Georgetown—Georgetown College recently added four new members to its board, including the founder of a growing international diversity leadership summit.

Now serving as trustees on the 45-member board are Douglas Freeman of New York and Janice Shelton of Johnson City, Tenn. Serving as board fellows are James Barlow Sr. of Georgetown and Major Jemison of Oklahoma City.

Freeman is CEO and founder of Virtcom Consulting, a firm focused on solving global diversity management challenges. He has lead diversity conferences around the world, including the United Nations Global Compact/ILO Global Diversity Dialogue in London and the UN’s International Women’s Day Forum.

Four years ago Freeman founded the World Diversity Leadership Summit in Prague, Czech Republic. Last year’s event was held at the United Nations and included a CEO roundtable with heads of Proctor & Gamble, HSBC Holdings, Major League Baseball and other entities. Georgetown College President Bill Crouch also spoke at the 2007 summit.

Freeman is a graduate of the University of California at Berkley and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The last few years, Crouch has focused much of his efforts on increasing racial diversity at the Scott County college.

“The world’s changed and we live in a very diverse place,” Crouch said. “Educationally you have to teach people about diversity and the best way is for them to experience it.”

Crouch said of the 1,300 undergraduates currently enrolled, approximately 7 percent are “people of color. … Our goal is to get that to 17 percent over the next five to 10 years.”

In the past two years Georgetown also has welcomed new African-American and Hispanic faculty to campus.

A retired East Tennessee State University administrator and professor, Janice Shelton is an alumna of Georgetown College, the University of Kentucky and University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently is director of senior adults at Central Baptist Church in Johnson City. Shelton served Georgetown’s board of trustees from 1998 to 2005 and was chair from 2003-2005.

Jim Barlow, a Georgetown native and member of Georgetown Baptist Church, is CEO of Barlow Homes, Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and has been active in numerous civic, community and professional organizations. He divides his time between homes in Georgetown and Naples, Fla.

Major Jemison, senior pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, is immediate past president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. He is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., and the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Jemison also is a graduate of the now-closed Bishop College in Dallas, a school that produced other prominent African-American ministers and drew great admiration from Crouch. Last year Georgetown launched a scholarship program for African-American students related to, or recommended by, Bishop alumni. Currently there are five Bishop Scholars on campus.

The diversity effort at Georgetown has not come without controversy. Crouch acknowledged that rumors circulated that African-American students were receiving more scholarship monies than Anglo students. He denied the accusation and said the administration responded to the rumors by meeting with students and explaining the goals of the diversity initiative.

“For there ever to be constructive change, it has to begin with conversation,” Crouch said. “The students were asking really good questions. They were just looking for answers.”

About 150 students attended the most recent meeting, he added.

In part to elect non-Baptists to its board, Georgetown College sought in 2005 to redefine its relationship with the Kentucky Baptist Convention. That year messengers to the KBC annual meeting affirmed a plan to phase out Cooperative Program funding for the school over the next four years.

Seventy-five percent of Georgetown’s board is Baptist, and the college remains connected to several Baptist institutions.

“It’s important that a college get trustees that also have networks that will help the college grow and improve,” Crouch said. “I think Kentucky Baptists would be pleased to know that we still turn primarily to Baptists to provide that expertise.”