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Today I literally spent the afternoon at Northern Kentucky University visiting with their Office of Latino Student Affairs. What a wonderful group of individuals – really an understatement for all they do to serve the Hispanic students at NKU. While I was able to share my background and a little about my company, I learned much more from the students and staff than they did from me. After my informal presentation, I enjoyed an hour of  sharing ideas and perspectives with Hispanic students from Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, the United States. Although there are only 200 Hispanic students at the NKU campus, Leo Calderon, the center’s director, is passionate about serving the needs of his students. He actually knew each student by their first name! Along with his assistant, Diane Maldonado, they make an excellent team and the students are certainly fortunate to have such committed individuals supporting them.

Next month, the Office of Latino Affairs is hosting the first annual conference of ELKF (Educating Latinos for Kentucky’s Future) on February 11-12. They’ll be holding a college fair along with a conference featuring Rosa Rosales, LULAC National President, and Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate at the PEW Hispanic Center.  I’m a big fan of Mr. Fry whose work I used extensively in my doctoral dissertation. More information about the conference can be found at the ELKF website. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the opportunities and challenges facing Hispanics in Kentucky (and in the South for that matter) to attend. It will be worth your time.

I was able to spend about an hour with Mr. Calderon in his office and was inspired to do more – particularly when it comes to helping those without a voice regarding education and career opportunities. Mr. Calderon is an example of what we Hispanics describe as “ganas” – motivation, passion, determination, and commitment. Mr. Calderon serves those that most need it - he truly defines what it means to be on the front lines. While it is easy to write about the challenges faced by Hispanic college students, it’s quite another thing seeing it first hand. I’m always inspired by those that look beyond the challenges and focus on the opportunities. The students I met today certainly demonstrate that I have so much more to learn and understand about the experiences of Hispanics in higher education.

I’ve tweeted about a lot this week but wanted to share some thoughts below (with associated links) since I think they highlight continued trends regarding the importance of the growing Hispanic workforce. Enjoy!

Hispanics in the South: The University of Alabama is hosting a one day conference on the growing presence of Hispanics in the South. This is growing trend with states such as GA, TN, and NC already experiencing significant growth over the last decade. I lived in Little Rock, AR. for two years and saw tremendous growth of the Hispanic population during my time there. Little Rock actually hosted the LULAC National Convention there a few years ago. It was a great convention!

Education Where It’s Needed: Teach for America is offering potential Hispanic teachers the opportunity to give back to their community by placing them in areas where they’re needed the most – they’re own communities. Teach for America salaries are just a bit higher if a candidate teaches in an urban or high need area. The organization recruits college graduates from all backgrounds, trains them, and places them where there is a high need. A great opportunity to give back, make a difference, and begin a career in education.

Intel Making a Difference: Intel is investing in providing K-8 teachers professional development on math content by taking an innovative approach.  This Intel Math program is an intensive 80 hour course facilitated by a practicing mathematician and a math educator.  The curriculum is available for free to any state in the US.  Another organization making a difference is my alma mater – The University of Texas at El Paso. I worked at the career center there and it’s where I earned my BA and MA degrees. With more than 70% of its student body of Hispanic descent- it’s making a huge difference in graduating students into STEM careers .

Hispanic Trends for 2010: Jose Villa provides some excellent thoughts regarding Hispanic marketing trends for 2010. I’ve insisted that many of these same ideas can be applied to recruiting Hispanic professionals into the workplace. I particularly like his thoughts regarding generational differences and acculturation.

Demographic Trends: The NewYork Times shared an article on how seven states in the U.S. have seen a decrease in their 18 and under population. The list of states is provided in the article. Despite some of these contractions, the Hispanic population in these states is still growing.

Future Leadership:  I’ve long advocated that organizations need to tap and exploit growing pools of talent for future leadership - especially as more Hispanics graduate from college. To this thought, Kevin Wheeler shares some ideas regarding the future of leadership. With baby-boomers and non-Hispanic whites decreasing in population, there will be a definite leadership gap in the coming decade.

