CATCH THE NEXT-PUENTE
COLLEGE SUCCESS PROGRAM
WWW.Catchthenext.org
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Twitter @catchcollege
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Texas Higher Education
Coordinating Board
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Crossing Bridges, Catching Dreams Newsletter
January 2014 Volume 2. No. 7
CTN-Puente Pathways to Degree Programs
The Puente model has many components, including accelerated English reading and writing,
counseling, and mentoring. But at its core is literacy. Literacy enables students to master English
classes in college. But that is only the beginning. Literacy is also essential for courses in every other
discipline of study. The ability to read at a high level of comprehension, and write well-crafted papers,
is critical for success in everything from health sciences to manufacturing and industrial work to STEM
careers. The Catch the Next project in Texas builds on literacy skills to create a pathway through higher
education. As we scale up the Puente model in Texas, we are empowering students to succeed in
whatever subject they choose, and in whatever career they choose. Puente Pathways evolved during the
2013-14 academic year because of student demand coupled with committed leadership and vision by
college presidents. Principles of Puente Pathway: Multiple career pathways; Acceleration;
Integration of student success strategies; Research based pedagogy and content; Professional
Development and Knowledge development. Courses in Puente pathways include: English Composition
2, Psychology, Mexican American Studies, and Music.
CTN-PUENTE PROMOTES HIGHER EDUCATION Latinos are the largest
ethnic minority in the US and this is reflected on our campuses, yet only 8.9% of Latinos have a
Bachelor’s Degree. Educational disparities will continue unless we help all of our students succeed, and
help our students transfer to four year institutions. Catch the Next is determined to help all students
catch their dreams!
Dreams are the pictures that we paint in our minds. It’s the stuff that
creates life, love, hope and accomplishments. All great things begin
as a dream, a thought, an idea and we’re here today to remind you to
believe it! We want you to think big and to prepare yourself to
overcome obstacles and stop waiting for someone to tell you to start
working towards your dream! We are here to remind you that YOU
get to choose how you want to live your life, how you want to create
your life and to remind you that if you want this badly you will have
to work harder than what you have ever worked. Dr. Sandra
Ledesma, South Texas College, Learning Frameworks Instructor.
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Community College Transfer is Our Goal
In the Puente framework, the Education 1300 faculty, who are oftentimes counselors, provide academic
counseling in preparation for transfer to a four year University. The Education 1300 faculty encourages students
to meet with university and academic preparation personnel to facilitate the transfer process. This comprehensive
academic and career counseling for Puente students continues after they complete the Puente course sequence
(Phases I and II), throughout the remainder of their community college enrollment (Phase III). The Teacher and
Counselor ensure that each student has a comprehensive Student Education Plan (SEP) that reflects his/her
individual educational and transfer goals. The counselor does this by scheduling ongoing individual and group
meetings during the last phase (Phase III) of the program, assisting students with transfer applications, letters of
recommendation, interviews, field trips, financial aid, scholarship, and internship information.
Palo Alto Students Visit TAMU-SA
th
On December 6 Palo Alto Students went on a field trip to TAMU-SA to learn about the transfer
process. Visiting colleges is a key part of Puente’s methodology for student success.
LEE COLLEGE HAS A NEW PUENTE VIDEO!!
From Victoria Marron
Here’s our new Puente video our awesome videographer put together for us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gy2IurixVM
LEE COLLEGE TO PRESENT AT TACHE
Lee College Faculty and Administrators will be presenting at the Texas Association of Chicanos in
Higher Education’s 39th Annual Conference to be held February 19 – 22, 2014 in Fort Worth, Texas
Lee College’s presentation will be on Friday, February 21, 2014 from 11:00 am – 11:50am in the
Spicewood room. The Title of the Workshop: Trabajamos Juntos: Preservation of Nosotros
Abstract: Work smarter not harder!! How we have utilized an HSI STEM Grant and a nationally
recognized mentoring program, the Puente Project, to preserve and promote the Chicano Culture in
higher education. What strategies and policies are effectively connecting STEM innovation with
relevant student support programs? Research shows Latino students require specific, intentional support
to reach their academic goals. Presenters will be sharing best practices with intertwining course learning
outcomes, student support services in order to guide underrepresented students to college completion
and transfer.
