A case study of Latina/o students at a community college in the Midwest

Community colleges offer Latina/o students a critical access point to pursue a post- secondary education. The existing literature of Latina/o community college students has primarily focused on capturing the educational shortcomings of Latina/o students along the Mexican-U.S. borderlands. The rapid growth of the Latina/o population has extended beyond the southwest and has produced new growth communities of Latinas/os. For this reason, the focus of this dissertation was to explore the challenges as well as the responses of Latina/o students to overcome the barriers imposed along their journey to attain a post-secondary education in a new growth community in the Midwest region of the United States. Guided by Padilla’ (2009) Expertise Model of Student Success, my dissertation examined the educational experiences of 16 Latina/o students at a Midwest Community College. Over the course of seven months, I interviewed each participant on three different occasions. Each interview focused on a particular moment in their young lives--pre-college, college, and future. The data collection phase generated a total of 44 hours of recorded audio time among all 16 participants. Participants were also informally observed during community service events as well as student organization meetings. All files were transcribed and analyzed using open and focused coding technique. Based on these analytical techniques, four major themes emerged from the data; Latina/o students highlighted the challenges that they encountered, resources available to overcome these challenges, and their resiliency