The total number of faculty members at MSU has decreased, but women and ethnic minorities make up a larger percentage of the group, according to a 2002-03 university report released last week.

The report, "Diversity within Community," is released annually by the Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance and Monitoring.

The total academic personnel workforce includes all academic positions such as faculty, librarians and advisers.

Within this group, the number of women increased by 1.7 percent and the number of minorities by 6.1 percent.

Among tenured faculty, the number of females increased by 2.2 percent and the number of ethnic minorities by 4.5 percent.

"We continue to see modest gains," said Paulette Granberry Russell, director for the Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance and Monitoring, adding that some changes are because of normal fluctuations.

"We lost faculty while we were not hiring at the same rate," Russell said. "Faculty hiring has slowed."

Russell said that of the tenure-system new hires, 62 percent are women and ethnic minorities.

"Part of our goal is for that trend to continue," she said.

The report included that over the past several years, gains in recruitment of women and ethnic minorities have been offset by a higher rate of resignation.

The MSU Black Faculty Staff & Administrators Association is concerned about the retention rate of ethnic-minority staff members, said President Deborah Sudduth.

The group meets once a month to discuss issues and concerns within the black community.

"Our concern is, once we hired the minorities, what is the university doing to retain them?" she said.

Sudduth said the group also looks at the number of ethnic minorities promoted or being moved into the tenure stream.

"I hope the university realizes the value of having minorities and that the minorities value being here," she said.

Assistant Professor Denise Saint Arnault said she thinks the university would hire more female and ethnic-minority staff members if more qualified members of these groups were available.

"It's not like they're out there and we're not taking them," she said. "These people are in such high demand."

Saint Arnault said that many women stick to traditionally female-dominated fields, such as social work and nursing, where the demand is not as high.

"There's several social forces," she said.

Jon Sticklen, chairperson of the Executive Committee of Academic Council, said that neither Faculty Council nor Academic Council officially have addressed ratios or hiring rates of women or ethnic-minority staff members in the two years he has sat on the executive committee.

The councils have discussed numbers in the abstract, he said, also adding that "there are concerns that I've heard voiced informally."

Sticklen said there are difficulties in examining one year's worth of data as it is presented in the report.

"You want to identify a trend as early as you can and take remedial action," he said. "But you don't want to act too early." He said some variations might be because of statistical fluctuations.

Though the report showed that the number of American Indian and Alaskan Native personnel decreased by three people, assistant Professor Susan Applegate Krouse said the numbers have increased dramatically over the last five to six years.

"It's a lot of behind-the-scenes recruiting," she said. "We look for qualified native faculty."

Krouse said the recent losses are not the fault of the university, but normal changes.

"Our numbers are so small that even the loss of one person makes a difference," she said, but added, "We've been pretty successful retaining the native faculty that we have recruited."