TH: You grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. What line of work were your parents involved in?
CD: Actually, I'm a big-time government baby. My father was a career Air Force man. My mother worked for the Department of Defense. A military brat, I guess you could say.

TH: As a military "brat," did your family move around a lot?
CD: We didn't. My dad did mostly six-month stints, where he would go to England, Germany, things like that. We would usually just wait for him and stay kind of in the Carswell Air Force Base area. The longest time that he was away was Vietnam.

Cammie Dean Age: 32 Occupation: Director of multicultural student services at Clarke College since 1997. Education: Bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Iowa, 1995. Community leadership: Dubuque School Board member since 2002; Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.; Women United for African-American Success; Girl Scout troop leader. First Baptist Church member. Family: One daughter, Viola. Daughter of Viola and Harold Dean of Fort Worth, Texas. One sister, of Sylvia Wade, of Frisco, Texas.

TH: How do you describe your childhood?
CD: Interesting. Being in the military and not having kind of that typical moving around anguish to deal with, you see a lot of very strange things as a child.

We had to go through the nuclear catastrophe-type training and things like that. We learned how to drink out of the toilet, in case there was a problem with the drinking water system. Carswell was way at the top of the list as far as who would get hit by a bomb during the Cold War and things like that. In a way, I think you get both sensitized and desensitized to kind of the international issues that you have to deal with.

At the same time, it was a secure environment. There was hardly any crime on the base where we lived. So in that way, I think the insulation was a good thing.

TH: I bet when it came time for chores to clean up the bathroom, you really didn't neglect toilet bowl duty.
CD: Oh, yeah, we took good care of that.

TH: But then you went off the base for school?
CD: We did. Well, my first three years of school, there was actually an elementary school on the military base. So I started there, but it was in the second grade, I believe, I actually went to live with my grandparents for a year in a suburb of San Antonio.

Then when I returned, my testing scores - ironically the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) - were very good and I ended up being bused across town to a magnet school, a Vanguard school, where we did accelerated learning.

Then I was definitely out of my normal realm of experience there. I was in school with a lot of very well-off kids. I was the only minority in the classroom most of the time. It was a different experience.

TH: When you went to this magnet school, you were the only African-American in the school or your particular class?
CD: In the class. We had a group of about 40 students who had classes all together, all day long - Spanish, music, art, whatever the case might be. We stayed together. We had a particular core group of teachers that we worked with. Essentially a talented and gifted program.

There were other minority kids in the school, but they were not in the program and I never met any of them. I would get off the bus, go to class, get back on the bus and go back home. That was kind of the limit of the experience there. But it was a great education. You can't knock the education, wonderful exposure to all sorts of new ideas and ways of thinking. In that way, it was a good thing. Socially, I was quite isolated, but otherwise ...

TH: About what age would you have been when you started at that magnet school?
CD: Fourth grade, 9 or 10.

TH: You mention the isolation. Was that a time you felt that there was discrimination occurring?

CD: I don't know that you could really characterize it as discrimination. I was not from the same neighborhood as the kids I was in school with. They knew that and I knew that. That was just kind of the thing. It's just an understanding. I don't remember ever doing birthday parties or sleepovers or anything like that with the other students. I don't know that it was my being black as much as it was probably my being middle-class. I think that probably had just as much influence.

TH: What about with the kids back on the base? Were you able to maintain connections with them?
CD: Right. When you're at different schools, it's hard to do that sort of thing. I was a Girl Scout well into high school. I stuck with that group on a regular basis. But beyond that, between the homework and doing chores at home and things like that, there just wasn't a lot of time for other kids.

TH: When you were 10, 12, 13 years old, what were your aspirations?
CD: At that point in time, I wanted to be a concert violinist. That's what I wanted to do. And I don't really know what to attribute that to.

TH: Listed on your resume is Castleberry High School. Was that the magnet school?
CD: That is not, actually. When I was 13 or 14, my parents moved off of the military base. We moved to a suburb that was relatively close but within a different district. So we were no longer eligible for that program. I ended up in the Castleberry School District and actually, quite to the contrary, it was a school that was more, typically speaking, more of a lower-income level, lower-class level group of students that they were serving.

