New McMaster student success manager hopes to empower Black students

Iyobosa Faith Ogunkoya wants to help Black students find their voice.

Growing up in an immigrant family in London, England, Ogunkoya saw her relatives lose their confidence and try to hide their accents in public.

That makes me angry," she said. Their gifts end up buried ... they never shine and they never release their potential."

That anger has continued to fuel my way of working and my approach," she added. I want to find solutions."

Recently appointed McMaster University's inaugural manager of Black student success, Ogunkoya has the chance to do just that. She'll help build the new Black Student Success Centre on campus, where students can get weekly well-being checks, increased access to mental-health supports, financial aid counselling and a sense of community which supports their identities.

Ogunkoya has worked in career services for more than a decade. After moving to Hamilton in 2014, she worked with Wesley Urban Ministries helping racialized youth find employment. She also worked in student success initiatives at Mohawk College before coming to McMaster in 2017.

Over her time on campus, Ogunkoya was involved in conversations about equity. There were long-standing issues which she and her colleagues felt needed to be addressed. For example, the comparatively low number of Black faculty on campus as well as the number of Black students accepted into popular programs such as health sciences. (In 2020, students in the Black BHSc Association found there were fewer than 15 Black-identifying students in health sciences - less than two per cent of the class size - leading to the pilot of an equitable admissions project at McMaster.)

When there are low numbers of Black faculty, the Black students on campus may feel the impact of a lack of representation," Ogunkoya said. I'm one of the people that really couldn't afford to keep quiet about some of the unique challenges that students are facing that we really needed to do more about."

Her new appointment is part of the university's response to a review late last year which found a culture of systemic anti-Black racism" in campus athletics. Ogunkoya was part of the review's task force.

It became glaringly obvious that a safe space is one of the things that students are really wanting," she said.

At times, white-dominated spaces can pose a barrier to Black individuals expressing themselves fully, Ogunkoya said. For example, certain cultural slang is not seen as professional in some contexts. The Black Student Success Centre is meant to empower students to be themselves.

The centre will be guided by an ancient African philosophy called Ubuntu, a Xhosa word which means, I am because you are." The philosophy promotes community and collective empowerment.

(It's) a space where students can call their own, they can come in, there's no need for code switching or that sense of the white gaze is not there," Ogunkoya said.

Of Nigerian heritage, Ogunkoya said her identity has helped her understand the barriers faced by others who identify as Black. When she moved to Hamilton, she left behind all her networks and was forced to find her own voice.

I had to then see for myself what it's like to be Black in Hamilton, trying to find community and re-establish myself in my career," she said. But Ogunkoya found herself empowering students wherever she went.

We always stand on other people's shoulders," she said. That power is what we all need to be able to stand up to oppression and discrimination."

Maria Iqbal is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator covering aging Reach her via email: miqbal@thespec.com