Pierce College has launched Nuestra Comunidad on campus, a program for Latinx/Chicanx students to have a safe space, a sense of community, and a place to ask questions and get answers.
After being hired last spring, Diego Paez has been tasked with bringing Nuestra Comunidad to life after many years of the school attempting to build a program of this kind.
“They had been trying to get this program going for maybe, like a year or two, and they were finally able to, you know,” Paez said. “Once they hired me, they were finally able to get it going. I’ve just been trying to get the word out. We call it a soft opening right now.”
Paez described the program’s mission as helping students connect to one another and giving access to resources they may need, such as study spaces, mentorship programs and tutoring.
“Students can come in, they can do homework, they can, you know, hang out, they can eat in here. It’s really just this space for the students” Paez said. “We can connect students to… [if] they’re interested in maybe getting connected to another resource. For example, like the peer mentorship program or tutoring, or mentoring, anything like that.”
Paez added continued to explain that the importance for Latinx/Chicanx students is to be connected to the campus and to support and encourage the students, especially since many students may be the first in their families to attend college and need help with learning about what is available to them.
Nuestra Comunidad strives to provide those answers for them.
“It’s really to foster that sense of belonging on campus, and when students feel connected to their campus, it’s been shown that they tend to do better in their classes,” Paez said. “Since a lot of students are first generation, especially within the population that we’re serving, they don’t have many people they can go to to help them figure out how to navigate higher education”.
Associated Student Organization President Jasmine Minchez explained that a big motivation for creating space for the Latinx/Chicanx community is that it provides representation on campus.
“Our new students who are coming into college and maybe haven’t had the experience of physical presence on campus, you know, maybe they don’t feel super tied to the physical community on campus” Minchez said. “How can we provide that resource for them? So I think that’s where Nuestra Comunidad came in.”
When it comes to having the program on campus, Minchez describes that it is especially important for the students on campus that commute from home to school.
“These physical spaces I think are important for commuters, especially because they are commuters,” Minchez said. “ Like, if you are coming to school, and then you have to think about where you’re going to be for the next six hours, what to do until you can go home to get picked up, or, you know, until you can take the bus back.”
Business administration major Nicole Llerena explained that she has not heard of the program herself but she believes it is important for students to have access to. She added that she thinks this program will help unite students on campus and motivate them.
“I think it’s definitely a very interesting program that will help a lot of students feel a lot more united with the college community and definitely meet a lot more people that are similar to them,” Llerena said. “So, it’s probably going to make them more motivated overall to come to college and to form a better relationship to life.”
The program also hosts events for students on campus, including for Latinx/Chicanx traditions or holidays. Nuestra Comunidad is located at the Multicultural Center and is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