TH: How did you end up at the University of Iowa, after living all your life in Texas?
CD: I probably shouldn't say this, but what really did it for me is I had a lot of negative experiences during high school. I went from being the only minority kid in a class of 40 students (at a magnet school), to being the only minority kid in a 150 people of my graduating class. I wasn't, to them, just different and not belonging. I was much more maltreated, I suppose. It was very difficult to deal with.

When you're a pimple-faced girl that wants to get asked to the prom, you have enough problems to deal with without also having to deal with race issues and things like that.

TH: So you were the only minority student at Castleberry (High School in Fort Worth)?
CD: There were other kids who would kind of move in and move out periodically, maybe five or six other kids in the four years that I was there. They tended to be in the special ed program, for whatever reason. In all of that time, I never had another black child in my class.

Most of my classes would be honors-level courses and as I got into my junior and senior year, a lot of my classes were independent study, which was better for me because I didn't have to deal with other kids and deal with the hostility that they would have towards me.

I took analytical geometry and all sorts of bizarre things that they would have to dig out a book and dust it off. But being by myself, it was better.

TH: But your experience at Castleberry was negative. You're interested in getting the heck out of there?
CD: Yeah. I was still bright, of course. My PSAT score was pretty good and the University of Iowa called me up and offered me a scholarship. I hadn't applied. I hadn't expressed any interest in Iowa. Except for just that kind of funny shape on the map, I didn't know anything about it. But I think I needed to get away, so I did. I accepted and showed up the day before classes started, sight unseen.

TH: You had never been to Iowa?
CD: I had never been to Iowa and had no clue where Iowa City was. It was an interesting experience.

TH: What were your first impressions of Iowa?
CD: I remember thinking how friendly everyone was because people would say "hi" on the street. When you come from an urban area, you don't do that. That's just not safe. So it was weird for me to be here and to have people, "Hey, how're you doing? Are you finding everything OK?" That was very strange. That was probably my first experience, just kind of Midwestern friendliness of it all.

I think I kind of slowly but surely gained an awareness of how different I was here, as well, because there were a lot of people ...

One of my first roommates was from Davenport and had never had the chance to talk to someone who was black. She just had a million questions. Sometimes I would get a little annoyed with that. But the curiosity factor was different, because, I think, in the South, whites are very familiar with who we are. They don't necessarily want to talk to us, but they know who we are and what we're like and we're not a strange thing.

TH: At least they think so.
CD: Right. They may or may not want us around, but we're not unfamiliar. But here, it was definitely an unfamiliarity thing. That was interesting for me.

Then, being at the college level, I did finally encounter other black students who had been tracked as well and had oftentimes been the only black child in their class and kind of new sort of what my life had been like and that was an interesting thing.

TH: Did you work anywhere between graduation and coming to Clarke?
CD: No. I actually continued to take graduate courses. I did some work at the University of Iowa in the minority retention area, but it was usually in part time things. Tutoring and kind of low-level counseling, things like that.

TH: You started at Clarke in 1997?
CD: January '97. I was still taking classes for a year-and-a-half. Couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. Surprise, surprise.

TH: At what point did the prospective concert violinist maybe think more about diversity issues and race issues?
CD: Well, I think the concert violinist thing kind of went to the wayside when I changed to the Castleberry school district because they didn't have orchestra and my parents couldn't afford private lessons. So I was kind of on my own in the music department.

When you prove yourself to be a bright student, people tend to push you in particular directions. I came to Iowa with the impression that I was going to be an engineering major. Why? Because on the (standardized tests), you have these great math scores, so that's got to be for you. You get pushed in that direction. I discovered along the way that it wasn't for me.

I think sometimes we forget to tell bright kids that just because you can do something doesn't mean it's what you should be doing. I actually changed my major about eight times.