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PALO ALTO COLLEGE TO PRESENT AT NISOD
Palo Alto Puente team members will do a poster presentation at the NISOD conference to be held May 25-28,
2014, at the Convention Center in Austin, Texas. The presentation Title: The Puente Project - Maximizing
Mentor Accountability for Student Success. Presentation Description: This poster session exhibits the use and
operation of the Puente Project's mentoring component at Palo Alto College in San Antonio, Texas.
Content: The Puente Project at Palo Alto College's Mentor program is designed to recruit and cultivate
community mentors who support students in achieving their academic goals. The poster session will provide a
visual of the mentor program's inception and how the program has enabled many students to be motivated to
complete college.
Presenters: Diane Lerma and Stacy Ybarra
SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE TO PRESENT AT NIDOD
South Texas staff will present: The reluctant learner: A tool kit for transformative at NISOD
conference to be held May 25-28, 2014, at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.
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FACULTY REFLECTION ON THE TEACHING OF INTEGRATED READING
AND WRITING AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION
By Rafael Castillo, Puente English Professor
This year’s crop of INRW Puente students was quite attentive, enthusiastic, and literate. With a few
exceptions who had high absences and some who moved out of state, the Puente students succeeded in
the Puentifying process. This New Year’s English 1301 will be a bit more intense with longer essays
(MLA citations) and at a critical level. I will be introducing them to a critical base (Reader-Response
theory, Post-colonial, and Cultural Studies) process as an analytical tool. Although it is a bit ambitious, I
think this group is up to the challenge.
Critical thinking should be the foundation for all coursework at the college level. They will be exposed
to David Montejano’s Mexicans and Anglos in the Making of Texas, the film Giant, some poems relating
to Giant by Tino Villanueva, and two memoirs, Reyna Grande’s magnificent tear-jerker and Domingo
Martinez’s Boy Kings of Texas. I wanted to include Americo Paredes’s George Washington Gomez (a
novel I’ve taught before) but decided to wait until another time. I don’t want to bog them down with too
much. Slow steps toward giant process.
In using the film Giant, with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, the focus will be on the peripheral
characters (how are the subalterns treated as human beings, as displaced characters, and as part of the
racism embedded in the system). The film is quite useful because it highlights many of the items that
David Montejano talks about in his text. I will be dividing up the book among the Puente students with
responsibilities to analyze, select strong lines, and relate it to the film. The Montejano text will be
daunting because of the dense writing. But I think these students are up to the challenge.
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El Paso Community College Wins White House Grant
Leaders of more than 100 colleges and 40 nonprofits met at
the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White
House Jan. 16, where they pledged commitments to improve
college access for the next generation of students. The group
included presidents from elite schools such as Yale University
and those that serve primarily minority populations –
including El Paso Community College President William
Serrata pictured on the left by Gavin Stern, SHFWire.
President Obama, spoke to leaders in the event titled:
COMMITMENTS TO ACTION ON COLLEGE
OPPORTUNITY which was designed to launching a plan of
action for increasing college opportunity for low-income and disadvantaged students in partnership with key
organizations such as: Achieving the Dream, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Jobs for
the Future—experts in institutional change, faculty engagement and curriculum reform, and policy development,
respectively, who are working to create a "Breakthrough Collaborative." The collaborative will work with willing
community colleges, higher education organizations, philanthropy and other stakeholders to help learn together
the best ways to implement and improve promising practices that accelerate progression through remediation and
gateway courses, especially for those students who are the least college-ready. El Paso Community College
(EPCC) was announced as a recipient of a grant at this event, for their work as a co-development partner for the
Texas New Mathways Project (NMP) in collaboration with the Charles A. Dana Center of the University of Texas
at Austin. This project will accelerate students through their developmental math sequence by pairing a
developmental course with a transfer level math course. Congratulations to El Paso for their grant.
Del Mar College will be joining Puente Familia in the state of Texas.
Del Mar College located in Corpus Christi, Texas and founded in 1935 will be joining the Puente
Familia in Texas. Corpus Christi is a coastal city in the South Texas region of the U.S. state of Texas.
