Latinx community college transfer students add unique perspectives to the community, speakers at a UT program’s research webinar said on Tuesday, discussing Latinx student success and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The webinar, “Latino/x Men and the Community College Transfer Experience: Providing Best Practices to Empower Latino/x Men to Thrive at Two- and Four-Year Institutions,” featured the co-editors and several chapter authors of the book “Community College and Beyond: Understanding the Transfer Pipeline for Latina/o/x Students.” UT program Project MALES, or Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success, contributed a chapter of the book and hosted the webinar. The program is a research and mentorship initiative focused on the Latino male student experience.
Jeffrey Mayo, who contributed to a chapter and serves as the director of the First-Year Experience Office at UT, said Latinx student success is important not only for the college system and individuals but for communities as well.
”You have to have an interest in Latinx success at college from a systems point of view to know that these systems were not built for those students,” Mayo said. “From a more personal, human level of seeing what degree attainment can do for students … the impact isn’t just on one person. It’s on a family. It’s on a community.”
Mayo said the obstacles these transfer students overcome make them a unique asset for four-year universities, and institutions are “doing themselves a disservice” by not recognizing this population.
“We found that students brought great cultural wealth, in particular, aspirational social and familial capital with them to campus, despite facing institutional barriers to their success,” Mayo said.
Co-editor José Del Real Viramontes said the book is the first of its kind, and it focuses on the Latinx student experience transferring to four-year institutions, essential resources to support them and how the student group is an asset to institutions. Fifty-one percent of Latinx students begin obtaining their post-secondary degrees at a community college, but only 10% finish their bachelor’s degrees within six years, he said.
“Our book is very significant because it provides much-needed research in this area for (other) research, policy, practice and pedagogy, but it also focuses on using an asset-based perspective,” Del Real Viramontes said. “We were really intentional about how we put this book together and the work that we highlighted.”
Author Fernando Garcia said a lot of literature examines these students’ challenges in higher education but does not account for different metrics of success, such as relationships and growth. He said this book does account for different definitions of success.
“In many cases, success is often tied to academic outcomes like grades, transfer, rates, retention and attainment,” Garcia said. “What we really took away from this project was having the opportunity to learn from our participants and have them define exactly what success looks like, acknowledging that it’s not the same for each of our participants.”
Author Cynthia Estrada said academic institutions should continue to serve minority student populations despite Texas’ DEI ban in public universities.
“This student population is not going to go away, regardless of our legislation,” Estrada said. “We continue to advocate for the student populations that we are advocating for (and) resist in however form (we)’re comfortable with.”
Mayo said the DEI ban may force university offices to take responsibility for creating a “receptive” culture for their Latinx students.
“Perhaps any positive that comes from (the DEI ban) is that offices across campus will see it as their responsibility,” Mayo said. “(We can’t) point (Latinx students) to the division for Diversity and Community Engagement … This is a responsibility for all of us on campus.”
