Women's Equity Resource Center

This project addresses two major barriers to Latinas’ participation in higher education: low educational and career expectations of girls and their parents and lack of knowledge about how to prepare for, finance, and succeed in college. The project is providing girls in grades 7–10 with guidance, direction, counseling, and positive reinforcement; providing mothers with guidance so they can support their daughters and explore their own educational opportunities; creating an educators’ institute for teachers, counselors, and principals to enhance their knowledge, desire, and ability to improve the preparation for higher education of young Latinas; and producing a comprehensive curriculum guide and training materials.

The program works to strengthen the instructional program for girls in reading, math and career options and assists teachers in working with the girls’ mothers on academic support activities including homework support and mentoring. The participants in this four-year project (1999-2003) are selected from families with no previous experience with college who also have economic need.

Gateway to Success is working specifically to increase the number of Latinas with college degrees in science, engineering, and mathematics. The project helps participants develop proper study habits, a scholarly attitude towards school/university work, and a dedication to academic excellence; trains them to use library resources to include electronic information retrieval systems and independent bibliographical research; and helps them develop effective communication skills. Perhaps most importantly, the project provides participants with role models of women science, engineering and mathematics teachers/faculty. This has been identified as the most important element in early intervention with pre-college women.

The project design is based on the successful experience of University of Puerto Rico—Humacao in the admission and retention of women in these fields. Components include a summer English immersion program, hands-on work at a high technology laboratory, a leadership seminar with science teacher/faculty mentors, a computer literacy and information systems workshop, an effective communications program, a graphic calculator workshop, and a standardized test achievement and skills workshop. Participants—selected from three public middle schools and three public high schools—are sponsored through their secondary education and tracked at the college/university level.

The success of the five-year program (2000-2005) will be measured by an increase in the English language comprehension and fluency of project participants as measured by standardized tests, and 85 percent of the participants scoring at least at the 75 percentile of women taking the College Entrance Examination Board test

The Educational Enhancement for Mothers and Daughters Program at the University of Texas was the model for this program, which provides direct service to 100 participants—50 fifth grade mother-daughter pairs. The participants are Spanish-speaking, limited English proficient girls and their mothers from three elementary schools in San Mateo County in the Redwood City School District (Fair Oaks School, Garfield Charter School, and the Hawes School). The four-year project (1999-2003) focuses on building girls’ self-esteem, orienting them to higher education and professional careers, improving the quality of academic preparation for higher education, and increasing parental commitment through active involvement in the education of their children and the youth of their community.

The greatest challenge faced by this project has been maintaining consistent participation of mothers and daughters in their first year of the program. It has addressed this challenge in a number of ways, including having a site coordinator at each school who facilitates the involvement of students and parents, using the parents’ first (home) language as a means of communicating in meetings, scheduling university field trips and sessions at which mothers tell their life stories on Saturdays, and developing alumni “Mother Leaders” who nurture and reinforce the participation of new mothers.

The project leaders have found that this is a powerful program model that makes a significant impact on the participants. The girls explore career options that they had not before even considered. The mothers learn what they need to do to help their children achieve their academic aspirations. They also discover that they have something to learn from each other and that they can pursue their own educational goals.