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New project selected for Tracing Race at ISU 

Author: Erin Ridnour

Color image in square with cardinal border. On right upper left corner black and white Tracing Race at Iowa State University in white rectangle background. Color image of woman in head scarf wear black glasses and green suite jacket with long white pearl necklace arms crossed against a brown brick wall.The ISU Library Digital Scholarship and Initiatives Department and the Tracing Race at Iowa State University Advisory Group announce a newly selected digital project. Ananda Astrini Muhammad (pictured), the project lead, is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Linguistics and Technology, Department of English. She is the graduate assistant for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Bridging Opportunities in Leadership and Diversity (BOLD) Learning Community and STEM Scholars program. In support of her work, Muhammad has been awarded a $2,500 Tracing Race Student Scholar Award made possible by the Sanderson Family Library Assistantships fund.  

Mapping Leaders of Color: Leadership as a Force of Change at Iowa State University is a digital scholarship project that aims to explore and map student, faculty, and staff leaders of color at Iowa State in order to investigate the extent to which their leadership acted as a force of change at ISU. The research results will be incorporated with reflections from students in BOLD expressed in multimodal forms (e.g., video, audio, textual with images). Therefore, not only is this project intended to educate the university community and beyond about the contributions of leaders of color to this predominantly white institution (PWI), but also to highlight their impact in shaping current BOLD student’s leadership identities.  

The digital project will communicate the complex narratives of people from different colleges and backgrounds in developing and presenting themselves as leaders of color at a PWI. In addition, the multimodal reflections of the BOLD students will enhance the overarching narrative of the project. That is, the continued presence of leaders of color at ISU only serves to enrich higher education experience in this community.  

For more information about the Tracing Race at ISU initiative, click here. Questions? Contact project lead, Erin Ridnour.