But somewhere, I don't know, it finally hit me. Between that and my mother hitting me. No, she never actually hit me, but she did say, "You know what? You need to graduate. You need to pick a major. I don't care what it is. Go through the book, look at every major, figure out what you're closest to graduating with and do it." That's when I actually discovered sociology, because so much of the variety of things that I had taken previously fit into sociology. You need the numbers classes and the statistics for doing research. The anthropology and the Russian culture fits with that. Everything kind of worked with sociology. Then that ability to use sociology to produce knowledge and to expose people to ideas and to explore things that haven't been explored before was really appealing to me.

That's how I sort of ended up there because we spent so much time discussing contemporary issues and things that people are facing right now. That was appealing. So I ended up with sociology.

TH: This was what, you senior year or the end of your senior year, the day before graduation?
CD: Yeah. Super senior year or something like that. Exactly.

TH: The eight-year plan or something?
CD: I think that was the seven-year plan when it was all said and done - 61/2, I suppose. Took me awhile.

TH: By then your scholarship probably ran out, didn't it?
CD: Yes, it did. I have to say that for someone who had been insulated as I was growing up, it was a time for me to really figure out who I was and what I wanted to be. What I wanted my impression in the world to look like. And I needed that time.

I don't know that my mother has ever understood that, but I definitely needed that time. I learned a lot. I know a little bit about some of everything. I had all sorts of interesting experiences and I became a joiner. I was never a joiner before college, so I became a joiner. Black Student Union, the Hawkeye Hunting and Rifle Club. You name it, I was joining. I had a very good time.

TH: Do you go hunting?
CD: Actually target shooting is what I was more in to, but it was a good time.

TH: What are your duties at Clarke? Where do you fit in to the organization?
CD: It's sort of tri-fold. I think what I do that is most apparent to people is working with and on behalf of American minority students, doing advocacy, doing coaching basically, whether it's helping them to kind of figure out the culture of college or helping them to sort of negotiate or prepare to negotiate with professors or whatever the case might be.

Most American minority students even at the point in our country's history are still first-generation college students and so, this is still a foreign environment for them. On the other half of that, I am kind of helping the college employees, faculty and staff to see what the challenges are for these students and to recognize in some cases when they're having difficulties that may be our fault as a college that we're not accommodating in some way, form or fashion. So that's kind of my first area, advocating for minority students and working directly with them.

The second piece, which has become a much bigger piece in the past two years is working with international students. At this point, that's one part orientation in getting the acclimated to the environment and 98 parts government regulations. Dealing with that. Making sure that they're in compliance.

TH: Basically, this is in the wake of 9/11?
CD: Exactly. And so we're all kind of feeling our way through this together. And then the third piece is just sort of general diversity things, doing programming on campus, like an international fair or a Martin Luther King celebration or Hispanic Heritage month. Black History month. Asian-American, Pacific Islander, those sort of things.

And diversity training for the resident assistants or the students who help with orientation, things like that.

TH: That sounds like a pretty full menu.
CD: It is indeed. It is indeed. With the changing regulations for international students, it's a much bigger job than it used to be. Actually, when I started at Clarke, the first year or two, I was half-time. I think the need kind of became more obvious and the direction we were going with wanting to do an ESL (English as a Second Language) program, things like that, motivated us to go to a full-time position for that office.

TH: What do you like best about your job?
CD: I'd have to say, in a selfish way, working with the students, because I love learning about different cultures. I've had to sort of -given the fact that I was always in predominantly white institutions, church, school, whatever the case might be, - I've had to sort of reacquire my own culture in some ways. In the process, I have developed a fascination for how all cultures work. So I love learning about their cultures, learning words from their languages and understanding how people look at the world. The lens through which we all work and see the world and that's our interpretation. So it's fascinating to me.

I should say, on the non-selfish side. I really do like to see a student who has the potential that doesn't necessarily know how to get to their goal. I love to see them get there, and I love to play a role in that if I can.

TH: What about on the flip side of the coin. What would be some aspects of your job that if they suddenly went away, you wouldn't mind?
CD: I enjoy working with the international students in that one-on-one basis. I really do. But if we were to ease up as a nation on the regulations that we have at present, I wouldn't be crying. Some of the rules are hard to enforce and they can make things more complicated than they really are. So I probably would not mind missing that little piece of my job. But as long as it's there, I'm determined to be as helpful as I can for the students.

