Each week, “Pop Quiz” features an interview with a member of Greater Houston’s education community. To suggest someone we should interview with an interesting story to tell, email us at education@houstonlanding.org.
Meet the interviewee
Hispanic and Latino students are making up an increasing share of college enrollment, yet they fill a disproportionately low number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics jobs.
At San Jacinto College, where two-thirds of students are Latino, a team has been working to help close that gap.
The college in 2021 established Hispano STEM: El Camino al Exito, or “the path to success,” an initiative that encourages low-income Latino students to study STEM subjects and gives them extra support along the way. Led by Grant Project Director Mark Thomas, the program is funded by part of a nearly $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create ways to prepare more Latino students for STEM fields.
Four years into the program, Thomas, who oversees and tracks its progress, talked to the Houston Landing about what the college has done to narrow the gap.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tell me in short what the Hispano STEM initiative is and how it started.
The initiative started through a grant application that San Jacinto College submitted to the Department of Education under the Title III funding apparatus. Our particular project involves focusing on those students who have shown barriers to entering into the STEM field. And in our case, it would be Hispanic and low-income students as our target. And so our project title is, of course, Hispano STEM: El Camino al Exito — it’s “the pathway to success.”
The project is designed to increase Hispanic and low-income student participation in STEM fields. That’s pretty much the long and short of it. But we provide academic support, mentorship and dual credit opportunities to help students successfully transition into STEM careers. We partner with high schools, especially (Sheldon ISD’s) C.E. King STEM Academy to help create and strengthen pathways from high school to college STEM programs.
What can you tell me about the prevalence of Hispanic and Latino people in the STEM field, currently? What is the issue you guys are trying to solve at San Jac?
The problem that we’re trying to solve is to reduce those barriers that we know exist for Hispanic and low-income students into STEM fields. And those barriers could be as simple as, “Hey, I can’t get to school, I don’t have transportation to get to class. I’m interested in STEM, but I can’t get to class or I don’t know how to navigate the college advising apparatus. I need some help doing that.” Or even, “I need a mentor.” Or a student might have some challenges with interpersonal relationships and may have some issues with confidence and asking the right people the right questions to navigate the whole process.
So that’s the problem that we’re trying to solve is to help reduce those barriers, and we do that through … what we call resource and inclusion specialists. These are, I don’t want to say that they’re case managers, that’s not a term that’s used a lot in the academic arena, but for ease of conversation here I’ll use it. They’re case managers that really work intensely with this cohort of students to help them navigate all of those personal and academic barriers they may experience.
Why is it important that Hispanic and Latino low-income students get these opportunities and support?
It’s been documented and demonstrated that this demographic student has challenges. Because of the huge Hispanic low-income student population in the Greater Houston area, and certainly within the reaches of our North Campus, we’ve decided to use this opportunity to focus on that cohort of students.
What are some examples of targeted ways that y’all are helping low-income Hispanic students get to STEM and then through college?
We work very closely with our student services department … by working with this specific cohort of students and targeting resources for them and to them. For example, we have a mentoring initiative that we’ve set up for this cohort of students where we connect them with mentors that will meet with them periodically to see what challenges that they’re experiencing and to just kind of motivate them and keep them motivated along their STEM career pathway.
Our resource and inclusion specialists are embedded with student services … so they have access to student files and student records as they go through the admissions process. So they are able to kind of track them from the very beginning of their academic career, help them with selection of their classes.
The other thing that we do is we help them in an intentional way. At a certain point, we try to help them connect with internship opportunities. And so, once they get through the first fundamental, core courses that they’ve signed up for, and they’re further along that STEM pathway, we try to connect them with industry partners that are looking for STEM students to give them some really hands-on industry experience.
What are some employers or areas where you have partnered with those in the industry to create those post-grad opportunities?
We try to do that through the college’s already existing apparatus of internship programs … What we’re doing now is we’re working within that system to connect our students with those internship opportunities that are already there.
And I’ve already mentioned mentoring and campus engagements, and through that students gain exposure to STEM careers through mentors, field trips and special college tours. We have a transfer coordinator that’s funded through the Hispano STEM initiative that works with students to connect with four-year universities.
We’ve done, I would say, more than a half-dozen college visits with our cohort of students. Places like UT Tyler, University of Houston, Clear Lake, Stephen F. Austin, a couple of other universities that we’ve gone to visit and take the students on those tours so they can learn firsthand what those colleges are expecting and to really kind of get them motivated and excited about transitioning from San Jac to a four-year university to continue their STEM pathway.
Miranda Dunlap covers Houston’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus. Despite roughly half of Houston’s higher-education students attending community colleges, there hasn’t been much news covering these systems or students — until now. Her reporting holds institutions accountable, highlights barriers faced by students and helps them navigate their opportunities. Reach Miranda at miranda@houstonlanding.org or on Twitter and Instagram.
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