MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech student Portia Galloway (right) gets a hug from Cathy Fernandez-Weston.

BLACKSBURG -- Friends, family and Virginia Tech officials and professors gathered in the school's Graduate Life Center on Thursday night for the Donning of the Kente. The ceremony, an annual event at Tech since 1995, honors black students about to graduate. It has its roots in the long tradition of African weaving and is reserved for special occasions.

While the students celebrated as a group, the ceremony had a personal touch, with a family member or friend saying a few words about each student before placing the Kente over their shoulders. Some speakers spoke through lump-filled throats and dabbed their eyes.

Portia Galloway's friend Alicia Brown kept it light. After a few words about how Galloway mentored her when she first arrived at Tech, Brown explained why her friend will go far in life.

"For someone who doesn't drive or have a license, she always manages to get there," she said.

Galloway's persistence was tested at Tech. A first-generation college student, she came to the school in the fall of 2002 from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. A good student in high school, she wanted to study engineering. Attending a school in Southwest Virginia, more than 500 miles from home, didn't faze her.

But during her first semester Galloway said she struggled academically and felt alienated at times in class. As a black woman pursuing a degree in industrial systems engineering, she was a double minority. It was hard to connect with professors and students in her classes. She thought about transferring to a historically black college.

Maybe there she'd find it easier to connect with professors and ask for help. And maybe she would be able to shake the feeling that she needed to prove she was worthy of being in the class.

But Galloway had already made friends at Tech, many of them black. And she credits them with talking her into sticking it out.

"I feel you, but this is where you chose to be," was the gist of their counsel.

"It was just having that understanding amongst us that, even if it was unspoken, we were all going through the same thing," she said.

If Galloway didn't finish what she started at Tech, she wouldn't have been unique. Nationally, less than half of all black students who enroll in a college graduate from that school within six years, according to a an April report from Education Sector, a Washington, D.C., research group. Graduation rates for black college students are about 20 percentage points lower than white students, partly because blacks are more likely to enroll at schools with low graduation rates. The median six-year graduation gap for blacks and whites at individual colleges is about 10 percent.

Tech's 13 percent graduation rate gap is better than some of its peers -- the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has a gap of 22 percentage points -- but worse than others, such as the University of Texas, Austin. The gap there is only 5 percentage points.

Education Sector's study mentions societal reasons as one cause for the different rates. Black students are more likely to be first-generation college students, making it difficult for their parents to give them advice. The economic divide between blacks and whites and the quality of urban secondary schools also come into play.

But the study explores how some schools are closing the gap. It highlights Florida State University, which has eliminated its graduation gap since implementing a comprehensive program to help low-income, first-generation college students succeed. The program coordinates many of the school's different initiatives under one effort -- the Center for Academic Retention and Enhancement.

Kevin McDonald, Tech's vice president of multicultural affairs, admits that some of the programs Tech has to help students sometimes end up competing with each other rather than complementing one another.

The school is trying to change that, he said, and raise awareness of the many options students have. The Multicultural Academic Opportunities Program is one of the initiatives that provides academic, social and financial support to students. There are student groups designed for minorities pursuing particular degrees, such as Black Engineering Support Teams.

A list of more than 50 similar organizations fills the inside and back of a one-page, 11-by-16-inch brochure of diversity support programs and services. Karen Eley Sanders, associate vice president for academic support services, said the list used to just fill up one regular-sized piece of paper.

"I think we might need a book next time," she said.

The graduation rate gap has been cut in half at Tech in the past decade, when many of the programs were established or enhanced. But they don't work if students don't take advantage of them. The Education Sector report talks about the need for coordinating efforts and the effectiveness of "intrusive counseling."

Jessica Grimes, assistant director for learning assistance programs at Tech, meets with various minority groups on campus to let them know about the Center for Academic Enrichment and Excellence. She and a colleague are also searching for faculty mentors for a new program to help incoming black students next fall.

CAEE offers tutoring and workshops on time management, studying and test-taking. It also runs a program specifically for students on academic probation, though none of its offerings is mandatory.

"I wish they were," Grimes said.

She estimates that about 8 percent or 9 percent of the 500 students she worked with last fall were from underrepresented groups -- black, Hispanic or American Indian. That may not sound like much, but those groups make up only about 7 percent of the student population. Black enrollment at Tech is 4.6 percent and has been falling steadily since reaching a high of 5.8 percent in 2003.

Anton Dawson, another black graduating senior who attended Thursday's ceremony, said the decline is noticeable and a cause for concern. He came to Tech in 2003 and will graduate today with a double major in chemistry and biology. Dawson is outgoing and has plenty of friends, black and white. He said he has loved his time at Tech, but he and his black friends talk about how the university's black community used to be more robust.

There's a natural tendency for students to seek help from friends with similar backgrounds in class, he said. Asians help other Asian students and whites help white students. Dawson was often the only black student in class.

He succeeded by working hard and seeking help from people he knew were good students, whatever their race.

A similar outgoing attitude helped Galloway through her college career. Her mother, a social worker with an associate's degree, told her daughter to speak up and introduce herself to her professors. So at the start of each semester, Galloway told her professors about her goals and what she was hoping to get out of the class. And she asked them about their availability and how they could help her.

"And it was to make sure that he knows that I'm not just the black girl in his class," she said. "Make sure he knows that I am Portia."