CSU Monterey Bay is just above average among California State University campuses in hiring minority professors but is still becoming increasingly white, studies related to California Research Bureau data suggest.

According to a faculty recruitment survey by the California State University Office of the Chancellor, CSUMB ranked 10th out of 23 CSU campuses in minority recruiting during the fall of 2002.

Just over 31 percent of CSUMB's new tenure-track faculty are minority, which is about on par with CSU-Fullerton (31.3 percent) and CSU-San Francisco (31.7 percent). San Jose State had 35.2 percent.

"Considering the small pool of (minority) Ph.D. candidates, I think we're doing OK," said public information officer Holly White.

"We could always do better," she said, but "our commitment is very, very bold."

But not bold enough, said CSUMB professor Jim May, a former state treasurer of the California Faculty Association and now its faculty-rights coordinator at CSUMB.

According to an association study, the university's faculty is now less than half minority. That's much less ethnically diverse than it was when CSUMB first started in the mid-1990s, his data indicate.

In its 1994-95 founding year, when CSUMB first espoused its mission of diversity, 69 percent of its tenured and tenure-track faculty was from a minority group, May said. In the 2000-01 year, that figure had dropped to just over 45 percent.

The perception has been that the share of minority professors has been on the drop, May said, "but this seems to confirm it."

May's data on CSUMB were culled from a 1985-2001 study by the California Faculty Association, which drew data from the CSU Chancellor's office. Because the California Research Bureau's study used the same time span, May presumed the surveys used much of the same information.

California Research Bureau data on CSU-Monterey Bay were unavailable Wednesday.

In the association's survey, the ethnic breakdown of combined tenured and tenure-track faculty (using rounded figures) was as follows:

• White: White representation was 54.8 percent in 2001, up from 31.4 percent in 1995.

• American Indian: 3 percent, up from 2 percent. (American Indians are 1 percent of the state population.)

• Asian: 17.9 percent, down from 25.7 percent. (Asians are 11 percent of the population.)

• Black: 7.1 percent, down from 14.3 percent. (Blacks are 7 percent of the state's population.)

• Hispanic: 16.7 percent, down from 22.9 percent. (Hispanics are 31 percent of the population.)

CSUMB has seen its share of ethnic strife. Several years ago, students and minority faculty members protested perceived mistreatment of minority employees.

In January, a group of students stormed the stage just before President Peter Smith's annual State of the University address and complained of past discrimination lawsuits filed against the university.