ROCKLAND (AP) – The University of Maine’s College of Education is in danger of losing its national accreditation unless it becomes more diverse.

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education wants the university’s College of Education and Human Development to show by this fall the steps it’s taking to make its faculty and students more racially diverse.

National accreditation is important because it ensures that graduates will be certified to teach in other states if they leave Maine.

Education Dean Robert Cobb told the State Board of Education on Wednesday that the move by the accrediting agency came as a surprise. But he said he’s confident that he can show the college is meeting diversity standards.

Achieving racial diversity has been a struggle for colleges and universities in Maine, where the minority population is about 3 percent.

But the State Board of Education, which approves all higher-education institutions in the state, made it clear that it can be done.

“It is a matter of will,” said James Carignan, board chairman.

The accreditation council noted a lack of diversity at other education colleges in Maine, such as the University of Maine at Farmington, but the flagship campus was the one in Maine to receive an official warning that its accreditation is at stake.

The flagship campus was put on notice first, in part because it came up for accreditation earlier than other Maine campuses, Cobb said.

Only one of the roughly 46 full-time and 20 part-time faculty at UMaine’s education college is a member of a minority group. About 4 percent of the roughly 900 undergraduates in the education college are minority students. The percentage of minority students is slightly less for the college’s roughly 650 graduate students.

Carignan said Maine’s public colleges and universities can do better.

Carignan, a former dean of Bates College, said Bates students were almost all white 35 years ago. These days, more than one-quarter of its students are minorities, he said.