorded about 158,200 American Indians among the nearly 16 million college students enrolled in 2001.
“Part of it is that indigenous people are demanding” attention, explained Samuel Cook, coordinator for American-Indian Studies at Virginia Tech.
“The other part of it is sort of the nationwide movement toward diversity,” he said.