May 23, 2005

The Atlanta-based Goizueta Foundation has awarded $500,000 to Columbus State University to support a comprehensive Hispanic/Latino recruitment initiative at CSU.

The majority of the grant will go into The Goizueta Foundation Scholars Fund to provide need-based scholarships for future Hispanic and Latino students at CSU. Some money will be used immediately to provide support for Hispanic and Latino students during the next three years.

Additionally, the grant will pay for a bilingual adviser and recruiter who can attract Hispanic and Latino students to CSU and advise them in their own language while on campus.

The Hispanic/Latino population in Georgia and in our student body is growing each year, said CSU President Frank Brown. We have recognized this is an area where we need to focus more attention, and we are delighted The Goizueta Foundation has supported our ideas and awarded CSU this very important grant.

CSU figures show an increase of more than 55 percent in the number of Hispanic students during the last four years, with 236 students enrolled in the fall 2004 semester. That number will surely increase as the U.S. Census predicts people of Hispanic/Latino origin in Georgia will increase from 2.1 percent of the 1995 state population to 3.5 percent of the population by 2025.

Between 1990 and 2000 censuses, Georgias total population grew by 26.4 percent while the Hispanic/Latino population grew by 299.6 percent. During the 1990s, North Carolina was the only state with a higher rate of Hispanic/Latino population growth than Georgia, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

University officials hope the Hispanic/Latino recruitment initiative will eventually aid many more Hispanics in the state than just those who attend CSU. Preference for scholarship recipients will be given to students in the College of Education so qualified Hispanic/Latino teachers can impact other students through their own classrooms in their own communities.

This is not the first grant to CSU from The Goizueta Foundation. The Foundation helped establish, and later support, CSUs Coca-Cola Space Science Center in Uptown Columbus.

The latest grant will count toward CSUs Investment in People capital campaign that will wrap up this fall. The campaign seeks to raise at least $85 million to establish a learning environment more dynamic than at any institution of similar size. To date CSU has logged more than $83 million, about $12 million of which is in deferred gifts, such as wills.

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For more information: Martha Saunders, 568-2061