Part of Iowa State’s policy promises to prohibit discrimination in all its forms, but a recent data symposium conducted by the university insists the scales are tipped against minority students.

The data, collected by ISU University Innovation Alliance, shows the rate at which  underrepresented minorities leave ISU is more than one third higher than white students. Similar trends are observed when low income and first-generation college students are compared to wealthier students.

ISCORE, the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity, starts at 8 a.m. in the Memorial Union Sun Room on March 2. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, and attendance is free for registered ISU students and faculty. The goal is to bring awareness of racial and ethnic issues to ISU.

“It’s one thing to say you’re about diversity and inclusion,” said Susana Muñoz, ISCORE’s keynote speaker and professor of higher education at Colorado State University. “But it can’t stop there. You have to show it with your behavior.”

Muñoz received both her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from ISU. She’s an author and professor, and focuses her studies on the rights of undocumented Latinx in the U.S.

Muñoz believes present problems with inclusivity and racism have been around for a long time, and that we haven’t done as much to combat them as we’d like to think.

“I was on the campus in the 90s, and we’re having the same conversations now that we were having then,” Muñoz explained. “ISCORE is a great way to get students involved in these conversations, and hopefully they can become a part of the solution.”

One important issue is climate. Does Iowa State feel like home to all of its constituents equally?

“When somebody comes here, and nobody looks like them, they wonder if they fit in,” said José Antonio Rosa, professor of marketing at ISU. “And it’s even more important in positions of power.”

Rosa will be speaking at ISCORE. He came to ISU three years ago and immediately became involved in ISCORE.

“I’m Puerto Rican,” Rosa explained. “I see it as part of my mission of diversity and inclusion to get involved.”

The goals of ISCORE are to facilitate conversations about race and ethnicity and equip students and educators with the ability to have more of those conversations in the future.

Inspiration for ISCORE comes from NCORE, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, where educational leaders from across the country come together to talk about the same issues ISCORE is focusing on at ISU.

Japannah Kellogg is the Division of Student Affairs Director at ISU. He’s been involved with ISCORE since 2000 when he arrived in Ames.

“NCORE’s mission is to get these conversations started,” Kellogg said. “At ISCORE it’s our job to continue those conversations.

There are many obstacles standing in the way of change, and when it comes to race and ethnicity one of those obstacles is discomfort. Many people feel uncomfortable during these conversations.

“If nothing else, ISCORE is an opportunity to engage,” Kellogg said. “It’s so easy to avoid these discussions, maybe some of us are afraid of saying the wrong thing… but we come to college to learn.”

College campuses are seeing an increased population of minority students as a whole, and students are getting involved with NCORE and ISCORE along with their professors and faculty.

“ISCORE is important because these issues affect student success,” said Benjamin Dralle, senior nutritional science. “And this goes beyond Iowa State. It gives us an opportunity to talk about national issues.”

Dralle has experience with ISCORE in the past, and this year he will be part of a project presenting the problems in African American communities.

That’s just one presentation. ISCORE will host more than 30 sessions that deal with issues present in communities of all sorts of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Jazlyn Talley, junior in environmental studies and political science, will be presenting about issues faced by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

“These conversations are important,” Talley said. “But people don’t like to have them. ISCORE helps normalize these discussions and gives people a platform.”

Rosa said it’s the job of places like ISU to adjust its campus climate in equal fashion to the demands accompanied by growing diversity.

“We’re supposed to be the place where knowledge trumps simple minded fears,” Rosa said. “Iowa and ISU is only going to get more diverse as time goes on. If we’re going to accommodate future demographics, we need to start today.”

He continued, “It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s our duty as a public institution to focus on these problems.”

Susana Munoz

Muñoz received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Iowa State. She went on to earn a master’s degree in student affairs and higher education from Colorado State University before she returned to ISU where she became a PhD in educational leadership and policy studies.

Before she started her academic career, Muñoz immigrated to the U.S. from the Yucatan region of Mexico.

“I was never really proud about being an immigrant,” Muñoz remembered. That was before she took a Latino Studies class at ISU.

