Immigrant-Origin Students in Community College

This groundbreaking volume is the first to concentrate specifically on the experiences, challenges, and triumphs of immigrant-origin community college students. Drawing on data from the Research on Immigrants in Community College Study (RICC), chapters highlight the unique needs of these students, the role of classrooms and campus settings, out-of-class time spent on campus, the importance of relationships, expectations versus outcomes, and key recommendations for policy and practice. The text integrates an array of important topics, including developmental challenges, language learning, the undocumented student experience, microaggressions, counseling center use, and academic engagement. Above all, this book looks at what community colleges can do to better help this growing population of new Americans succeed.

Book Features:

• Holistic and resilience-based strategies of practice that build on the many strengths of new Americans in higher education.
• Federal, state, and local administrative policy recommendations to help this important and growing student population flourish.
• An in-depth study of more than 600 diverse immigrant-origin students attending three community colleges in New York City.
• Interdisciplinary, mixed-method research (survey, interviews, classroom observations) from a variety of viewpoints (students, faculty, administrators).

Carola Suárez-Orozco is professor of human development and psychology and co-director of the Institute for Immigration, Globalization, and Education at UCLA Graduate School of Education. Olivia Osei-Twumasi is an assistant adjunct professor of economics in the Department of Economics at UCLA.

“ Immigrant-Origin Students in Community College serves as a timely and informative resource for higher education professionals and practitioners interested in better serving this group. Grounded within the context of the shifts in student demographics happening in the U.S., authors provide meaningful analysis to help this growing population succeed.”

—Teachers College Record

“Immigrants constitute a large segment of the student population in community colleges, but their identity and lived experiences are erased by research methods that strive to generalize to a generic “all students” category. The greatest accomplishment of this book—and there are many—is that it positions immigrant students as the authors of their own stories. The chapters that discuss students’ classroom experiences, and in particular the incidence of macroaggressions, reveal how practitioners’ pedagogical choices and their stances toward students who are not like themselves inevitably turn them into agents of inequality. In a political climate that makes immigrants the dehumanized “dangerous other,” this book is a gift of hope and possibility to all of us who know that community colleges are the pathway to educational opportunity and equity for the students who, in the not too distant future, will be the face of America.”
—Estela Mara Bensimon, professor and director of Center for Urban Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

“Community colleges offer pathways to better jobs in an increasingly competitive U.S. labor market, but their students often fail to complete these pathways. This volume offers detailed analysis and concrete recommendations on how they could better serve students from immigrant backgrounds. A must-read for policymakers and practitioners in the field!"
—Randy Capps, director of research, U.S. Programs, Migration Policy Institute

Contents

Series Foreword James A. Banks

1. Introduction: What Are the Opportunities, Challenges, and Experiences of Immigrant-Origin Students in Community Colleges?
Carola Suárez-Orozco, Olivia Osei-Twumasi, Robert Teranishi, & Marcelo Suárez-Orozco

Part I: THE CHALLENGES IMMIGRANT-ORIGIN STUDENTS FACE IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

2. Emerging into Adulthood for Immigrant-Origin Community College Students
Dalal Katsiaficas

3. The Pathways of English Learners in Community Colleges: Persistence and Push-Out
Tasha Darbes

4. Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Undocumented Students in Community Colleges
Olivia Osei-Twumasi & Guadalupe Lopez-Hernandez

Part II: THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE SETTINGS

5. Classroom Engagement in Community Colleges: Moving Beyond Student and Instructor Dimensions to a Dynamic Settings Approach
Stacey Alicea & Carola Suárez-Orozco

6. The Prevalence and Relevance of Microaggressions in Community College Classrooms
Carola Suarez-Orozco, Dalal Katsiaficas, Saskias Casanova, Margary Martin, & Sukhmani Singh

7. The Use of Out-Of-Class Time on Campus of Immigrant-Origin Students
Olivia Osei-Twumasi, Carola Suarez-Orozco, Edwin Hernandez, Monique Corral, & Janet Cerda

8. Immigrant-Origin Community College Students’ Help-Seeking Orientation and Use of Counseling Services
Sandra I. Dias

part iii: THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

9. Immigrant-Origin Community College Students’ Experiences with Faculty: Relational Agency or Relational Helplessness?
Carola Suarez-Orozco, Natacha Cesar-Davis, & Alfredo Novoa

10. Through a Lens of Deficit: Faculty and Administrator Perceptions of Immigrant-Origin Students
Heather Herrera, Margary Martin, & Natacha Cesar-Davis

11. The Significance of Networks of Relationships for Immigrant-Origin Students
Stacey Alicea

12. The Role of Instructor Relationships in Predicting Academic Outcomes Among Immigrant-Origin Community College Students
McKenna Parnes, Sarah Schwarz, Carola Suarez-Orozco, & Olivia Osei-Twumasi

part iv: AND NOW WHAT?

13. Dreams Versus Realities: Graduation Rates of Immigrant-Origin Community College Students
Olivia Osei-Twumasi & Juliana Karras Jean-Gilles

14. (Re)Designing Institutional Practices and Policies to Serve Immigrant-Origin Students in Community Colleges
Robert Teranishi, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, & Cynthia Alcantar

Appendix: RICC Project Description

About the Contributors

Index

Download online appendix here.