Students and staff will have the opportunity to learn more about multiculturalism and diversity at an event planned for Friday.

The eighth annual Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity, the multicultural event modeled after the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, will feature presentations from students who attended the last NCORE.

ISCORE will begin at 8 a.m. Friday in the Memorial Union.

When the students who attend NCORE return to Iowa State, they take a fall course relating to their experiences and prepare proposals and presentations for ISCORE.

This year’s ISCORE will feature presentations and discussions on a variety of topics, such as the relationship between race and athletic ability, white privilege and racial issues in science.

Carmen Flagge, program coordinator for the Dean of Students Office, is in charge of recruiting students for NCORE and ISCORE.

Flagge travels with the students to the national conference and helps them prepare for ISCORE when they return.

“Because NCORE is essentially five days filled with discussion surrounding the topic of race and ethnicity in higher education in the United States, it can be very emotional at times,” Flagge said.

Flagge and the students at NCORE had to face the topic of racism of head on by trading ideas about the issue with other student representatives from diverse backgrounds.

“Race and ethnicity have never been easy topics to discuss, and having a varying group of people from all over the country coming to this conference, there are lots of discussions to be had,” Flagge said. “Students had to step out of their comfort zones.”

The challenges and somewhat uncomfortable situations that students face at NCORE, Flagge said, are what stick with the students when they come back to Iowa.

“It can be challenging, but at the same time, very rewarding and life changing,” Flagge said.

Japannah Kellogg, program coordinator for the Dean of Students Office and interim director of Multicultural Student Affairs, recalled his first impression of Iowa State that occurred while he attended NCORE for another institution.

“I met pockets of students from Iowa State, and I was really impressed,” he said. “I realized that they had the most people at the conference from one area. I never thought of Iowa as being very diverse.”

That was Kellogg’s first encounter with the ISCORE project. After meeting the students and staff from Iowa State at the conference and discussing the goals of ISCORE there, Kellogg decided if he ever got the opportunity, he would take a job at Iowa State if a position with the multicultural office opened up.

“Often people go to conferences and [learn] different opportunities and skills, but rarely, unlike ISCORE, do they come back and share with the rest of the community what they learned,” he said.

Joaquin Alvarez, senior in management information systems, had the NCORE/ISCORE experience two years ago.

“The whole experience was just, wow. I wouldn’t call it overwhelming, but it was just huge,” Alvarez said. “The scope of the conference was intense; there were people from all over the United States going to this thing. It was profound to see that many like-minded people there.”

Alvarez said he noticed the popularity of multicultural events such as ISCORE grows as steadily as awareness about racial issues increases.

“It keeps getting bigger every year as people become more aware of these issues,” Alvarez said. “If everyone was more aware of ethnicity, then we can learn come together, put the pieces of the puzzle together.”