“That class changed my life,” Muñoz said. “It got me connected with my  immigrant identity.”

The freshly-inspired Muñoz then focused her educational path on activism. Her writings take a specific focus on undocumented Latinx students at public universities.

Muñoz is an assistant professor of higher education at Colorado State University. Her book,“Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education: The Journey Stories of Undocumented and Unafraid Community Activists,” chronicles the experiences of undocumented activists in the U.S.

More recently, Muñoz spoke out against the Trump Administration’s decision to end the DACA program. She wrote an open letter to educators where she called upon them to create relationships with undocumented students and be active parts of their community.

The termination of DACA isn’t the only issue Muñoz has with the Trump Administration. She referred to something called “the Trump Effect,” which facilitates greater prejudice against minority communities.

“We’re experiencing heightened levels of emboldened racism,” Muñoz said. “There’s also issues of freedom of speech on campuses, and questions about hate speech. This is why we need to have these conversations about race and ethnicity.”

Jose Rosa

Rosa grew up in Puerto Rico. He developed an interest in cars at a young age, but would have to leave his home island to get real experience in the automotive business.

“There’s cars in Puerto Rico,” Rosa said, “but there’s no real automotive industry. I heard that General Motors had a school in Michigan, and I knew that’s where I wanted to go.”

Rosa traveled to Michigan when he was a teenager, and graduated with a bachelor’s in marketing from General Motors Institute (GMI) in 1977.

“I was working and going to school,” Rosa remembered. “There were hardly any latinos in Michigan in the 1970s.

Rosa thinks it’s the job of public institutions like Iowa State to accommodate minority students.

“This is a society of immigrants,” Rosa said. The nature of diversity changes, but the core concept doesn’t.”

Rosa went on to earn three more degrees after leaving GMI. He received an MBA in finance from Dartmouth, a master’s in psychology from the University of Michigan and a PhD in marketing from the University of Michigan.

Iowa is predominantly white. Info from the State Data Center of Iowa recorded the population at  91.3 percent. However, their data also shows a 110 percent increase in the Iowa hispanic population from 2000 to 2014. There was a 71 percent increase in the black population and an 88 percent increase in Asian populations in that same window.

“Public institutions can’t be insensitive to the changes of their constituents,” Rosa said. “Most students at ISU come from a 300 mile radius, and those demographics are beginning to change.”

Rosa’s research focuses on the behaviors of different kinds of consumers and social influences on changing markets. He is also a published writer with works in multiple peer-reviewed journals and four papers currently under review.

“The cycle of immigration always pushes boundaries,” Rosa said. “It’s beneficial to society. It only seemed natural for me to take part in ISCORE.

Jazlyn Talley

Talley was one of the youngest people from ISU to attend last year’s NCORE conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

“There was more than twenty of us,” Talley remembered. “Most schools only had ten or eight. I think there were only three other sophomores [from ISU] there.”

This is Talley’s first year attending or presenting at ISCORE.

“You come to college to learn and get new ideas,” Talley said. “That means you should interact with people that aren’t like you.”

Talley is studying environmental studies and political science at ISU. She said ISCORE offers a variety of learning presentations that help people learn to have conversations about issues in different racial and ethnic communities.

“There’s lots of sessions,” Talley said. “You can choose what you learn about. It might be about a group you don’t identify with, but these are things we need to talk about.”

 Ben Dralle 

Once he’s completed his undergrad, Dralle plans to join ISU’s premedical program. He’s been a CA in Friley Hall for 3 years.

Dralle has experience with multiple ISCORE and NCORE conferences, and says they’re great for opening people to new perspectives.

“It really shows you that you need to challenge your assumptions,” Dralle said. “The topics discussed really relate to social structures everywhere, not just at colleges.”

Dralle was a junior when he first went to NCORE, and he was surprised by the amount of opportunities that came his way there.

“I gained a lot of knowledge and exposure,” Dralle said. “I even ran into some networking opportunities, there really are people from all walks of life and professions becoming a part of this.”