Dominican University: Serving Latine Students in the Midwest

By: Verónica Gutiérrez, MBA’22, Dominican College, River Forest IL and Marcela Reales Visbal, Exercise Director for Title V, Portion B – Marketing Publish-Baccalaureate Prospects for Hispanic Individuals, Dominican University, River Forest IL

“I experienced under no circumstances read of the expression HSI right until I came to Dominican University”, mentioned Verónica Gutiérrez, a initial-generation Latina who grew up in just one of Chicago’s northwestern suburbs and a short while ago graduated with her Master’s in Small business Administration from Dominican.

Dominican University is 1 of 30 Hispanic Serving Institutions in Illinois, and a single of 15 that offers graduate courses.¹ When most HSIs are concentrated in the U.S. Southwest, Puerto Rico, and New York, Dominican proudly serves the midwestern Latine community. The school is considered Chicago’s Premier Catholic HSI.

Like Verónica, many college students at Dominican are initial-generation college or university college students and from traditionally marginalized communities in the Chicago metropolitan region. With Latine learners accounting for 20% of college undergraduates in the United States, it’s essential to be intentional about serving this subset of the populace.²

How? By setting up on students’ property and giving them equipment and sources that will assist them triumph.

Because the drop of 2017 Dominican University has been awarded Title V and Title III grants aimed at increasing Latine and very low-earnings pupil results. These sources increase and greatly enhance tutorial offerings, educational aid providers for undergraduate and graduate college students, profession and expert preparedness, and co-curricular choices such as a Money Wellness method. They also aid school and staff members throughout campus to grow to be extra culturally inclusive as a result of their function and teaching procedures.

“When I came to Dominican there was an all round emphasis on the well-currently being of the pupils,” reported Verónica. “It felt like a whole lot of the school, this kind of as Professor of Management Molly Burke, have been frequently incredibly fascinated and anxious about how the students were carrying out, giving tutorial assist and connecting us with men and women and sources.”

Although pursuing her MBA, Verónica was a graduate assistant for the Financial Wellness software. The program, led by Ramiro Atristaín Carrión provides college students fiscal literacy workshops, money steerage, undergraduate internships, and volunteering options in the neighborhood. The assistantship gave Verónica an opportunity to expand her knowledge of Fiscal Literacy, mentor undergraduate students, and gain project administration abilities.

This expertise led her to pursue her existing occupation as a specialist for bigger education and learning: “As a very first-gen university student I generally locate it handy when establishments offer applications and methods that empower the students, no matter if it is via experiential opportunities like internships or graduate assistantships, that will provide encounters needed for a lot of our pupils,” she claimed.

Verónica has usually been dedicated to mentorship and advocating for her neighborhood.

“Growing up I experienced extremely supportive academics that often thought in my potential, so I believed that I could achieve whatever was in my mind,” she said. “I would also say that representation does make any difference. Ramiro was in financial commitment banking, and I experienced hardly ever fulfilled everyone from Latin The united states that was in expenditure banking, so it was the to start with time that I entered the room and assumed that everything was probable!”

“We can’t be what we simply cannot see,” writes actor and social justice advocate Michael K. Williams in his posthumous memoir.³

Offering a wide range of applications and opportunities for our learners to see over and above what they know and be successful on their endeavors, is critical to aiding them be the very best-achievable version of on their own.

¹Excelencia in Education and learning: Hispanic-Serving Establishments (HSIs): 2020-2021

²Nationwide Middle for Instruction Data and The White Home: A Proclamation on Hispanic Heritage Establishments 7 days, 2022

³Williams, Michael Kenneth, and Jon Sternfeld. Scenes from My Lifetime: A Memoir. Crown, 2022.

Verónica Gutiérrez currently works for a consulting business in Chicago. She graduated personal debt totally free by applying the individual finance concepts taught by Ramiro J. Atristaín-Carrión in the plan. Verónica thinks in empowering folks by equipping them with the knowledge, equipment, and expertise they will need to be productive. Her foreseeable future intention is to start off a economic literacy software to empower females and other initial-technology university pupils.