New Diversity Center promotes student interaction

September 10, 2008
By Ashley Rueff
Staff Writer

Nearly 34 percent of freshmen at UIS this fall identify themselves as students of color, while many more are unique because of traits like gender and sexual orientation.

To help accommodate the growing numbers of students and their diversity at UIS, the university has changed the former Office of Multicultural Student Affairs into the Diversity Center.

The transition started last spring, but now with a new director on campus and a growing office in the Student Life Building, the center is ready to get to work.

“Most of the time when you look at multicultural affairs, you look at ethnicity and gender,” said Clarice Ford, the new Diversity Center Director. She wants to expand the scope of the office past those qualifiers.

Before arriving at UIS this fall, Ford was the assistant dean of students at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.

She said the mission of the new center is to help campus understand the differences between everyone, including factors like socioeconomic status, physical disabilities and religion.

“We have a responsibility to make the world a better place and the only way it can happen is to communicate with one another,” Ford said.

The center is designed to act as a support system for students on campus who are looking to form relationships with people who are similar to as well as different from themselves.

The center organizes programs to help students interact as well as to have a place on campus to feel welcome.

Bret Tate, a junior sociology/ anthropology major, is active in the LGBTQ organizations on campus and said the Diversity Center is serving students who weren’t being served by the multicultural affairs office.

“As the campus started to grow, there was an obvious need,” for more student support, Tate said. “The center is educational for students who haven’t been exposed to diversity before.”

The campus began to admit more freshmen in 2006, said Marya Leatherwood, interim Assistant Chancellor for Student Affairs, which increased the number of younger students at UIS.

“As we’ve brought younger students to campus, we’re dealing with more of the student selfdiscovery process,” Leatherwood said. The new center is there to help students with that process.

Yolanda Beaman, graduate assistant for the Diversity Center, attended UIS for her undergrad and has seen the growing diversity on campus in recent years.

“There’s a growing need to know about different cultures because they now exist on campus,” Beaman said.

With the center, Ford hopes she and her staff can help students with the social part of their education before they graduate and enter the workforce.

“We have a responsibility as an educational institution to educate the whole student,” Ford said.

Information about the center is available on the site for the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at http://www.uis.edu/ multiculturalstudentaffairs. An updated site for the Diversity Center is in the works.