Dr. Ignacio López, an up-and-coming Hispanic leader in education, knows what it means to be community-minded.
As president for a little more than a year of Harold Washington College (HWC) — a community college within the City Colleges of Chicago system— López has introduced a culture of shared governance for students, faculty and staff, and he regularly engages with community-based organizations.
Although he swiftly climbed the administrative ranks in higher education at the age of 38, his foray into education began with an experience teaching poetry to inner-city youth in Chicago after studying nonfiction writing and poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“I was really inspired by the students that were loving writing and engaging,” he says.
While working with youngsters in an after-school program, a student told him that he should consider becoming a teacher. López decided to pursue a master’s degree in secondary education and teaching at National Louis University and soon began teaching English to high school students.
López quickly observed that students did not want to be in school, he says, adding that schools at the time did not have successful methods to intervene around behavioral or motivational issues affecting some students’ attendance and success.
“I got really inspired by reading and understanding psychology and intervention-based work,” López says. He returned to National Louis University to finish his doctorate in educational psychology, studying reality therapy and other intervention-based work.
