On their first day at NC State, students in the Latino/Hispanic Symposium had the opportunity to join the growing family of Latino students and faculty and make connections that will last throughout their college career.
One of the primary goals of the Symposium is to expand on New Student Orientation by adding a cultural component. The purpose of the Symposium is to help first year students confront the challenges that will accompany reaching one’s academic and personal potential at NC State.
While this was the fifth year of the Hispanic Symposium, this was only the first Symposium for Nelson Santiago, the assistant director of Hispanic/Latino student affairs. For Santiago, it was important not to reinvent the wheel and create a new Symposium from scratch, but to find ways to put his own spin on it.
“We look for ways to infuse culture in all aspects of the program, whether it’s through the influence of music as students walk in on the first day, or by bringing in Latino faculty members to speak to our students,” Santiago said.
By comparison, the African-American Symposium has a much longer history and has been held annually since 1983. With an increase in Latino students at NC State that has followed the overall growth in North Carolina, the Latino/Hispanic Symposium has been able to work to understand a changing demographic of incoming students and meet their distinct cultural needs.
One of the most important aspects of the Symposium allows incoming freshman to meet leaders in every college department that relate to their experiences by sharing culture. Knowing a professional leader within the university gives students professors to look up to.
“It’s all about getting them connected to the institution,” Santiago said. “It’s another opportunity to retain students, to make them feel welcome and to be an inclusive institution.”
According to the Multicultural Student Affair’s website, the primary objectives of these programs is to maximize the academic success of students, encourage multiculturalism, educate students and family members about campus resources and support services and coordinate activities that allow incoming students to get to know one another and interact with upper-class students, faculty, and staff.
Data has shown that first year students that attended the Symposium perform better academically and often have higher GPAs during their first year than students that didn’t go to the program.
There were 25 incoming students that attended the Latino/Hispanic Symposium, including some non-traditional students. At the opening ceremony, there were more than 60 people in attendance, including students, family members and some faculty.
The MSA office uses the Symposium as another way to reach out to minority students who are historically underrepresented at our university compared to the population of North Carolina. Students who self-identified as Hispanic or Latino make up just 4.3 percent of incoming students for this academic year.
One of those students, Armando Salazar-Cardoso, a junior in chemical engineering, almost didn’t make it to Symposium, but after going, he found it to be an amazing experience.
Salazar-Cardoso also said that he met one of his professors at Symposium, and was grateful for having made the connection when he went to his first day of class.
“I learned a lot about the Hispanic community as well as the entire university itself,” Salazar-Cardoso said. “I felt very welcomed by the community.”