Census estimates, make it the eighth most populous city in the state of Texas. The translation
from Latin of the city's name (Corpus Christi) means Body of Christ. The name was given to the
settlement and surrounding bay, by Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519, when he
discovered the lush semi-tropical bay, on the feast day celebrating the "Body of Christ." The city has the
nicknames "Texas Riviera" and "Sparkling City by the Sea", particularly in literature promoting tourism.
The city is home to the Port of Corpus Christi, the 5th largest port in the nation and is served by
the Corpus Christi International Airport. (Wikipidia.)
DMC encompasses two primary campuses and one campus annex with combined physical assets of
more than $99 million. Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, DMC offers
Associate in Arts and Associate in Science degrees in over 50 university transfer majors and Associate
in Applied Science degrees, Enhanced Skills Certificates and Certificates of Achievement in more than
80 occupational fields. During spring 2005, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board visited the
College and rated 14 programs as exemplary—a record for an institution of Del Mar College’s size.
Currently, over 22,000 credit and noncredit students enroll each year with an average full-time
enrollment of 11,400 students. CTN welcomes Del Mar College to the Puente Familia.
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UT Austin Office of Diversity and Engagement to Host Puente
Summer Institute June
Catch the Next-Puente Partner, The Office of Diversity and Engagement at UT Austin has agreed to
serve as home to the Catch the Next-Puente Initiative in the State of Tex as. With this partnership, CTN
is looking to having the Puente Summer Institute at UT Austin starting the summer of 2014 for new
colleges joining the Initiative. The Office of Diversity and Engagement is located in the Administration
Building (the tower) at UT Austin and as partners, CTN will have access to office space in the
Community Engagement Center as needed. CTN-Puente Community Leadership Mentor, Erica Saenz is
Assistant Vice President of the Office of Diversity and Engagement will be the lead person working
with CTN as we move forward. CTN is proud of and grateful for our new partner.
CTN-Puente Welcomes New Scholar Mentors
LUIS PONJUAN
Dr. Luis Ponjuan is an Associate Professor of Higher Education
in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas
A&M University. He has published on Latino males’ educational
achievement, first-generation students’ access into higher
education, and the retention of faculty members of color. He
recently was awarded the 2012 National Education Association’s
New Scholar Prize and was selected as a 2009 Faculty Fellow
from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher
Education. He earned his PhD from the University of Michigan
and was a first-generation college graduate. He earned his Ph.D.
in Higher Education with concentrations in Quantitative
Research Methodology and Organizational Behavior and Theory
from the University of Michigan. His Masters of Science in
Higher Education Administration from the Florida State University and his Bachelors of Science in
Psychology from the University of New Orleans. He is a first generation Cuban immigrant and a firstgeneration college graduate.
OSCAR CAZARES
Dr. Oscar Casares is an associate professor of creative writing at
the University of Texas at Austin where he is director of the
Creative Writing Program. Casares is the author of two noted
books, earning him fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America and the Texas
Institute of Letters. His collection of stories, Brownsville, was
selected by American Library Association is a notable Book of
2004, and is now included in the curriculum at several
universities throughout the country. His first novel, Amigoland
received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called it
a “winning novel.”
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CTN-Puente Welcomes New Author Mentor
ERICA NAVAJAR
A friend of our Lee College Puente Program, Dr. Erica Navajar has joined our
Catch the Next-Puente Familia as a New Author Mentor. Dr. Navajar is Horace
Mann Jr. High School Principal in Baytown Texas. She is the author of, “El
Sueno, The Dream,” The story focuses on a family travels from their homeland
of Mexico to America. But new hardships and tests await them in the strange
land. Language barriers and cultural differences are inevitable and aside from
the daily struggle to make ends meet, they all have difficulty keeping their
culture alive. Still, they cling to their dream of having a better life and a brighter
future. Erica Navejar was born in McAllen, Texas.
SCHOLAR MENTOR NEWS
Victor Saenz and Luis Ponjuan Visit the White House
On January 11 Teach for America held their “Entre Hermanos” summit on Latino males in education.