The idea of generational progress is a powerful principle when one thinks about the American Dream. My parents came to the United States hoping that the lives of their children, and their children’s children, would improve through education and hard work. With close to 50 grand-and-great-grand kids out there doing a lot of different things professionally and academically, I can attest that they’ve not been disappointed.

While progress is being made, some will still argue that Hispanic progress toward economic parity is not improving enough. I have no argument with that – more strides need do need to be made. Hispanics are still one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the United States, however, it does not mean that they aren’t making progress in the areas of employment, health, and education.

For 20 years, The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine, has been a voice in following the development of Hispanics in the area of education. Debuting in 1990, the magazine has shared some wonderful facts in an article regarding the progress, and lack thereof, Hispanics have made in 20 years. The article provides some excellent reading regarding overall educational attainment and challenges.

From 1992 to 2002 the number of bachelor’s degree recipients doubled among…schools conferring those degrees on Hispanic students. Eleven thousand more Hispanics received bachelor’s degrees from 2002 to 2005. As of 2008, the latest figures from the U.S. Census reveal that 13 percent of the Hispanic population 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That same report showed that the number of Hispanics 18 and older who had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2008 was 3.6 million, up from 1.7 million a decade earlier.

One interesting graph shows that Hispanic females are far outpacing Hispanic males in college enrollment. While these numbers still show a significant disparity when compared to overall college enrollment rates, they do indicate progress is being made. There are certainly many more Hispanics in the college education pipeline heading toward the workforce than there were 20 years ago.  Instead of a drip, it’s more like a flow. Is it as fast as we’d like to see? No. But certainly, I would argue that there are a lot of Hispanic parents and grandparents out there liking what they see.

Today was my birthday. One of the disadvantages of having a birthday so soon after the holidays is that everyone is suffering from Christmas and New Year’s Day fatigue (or hangovers), so much, that it really takes a lot of effort to get excited all over again - this is true for me as well! Not to mention everyone is back into “work mode” after the long break. While my wife, kids, and family always make it a very special day, I usually find myself trying to get back into a routine - you know, what life was like before Thanksgiving Day.   

Today was different. After three weeks of reducing a 200+ page dissertation into a 25 page manuscript, a month of waiting, a couple more weeks of revisions, and two more weeks of waiting, I received word today that my submitted manuscript to the Business Journal of Hispanic Research (BJHR) will be published. Frankly, it struck me more than my doctorate graduation ceremony – probably because it was unexpected. Not because the paper was lacking in some way, but because BJHR is a peer-reviewed journal. In other words, it’s reviewed and approved by scholars who really know the material you’re writing about. Putting your work (and yourself) in front of  academic peers can be intimidating, particularly if you’re a ”newbie” doctor like myself.  

In many ways, it’s also another example of what my academic journey has been like to this point. One of facing closed doors, opening them, walking through them, and discovering that they lead to more opportunities – and more doors. And all the while, I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate each room during my journey. This is one of the many “firsts” I’ve had in my life, another opened door, one that I’ll remember for a long time, not because it’s my first published academic article, but because it was great birthday present to myself.  

Happy Birthday Dr. Corona. ; )

According to the National Center of Education Statistics, only 3.4% of all doctorate or Ph.D’s in the United States are conferred to Hispanic Americans. I was both honored and humbled to be “hooded” with my doctorate degree over the weekend.

The 2009 Tomás Rivera Lecture explores the opportunities and challenges provided by the rapidly growing school-age Hispanic population in the United States. It describes how despite educational progress, the Hispanic achievement gap persists. This report documents Hispanic demographics, growth trends, educational attainment and road blocks leading to Hispanic underrepresentation in higher education.

DiversityInc has a good article on how organizations are recruiting Hispanics by developing relationships very early in their educational careers.

Google announces a scholarship targeting Hispanics in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). The announcement was made in conjunction with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Conference.

Hispanics and other minorities are receiving the brunt of the economic downturn. Policy advocates from different minority organizations took part in a congressional hearing to voice their different perspectives. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing titled “The Silent Depression: How are Minorities Faring in the Economic Downturn” on Wednesday. Webcast and transcripts are available here.

More debate on whether a college degrees make a difference in potential earnings. The New York Times provides an interesting article that drills down into the details.

