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ENLACE Featured Student
Because tomorrow begins today....
The Central California ENLACE
Program has established student advisory councils at selected schools
whose participation in the planning effort provides a well-grounded source
of ideas, feedback, and suggestions for how to adapt proven educational
programs and practices to the needs and special circumstances of central
California's rural Hispanic families and communities.
Patricia Moreno remembers the night in September 1996 when she rode nervously to attend a meeting with her father in Visalia where all of the colleges and universities in California were holding a college outreach and program orientation meeting for prospective high school students. She was beginning her senior year in high school and had dreamed of attending college and becoming a teacher since moving to the United States with her family in 1991. But for the daughter of a seasonally employed migrant farm worker, college was always thought of as an impossibility. Patricia knew that it was much more realistic to plan on getting married as soon as she finished high school and go to work in the fields to help support her family.
Her father told Patricia that she should not get her hopes up too high. He knew that she loved school and wanted to become a teacher. But with a family income of $20,000 a year, college just did not seem possible. As she rode to the meeting on a sweltering hot Wednesday night, she knew that she and her father would probably be riding home feeling disappointed. But she did not complain. She would never think of doing so.
That night, Patricia would meet representatives of the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at Fresno State University. They would tell her about how this program provided assistance to the children of migrant farm working families who wanted to attend college. They would tell her about how the program would provide admission assistance, financial assistance, and tutoring support at Fresno State. She left the orientation that night with her father by her side and with a CAMP representative’s business card held tightly in her hand as they rode back home.
Today, Patricia is entering her senior year at Fresno State with a major in Spanish and a 4.0 GPA. She works part time for the University Migrant Services office as she prepares to graduate and enter the master’s program in education. “I want to support my parents financially,” Patricia recently told a reporter for the Fresno State student newspaper. “I plan to continue my education until I finish the doctorate at UC Santa Barbara and eventually teach at the university level.” She knows that college can change the lives of other migrant students, and she plans to be a part of their opportunity to do so.
Patricia is the ENLACE Phase I Networking student representative of Fresno State’s planning program. She brings to the planning process a wealth of examples and insights into the many barriers to higher education that stand between migrant and other rural Hispanic students and their “impossible dreams.”
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