Penn State minority enrollment has reached record numbers, according to official enrollment data released by the university for fall 2004.

More than 80,000 undergraduate and graduate students are currently enrolled at University Park and Commonwealth Campuses this semester, with 9,827 students listed as minorities. Last fall, 9,658 students were listed as minorities.

The number of enrolled minority students has increased each year for 10 consecutive years. Tysen Kendig, Penn State spokesman, said this trend reflects Penn State's diversity initiatives for minority students.

"It has been a perpetual priority to attract and retain higher quality minority students," Kendig said.

Penn State's minority population currently comprises 12 percent of the student body, according to the Penn State factbook Web site. This is an increase of 0.4 percentage points from fall 2003, when total minority enrollment was 11.6 percent.

John Romano, director for enrollment management and administration, said the university would continue its efforts to reach out to minority students.

Penn State currently has recruitment centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which have higher proportions of students of color.

"Through these efforts, we are trying to reach out into a community of students who have been historically under-represented and under-served in higher education," Romano said.

Denise Hinds-Zaami, diversity advocate for Penn State, said the problem is enrolling minority students and retaining them because of financial restraints.

"It can't just be good enough to encourage students to enroll and not have any financial incentive to thrive and remain after their first year," she said.

Terrell Jones, vice provost for educational equity, said higher retention rates in the last few years have helped to increase minority enrollment rates.

"It's a retention effort," he said. "We don't want to lose any students, and we feel we have to do some things differently to be sure to retain students of color."

The university offers several programs to help improve the school environment for minority students.

In addition to the recruitment centers, Penn State has pre-freshman programs that sponsor trips for students to look at the university and provide opportunities to attend summer school.

The Multicultural Resource Center also assigns each enrolled minority student a counselor and provides more resources for African-American programs.

"We are constantly working to make this environment better for minority students," Jones added. "We believe we are able to retain more minority students by helping them take the appropriate steps to graduation."

Sonia Shah, Indian Student Association president, said the presence of minority groups on campus has increased since her freshman year.

"I think minority involvement on campus has increased because groups are trying to steer clear of just targeting their own culture," she said. "We are really trying to get out there and get other cultures and people involved."

Still, Shah said there is a lot of room for improvement for minority enrollment.

"We have a presence here, but it still so small compared to the school as a whole," she said. "We have 40,000 students just at University Park and not even 10,000 minority students at all the campuses combined, which in my opinion is still too small."