Dominican University: Serving Latine Students in the Midwest

By: Verónica Gutiérrez, MBA’22, Dominican University, River Forest IL and Marcela Reales Visbal, Exercise Director for Title V, Part B – Promoting Article-Baccalaureate Possibilities for Hispanic People, Dominican College, River Forest IL

“I experienced by no means listened to of the term HSI until finally I arrived to Dominican University”, said Verónica Gutiérrez, a initial-era Latina who grew up in a person of Chicago’s northwestern suburbs and just lately graduated with her Master’s in Enterprise Administration from Dominican.

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

Like Verónica, lots of college students at Dominican are to start with-technology college or university pupils and from traditionally marginalized communities in the Chicago metropolitan spot. With Latine learners accounting for 20% of school undergraduates in the United States, it’s important to be intentional about serving this subset of the populace.²

How? By constructing on students’ assets and supplying them tools and assets that will enable them do well.

Given that the slide of 2017 Dominican College has been awarded Title V and Title III grants aimed at rising Latine and reduced-profits student good results. These resources extend and increase tutorial choices, academic support products and services for undergraduate and graduate learners, profession and qualified preparedness, and co-curricular choices these kinds of as a Monetary Wellness system. They also support faculty and employees throughout campus to develop into extra culturally inclusive by way of their perform and instructing procedures.

“When I arrived to Dominican there was an general aim on the effectively-becoming of the learners,” stated Verónica. “It felt like a whole lot of the college, these kinds of as Professor of Management Molly Burke, have been usually really interested and anxious about how the pupils ended up executing, supplying tutorial support and connecting us with folks and assets.”

Whilst pursuing her MBA, Verónica was a graduate assistant for the Money Wellness plan. The application, led by Ramiro Atristaín Carrión delivers college students money literacy workshops, fiscal steerage, undergraduate internships, and volunteering possibilities in the neighborhood. The assistantship gave Verónica an option to grow her expertise of Fiscal Literacy, mentor undergraduate pupils, and attain venture administration skills.

This experience led her to go after her recent vocation as a specialist for better education: “As a very first-gen college student I constantly locate it practical when institutions supply resources and resources that empower the college students, regardless of whether it is through experiential options like internships or graduate assistantships, that will provide activities necessary for a good deal of our college students,” she stated.

Verónica has always been fully commited to mentorship and advocating for her neighborhood.

“Growing up I had very supportive teachers that often considered in my prospective, so I believed that I could achieve no matter what was in my brain,” she explained. “I would also say that illustration does subject. Ramiro was in investment banking, and I had by no means fulfilled anybody from Latin The usa that was in financial commitment banking, so it was the very first time that I entered the home and believed that just about anything was feasible!”

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

Delivering a variety of resources and options for our college students to see past what they know and realize success on their endeavors, is critical to encouraging them be the ideal-feasible model of on their own.

¹Excelencia in Training: Hispanic-Serving Establishments (HSIs): 2020-2021

²National Middle for Training Statistics and The White Household: A Proclamation on Hispanic Heritage Institutions 7 days, 2022

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

Verónica Gutiérrez at this time will work for a consulting organization in Chicago. She graduated debt absolutely free by applying the particular finance principles taught by Ramiro J. Atristaín-Carrión in the method. Verónica thinks in empowering people by equipping them with the know-how, applications, and capabilities they want to be effective. Her long run intention is to commence a economical literacy application to empower females and other to start with-era college or university learners.