An incredible gathering of outstanding Latino students and recent grads heard from a variety of Latino
leaders who shared their personal stories and provided information, advice, and encouragement! Scholar
Mentors Victor Saenz and Luis Ponjuan were guest speakers at the event .
Uri Treisman Named Senior Fellow by Education Commission of the States
Uri Treisman, Mentor to the Catch the Next Puente Initiative was named senior fellow by The Education
Commission of the States. Treisman is Executive Director of the UT Austin Dana Center. Uri Treisman
and three other senior fellows will contribute to ECS’s expanding efforts to better meet the needs of
state education leaders. The Education Commission of the States helps policymakers develop effective
policy and practice for public education by providing data, research, analysis, and leadership; and by
facilitating collaboration, the exchange of ideas among the states, and long-range strategic thinking.
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AUTHOR MENTOR NEWS
LAURIE ANN GUERRERO
Author Mentor Laurie Ann Guerrero was named as one
of ten emerging poets whose first full-length collections
made an inspiring splash in 2013" in Victoria Chang”s
Poets & Writers! “What a year it has been!” (Liv:
"Mommy, they made you a cartoon!")
CONGRATULATIONS LAURIE ANN!
SERGIO TRONCOSO
Author Mentor, Sergio Troncoso’s novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust was recognized for the best
book of fiction receiving The PEN/Texas Southwest Book Award. From This Wicked Patch of
Dust was shortlisted (came in second!), and this is what the judge said about the novel: "Effortlessly,
with elegance of style, Troncoso weaves a tapestry of lives, of human beings who by the end of the book
feel not just real, not just intimately close, but undeniable, inescapable, a part of ourselves."
--Miroslav Penkov, Judge for PEN/Texas Southwest Book Award for Fiction (shortlisted)
http://pentexas.org/contests/judges-comments-fiction-2013/
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER AND PUENTE SCHOLAR
PATRICIA GANDARA SPEAKS ABOUT ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Dec 19 2013, Dr. Patricia Gándara was cited in the Atlantic based on her presentation held last spring at
the Education Writers Association's National Seminar, held in May at Stanford University. Dr. Gandara
noted that millions of American students need to learn English, highlighting that only a fraction of
teachers have received training to help English language learners. “This presents a monumental
challenge for educators nationwide,” according Dr. Gándara, a UCLA education professor whom
President Barack Obama appointed to the Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. She is
also co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gándara
referenced a nationwide survey given to teachers already trained for the growing number of Englishlanguage learners, commonly called ELLs. “In the words of teachers themselves, they don’t feel
qualified,” Gándara said. Newly implemented Common Core Standards will force schools to do
something. Under the standards, students aren’t allowed to just produce an answer but must explain how
they came to that answer, integrating language at all times.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/millions-of-american-students-need-tolearn english/282522/?goback=.gde_1223957_member_5820032995041513473#!
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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Upcoming Momentum Events
Save these Dates
Financial Aid in Real Life
February 10-17 SHARE Aid Stories - what’s working well and not when it comes to supporting
student access and success?
February 18 JAM - how can we make aid better together?
Where is the Developmental Education Needle now?
March 3-10 STATUS CHECK - methods and milestones: what’s working where and for which
students?
March 11 JAM - the reality of implementation at scale, and what makes for great program technical
assistance
The Pedagogy of MOOCs
March 26 JAM - what it takes to provide great open online learning
Questions? Lisa Levinson
MOMENTUM events sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Knowledge in the Public
Interest
DIGITAL HEROES CONTRIBUTING PICTURES/ARTICLES
Rafael Castillo, PAC; Stacy Ybarra, PAC; Sandra Ledesma, STC; Diane Lerma, PAC; Victoria Marron,
Lee College; Debra McBeath, PAC; Erica Saenz, UT Austin, Sergio Troncoso.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO SUBMIT STORIES AND PICTURES CONTACT:
Maria Martha Chavez, Ph.D.
Chief Education Officer Catch the Next 275 Madison Ave., 14th floor
New York, New York 10016.
212-878-6650.
MariaMarthaChavez@catchthenext.org
Catch the Next website: www.catchthenext.org
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