BodyText4
Her goal, Watson added, is to equip for
success new Blue Hens navigating this journey. One of her tips is to go
ahead and ask for help: “A lot of first-generation students believe the
need for tutoring means they don’t belong on the university campus, but
this is not necessarily the case. Many high-achieving students are
getting tutoring — and it’s part of the reason they are successful.”
It is this climate of support that allowed for the success of Rony
Baltazar-Lopez. The son of an immigrant father from Guatemala and an
immigrant mother from Mexico, this alumni said his parents only went
through the eighth grade, and they saw higher education as their
children’s ticket into the middle class, so they desperately wanted him
to earn a college degree. But Baltazar-Lopez had responsibilities at
home — like taking care of his siblings, helping with the family
business and serving as his parents’ “unofficial translator” — that
would make enrolling at a campus far from his Millford home difficult.
A solution that allowed Baltazar-Lopez to attend to these familial
obligations while still getting his foot in the higher-education door
was AAP, which then opened the door to a bachelor’s degree in political
science from UD. Now, he is working on his master's in public
administration from the University, and he serves as the community
relations officer for the Delaware Department of State as well as an
official of the Milford School Board, inspiring other first-generation
students of color into leadership positions.
“It never felt like you were just going to class or just trying to
pass,” he said of the AAP experience that laid this career foundation.
“It felt like you were fostering relationships.”
The support does not end once students
matriculate onto UD’s main campus. For Perez-Gonzalez, the senior who
nearly quit his college path, much-needed support came from reaching out
to “amazing” members of faculty who, he said, regularly articulated a
commitment to inclusivity and who frequently took time outside of
designated class hours to provide additional help. Now, he serves as the
president of the HOLA
organization for the empowerment of Hispanic/Latinx students on campus
as well as the president of the Zawadi Chapter of the Lambda Sigma
Upsilon Latino Fraternity, Inc. In both roles, he mentors new first
generation students on campus, encouraging them to keep going when they
experience their own moments of doubt.