By: Verónica Gutiérrez, MBA'22, Dominican University, River Forest IL and Marcela Reales Visbal, Activity Director for Title V, Part B – Promoting Post-Baccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans, Dominican University, River Forest IL
“I had never heard of the term HSI until I came to Dominican University,” said Verónica Gutiérrez, a first-generation Latina who grew up in one of Chicago's northwest suburbs and recently graduated with her Master of Business Administration from the Dominican.
Dominican University is one of 30 Hispanic Service Institutions in Illinois and one of 15 to offer graduate programs.1 While most HSIs are concentrated in the US Southwest, Puerto Rico and New York, Dominican proudly serves the Midwestern Latino community. The school is considered Prime Minister Catholic HSI of Chicago.
Like Veronica, many students at Dominican are first-generation students and from historically marginalized communities in the Chicago metropolitan area. Since Latino students represent 20% of undergraduate college students in the United States, it is important to be intentional about serving this subset of the population.2
How? Capitalizing on students' strengths and giving them tools and resources to help them succeed.
Since fall 2017, Dominican University has been awarded Title V and Title III scholarships aimed at increasing the success of Latino and low-income students. These resources expand and enhance academic offerings, academic support services for undergraduate and graduate students, professional and career readiness, and joint offerings such as a Financial Wellness program. They also support faculty and staff across campus to become more culturally inclusive through their work and teaching practices.
“When I came to Dominican, I was totally focused on the well-being of the students,” Veronica said. “She felt that a lot of faculty, like Management Professor Molly Burke, were generally very interested and concerned about how students were doing, offering academic support and connecting us with people and resources.”
While pursuing her MBA, Verónica was a graduate assistant for the Financial Wellness Program. The program, led by Ramiro Atristaín Carrión, offers students financial literacy workshops, financial mentoring, undergraduate internships and community volunteer opportunities. The assistant position gave Veronica the opportunity to expand her knowledge of Financial Literacy, mentor undergraduate students and gain project management skills.
This experience led her to pursue her current career as a higher education consultant: “As a first-generation college student, I always find it helpful when institutions offer tools and resources that empower students, whether through experiential opportunities such as internships or graduate assistantships. that will provide needed experiences for many of our students,” he said.
Verónica has always been dedicated to mentoring and advocating for her community.
“Growing up I had very supportive teachers who always believed in my potential, so I believed I could achieve anything I put my mind to,” she said. “I would also say that representation does material. Ramiro was in investment banking and I had never met anyone from Latin America who was in investment banking, so it was the first time I walked into the room and thought anything was possible!”
“We cannot be what we cannot see,” writes actor and social justice activist Michael K. Williams in his posthumous memoir.3
Providing our students with a variety of tools and opportunities to see beyond what they know and succeed in their endeavors is key to helping them be the best possible version of themselves.
1Excellency in education: Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs): 2020-2021
2National Center for Education Statistics and; The White House: A Proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Foundations Week, 2022
3Williams, Michael Kenneth, and Jon Sternfeld. Scenes from My Life: A Memoir. Crown, 2022.
Veronica Gutierrez currently works at a consulting firm in Chicago. Graduated debt-free by applying the personal finance concepts taught by Ramiro J. Atristaín-Carrión in the program. Verónica believes in empowering individuals by equipping them with the knowledge, tools and skills they need to be successful. Her future goal is to start a financial literacy program to empower women and other first-generation college students.
