WASHINGTON — Being intentional about recruiting and serving Latino students, cultivating a familial community on campus and using data to implement and tailor student support initiatives were some of the strategies discussed during Excelencia in Education’s Accelerating Latino Student Success (ALASS) Institute on Friday.
The Institute followed the organization’s national announcement of it’s Seal of Excelencia initiative and its Celebración de Excelenica gathering on Thursday, which recognized four institutional and community-based programs that are excelling in advancing Latino students’ success due to evidence-based practices, committed leaders and utilization of comprehensive data systems.
“We are Hispanic-serving institutions,” said Dr. Ray A. Ostos, district director for student affairs at Maricopa County Community College District. “Really think about the word ‘serving.’”
Those attending the institute had the opportunity to learn how to grow or enhance their own Latino student support programs by assessing strategies enacted by Cerritos Complete at Cerritos College; the Gaining Access ’N Academic Success (GANAS) program at California State University, East Bay; the Educational and Research Internship Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center; and the College Crusade of Rhode Island — this year’s Examples of Excelencia.
Presenters acknowledged that much of their programs’ successes stem from a variety of high-impact practices, including meeting students where they are, creating a safe space of community, providing culturally responsive orientation and summer programs, building confidence in students and synchronizing wraparound support services across departments, among other supports specific to the context of the institution.
The College Crusade of Rhode Island works with students starting in middle school and has embedded 29 full-time advisors on middle school, high school and college campuses. Advisors provide a “road map” to college for students, said CEO and president Andrew Bramson. The program also promotes social connectedness and has a family engagement component.
“It’s a one-two punch,” Bramson said. “It’s the advising, but sometimes families need to be a secondary component to that.”
