Addressing Latinx Transfer Inequity Through Culturally Responsive Approaches

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Strategies That Promote Positive Outcomes at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Abstract

Driving to campus shows the richness of our pre-dominantly Latinx area surrounding Huerta Community College (HCC). Exit the freeway, you are greeted by signs for the local Mercado Azteca, across the way is the Tortilleria Coyolxauhqui, you can smell the harina for blocks. Past these shops is a community center and garden with an image of La Virgin de Guadalupe, a spiritual and cultural symbol for the heavily Mexican and Mexican-American area. Closer to the community college, you pass two elementary schools with Latinx surnames welcoming the students as they enter the gates. Outside of one of these school buildings are a set of murals depicting the Chicanx history of the area and a tribute to Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers. Arriving at Huerta, you walk onto campus and see a Latinx surname across one of the newest and tallest buildings honoring a longtime president. As you move through the space, you easily recognize our status as a Hispanic-serving campus with a Latinx student enrollment over 70 percent.

Although surrounded by all this Latinidad, our campus has failed to equitable support Latinx students who seek to transfer from Huerta. Our campus has been described as “intensely segregated” with “extremely low transfer rates” for Latinx students by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project (2012). In 2015-2016, the overall Huerta six-year transfer rate was 24.9%, but for Latinx it was 19.9%. The transfer rate doubled for Asian students who, at 45% had the highest transfer rate on campus (CCCCO, 2016). District and state rates are not much higher, with Latinx student transfer rates of 21% and 29%, respectively. To address this, we have spent the last four years developing and implementing various projects to make HCC a more equitable environment for Latinx students. In this symposium, we describe how we leveraged recent state reforms to create race-conscious and culturally-relevant programs to improve the experiences, conditions, and outcomes of our Latinx students. With the funds from the state’s Student Equity Policy, we created specific programs to support our Latino, first-gen, and undocumented students. Viva La Mujer, Men of Color Academy, and Raza Transfer Program are three programs based on our Latino values; we include our history, families, peer support, and relevant curriculum. In particular, parts of the program developed incorporated community cultural wealth and critical race theory making sure we talk about transfer in ways that were meaningful to Latinx students.

As scholar-practitioners we talk about the process that unfolded at HCC to a) develop these Latinx specific transfer initiatives, b) implement these new programs on campus, and c) share the results and impact from these efforts. Dr. Laura Cantu has overseeing the equity projects directly as Dean, Paulina Palomino has long championed transfer efforts to better support Latinx students, and Dr. Eric Felix has been an engaged research supporting the campus reach transfer equity for Latinx students.

Authors

• Laura Cantu, East Los Angeles College

• Eric R Felix, San Diego State University

• Paulina Palomino, East Los Angeles College