With her experiences as a first-generation student and immigrant from China, Fang Du said Iowa State University is a “good time and location” for her to positively affect the Multicultural Student Affairs office.

During her appearance as the last of four candidates vying for the post of director of MSA and assistant dean of students, Du said the main concerns she would focus on, if selected, are recruitment, retention and bringing accountability to the MSA office.

Du, who serves as the assistant director of the multi-ethnic student program at the University of Minnesota at Morris, said that instead of concentrating on recruiting a high volume of students of color, Iowa State needs to recruit scholars who will be a good fit for Iowa State, rather than “tricking them into coming here.”

Du focused on the state of the MSA office and the changes she would like to see.

“Multicultural affairs is more than just numbers,” she said. “There is a need to establish a framework that is rich both curricular-wise and extracurricular-wise.”

Along with the three previous candidates, Du also spoke about the public that the MSA office must focus on down the road.

“We need to pay a lot of attention to changing the demographic in which we serve,” she said. “I am determined to serve the complex population.”

In regards to actually “serving” the student population, Du said the MSA office needs to focus less on educating naive individuals about the obvious issues facing students of color and more on actually providing services to empower all students and improve their academic experiences.

“Educational dialogues need to be happening all over campus … this is not an educational office,” she said as she thought back on the times she has had to explain simple matters of tolerance to students.

“I’m so tired of it,” she said.

Toward the end of her presentation, Du spoke about the potential for students of color to enter areas of study that will increase in importance in the near future. After citing fields such as clean energy, biorenewables and other fields involved with the bioeconomy, Frank Bell, program coordinator for the institute for physical research and technology, said Du’s ideas in directing students to “green” areas of study will be not just successful, but “sexy.”

“Being a research institution … to me, that could be a diversionary issue for the institution,” Bell said. “That’s sexy, interesting enough – and hey, there’s minority students there too!”

After stating earlier in her presentation that MSA needs to focus on hard-hitting issues more than acting as a “whole-campus consultant,” Du said the MSA staff needs to build up a reputation of trust more than anything else.

“The ultimate objective is to help students learn and succeed,” she said. “But we also need to establish a reputation of being a safe zone. That will take hard work to build trust with students.”