It was the best of times, it was diverse of times: UI Engagement Corps visits two cities (and a town)

UI faculty and staff members talked with Postville's schoolchildren during a recent trip to explore issues facing northeast Iowa communities. Almost half of those enrolled in Postville's schools are children of immigrants who have come from Central America and Eastern Europe to work in the town's meat processing plants. Faculty members shown above are (left to right) David Collins, lecturer in marketing in the Tippie College of Business; Jon Garfinkel, associate professor of finance in the Tippie College of Business; Patricia Kelley, professor emerita of social work in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Keith Stroyan, professor of mathematics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

When a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, burned to the ground a few days before Christmas, workers, many of them immigrants from Central America, were given the option to move on to other plants in other states. But their families wanted to stay. Like many before them, they had come to the small northeastern Iowa town to sink roots, to leave behind the hardships that drove them from their homelands, and to realize their dreams.

“We need these families in order to survive, because their children make up half our enrollment,” David Strudthoff, superintendent of the Postville school district, told a group of University of Iowa faculty and staff members who visited northeast Iowa in May. “So we did what we had to do—we went out and found nearby employers willing to hire the displaced workers.”

Postville’s elementary school was the first stop on this year’s excursion by the UI Faculty Senate Engagement Corps. The annual trip is about building relations between UI faculty and the citizens of Iowa, sharing expertise and knowledge, and meeting colleagues from other departments in the University, according to Downing Thomas, professor in the Department of French and Italian in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and associate dean of International Programs.

“We especially want to provide opportunities for faculty members to learn about issues facing Iowa and consider how their teaching and research might benefit these communities,” Thomas says.

Last year, Thomas, with Steve McGuire, professor of art education in the College of Education, helped launch the engagement corps idea and organized a three-day road trip to western Iowa. The Engagement Corps was first funded in 2006 through a Year of Public Engagement grant and now is supported by the Office of the Provost.

This year’s group of 18 UI faculty and staff members—from business, medicine, law, education, nursing, English, social work, geography, and other disciplines—left the Hancher parking lot on the morning of May 17 in a chartered bus bound for northeastern Iowa. Over the next three days, they met with educators, community leaders, and others in Postville, Decorah, and Dubuque to talk about immigration and other issues affecting Iowa, including economic development, tourism, and higher education.

In Postville, UI faculty and staff learned about the school district’s successes with children of the town’s immigrant workers. Ken Brown, associate professor of management and organizations in the Tippie College of Business, says he was impressed with the resilience of Postville’s school administrators.

“They are responding to dramatic changes in their town with thoughtful experimentation,” Brown says. “They recognize they don’t have all the answers, so they’ve been looking for models of schools that have dealt successfully with diversity, talking with families of their students, and debating their options. They’ve just adopted an immersive curriculum for kindergarten and first grade that they readily acknowledge may require further tinkering.”

Many people think Postville is Iowa’s most diverse community, with at least 24 nationalities among its estimated population of 2,400. Of the more than 500 kindergarten through 12th grade students attending Postville schools, about 225 are Hispanic and about 50 are from Eastern Europe, according to Strudthoff.

UI faculty and staff members visited classrooms and spoke with the children, many of whom, even as young as 5, must translate or interpret for their parents in everyday transactions as important as handling car repairs, paying bills, or visiting the doctor.

David Redlawsk, associate professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says he learned a lot about the dynamics of this multicultural town from his conversation over lunch with Aaron Goldsmith, the first Jew to serve on Postville’s city council.

“I think people appreciated that we came and spent time talking with them,” Redlawsk says. “They even might have been a little surprised to see us get out of Iowa City and come to them.”

Brown, who’s lived in Iowa City for about eight years, says that as much as he wanted to help the University with public relations, he had a more selfish reason.

“I was excited to visit places I had heard my students talk about, Dubuque and Decorah, in particular,” Brown says. “It was an honor and a pleasure for me to get out of Iowa City and see more of this great state. The beauty of these places and strength of the people who live there amaze me.”

Brown says he has friends at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan, where such road trips are more routine and typically last a week, and hopes The University of Iowa can sponsor more of this type of outreach. With a little luck, he says, it might even win over a Hawkeye fan or two.

“What I enjoyed most was walking through the Postville elementary school, talking to a teacher and a few kids,” he says. “One girl in particular was fascinated with us. I encouraged her to go to college, and she said she loves science so we talked about the medical and dental colleges at the University. Of course, later in the same visit, we announced we were from Iowa and a handful of students booed us and shouted, ‘Go, Cyclones!’ Apparently Iowa State even has fans on this side of the state. I hope we do as well on the western side of Iowa.”

                                                               by Gary Kuhlmann