From the Student to Administrator Focus

This week Casa De Maryland, in collaboration with many other community based organizations (CBO’s), had a march on Washington, the Camino Americano: Marcha y Concierto por la Dignidad y El Respeto de los Inmigrantes on Tuesday, October 8th.  The State of Maryland is Washington, D.C.’s neighbor, which makes for a strong relationship with the political climate of our nation’s capital.  Currently, immigration reform is going to a legislative process, which CASA and other CBO’s are trying to influence the shape of the policy through these types of marches. The participation consisted of college students, community members, and politicians stressing the importance for immigration reform. These efforts put on hold our efforts to pilot the survey to the small youth group of DREAMERs that are part of CASA.  

This event pushed the research team to look at the other aspects of our research study, the administrators within four-year universities and two-year community college.  This part of the research will address the institutional factors that are assisting or hindering Latina/o college students to persist. We are now beginning to identify specific Maryland post-secondary institutions and administrators to interview, as well as follow appropriate IRB protocols for each institution. Most institutions seem to accept the UMCP’s IRB approved protocol, but others require the team to submit a new IRB application to the institution for review.  

"Counseling is for 'crazy' people"

Do Latina/o college students and undocumented Latina/o college students use campus services, such as counseling or academic services? This is a key question we want to answer with the survey we are constructing. This past week we had a long discussion about the research’s conceptual framework, which consists of both individual and institutional factors that may affect a Latina/o college student’s experience and persistence in college.  This discussion then led us to wonder whether students are comfortable using these services. What we do know in the counseling higher education literature is that some racial and ethnic minority students avoid using counseling centers because they perceive such systems as racist and biased, think that there is a lack of therapists who are racially or ethically similar to them, or believe that staff counselors will not share or understand their worldviews (Leong, Wagner, & Tata, 1995; Atkinson, Jennings & Liongson, 1990).  

Source: http://www.csun.edu/

As a result, university counseling centers are less likely to see an ethnic and racially underrepresented student use the counseling center services.  The research we will be conducting will hopefully shed light on the comfort level among Latina/o college students’ use of these services.  The survey will also ask an open-ended question inquiring what would make the student more comfortable in using these services.  We hope that our research will inform various campus constituents on the needs and services for this student population.   

Sources

Atkinson, D.R., Jennings, R.G. & Liongson, L. (1990).  Minority students' reasons for not seeking counseling and suggestions for improving services. Journal of College Student Development, 31(4), 342-350.

Leong, F. T. L., Wagner, N. S., & Tata, S. P. (1995). Racial and ethnic variations in help-seeking attitudes. In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of Multicultural Counseling (pp. 415-438). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Connecting with Community - Casa De Maryland

Casa De Maryland DREAM Act Rally

To begin our community partnership efforts to learn more about the undocumented Latina/o student population, we contacted Casa de Maryland, a large community based organization that has worked tirelessly with youth in the area to push for immigration reform and the Maryland DREAM Act. The Maryland Dream Act (SB167) was enacted in April 2012, and allows undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition rates at public institutions of higher education, if they meet certain requirements.  We met with Rommel Sandino, Community Youth Organizer, who informed us that Casa has a very active youth group that meets regularly to organize political efforts to advocate and inform the community about the Maryland DREAM Act.  We also learned that due to the passage of the Maryland Dream Act there were some unintended consequences for Prince George’s Community College students who were originally receiving in-state tuition and now are not due to the specific limitations of the policy.  The law does apply to all 24 jurisdictions within the state of Maryland—every county in the state of Maryland, plus the city of Baltimore.

According to the Maryland Dream Act, in order to qualify for in-state tuition rates, undocumented students must enroll in a community college no later than four years after graduating from a Maryland high school (or GED equivalent) and they would only be allowed to enroll in a public senior higher education institution (i.e., the University of Maryland) after they have earned at least 60 credits at a community college. Only undocumented students who enroll in a Maryland community college after 2011 are eligible for the Maryland Dream Act benefits.

      

 The information we gathered then made us wonder what is the community college’s role in informing students of this policy, and who in the community college puts together this infrastructure to implement the Maryland Dream Act? Montgomery County Community College, for instance, has a detailed FAQ website of the admissions, registration, eligibility requirements for this student population, as well as the efforts they are taking to inform students.

We hope to learn more about Casa’s youth organizing group in the near future, and possibly elicit support for our study. Stay tuned to what else we will do to collaborate with Casa de Maryland, and who else we partner with throughout the study.

Outreach Efforts – Unity Welcome & Latino Bienvenida

We’re so excited to begin this research project, and others are too! We began in mid September to get the word out about the research project with two main events in the multicultural community. One, the Unity Welcome held on Friday, September 13, 2013 from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). The Unity Welcome is hosted every year by the Office of Multi-ethnic Student Education (OMSE), and in partnership this year with the Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy unit.  This event provides an opportunity to welcome the campus' more than 8000 multi-ethnic students back to school in a fun way. Students get a glimpse of the many programs and services on campus, that support their personal and academic development.  We were there representing the College of Education and introducing students and staff to the research study.  We also wanted to gauge the interest of the community, as well as get key student organizations’ on board for participating in the study when we launch the survey on-line in the coming months.  The students from various multi-ethnic and multi-racial organizations were intrigued by the research study, wanted to know more about it, and of course wanted to know when and where the survey was in order for them to take it.  While we didn’t have the survey available then, it was good to see students’ eagerness to participate—a good sign for when we launch the survey.   

 

 

The other event we attended was the Latina/o Bienvenida hosted by Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc. on September 16, 2013 in the student union building.  This event was similar to the Unity Welcome, but it featured most of the Latina/o based student organizations on the UMCP campus. Each organization had a table set up with information about their organization.   

Pamela, the Research Grad Assistant
at the Unity Welcome

A member of the research team, the graduate student, attended the event, talked to various students and all of the organizations to inform them of the research study. They already had heard about the study from friends, which was encouraging because that meant that the word was getting out.  After a long night, and a couple of these outreach efforts, we were on the right track to launching the survey and gaining participation interest.