Billie Townsend
She’s working to make minority students feel at home
Billie Townsend knows it isn’t easy to be a minority student at the University of Iowa. That’s because she was one herself.
After two-and-a-half years of coursework and feeling “totally isolated,” Townsend earned her master’s degree in 1995 in student development and councilor education.
“I could understand what they were going through by what I was going through,” she said.
With that knowledge, Townsend has invested her time in a variety of university projects to make minority students feel more at ease as well as getting students, faculty and staff to work together.
“The only way that students, especially minority students, will survive on campus is to feel a part of that,” she said.
“Our greatest asset in this community is the students,” she said. “It’s up to all of us to inspire students to do positive things.”
For her work toward diversity efforts on campus, Townsend was the first recipient of the Catalyst award from the Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity in 1999.
She also was awarded the President’s Award in 2005 from the African American Council, one of the faculty and staff diversity organizations on campus.
Last month, Townsend chaired the committee for the University of Iowa Convocation “Day of Unity,” an event during Human Rights Week.
“I wanted a program that would commemorate a great man who fought for rights for everybody,” she said about Martin Luther King Jr.
Rather than continuing the candle-lighting ceremony tradition — done to show how the three groups of people on campus come together as one — Townsend brought her own twist to it.
A self-described “flower person,” this year’s convocation included a unity bouquet.
It took about a month to find the perfect combination of silk plants, but in the end there were five dahlias to represent administration, five carnations for faculty, 20 daisies for students, and two types of greenery for staff and the community.
“I hope this will make its way around the university as a symbol of unity,” Townsend said.
And although she’s no longer a student herself, returning to her work as a UI secretary, she still has the students in mind.
“I work with students because I enjoy them,” she said. “As long as they call on me, I’ll be there.”
— Rachel Gallegos
