Ames, Ia. - Erika Bahamon, born to Colombian immigrants in southern Texas, had never seen so many white faces as when she showed up for classes at Iowa State University.
"So many blond people - I didn't know it was so common," recalled a laughing Bahamon, now a 21-year-old senior majoring in pre-med.
It probably won't always be that way. Latinos are the fastest growing minority group on the campuses of ISU, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa, as they are in Iowa and the nation.
The wave of Latino students has already been seen in Iowa's elementary, middle and high schools. Their numbers have increased nearly 150 percent in the past decade, becoming the schools' largest minority group in 2001, according to the Iowa Department of Education.
That compares to a 63 percent increase in African-American students, now the second largest minority group, a 26 percent increase among Asian students and a 24 percent increase in American Indian students.
The number of white students fell 11 percent in the same period, although they still make up 85.6 percent of all students.
Now the wave is showing up at Iowa's public universities:
• At ISU, the number of Latinos increased 33 percent to 595 between 2004 and 2008, while the number of African-Americans and Asians remained relatively steady. Latinos now account for 2.8 percent of undergraduates. International students are counted separately.
• At the U of I, Latinos have been the second largest minority group among students since at least 2005. In 2009, they numbered 936, which is 3.2 percent of enrollment. And their numbers are increasing at twice the rate of Asian students, still the largest minority group on campus.
• At UNI, the number of Latino students more than doubled in 10 years, from 105 in 1999 to 282 in 2009. They are now the second largest minority group on campus, with 2.2 percent of students, and growing faster than all others.
"The future of higher education in Iowa is becoming much more diverse," said ISU Professor Laura Rendón, a Latina and chairwoman of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.
The benefits of more minorities on campus are not for the minorities alone, she said. By being exposed to people of many backgrounds and ethnicities, white students learn in college what it's like in an increasingly diverse world.
"We cannot continue to work in silos - whites with whites, African-Americans with African-Americans, Latinos with Latinos," Rendón said. "The new world order is calling for a new global consciousness on the part of individuals."
Making a campus more diverse is not without challenges, however. Recruiting Latinos has its own obstacles.
National studies have shown that Latinos typically attain less education than others, and surveys have found that the number of young Latinos who plan to go to college is well below average.
In Iowa, many Latinos came to the state to work in agriculture, as well as meat-packing and chicken-processing plants, Rendón said. Students and university officials say many of those parents did not go to college, so they struggle to coach their children toward college, if they do at all.
That's how it was for Karina Gutierrez, now in her fourth year at ISU.
She grew up in Sioux City, where her single mom raised the family of seven on packing-plant wages. After school, Gutierrez went home to cook and clean for her younger brothers and sisters.
She didn't think she would stay in high school past her sophomore year. Her older brother and sister both dropped out to work.
Gutierrez graduated high school, however, becoming the first in her family to do so. She had no idea what to expect when she began college.
"I was so scared - oh my goodness," she said.
A lot of Latino students don't make it that far, she said, because they don't know of the opportunities available to minority students.
That's why an Iowa State student started DREAMS, a program that brings college students to high schools in cities such as Perry to tell Latino students about scholarships and how to apply for college. The program is run by a traditionally Latina sorority, Sigma Lambda Gamma, and a traditionally Latino fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta.
But just getting the students to college is not enough.
"The main issue is retention - it's a problem," said ISU senior Brian Casto, 21, a civil engineering senior from Puerto Rico and president of Sigma Lambda Beta.
He said the learning environment at ISU is good, and that Ames residents try to be open to other cultures. But he said minority students new to Iowa State often find themselves with no one to relate to.
For him, it was the fraternity - not one with a house, just a tight group of friends.
"If I never met the fraternity, I probably would have been out of here a long time ago," he said. "It's a culture shock."
He didn't blame white students, however. He said they are usually glad to become friends with minority students - if they connect with each other in the first place. Casto said minority students too often stick together.
And therein lies a paradox: While minority students are encouraged to befriend white students, one crucial factor in increasing the number of minority students on campus is building a critical mass of them, Rendón said.
"This is not pie in the sky," she said. "I've seen it happen within this department."
She has other ideas for bringing more Latinos to campus, as well, which she included in a policy brief she helped write in 2008 with the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.
She said federal and state governments could do more to support scholarships for minority students. Also, she said elementary through high school officials ought to develop courses about planning for college.
Loh, the U of I provost, said that as important as it is to reach out to Latino students, it can't stop there.
"You have to reach out to the family," he said. Without their support, he said, there is little chance their children will attend college.
"It's going to take a long-term commitment," he said. "It's going to take resources."
The reason to go to college was obvious to Gutierrez, the student who was the first in her family to graduate high school.
She saw how her mother struggled to make ends meet, and she figured her best shot at a better future was earning a college degree. She started in pre-med, realized she didn't much care for science and switched her major to Spanish education.
But she's four years in, her scholarship will run out, and she has two years yet to go. She doesn't know how she will finish, but she said she will.
"I can't not make it - I don't have that choice," she said. "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to stay in college."
