Racism, discrimination and gender equality play a significant role in a student’s success. This was just one of the topics discussed during the discussion forum Monday at noon in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

Michael Whiteford, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, moderated the discussion, which included a panel of faculty and students from around campus. The panel included Modupe Labode, ISU alumna and former faculty member, Jowelle Benson, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies, Derrick Rollins, assistant dean for diversity for the College of Engineering, and Jaymes Barnett, junior in logistics and supply chain management.

Whiteford opened the discussion with statistics on how the number of minority and female faculty and staff employed in the past year has increased by no more than 1 percent. However, he said he feels this small increase is success in its beginning stages. The “somewhat discouraging” statistic, he said, was the retention rate for black students – 26.8 percent of black students did not return for their second year in fall 2007.

Benson, who is from Des Moines, said she had challenges academically from a lack of a support system.

“Cultural diversity was not something I had to think about in Des Moines, until I came to Iowa State,” she said.

She said being a part of the Black Student Alliance and the Multicultural Vision Program helped a great deal in making her feel less like she was “out there alone.”

“Students of color feel a lot of added pressure to succeed at Iowa State,” Benson said.

Labode added to the walk down Memory Lane as she related to the audience her personal story of being an undergraduate student during the 1980s. Labode, who grew up in Muscatine, said her “fantasy in coming down to Iowa State was to see faculty of color,” but was disappointed to find in the five years she spent here that she did not have one faculty member of color in the history department. She said issues of legitimacy and authority begin when a faculty person of color is not seen as the person in charge of his or her classroom.

In response to a story that was shared in which a woman of color was told her high GPA was not a result of her being smart, Karen Zunkel, director of the Women in Science and Engineering program, said discrimination is not just a race factor, but that it could also be based on sex as well. She pointed out that some women of color may feel discriminated against or out of place simply because they are women in a predominately male profession.

“Research shows [to them] that women get good grades because they work hard, not [necessarily] because they are smart,” Zunkel said.

To close out the session, the suggestion was made that changes should stem from the classroom level – from the manners in which professors handle their classroom affairs to, perhaps, creating spaces on campus where faculty and students in the majority have a chance to collaborate on thoughts and ideas with faculty and students in the minority.

“It’s got to be a mutual effort to gain common ground,” Barnett said.