Newswise — Middle Tennessee State University is reaching out to the students and families of the greater Hispanic community in Nashville and surrounding counties with the message that Tennessee welcomes you, and the university community is interested in you.
Public service announcements are or will be soon airing in Spanish on Telefutura TV 42 and on La Nueva Activa Radio 1240 AM. MTSU students and alumni are providing the voices and conveying the message that echoes the project theme: “Educacion: The Way to Your Dreams.”
The seed was planted more than a year ago when Dr. Laura Blackwell Clark, MTSU assistant professor in the Womack Family Department of Educational Leadership, had a conversation with Jim Baumann, chief technology officer at Telefutura.
“They were already broadcasting public service announcements for Nashville Metro Schools, and Jim wanted to take it to the university level,” Clark said. “He asked if MTSU could do something like that. I said, ‘Yes, we could!’” A collaboration also involved Caroline Bizot, assistant director of admissions, and the College of Education.
Clark credits Dr. John Townsend, executive director, Workforce Development Office at the TBR, with offering the funding “even before I had anything ready. One of their goals is to do outreach from TBR to the Hispanic community. That demographic is growing. Dr. Townsend saw my project as a perfect fit.
“I suggested that we focus on providing information to students and families in middle Tennessee about how to get ready for college,” Clark continued.
“Typically, even in American families, information about colleges is not easily accessible or widespread. Granted high school counselors provide it, but if children don’t assertively go after it, and their parents don’t encourage them, they may not get it. Particularly when a family is new in the county, they don’t have the social capital to understand that they need to talk to the high school to get this information or go to a Web site. So they go in without really knowing what questions to ask.”
MTSU students, some Hispanic and some nonHispanic who speak Spanish, provided the voices for the 60-second TV psa’s. Their message includes information about the ACT, filling out the FAFSA form (Free Application for Federal Student Aid, types of colleges in Tennessee and how to navigate through all the technical language of college enrollment.
“That’s why we’re doing these in Spanish,” Clark said. “The purpose of these spots is to give kids and their parents information. If they happen to be recent immigrants, their parents may still be learning English. These are families who may not know networks yet, and so we’re showing them some Latino faces at MTSU who have gone to college. And we’re also showing them American kids who are saying, ‘Come on! Go to college! And by the way, I speak Spanish.’”
“it’s a great feeling knowing that we are all working together for a common cause that will positively impact the Hispanic/Latino community,” Edgard Izaguirre, a senior public relations and marketing major, commented regarding his participation in recording the spots. “I felt honored.”
Izaguirre called his friend Brandon Clements and told him he should get involved, especially since Clements, a senior majoring in Spanish, will soon leave to study for a semester at the Universidad Nacional in Costa Rica.
“It’s not every day you see your average American guy speaking Spanish fluently,” Clements said. “It kind of makes one think, hey, college really can help me achieve my goals. … I feel great just to have been part of it.”
Other MTSU students who appear on camera are Anne Marie Moctezuma, Dany Flores and spring 2010 graduate Krissy Mallory.
A stipulation of receiving the grant for the project was that Clark had to develop a way to monitor the results of the psa’s. With the help of Middle Tennessee YMCA Latino Achievers, counselors in Nashville Metro Schools and MTSU Admissions, they will ask Hispanic students who express interest in exploring college if they heard the psa’s and were motivated by them.
“I’d like to offer these announcements to K-12 school systems for their high school students and even to other universities,” Clark said. “The message is … go to college and it will help you achieve your dreams.”
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