The other thing that we spend a lot of time doing, when we're advocating for international students or advocating for minority students, is talking about racism and discrimination. A lot of times, it's like spitting in the wind, because every time you get a new class of students in, every time you get a group of new faculty, new staff, you keep starting over from the beginning with why it's important to talk about these things.

There are things that make people uncomfortable. It's kind of my responsibility to keep raising those issues. There are days when I don't want to open my mouth, but I have to. That's my job.

TH: What are some of the common misperceptions that you bump into?
CD: I think that some of them, they're the pretty normal ones. I work pretty closely with the English as a Second Language students and then many of them will make that transition into the academic program. But oftentimes, there is that assumption that someone who has a heavy accent is not as intelligent. Or if they're struggling with expressing a particular idea, people are never sure is it because they don't understand the idea or because they're having trouble communicating it.

There's that tendency to talk loud and slow, loud and slow, as it that's going to help them understand. Sort of dealing with that sort of thing. That's a big one. With minority students, helping, particularly American students, understand that there's a place for their curiosity because we're still in Iowa and we're still dealing with a lot of students who 98 percent of their class look just like them. So there is a curiosity. It's a healthy curiosity. But knowing when to ask questions and how to ask questions and how to approach people can be challenging in helping people to understand that sort of thing.

There are some other things. There are the class issues that go along with people raise the presumption that they must be here on some affirmative action program - things like that that occasionally you have to deal with.

TH: Are there, just to pick up on your last comment, do you deal with the perception that standards are different for minority students, that the standards are different for international students, than, say, white students from Dubuque or Davenport or Des Moines?
CD: Sometimes I think that we do have to deal with that. I think that at Clarke, we have a very caring faculty and staff and caring can sometimes be interpreted as helping too much, but it's been my experience that caring means recognizing every ability and expecting people to perform at their best. So, sometimes I think there can be presumptions that, "Well, they're doing something for them that they're not doing for me." It's not been my experience that that's the case.

But I think that sometimes there are assumptions made about that if an international student is given extra time to complete a test, then you know there's that well, they're making it easier for them. It's not in any way easier for them to take that test. That time is not spent thinking of more answers. The time is just spent communicating the ideas and recognizing that can be hard for people sometimes, I think.

TH: Do you ever foresee a day when institutions, such as colleges, will not have a need for positions such as yours?
CD: Do I foresee it? Not any time soon. But I think that most of us that are in this for the right reasons, our ultimate goal is for there not to be a need for what we're doing. That would be our greatest desire, for it not to be a foreign culture for a student to go into college because of their ancestry or for discrimination for race or language or nationality or whatever not to be an issues on campuses, I think, would be my ultimate desire.

That's, I think, what we work towards when we keep reminding people of these things.

TH: Could the school district do better - maybe even save money -with more training opportunities for parents. Parents who say, "I'd like to help my kid with his homework, but I don't feel I'm capable, I'm not comfortable doing that."
CD: I think that those are marvelous opportunities to train, to help parents to understand how they can best use their role. Individual schools have kind of taken that up. I know at Lincoln, the last couple of years, we had meetings at night and it was a wonderful thing to see, 15 teachers sitting in a room full of parents, in this case it was African-American parents, talking about some of the important things that kids need to understand and what parents can do to support them as they work to become successful. It was a marvelous program.

I think it did a lot for the families who came. It helped develop that relationship between teachers and administrators and the families that were there. I think that it was a great program and if I'm not mistaken, they've done some more things at Prescott. Family involvement is a major piece of what they do. I'm sure with Audubon, I know they're in a similar situation, although race is not quite a factor there.

A lot of what we're talking about now (in the annual report) shows up here as a problem of race, but, as we said, it's a socio-economic thing. There are lots of first generations or future first generation college students out there who need that support right now from their parents. If we, as a district, can do something about that, I think that that would be a great thing and not something I would like to see more of.