Southern Vermont College Mansion
COLLEGE SUCCESS FOR HISPANIC STUDENTS: Some Suggestions from the Trenches
By Karen Gross, President, Southern Vermont College
Here’s a startling disconnect: Pew Hispanic Center reports that 89% of Latino young adults say that a college education is important but only half of those individuals plan to get a degree themselves. The questions that flow from this are obvious: what accounts for this gap and what concrete steps can be taken to narrow it? As with most issues of this sort, there are a plethora of complex factors producing these results and no easy answers. A recent statement made by Deborah Santiago, Vice President for Policy and Research for Excelencia en Educación, caught my attention. She noted that when thinking about Hispanic students’ progression to and through college, the tendency is to focus on what changes the Hispanic students themselves need to make when, “in fact, the colleges themselves need to adapt as well.” Blunt but accurate. As the leader of a college that is deeply committed to the success of first generation college students, I wanted to share some strategies being tested and done on the Southern Vermont College campus --- to “adapt” as Ms. Santiago suggests.
ENCOURAGING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT – EARLY AND OFTEN Alexander Astin, founding director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, indicates that the first-six weeks of the academic year are critical for a new student; within those first weeks, students need to connect -- to each other, to a member of the faculty or staff and to the larger local community. True enough. But, our own campus research suggests that the period of student vulnerability extends for much longer than six weeks, and colleges need to start connecting with their new students weeks before they come to campus and well beyond the initial six week settling in timeframe. That is why summer outreach efforts, pre-orientation initiatives, quality orientation programs and ongoing personalized attention matter.
P. 22
MARCH 2010
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LATINO NEW YORK