The University’s Hispanic and Latin student enrollment is at a standstill, and the total Hispanic students in the freshman class increased by one student — 173 to 174 — from fall 2007 to fall 2008.Hispanic undergraduate enrollment is up 6.1 percent from fall 2007 — an increase of 0.1 percent of the total undergraduate population — and the University has initiated recruiting plans to boost those numbers.About 43 million, or 14.4 percent, of U.S. residents are Hispanic — a minority that has replaced blacks as the largest minority group in the U.S., according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.About 3.3 million high school students graduated in the 2007-2008 school year, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.With the increasing numbers of high school graduates and Hispanic residents in the U.S., the pool of Hispanic students from which the University can recruit is growing.Jim McCoy, vice provost of enrollment management, planning and policy, said he would like the University to have about 300 incoming Hispanic students within the next five years. And he said that feat is possible if out-of-state recruiting continues.Compared with universities in states with large Hispanic populations, LSU is far behind. Hispanic students accounted for 17.8 percent of the University of Texas’ undergraduate students last fall and 13.5 percent of the University of Florida’s 2007 undergraduate population.Hispanics choose a school for proximity to their home more than any other ethnic group, McCoy said. “We are blessed in that we live close to Texas,” McCoy said. “But there are a lot of good schools in Texas.” He said for the past 10 years, Hispanics lived in concentrated areas of the U.S., but they are starting to spread to other states.LSU’s Hispanic students account for 3 percent of the undergraduate and graduate student body, slightly above the average standing among Tulane, UL-Lafayette and Louisiana Tech., according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.Mary Parker, executive director of Undergraduate Admissions and Student Aid, said LSU began traveling to recruit Hispanic students in 2007. Since then LSU has spent $38,000 on recruiting efforts targeted at attracting Hispanic students. Parker’s department funded mailings, purchases of National Hispanic Scholars’ contact information, a Miami recruiting trip and a bilingual counselor’s pay. The AgCenter paid for recruiting trips to Honduras, according to Frances Gould, AgCenter director of communications.Guadalupe Lamadrid, associate director of Undergraduate Admissions and Student Aid, traveled last year to Miami and this April to Honduras. She said there is a large alumni base there, including the Honduran Speaker of the House, Minister of Education and former president Carlos Flores and his wife, Mary.In Honduras, Lamadrid said she and three representatives of her department visited 14 high schools in four days with slideshows and presentations. Lamadrid and her group came away with about 400 e-mail addresses for high school juniors interested in LSU. She said the alumni were especially excited to host LSU’s representatives.”When the video would play and the fight song would play, you could just see on the faces of the alumni and all the memories coming back,” Lamadrid said,Another LSU group is camped in Honduras this week for more recruiting, and the representatives will host informational receptions in hotels for parents and students.Lamadrid, whose family is from Cuba, visited 14 high schools on a maiden voyage to Miami in 2007. Her efforts resulted in 56 applications and seven Hispanic enrollments from that area.Cerise Edmonds, Cross-Cultural Affairs coordinator for the Office of Multicultural Affairs, said she serves as a resource for minority students once they arrive on campus by introducing them to LSU’s academic, social and career services. Edmonds said she is working on a new Hispanic Awareness Initiative to promote acceptance of the culture on campus. “To me, tolerance isn’t enough,” Edmonds said. “Historically, LSU has always been a black and white dichotomy. It’s changing.”Edmonds has been at the University for two months and said when she arrived, she e-mailed all declared Hispanic students to find out what they needed most on campus.Several meetings later, the Hispanic Student Cultural Society now has about 10 members. The society held its first event, the Hispanic Cultural Showcase, Tuesday in Free Speech Alley.Pedro Cobos, agricultural business freshman from Honduras, said he looked at Purdue University and Texas A & M before he chose LSU after graduation. He said studying in the U.S. provides him with more opportunities than his native country because Honduras is a third-world country.Cobos’ father is a 1983 LSU alumnus who founded and presided over a Honduran student association on campus. Cobos said he would like to re-establish the organization, but the current economic situations of the U.S. and Honduras make it too expensive for many Hondurans to study at LSU. “Diversity is an important component in anyone’s education that lives in America and will work in America in the next 30 years,” McCoy said. – – – -Contact Sarah Lawson at [email protected]