ANN ARBOR – The University of Michigan, which has seen mixed court responses to its affirmative action programs in recent years, announced a new diversity program Thursday that would spend $85 million over the next five years to bring more minorities to the campus.

Rob Sellers, vice provost for Diversity, Equity and Academic Affairs, who announced the plan, is also being recommended as the university’s first chief diversity officer, U-M President Mark Schlissel said in the university’s announcement.

“The future of our great university will be determined by how well we embrace the values of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Schlissel said in the announcement. “To live up to our full potential as a university, everyone must have the opportunity to contribute and to benefit, and our community can be complete only when all members feel welcome.”

Among the elements of the plan are efforts to recruit a more diverse student body and to make the campus more welcoming once those students arrive.

Incoming freshmen, for instance, will attend a program designed to help them navigate the differences among their fellow students.

The Wolverine Pathways program that has been attracting minority students from Southfield and Ypsilanti will be expanded to Detroit in the coming year, officials said.

The university is also building a new, $10 million multicultural center on campus.

The plan notes a number of milestones for increasing diversity since the university was founded.

“While U-M was the first university in the country to establish an office focused on the concerns of gays and lesbians when the Human Sexuality Office (today’s Spectrum Center) opened in 1971, it took 22 more years before U-M banned discrimination based on sexual orientation,” the plan says.

It also notes its successful defense of including race as a factor in its law school admissions in a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It does not mention another case that same year that overturned its use of race, as implemented, in its undergraduate admissions process.

The university is also working to develop new teaching methods that will reach the more diverse student body.

Sellers said the university is planning a survey of students and faculty later this month designed to create a baseline of the current racial and ethnic climate at the university. The information is intended to allow officials to measure the effects of new programs on that climate.

This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com