Access to higher education in the United States is becoming more limited every year for less fortunate communities, with the rise of tuition and other outside pressures. Within a 40 year time-span (1980-2020), the average price of tuition, room and board, and fees for an undergraduate degree have gone up 169%, according to Forbes. The Hispanic community is one of the groups most impacted by not only the pressures surrounding higher education, but also outside forces that are difficult to control, such as the need to work full-time jobs to support their families and having dependents other than a spouse. Inmaculada Gomez Soler, a current Assistant Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics at Dublin City University, wrote an article covering her experiences and findings while conducting an engaged learning project in an urban university in Tennessee. My main research question for this project was how student-written texts created by minority students impact their lives at universities. I think it is clear to see how my research question aligns with the overall theme of this focal article, so I was eager to dive more into her findings. Gomez Soler’s Engaged Learning as a Pathway Towards Supporting Hispanic Students at Urban Universities was published in Sage Journals in July 2022 for the purpose of explaining why she conducted the project and the effects that it had on the students undergoing it. During her seven-year span as a Spanish professor at the University of Memphis, the urban university in Tennessee, Gomez Soler decided to interact with a classroom of students taking the “Spanish for Heritage Speakers Class.” This interaction consisted of starting a bilingual newspaper in which the students are highly encouraged to participate in. At the end of the study, there were multiple surveys that revealed positive outcomes because of the students’ participation in the bilingual newspaper engaged learning project. The surveys show that 73% of the students feel that this project positively influences their intention to complete the degree, while 60% said it has made them more marketable in their chosen profession. It is evident that the findings of the project “indicate that the project motivated students to complete their degree, helped them develop transferable skills, led to higher academic engagement, and increased their sense of belonging to the local Hispanic community” (Abstract Paragraph Soler 1).
Throughout the article, there were three key words/phrases that I found tied to more articles on the topic. The first key phrase is “Engaged Learning,” used 24 times by Gomez Soler in her article. The bilingual newspaper project that was brought upon the students represents a keen example of engaged learning as it refers to an educational strategy in which either part or all of the class objectives are learned by working on projects with a community partner University of Maine at Presque Isle. My research question is heavily intertwined with this method of engaged learning as the Hispanic students are taking part in a community bilingual newspaper. This engaged learning project had very positive results such as the fact that 80% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that the collaboration with the newspaper assisted them in strengthening their resolve to pursue their major or profession (Gomez Soler 14). This statistic stood out to me as Hispanics between 18-24 were less likely to be enrolled in school than all young adults (42% versus 24-33%) (Lopez 2009). It is very interesting to see the contrast between the statistics and the huge difference that the engaged learning project had on the students. The introduction of engaged learning in classrooms with a high percentage of Hispanic and other nontraditional student groups that constantly fall behind in enrollment of higher education can have a large impact on the future generations of those groups. As students begin to connect more to others in the classroom and find what they want to do in life and become successful at it, others who are able to relate to them will be more attracted to enrolling in higher education.
The second key term that was found throughout Soler’s article was “Hispanic Students.” This term was displayed 24 times in the focal article and shares the same key descriptor with the key term “Hispanic Community”. Although these words share a common word, the focal article written by Inmaculada Gomez Soler gives clarification to why these key terms are distinct from one another. After reading Gomez Soler's Engaged Learning as a Pathway Towards Supporting Hispanic Students at Urban Universities, it is evident to see how she explicitly displays the distinct characteristics of the two key words through various statistics and descriptions of those entities in particular to how they relate to the project at hand. The term "Hispanic Students" is used to reveal statistics that relate Hispanic students to their academic career and, more specifically, the development and positive effect that the engaged learning project conducted by Gomez Soler has had on the Hispanic students that were included in it. This term brought me to an article written by J.R Feagin and J.A Cobas titled “Latinos Facing Racism: Discrimination, Resistance, and Endurance”. This book provides an in-depth examination into the racism faced by Hispanics, as well as the mistreatment that they face from society. A murder case in Pennsylvania involving multiple white students beating a Mexican American student to death because of his ethnicity stood out as the most salient example of discrimination. At the trial, the attackers were sentenced to only nine years in prison as their actions were deemed a hate crime. This example of unfairness was brought upon by the skewed legal system as the jury deemed the murder a result of his ethnicity or race, however it is important to mention that if the student had been white, there would’ve been harsher punishments. This horrible event that took place not even 20 years ago shows a racist ideology that many Americans may carry towards non-white Americans. Today it is more important than ever to curb this belief and raise awareness for the groups that are facing this ongoing racial prejudice.
After reading Inmaculada’s article, it is evident that the term "Hispanic Communities" is used as a broad term to describe the broader cultural practices and common areas belonging to the Hispanic community. In fact, this term was found 15 times in the focal article and although it’s on the lower end of the scale, there is still an extreme importance of recognizing this community. I chose to analyze the article “Linking Service-Learning with Sense of Belonging: A Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Heritage Students of Spanish” by Chin-Sook Pak as it relates heavily with the Hispanic Community and gives insightful information that is able to help members of this community. This article examines the effect that service-learning projects can have on the ability to provide Latino students with a safe space on college campuses and strengthen their sense of belonging as well. This article’s main goal is one of the important takeaways from Gomez Soler’s engaged learning project, as she stated that some factors that contribute to this sense of belonging are peer interaction, faculty support, and campus climate. With this information, universities around the country are able to make changes in order to cater to non-traditional student and minority groups, to promote a sense of belonging and in time increase the attainment of higher education and enrollment in the future for younger members of those groups. Three years prior to the publication of Gomez Soler’s article, there was a college admissions cheating scandal fueled by uber-wealthy families’ ambitions of getting their children into prestigious universities. Not only was this scandal very illegal, but it also created an even more unbalanced college admissions playing field than there was before due to the fact that the Hispanic community in the US has the lowest average income, according to the Pew Research Center. The inequality that the Hispanic community faces and the limits that already hinder the access to higher education are extreme enough, and this admissions scandal made it not only worse for this group’s access to higher education, but other groups whose access could be limited for a variety of reasons.
Singling out one of the major ethnic groups in our country and lacking the acknowledgment of others is a belief that may be felt by some audiences. Although it is important to set up all types of students for success, it is imperative that we start with minority groups such as the Hispanic community, as they have often been on the receiving end of discrimination from both the state and the broader community, especially in educational settings. The Hispanic community has long been lacking the attention and resources it needs to see its younger generations thrive in a university setting. As it was mentioned earlier, the rates at which Hispanic students are enrolling in higher education, as well as their attainment, has been far lower than other ethnic groups. In order to help every student be successful equally, we must first let everyone begin at the same starting line. Along with this, many Americans may feel that the money which institutions and universities bring in should be used to help benefit the lives of white Americans and should shy away from helping racial and ethnic minorities such as the Hispanic, African American, and Indigenous Native American communities. This viewpoint is not only very discriminatory, but goes against the virtues of universities and in particular, urban universities. The engaged learning study that was conducted by Gomez took place in an urban university in Memphis, Tennessee. Gomez Soler states in her article that the goal of these urban universities is to help non-traditional students (characteristics include older than typical age, part-time attendance, being independent of parents, working full time while enrolled, having dependents, being a single parent, and being a recipient of a GED or high school completion certificate). Along with this main goal of urban universities, it is important to note that the Hispanic population in the United States is close to 20%. As a country it is more imperative than ever to help its citizens regardless of their background, race, or religious affiliation. We all want to see a positive change in our society and having higher education as a solid foundation will make all the difference.