On Friday, February 10th 2017 the Texas Education Consortium for Male Students of Color (TECMSC) convened at the University of Texas San Antonio-Downtown Campus. Approximately 80 educational leaders from ISD’s, community colleges, and universities attended from across the state of Texas. Dr. Jude Valdez, Vice President for Community Services at the University of Texas San Antonio welcomed everyone.
During the morning, Mona Aldana-Ramirez, Director of Retention Support Services at San Antonio College and Chair of the Consortium Advisory Council, provided everyone with a report from the advisory council and welcomed our six new Consortium institutional members: Del Mar College, Houston Community College, San Jacinto College, Texas Southmost College, Baylor University, and Texas Tech University. This was followed by Consortium and Site Report updates from Dr. Victor Sáenz and Dr. Luis Ponjuán.
A conversation regarding the current status of male student of color research was facilitated by Dr. Sáenz, Dr. Ponjuán, Dr. J. Luke Wood, Director and Associate Professor of the Doctoral Program in Community College Leadership at San Diego State University (SDSU) and Co-Director of the Community College Equity Assessment Lab (CCEAL), Dr. Frank Harris III, Professor of Postsecondary Education in the College of Education at SDSU and Co-Director of the CCEAL and Dr. Marissa Vasquez Urias, Assistant Professor in the Community College Leadership Program at SDSU and Associate Director of the CCEAL.
A student/local partners panel facilitated by Dr. Emmet Campos was featured during lunch, where students spoke about how these male of color initiatives in their school’s help shape their experiences in myriad positive and constructive ways. Local partner members made up of administrators, faculty, and staff shared their experiences regarding how the Consortium has helped advance their work with males of color on their respective campuses. Our meeting concluded with breakout sessions lead by the CCEAL team, groups were divided by institutional type and sector. Groups had the opportunity to conduct an Equity Root Cause Analysis for their respective institution and identified some of the challenges along with some intervention strategies, in order to develop solutions to improve the conditions and outcomes for male students of color.
We want to thank Dr. Rudy Reyna, Pamela Garza, and Darrell Balderrama from the University of Texas at San Antonio for hosting a successful meeting. We are excited about our progress thus far and look forward to providing more updates regarding our Consortium work in the near future. Please stay tuned for more information about our next Consortium meeting in October hosted by Tarrant County College District.
