A group of Latino leaders with Columbus connections shared their journeys to educational and career success with students from five area high schools who hope to follow in their footsteps.
Exito Latino, a one-day event at the Columbus Learning Center, brought 180 Latino students to the IUPUC and Ivy Tech Community College campus for the second time.
The students attended discussion sessions Friday about networking, finding scholarships, overcoming barriers, and persistence with professionals representing many of Columbus’ leading employers including Cummins, LHP Engineering and Columbus Regional Hospital.
Students who attended were from Columbus East, Columbus North and CSA-New Tech high schools, along with Shelbyville and Seymour.
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“We wanted to give these students some important information about what could happen after high school,” said Matt Souza, IUPUC’s special assistant to the vice chancellor and dean for strategy. “For such a large percentage of these students, that’s a very challenging question because of resources.”
While financing college is always a challenge, Latino students also face the challenge of acceptance as they move out of high school into higher education, he said.
“The barriers include that they are people of color and the perception about how their parents brought them to this country,” Souza said. “We’re telling them it’s OK to have a dream and pursue that dream.”
The Exito Latino program revolves around having young Latino professionals share their journey in the hopes that high school students will be encouraged to embark on their own with more confidence. “Exito” refers to “success” in Spanish.
Last year, 29 percent of the seniors who attended Exito Latino went on to post-secondary education at a Columbus higher education campus, organizers said.
One of those young professionals, Jorge Garcia, had a reunion with one of his counselors at CSA-New Tech, Megan Shaff, now the adult/alternative education director for Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.
“He helped me to be a better counselor,” said Shaff, laughing and hugging Garcia, and remembering working with him to find scholarships and a pathway to higher education. “It was always ‘How do we figure this out?’ “
Garcia, who is now a Cummins global service analyst in Nashville, Tennessee, said he didn’t have the money for college when he graduated, and worked 80-hour weeks to save enough money to enroll.
One opportunity that helped was that Garcia had accumulated about 30 college credits while still in high school at New Tech, and could finish a college associate degree in about a year. He then moved to IUPUC for his bachelor’s degree, and was hired by Cummins.
Garcia said both he and his wife are in DACA, the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and are aware of the changing political landscape about whether the current administration will end the program.
DACA is an American immigration policy that allows some individuals who were brought to the United States illegally as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the United States.
“I know the challenges we are facing,” Garcia said. “What I’m telling these students is turn off the TV and think about their situation and come up with a solution. Locally, Su Casa is very helpful with legal and financial issues. Join groups and be part of a supportive community for Latinos.”
Keynote speaker Guadalupe Ibarra Ortiz, a 2015 IUPUC graduate with a degree in business management and finance, talked with students about coming to the United States from San Juan Tehuixtitlan in Mexico and adapting to a new culture, language and life.
Raised by a single mother, Ortiz said she was told to get good grades in order to get to college. But when she graduated from high school, Ortiz also learned that it would take far more money than she had imagined.
Undocumented as a high school student, Ortiz said she decided to go to Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus. She discovered because she was not born in the United States, she was required to pay the non-resident tuition fee, making the cost even more expensive. She enrolled in college part time, and worked full time, to afford it, she said.
She was among the Latinos who fought for the DREAM Act under the Obama administration, and described the DACA program as something that changed her life.
After earning an associate degree in business administration at Ivy Tech, she pursued and attained her bachelor’s degree in management and finance at IUPUC in 2015. She now lives in Indianapolis and works in a management position at Primerica, Inc.
When pursuing her degrees, she received scholarship help through the Hispanic/Latino Scholarship Fund through the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County. She also was a campus leader in the Latino/American Organization of Volunteers in Education (LOVE), which continues to assist Latino students who are working toward degrees on Columbus campuses.
Ortiz said she believes education was the key for her to achieve the American dream — which has included starting her own family in Indianapolis and buying a home there.
“If I could go back, I would do it all over again,” she said, momentarily stopping to wipe away tears as the students applauded.
“The thoughts I would leave you with today: You guys are high school students and it seems complicated now; it is for everyone,” she said. “Every one of you can make an impact in the world. Don’t give up on that dream.”
