Latino/a Scholar's Corner

Buenos Dias Colegas!

The Latino/a Knowledge Community strives to support the research and share the stories of colleagues who are completing scholastic work, especially focusing on Latino/a educational issues. If you want to have your research or story shared, please contact Sarah Rodriguez ([email protected]) or Marissa Vasquez Urias ([email protected]).

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During this Latino/a Scholars Corner, we will be highlighting the scholastic work that our colleagues are doing across the world. This post comes from Dra. Erin Doran.

Dra. Doran is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Iowa State University.  To contact Dra. Doran, you may email [email protected].

What initially interested you in studying Latinos in higher education?

I attended a large Hispanic-Serving Institution (University of Texas at San Antonio), and I started teaching nighttime classes at Northeast Lakeview College, a community college in the San Antonio, TX area.  More than anything, I found myself curious about the students in my class and how to better promote their success through the course of their academic careers.  I assigned my students papers to write, but I found that they hated the process because they never felt confident enough to believe they were good writers.  A good percentage of my students happened to be Latinx, and my experience with teaching writing informed my research because I wanted to improve my own teaching.  I found a lack of research on Latinx college students and writing, so I decided to contribute to that research to better understand how to support students and their development as college students through writing.

How has your research evolved over time? What is a finding you did not expect?

When I started, I was very focused on classroom settings and what types of pedagogical strategies best help Latinx students build their writing skills.  What I realized over time is that institutional policy and practice, whether it be placement practices into developmental education or the kind of investment colleges and universities allocate to academic support services, are just as important as what is going on in the classroom.  I want to build on work that includes faculty, academic and student services, and administration in building a culture that specifically promotes a culture of support for all students in ways that understand and honor students’ cultural backgrounds.

Besides the lack of literature on Latinx students and writing, there are some major disconnects in the field that I did not expect when I started my research.  One observation that I have made in the literature is the conflation of developmental education, especially in reading and writing, and English as a Second Language (ESL) issues for Latinx students.  I think a lot of literature assumes that all Latinx students are English Language Learners (ELLs), and to me, that makes assumptions about the needs of Latinx students that effectively ignores the diversity of our population.  They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but if a college assumes that a Latinx student is an ELL and places them in ESL courses before developmental writing, that could potentially add an additional layer of coursework students need to overcome before they can enroll in college-level work.  My concern is what that does to student morale and their chances of persistence.  On the flip side, I would argue that developmental instructors should have more training to help students with ESL issues.

What motivates you to continue writing and pursuing this line of work?

Any time I get the chance to observe community college instructors at work or hear success stories from Latinx students, I am inspired.  I really feel like community colleges are the unsung heroes of higher education, and I continue to build my work around these institutions because I want to be a cheerleader for the students, faculty, staff, and administrators who walk on these campuses every day.

How can your research influence the work of student affairs professionals?

My dissertation chair, Anne-Marie Núñez, drilled in me that research should always have implications for practice.  As such, I try very hard to do research that offers implications for policy and practice—and practice that speaks to professionals in academic and student affairs.  One perspective that I try to include in my work is that working in higher education is challenging (and rewarding) work, so if I can bring research that inspires professionals to keep fighting the good fight, I feel like my research has done what I intended it to do.  My research looks at the role of individual and collective efforts to support Latinx students in and out of the classroom, so executive leadership might see examples in my work of colleges with a strong commitment to these students that have positive trickledown effects throughout these organizations and what that commitment looks like in practice.  These examples are important for the student affairs professionals who are critical for Latinx students given that they may be the first staff member a student at a 2-year or 4-year institution encounters or who a student seeks out when they need help out of the classroom.  These types of encounters have meaningful impacts on how a student responds—if they commit to college, if they seek help to make it through a tough semester, if they continue to enroll each semester until graduation. 

I hope that my work on how institutions work with Latinx students in culturally relevant ways prompts a student affairs professional to think about ways they could apply that perspective in their context, be it a student success course, a workshop, or in a one-on-one advising session with a student.  More than anything, I want student affairs professionals at all levels and all types of institutions to read my work and think about ways they can lift up Latinx students as they pursue their academic goals.

Do you have final words of advice?

Read outside your field, whatever that may be.  In higher education, we tend to silo ourselves into certain communities or fields, and we miss out on some rich conversations that people in other fields are having that could generate new ideas.  If you are a practitioner at a 4-year institution, read the community college journals.  If you are interested in student affairs programming, read some journals of teaching every once in a while.  You never know where inspiration will find you!