When Daniela Torres was finishing her Associate of Arts in Teaching degree at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, her class got a series of visits from staff and faculty at Texas Tech University who came to invite the students to take the next step.
Those visits proved critical in encouraging Torres to enroll in STEP 2—a program at Texas Tech’s College of Education that helps students at South Plains College make the transition from the two-year institution to its four-year college.
The STEP 2 program (STEP is an acronym for Successful Transition to Educator Preparation) is one of three programs honored Tuesday by Excelencia in Education for their success in helping Latino students get to and through college. The ceremony, which was held at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, took place during Excelencia’s sixth annual “Celebración de Excelencia.” Diverse was a co-sponsor of the event, which included attendance by Dr. Martha Kanter, the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, and Jon Whitmore, the CEO of ACT.
The other two honored programs are the Early College High School Initiative at El Paso Community College, which seeks to compress the time it takes to earn an associate’s degree by blending high school and college courses for high school students, and the Ph.D. Clinical Psychology Program at Carlos Albizu University, San Juan Campus, in Puerto Rico, which trains culturally sensitive psychologists in a Hispanic or Latino cultural context.
All of the programs were given certificates of recognition and $5,000 awards from Excelencia to help support and grow their programs.
Though the three programs honored by Excelencia all serve students at different stages in their post-secondary careers, they share common threads with respect to their success in helping Latino students attain college degrees, said Deborah Santiago, Vice President for Policy and Research at Excelencia.
While none of the programs exclusively serve Latino students, Santiago said, one of the common threads is that all of them have evidence of Latino students doing as well or better than other students in the program.
