Twenty years ago, most of the students in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences were white males.

Although today’s student profile is changing, the college still has a long row to hoe in paving a way for minority students’ agricultural empowerment.

“We’ve made a great effort to increase diversity in this college,” Scott Angle, dean of the college, said in an interview Tuesday. “While we’re going in the right direction, we’re not where we need to be.”

During the last 10 years, Angle said, the number of females enrolled in the college accelerated. In the 2008-2009 academic year, he said, female students made up 53 percent of the college’s student body. This figure mirrors that of the University at large, which has 57 percent female enrollment.

Ethnic diversity in the college, however, is a different story.

“While the percent progress looks good, the numbers are low,” Angle said.

According to the college’s Web site, in fall 2007 12 percent of the students were considered minorities – 4 percent of which were African American students.

Compared to other agriculture colleges in the South, Angle said the college is “pretty much on par.”

“None of us have achieved our goal with African American or Latino undergrads,” he said. “There’s still a long way to go.”

Angle said the college has been working diligently to increase diversity among students.

He said the college is going into high schools and middle schools around the state that are predominantly Latino or African American and explaining what modern agriculture means.

“We’re carrying all of these messages out to students who would not otherwise go to a college of agriculture,” he said.

Angle attributes many of the changes to efforts of Ronald Walcott, an assistant dean for academics in the college.

“He’s made a huge difference in this college,” Angle said. “The only credit that I take is that I hired him.”

Jean Bertrand, also an assistant dean for academics, has been working alongside Walcott to recruit more minority students into the realm of agriculture and related sciences.

“We don’t have the numbers for this year yet,” she said in a telephone interview Wednesday, “but we’re expecting them to look good.”

“We are probably a little less diverse [than] the University [at large], but not as much as you might think,” Bertrand said.

She said the college participates in several of the University’s recruitment events, including those geared toward prospective Latino students, as well as the “Georgia Daze” program.

“Georgia Daze is for minority students that have been accepted to [the University],” Bertrand said. “Our college hosts a breakfast for them, and that’s been really successful in the past.”

According to the January “Georgia Daze” schedule, the breakfast included presentations from the group Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences.

Erik Nkembe, a recent graduate from Pavo, served as the president of MANNRS from 2008 to 2009.

He described the group as an organization that “promotes the advancement of members [of] ethnic or cultural groups that are underrepresented in agricultural and related sciences.”

He said though most of the College’s minority students are not involved in MANNRS, the membership is steadily growing as successful events attract more underrepresented students.

In addition to University-wide events, Bertrand and Walcott actively recruit students at events in Hall County, an area with a large Latino population.

Bertrand said more incentive is now available for minority students interested in becoming students in the college thanks to five multicultural scholarship opportunities.

Each scholarship, granted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, pays $6,000 a year for students to attend the University.

Angle said one reason the college is not very diverse is because of the negative connotations agriculture has for minority groups.

“Its roots are slavery and sharecropping, which are unhappy parts of our history,” he said, adding that it is therefore the last thing most minority students want to be associated with.

“We come from a place where it’s hard to recruit students,” he said. “The challenge is to allay these misconceptions. Agriculture is a science-based business with more jobs than students.”

Angle said the most diverse majors are animal health, biological sciences, and agribusiness.

“Medical schools in particular say they want students with a diverse background,” he said, adding that diverse majors count in addition to ethnicity.

Nkembe, who was a biological science major as an undergraduate, said the college’s diversity is “a work in progress.”

“It isn’t quite as diverse as we’d like it to be,” Nkembe said, “but minority numbers are rising in the college, and we’re very proud of that.”

He said his own ethnicity did not stop him from appreciating the college’s experience.

“Although I am a minority student in the college, I have been presented the same opportunities as the majority, and I have taken full advantage of them,” Nkembe said.

Angle advises that for all students in the college.

“Everyone should be able to take advantage of the opportunities and bounty that agriculture is capable of providing,” Angle said. “It is incumbent upon us to make sure everyone in the state knows what those opportunities are.”