Editor’s Note: In conjunction with Black History Month, the Daily will be profiling five outstanding black students this week.

For some Iowa State students, involvement means learning about many different cultural groups around campus.

No one knows this better than Dashan Sardine, junior in community health curriculum.

Sardine, who was born in New York City and grew up in Miami, said she is a multiculturalist at heart, and hopes to one day be involved in the Peace Corps.

“I’d like to teach people more about their bodies, particularly women’s health,” she said. “I’d like to teach it on an international level possibly, going to Third World countries and teaching health through a grass roots organization.”

Sardine also is preparing for work on an international level through her involvement in various cultural programs, from the African American Studies Societies to attending Asian American Pacific Awareness Coalition meetings.

Sardine has been very active in these groups, helping to organize the African American Studies Societies.

She also is very involved in the Black Cultural Center in her church, the New Body of Christ Christian Worship Center, and in the Unified Christian Council.

Despite the time these activities consume, Sardine said she thinks that it’s well spent.

“I find them very rewarding because I feel there’s a need for everything that I’m involved with to get done,” she said. “I wouldn’t do them if I didn’t love them because they just totally drain me, but I find them very fulfilling.”

One of activities Sardine said she especially enjoys are the different cultural nights, “especially the ones that I’m not familiar with.”

“They’re really educational,” she said. “You’re in a room with people who look nothing like you, who have very different interests than you, and you gain a knowledge of a different people.”

The Ames Few, an African drumming and dance group, and the Black Cultural Center also have been very important organizations in Sardine’s college experience.

“The Black Cultural Center was a driving force when I got here. It was where you could go to just relax, to study, to meet people; you could always go there,” she said. “My first semester was so hard here, and it was the African-American community that reached out to me.”

Sardine said she decided to come to ISU when she was awarded the George Washington Carver Scholarship.

“Initially, that’s what brought me here,” she said, “but it’s the people that kept me here.”

Sardine said some of her favorite aspects of ISU are the genuine people, her church and the campus, but she also said she sees need for improvement in the administration.

“Sincerity from the administration is a huge [problem],” she said. “Sincerity is always followed up, and I don’t see a lot of follow-up; I don’t see the university being very public about a lot of issues.”

Sardine said some of the issues she is concerned about involve the Catt Hall resolution and the possibility of a multicultural center at ISU.

“[They’ve] just sort of disappeared off the front pages somehow,” she said.

When she needs to relax, Sardine said two of her favorite places are the greenhouse attached to the horticulture building and the chapel in the Memorial Union.

“I am very tropically oriented, and I spend a lot of time in the greenhouse during the winter months,” she said. “I don’t know that people value things like that.”

Sardine said her advice to students is that they try to grow spiritually during their college careers.

“I really think we need to be more soul-searching in how we experience it — stand for what you believe in,” she said. “Find something to live for that you would die for.”