The Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity (ISCORE) is a somewhat of a forum on issues of race and ethnicity at specifically Iowa State University, but can also be applied to students all over the nation who are experiencing college life as the minority. The local conference is designed to model the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity also known as NCORE. NCORE is the leading and most educationally based national forum on issues of race and ethnicity while obtaining a secondary education degree, bringing together students and experts from all over the world to a designated location on an annual basis. The main goal of the conference is to help promote racial equality in institutions of higher education and instill certain goals and ideas in students that can be practiced once they arrive back at their instituiton. Its also there to help increase the oppurtunites of minority students throughout the nation by promoting certain values.
At this year's ISCORE conference I attended the session called The Hidden Curriculum: Barriers to Success for Female Students of Color. I found this session to be very helpful for the fact that it showed me some of the steps to take as an African American female to become a more successful and open up more oppurtunites for success as a student. One of the things that I enjoyed listening about was the advisors and faculties opinion on the help we seek as minority students. They claim that they give us numerous oppurtunites to get help in school and oppurtunites so that we can perform better in the classroom, but it is our fault that we have not taken advantage of any of them. In their opinion they give us numerous chance to better ourselves as students, and that the reason there is a barrier is because we make one for ourselves. However, as a student I believe that just because there is an oppurtunity placed in front of us, there is often times a fear to utilize it. I have personally been reluctant to take advantage of the oppurtunites the faculty have given me at Iowa State simply because I have a fear to utilize them. Attending Iowa State University can be a big culture shock for a lot of students upon arrival. In my opinion, I myself wasn't used to being surrounded by people of the caucasian race at all points of the day. I believe it would also make a stand if some of the advisors and faculty were minority themselves. I believe a lot more students would have the tendency to reach out to them a little more. I believe there is a barrier for success for not only female students of color, but simply students of color as well at predominately white universities and colleges. I believe that some of the suggestions they gave us about seeking help from students who look like us, and by accepting some of those resources provided for us we will be a lot more successful. I must say since second semester, when I decided to get help with my classes from the dean of diversity for the college of engineering and take help from tutors and workshops offered in the evening, I have been a lot more successful and the majority of those barriers no longer exist.
