BLACKSBURG -- Virginia Tech plans to invest $899,000 over the next five years to improve the climate for minorities on campus.

The money will help turn dozens of recommendations made last year by Tech's Task Force on Race and the Institution into a viable plan, according to a report the university recently released. The plan recommends taking steps such as new hires, outreach programs and new curriculum and minority student recruitment efforts to increase the university's diversity.

Tech Provost Mark McNamee formed the task force in the summer of 2006, after protests following the announced departure of political science professor Christopher Clement. The black professor received a negative review in his tenure process, effectively ending his career at Tech.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia listed Tech's black student enrollment as of fall 2007 at 4.6 percent -- lower than all but two of the state's 15 public four-year universities. Tech also ranks in the bottom half for its Hispanic enrollment.

The work of the task force was interrupted by the April 16, 2007, shootings on campus -- a community forum about the task force's initial recommendations scheduled that month was canceled. But a 14-person implementation team of students, faculty and administrators went to work in August 2007 to turn the long list of recommendations into an action plan.

McNamee said that was an important step for an initiative that some doubted would lead to any real action.

"I feel really strongly committed to get it done," he said. "Because when I set up the task force, a lot of people rolled their eyes."

Most of the expenses in the budget projection -- $789,750 -- would become recurring costs. Much of that is in the form of diversity "cluster hires" scheduled for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 academic years. The idea behind hiring multiple people with backgrounds in diversity would be to bolster the complement of minority professors and provide mentors to faculty already at Tech.

The initial cluster hire will consist of six positions. The first four hires would be senior positions in Africana studies and race and social policy.

The sections of the implementation plan addressing student recruitment and campus climate are less focused on new efforts. Kevin McDonald, Tech's vice president for equity and inclusion, said the idea was to work with, rather than duplicate, existing programs. The university is developing relationships with historically black colleges and universities, has several minority student organizations on campus and has established internship programs to attract minorities.

Overall black enrollment at the school has been declining since 2003, when the board of visitors voted to end affirmative action in hiring and student enrollment. The board quickly reversed the decision, but black freshman enrollment plummeted and has been slow to recover since.

Karen Eley Sanders, associate vice president for academic support services, said the application pool for blacks and Hispanics has grown along with the overall application numbers.

But Sanders said Tech still struggles with getting those black and Hispanic applicants to accept offers of admission.

Sanders said Tech's Presidential Scholarship Initiative, providing tuition, fees and room and board to low-income students living in Virginia, should help address that problem.

The university announced the program in June. It's designed to serve 50 new students a year starting in fall 2009 and is not limited to minorities. But poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are more than double the rate for whites. And black and Hispanic students who decline offers to come to Tech typically cite financial aid as the reason, she said.

By adding 50 new students to the program each year, the scholarship will eventually serve 200 students at a time. Because those students will be eligible for federal need-based aid, each scholarship is expected to cost Tech only about $2,200 annually. The implementation plan mentions a $3 million fundraising goal for multicultural efforts as part of Tech's $1 billion capital campaign. That funding, along with tuition and fee revenue, would help support the scholarship program.

At Monday's board of visitors meeting, Tech President Charles Steger warned that impending state budget cuts will lead to reductions in Tech's budget. But McDonald said he's optimistic that university leaders will not allow those cuts to affect the task force's plan.

"I'm confident that they're supportive of this, they're backing this and, even in the face of some of our fiscal challenges, that they will make sure that diversity isn't an area that is short-circuited," he said.

To read the complete task force implementation team report, go to www.provost.vt.edu.