As part of the ongoing effort to facilitate student success, SPC’s Collaborative Lab hosted a session on helping Hispanic/Latino students improve their academic development on Thursday, July 28. Staff, students, and community members gathered together to brainstorm strategies for engaging Hispanic/Latino students and their families with our college.  The group established three strategies, each with a success plan with three main solutions:

• Pre-enrollment: In this section, we focused on how best to reach to the Hispanic/Latino community and give them information about our college.

• Enrollment: In this section, we focused on how to encourage Hispanic/Latino student to move forward from initial application at SPC to enrollment in classes.

• Retention: After discussing possible reasons why Hispanic/Latino students drop out of college, we focused on strategies for keeping students enrolled in classes.

As an international Hispanic student at SPC, it was such an honor to be part of an event which was motivated by a desire to help my community succeed. It was a great opportunity for me to talk about some main reasons why Hispanic students drop out of college and try to find solutions to these issues. In this meeting, I could feel how SPC staff and students care about my community and want to look out for our well-being. As a student, it makes me feel comfortable and supported to know that SPC is eager to support our success in college, and I am grateful for that.