The Vanishing Latino Male
Using Mentorship to Close the Latino Higher Ed Gap.
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With a Ph.D. behind his name, Victor Saenz knows he is among the 0.1 percent of this country’s Latino male population with a doctoral degree.
The UT professor and higher ed researcher in the Department of Educational Administration wants to see that tiny number increase. In fact, with the Latino population growing so dramatically, he believes the future of the state and country depends on expanding the number who graduate from college.
To make it happen, Saenz is starting a pilot program: Project MALES, Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success. He’s using UT as its launchpad, hoping to create a prototype here that can be adapted to other college campuses.
Another statistic that motivates the work: the ratio of Latino men in prison beds to those in college dorm beds is 3:1. Yet the country’s Latino population is growing. “The consequences,” Saenz says, “will ultimately point us in some very sobering directions socially and economically.”
A Rio Grande Valley native, Saenz was visiting with the president of South Texas College, a community college in McAllen, last year. The two started talking about how to boost Latino college attendance and graduation rates. Soon they were plotting something like Project MALES.
Research has shown, Saenz says, that for men of color, positive role models and mentoring are especially good means of spurring achievement.
He believes that having one-on-one or small-group support on cultural issues Latinos often experience — such as a sense of obligation to be supporting the family during prime earning years — can help.
The ratio of Latino men in prison beds to those in college dorm beds is 3:1
Why emphasize Latino men, rather than women too? In 2009, three-fifths of all college degrees earned by Hispanics were given to Latina women, up from half in the ’90s.
Some think this could have a negative impact on the Latino family, causing Latinas to choose partners with comparable educations from outside the culture, among other effects. Regardless of the scenarios, Saenz would like to see the gap evened back out.
Before Project MALES can be exported to other colleges, Saenz and a team are refining its training curriculum. They’re strongly considering a “constellation mentoring” model, whereby each mentor takes on three or four mentees, who in turn mentor another few.
They’re also assessing how often to meet as a group, and experimenting with networking using tools like Facebook and Skype.
“Designing a program that has credibility in young men’s eyes,” Saenz says, “is not as easy as it may seem.”
Read more about closing the gap in latino males in higher education here.