What will shape the future of education? Check out this map that outlines some intriguing trends.

As an alternative to U.S. News & World Report’s much-criticized college rankings, the Washington Monthly magazine has just released its own annual College Guide and Rankings. Whereas U.S. News relies on basic and easily manipulated measures of money and prestige, like alumni giving rates and a vague reputational survey, the Washington Monthly ranks schools based on their contributions to society.

The Washington Monthly’s approach provides noticeably different results – some highlights:

• Some of the top universities on the Washington Monthly list, like South Carolina State (#6) and Jackson State (#22), are non-elite “red state” schools buried in the lowest tiers of the U.S. News list.
• Women’s liberal arts colleges score well in the Washington Monthly rankings, with Mount Holyoke, Smith, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley all in the top 10. Historically black institutions, such as Spelman and Morehouse, also make strong showings.
• While all the top 20 U.S. News universities are private, 13 of the top 20 Washington Monthly universities are public.

To compile the list, the Washington Monthly’s editors gathered publicly available data while U.S. News relies on universities to report data. The Washington Monthly list is based on three criteria: social mobility, research and service. America’s best colleges, the editors reasoned, are those that produce new scientific discoveries and highly trained PhDs, help economically disadvantaged students earn degrees, and emphasize the obligations students have to serve their communities and the nation at large. Below is a snapshot of the list, but you can browse and manipulate the complete list here.

My postings to this blog have often highlighted one of the major socio-technological changes in the United States – the growing diversity of the workforce. Census and demographic data demonstrate the “traditional” pool that supplies today’s technological workforce is shrinking, while untraditional pools such as underrepresented minorities and women groups are growing proportionally, with them making up 1/2 to 2/3 of the population, the new majority, of the United States. If the United States is to maintain remain competitive and continue to compete in the global marketplace, it must draw on all of the talents in its population. The need for a highly skilled technical labor force, the new majority, and the aging population are several factors that drive the need for a comprehensive look at changing the culture of engineering. 

In academic year 2002-03, Latino STEM graduates accounted for 6 percent of all graduates at the bachelor’s level, one percent at the master’s level, and 2 percent (544) at the doctoral level. The unachieved potential of Hispanic and women students in the STEM fields is significant and is critical to harness for the economic future of the United States. To realize this potential will require the support and commitment of the corporate community as well as government, nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, and educational institutions.

David Bressoud, a professor of Mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and others are doing their part by appearing before Congressional Diversity and Innovation Caucus to make a presentation on “Diversity and the Future of STEM: Filling the Undergraduate Mathematics Education Pipeline.” Dr. Bressoud will be making the case that women, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans are being lost in the undergraduate mathematics education pipeline. He provides an excellent overview of the situation with regard to women. Next month, Dr. Bressoud will share the data uncovered on minority representation in undergraduate mathematics.

Source: National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, Arlington, VA: Available on the internet < http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/start.htm>

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) just released a report, A Profile of Successful Pell Grant Recipients.  A couple of  highlights from the study:

• In addition, a larger percentage of Pell Grant recipients than nonrecipients came from non-English-speaking households, and a larger proportion were Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, or from other racial/ethnic backgrounds other than White. Also, a larger proportion of Pell Grant recipients than nonrecipients were women.
• In addition, after controlling for parent’s education and racial/ethnic background, no measurable differences were observed in the median time to degree between Pell Grant recipients and nonrecipients if they were Black or Hispanic, or had parents who did not graduate from college.

I find the second conclusion above somewhat significant. The issue I have with these type conclusions is that it assumes all data, from college graduates in this case, is based on an equal footing in the system. In the case of Hispanic college students, the report does not recognize the uneven distribution of Hispanic students within the college system. The second conclusion is very broad and gives one the idea that aside from the controlled variables, all college experiences are the same. Close to half  of Hispanic college students attend only 22 institutions of higher learning (excluding Puerto Rican schools). 

Given that the dispersion of Hispanic students is concentrated in such a small number of colleges, I doubt the same results if the study were focused on HACU, HBU, or women colleges. This is an informative report but too often results that reveal the status of Hispanic, other minorities, or women college graduates evolve by studying the majority of college student experiences.