Gilbert Karuga’s concerns about becoming a professor at a predominately white university were quickly put to rest when he talked with others from Kenya who had been at Kansas University.

“They said it was the best place in terms of fitting in the community,” said Karuga, a KU assistant professor of business since 2002. “They didn’t feel out of place.”

Gradually, with the addition of faculty members such as Karuga, KU’s instructors are becoming more diverse. But the university still lags behind its peers nationally, according to a report released Monday by the American Council on Education.

The report, which used data from 2001, showed 14.9 percent of full-time faculty nationwide were from minority ethnic groups. That compared with 13.7 percent at KU for that year.

Since then, KU’s faculty percentage from minority groups has climbed to 14.55 percent. Just more than 10 percent of KU faculty members were from minority groups a decade ago.

But the university still is shy of the goal of 200 minority faculty members set when Chancellor Robert Hemenway arrived in 1995. There were 181 minority faculty on campus in fall 2004, according to KU records.

“We’re making some strides, but it’s not as dramatic as we’ve hoped,” said Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, senior associate vice provost. “That’s one of the reasons we want to bring someone in to work on this.”

That someone is Jean Epstein, who started last month as KU’s half-time coordinator of faculty and staff diversity.

Epstein moved to Lawrence in 2003 when her husband, Steven, was named professor of history. She previously was management project training manager at Exabyte, a Boulder, Colo., technology firm.

She did not return phone messages Monday.

6News video: KU needs to improve minority faculty numbers

But McCluskey-Fawcett said she didn’t expect Epstein to set specific goals for recruiting a diverse faculty for about a year as she learns the ropes of her new job.

The biggest focus, she said, will be on increasing the number of prospective faculty applying for KU jobs. That will include making contacts with other universities about graduate students, talking with faculty at other schools who might want to move to KU and targeting professional associations and publications that cater to minority faculty.

In Karuga’s opinion, universities need to encourage more minorities to pursue graduate degrees.

“The market is still very skewed,” he said. “You can’t entirely blame universities for not hiring minorities if there are no minorities to hire.”