崇高的目标

圣澳门金沙赌城线上游戏 political science professor Juan 赛普维达’s life has been chock-full of incredible experiences. 他是澳门金沙线上赌博官网的卡尔加德杰出实践教授, was a former member of the Obama administration 和 a member of the Biden-Harris transition team, served as a senior vice president at PBS—和 that’s after earning degrees from Harvard, 斯坦福大学, 和牛津.

But what’s one experience even 赛普维达 wishes he’d had when he was a young student?

It’s attending a program like the Latinx on Fast Track (LOFT) Leadership Institute—a partnership between 圣澳门金沙赌城线上游戏 和 the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) that 赛普维达 HHF首席执行官兼总裁Antonio Tijerino于2021年夏季推出. 的 institute brings together some of the top Latinx graduating high school seniors in the country for an interactive series of seminars on leadership, 社区建设, 职业探索.

赛普维达说:“当我还是个孩子的时候，我很想拥有这样的东西. “我在职业生涯中建立的所有网络和社区, 像这样的项目在你上大学之前就把这些因素结合在了一起. 我告诉LOFT的参与者, “我希望你们彼此喜欢, 因为无论你走到哪里, 或者你做了什么, 你们会经常见面的!’”

LOFT为获得西班牙裔传统青年奖的青年提供服务, an HHF program that brings together the most talented 270 Latinx students in the country—out of a field of more than 30,000 nominees—who receive a grant to continue their education or to support a community-based project or idea. 赛普维达 launched LOFT with the goal of getting those students interacting both with each other 和 with Latinos 和 Latinas who are already stars in their prospective career fields.

这270名学生, 一次选择, 被分为九个职业轨道, 由九个行业参与者赞助:医疗保健和科学(CVS health), 工程(BP), 科技(t - mobile), 教育(西南航空), 公共服务(国会西班牙裔核心小组研究所), 财务(东洛斯资本), 创业(TikTok), 和社会公正(耐克). 学生 in each track then heard from guest speakers representing those fields as well as formed friendships 和 ties with each other.

“Most of these students don’t have these types of networks built already,赛普维达说. “的y need to be able to see 和 meet the people who have gone into these fields before them.”

赛普维达 says students in each of these tracks got to “take a deep dive” into these career fields, asking big questions of the guest speakers: “What does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? 教育到底意味着什么?"而是以一个真正的文科教员的方式, 赛普维达 also excelled at constructing the program to highlight the connections between disciplines. “We got students thinking about how these tracks connect, how there’s crossover,赛普维达说. 澳门金沙线上赌博官网是一所小型的文理学院. 我们建立联系. 这就是我们看待世界的方式. 人们愿意深入研究他们的课题, 但我们的学生并没有想过孤立无存.”

另外, 赛普维达 enlisted 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 students to act as mentors for the LOFT Leadership Institute participants. “我想把他们当作‘哥哥和姐姐’的形象来纪念，”赛普维达说. “通过这种方式，我们的学生也成为了网络的一部分. 我希望他们与所有的企业、部门和学生建立联系. 我希望他们有领导经验."

那就不足为奇了 Thomás Peña ' 22 和 Sabrina Cuauro Cuauro ’23 both emerged from the program with a renewed sense of identity, 方向, 以及对未来的展望.

Peña，双学位 金融 和 商业分析与技术 来自德克萨斯州罗马市的他与LOFT的学生一起参加了技术项目. “这是我学习的所有东西的交集, so it was a great chance for me to take that relevant experience 和 help the students out,他说.

的 biggest advice Peña had for the LOFT attendees was about finding a sense of belonging. “I was blown away by these students… taken aback by how accomplished they were,” Peña says. “But even having all these accomplishments, everyone always has a sense of imposter syndrome. I got to talk about when I was in their position, first getting to college: Did I belong here?”

