Diversity on a college campus is not always easy to achieve, but can bring valuable perspectives to a community, said guest speakers in the Memorial Union Tuesday.

The Higher Education Regional Summit brought together a career fair, group discussions on diversity and special guest speakers.

The summit attracted many students, staff and faculty from colleges across Iowa and beyond to find new opportunities for jobs in diversity and to participate in discussions about the issues of diversity.

Featured at this event were two keynote speakers: J. Herman Blake and Emily L. Moore, co-founders of Scholars for Educational Excellence and Diversity Inc.

Moore spoke about her experiences as the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Dillard University in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

“I want to tell you what happened to this particular institution during the storm in terms of faculty and staff retention and recruitment,” Moore said. “If you think it is difficult to recruit people here, just imagine how difficult it is to convince people to come back to New Orleans.”

All but one building on campus was destroyed at Dillard University by Hurricane Katrina. The faculty, staff and students who stayed with the university had to continue with their studies from a hotel with a restaurant converted into a student cafeteria.

“We ran the entire campus from that hotel,” Moore said.

Even though the odds were stacked highly against them, Moore said they were still able to retain a diverse staff and student body committed to higher education.

“We were able to help them find ways to bring faculty back and to retain the faculty that we had,” Moore said.

Blake touched on a key theme present in many discussion groups. He said the responsibility for establishing a diverse faculty and staff lies with every person involved with the institution.

“It’s everybody’s responsibility, across the board; there are ways in which we can support and uplift each other, and that is very, very critical,” Blake said.

In two decades, Blake said, half of the population of Iowa will be minorities. He pointed out that Iowa needs to prepare for this drastic change by educating Iowa about diversity.

“As people see this reality, they begin to feel threatened, and begin to react and push back,” Blake said. “We’re not talking about a hypothesis. Many of those people are here and their children are in our schools.”

Carla Espinoza, associate vice president of human resource services and member of the Regional Summit planning committee, discussed the purposes and central ideas behind this year’s regional summit.

“The themes at the center of this event are really diversity and recruitment,” Espinoza said. “Even though it is faculty recruitment and retention, faculty are critical to our students and student survival, certainly in terms of role models. We thought it was important to tie back in with the students with the career fair.”

Espinoza said one goal of the summit is to get many people working in diversity at various colleges, to come together and share ideas and techniques, and to discuss what works well in their own colleges and what doesn’t.

“We wanted to bring back those people who were important to progress and diversity when they were here at Iowa State, and have them give a broader perspective to the community colleges, the private colleges, and to us,” Espinoza said.