Transcript
Arnoldo Hernandez
Diversity Director, Albertson College of Idaho
I also want to comment that I was very touched by that piece as well and I am honored to know Sergio Gutierrez and his wife Mary. Mentor programs are very powerful. I work with the Albertson College, it's a private institution here in Idaho, and we have created a mentor program with Latinos that are at the college level to go out and work with students at the elementary as well as high school level. They are growing up like I did, parents couldn't see past this wall when it came to higher education because they only have a first- or second-grade education themselves. So we've got to go out and seek those that have gone beyond our parents so that they can teach us the way. It's not just the Latinos that are mentoring; we see a lot of Anglo students that are very interested in showing us the path as well. Roberto Beruth, a huge mentor of mine that continues to mentor me, he also works at a university. We must seek out these persons that are willing to go out and help us and show us the way. For a lot of us, and I think a lot of us in here will agree, that our parents did not get very far when it came to higher education, so we must seek and continue to put together some of these mentor programs not only for students but for parents as well. We started the Minority Adult Symposium where we bring in parents que ya tienen la edad de cinquenta o sesenta aņos, that are 50-60 years old, they are coming back and talking to other parents about how they learned to drive, how they learned to speak English and this and other things. So we've got to create these programs because these are the missing links and we can go out and find the missing link and repair the chain.
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