佩纳还在继续, “相信自己在学校的存在可能是一个学习曲线, 在实习期间, 在工作中, 是应得的. 当我在戴尔科技公司实习时, 我的经理告诉我, ‘嘿, 你总是第三个说话的人. 让别人看到你，听到你.’ That speaks to so much of the Latino experience 和 the importance of representation. 像LOFT研究所这样的项目向我们展示了来自Facebook的拉丁裔领导人, 苹果, 我们也听到了他们是如何创建一个社区的. 这是一个非常积极的信息.”

Juan 赛普维达 discusses mentorship opportunities with the LOFT program with Sabrina Cuaro Cuaro 和 Tomás Peña.

郭罗郭罗是 心理学, 全球拉丁语系研究, 西班牙语 triple major from Katy, Texas, who was matched with the health care 和 science track. She says the LOFT Institute represents just one step among many that 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 is making to continue to build communities for Latinos 和 Latinas on campus.

“我来澳门金沙线上赌博官网是因为它是一所小型文理大学, 直到我来到这里，我才了解拉丁裔社区的历史,Cuauro说. “I became a 全球拉丁语系研究 major right at a time when I felt unsure of my identity. 我加入了博士. 赛普维达的拉丁领导力课程，这对我产生了巨大的影响. 我现在是澳门金沙赌城线上游戏拉丁裔协会的主席.”

But getting to network with the LOFT students—hailing from a nationwide network—was an entirely new type of 社区建设 experience for Cuauro Cuauro. “让我印象最深刻的是这些学生的潜力，”她说. “他们已经取得了如此多的成就. And hearing their stories as to why they wanted to go into health care, I was inspired by them. So many of them have had experiences with family members who had an illness 和 were treated differently or encountered different obstacles because of their identity.”

对临床心理学有兴趣的学生, 这对库罗·库罗来说是个打击. “不同身份的人会表现出不同的精神疾病, 谁对这些问题有不同的看法,她说。. “而且很多现有的心理学研究都不是‘跨文化的’, 所以我想做研究，关注不同人的观点.”

LOFT领导力学院, 目前正在接受2022年夏季项目的申请, 目标是保持增长, 根据赛普维达.

“我想扩大这个项目，让高中生更早地来到澳门金沙线上赌博官网, 在他们大四之前,赛普维达说. “今年我们是远程的，所以我想亲自做更多的事情. I would love to bring [the students] all to 澳门金沙线上赌博官网, as well as to [Washington ]D.C. 给西班牙传统基金会. We’re also looking at exp和ing with more sponsors 和 adding a sports 和 fitness track. 我希望我们的网络发展壮大, 随着越来越多的学生回来和我们一起做这个项目, 我想让他们来主持会议, 帮助管理整个项目.”

这些都是崇高的目标, 赛普维达笔记, but the right goals for a university like 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 that’s trying to build a better network for its Latinx students. “如果我们想和拉丁裔领袖一起成为一个全国性的球员, 我们需要做更多的全国性项目，就像我们在LOFT做的那样,他说. “有澳门金沙线上赌博官网的学生帮助我们领导，这是一个巨大的好处, 帮助我们运行这些程序.”

While 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 did not have any incoming students as participants in the LOFT Leadership Institute, 赛普维达 says future editions of the program will benefit from having voices like Cuauro Cuauro 和 Peña on board.

正如这两个人可以证明的那样，这种好处是双向的. "关系博士". 赛普维达与这些职业领域的主要参与者建立了联系, 我们可以问他们问题, 倾听他们的故事, 听听他们是怎么做到的. 这真的很鼓舞人心，”夸罗说.

“I feel really confident that I have the skills I need; I belong here,” Peña says. “我想说的是，我在澳门金沙线上赌博官网待了四年, 并参加了拉丁裔领导力课程等项目, 澳门金沙赌城线上游戏拉丁裔协会, 现在是LOFT, 并不是这些事情改变了我的身份:我的身份被放大了.”