Laura I. Rendon

Validating Culturally Diverse Students: Toward a New Model of Learning and Student Development.

ConclusionThis study demonstrated that nontraditional students, no matter how fragile, can be transformed into full members of the college academic and social community. The importance of this finding cannot be over stated, for it points to real hope for students who do not see themselves as “college material” or who feel that college life has little or nothing to do with the realities from which they come. What is needed to transform these students is for faculty, administrators, and counselors to fully engage in the validation of students and to recognize that not all students can be expected to learn or to get involved in institutional life in the same way. Diversity in nature is a strength. So is diversity among college students. The challenge is how to harness that strength, and how to unleash the creativity and exuberance for learning that is present in all students who feel free to learn, free to be who they are, and validated for what they know and believe.

The transition to college: Diverse students, diverse stories

While much is known about the role of student involvement in various dimensions of student change and development, considerably less is known abouthow students become involved as they make the transition from work or high school to college. This paper describes the results of a series of focus-group interviews with 132 diverse, new students entering a community college; a liberal arts college; an urban, commuter, comprehensive university; and a large research university. The study identifies the people, experiences, and themes in the processes through which students become (or fail to become) members of the academic and social communities on their campus.

Academics of the Heart: Reconnecting the Scientific Mind with the Spirit's Artistry

Arguing that higher education research has become disconnected and fragmented, this paper presents a model, Academics of the Heart, that seeks to connect the intellect with the spirit. The model, based on the ancient wisdom of the Mayas and the Aztecs, views research as a relationship-centered process, honors diverse ways of knowing, and employs contemplative practice to connect the inner and outer nature of knowledge.

Eyes on the Prize: Students of Color and the Bachelor's Degree.

I DOCUMENT RESUME

The Process of Reflexión in Bridging Testimonios Across Lived Experience

From Latinas’ locations in the margins of academe and society emerges a unique set of challenges complicated by racism, sexism, and classism. One form of resistance to these multiple marginalities involves drawing upon and (re)telling ones lived experience to expose oppression and systemic violence. Testimonio is a conceptual and methodological tool that transforms personal narrative into this type of resistance. In this article, the authors employ testimonio to document, from an intergenerational perspective, critical consequences and benefits of the academic socialization process for Latina academics. In examining the exchange between and among four established and four emerging Latina scholars, the authors uncovered an innovative methodological technique for bridging testimonios across lived experience; this technique is referred to as reflexión and enhances the level of knowledge construction that testimonio offers in formulating a collective consciousness across generations and social identities, crafting theories about Latina scholars in academe, and demonstrating that lived experience is integral to knowledge creation.

Testing Race-Neutral Admissions Models: Lessons from California State University-Long Beach

This policy analysis article examines how California State University-Long Beach, an institution where upward of 22,000 student applied for roughly 3,400 freshman slots and where the transfer class had to be reduced because of mandatory enrollment reductions, tested race-neutral admissions models in accordance with Proposition 209, which prohibits race/gender preferences. Testing occurred in the fall of 2002 and 2003 within a complex context where escalating demand for access came at a time of budget reductions and enrollment downsizing.

Learning With Heart And Mind: Embracing Wholeness in Learning Communities

Most of us understand what it means to use the mind for intellectual pursuits (i.e., engaging in problem-solving, decision-making and critical thinking), but what does it mean to learn with heart? When speaking of heart, most of us automatically think of the biological view of the heart as a human being’s most vital organ, which represents the center of the body, the seat of our very lives. Human beings cannot live without a beating heart; life itself is drained with a weakened heart. In his essay, The Politics of the Brokenhearted, Parker Palmer emphasizes that the heart can be thought of both as the seat of human emotions and as the core of our sense of self.2 Along these lines, some educators employ the notion of “learning with heart” as a metaphor for experiences that are centered on evoking human emotions and engaging learners in experiences that illicit a sense of wonder and appreciation for the sacred, as well as involving students in learning more about the self and how one is connected to a larger whole.3 The story of what it means to learn with heart is unfolding at a time when a growing number of scholars and practitioners believe that our present education is fragmented and disconnected, resulting in an education that separates mind from heart, and that privileges the outer world of action and objectivity (i.e., rationality, reasoning, problem-solving and critical thinking) over the inner world of reflection and emotion.4 Recently, contemplative practice, with a focus on inner life skill development, has been receiving increased attention as a way of assisting students to not only react and analyze classroom material, but as a means to help students become relaxed and focused in order to observe their emotional, intuitive or physical responses to what is being taught. For example, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society joined the American Council on Learned Societies to award Contemplative Practice fellowships to faculty teaching diverse courses such as physics, business, music and art to

Cultivating Una Persona Educada: A Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Vision of Education

This essay focuses on the need to educate the new persona educada, a dignified, honorable person with a good measure of social and personal responsibility who also possesses the habits of the mind and heart. To cultivate una persona educada requires a newly formed vision of education and pedagogy. Examples of three entrenched agreements that have become part of higher education’s harmful hegemonic structures are discussed. Finally, the elements of creating a sensing/thinking pedagogy, which unites the sentir of intuition and the inner life and the pensar of intellectual development and the outer life, are presented.