Dear All,

 

Some advisors expressed their interest in becoming a mentor for the PIVOT program and the information was forwarded to Dr. Gonzales.  Below is her response.  Please let me know via e-mail who would like to get more involved.  I will forward the names to her and will coordinated with her a meeting sometime in May.

 

You all have a wonderful weekend!

 

Sylvia Mansour

 

Thank you so much for welcoming us. The PIVOT team is passionate (with a healthy dose of urgency) about their work in supporting our UTSA students. 

 

I am thrilled that advisors want to be more involved. I will let the PIVOT team know so that we can begin thinking about the best way to do this. Might it be possible to aim for a meeting with those advisors who want to be more involved, say in May after graduation? 

 

For now, and immediately, any and all advisors who want to give of service to first-geners could do a number of things:

  1. Encourage our first-geners to attend the First to Go and Graduate Student Organization meetings on Tuesdays at 5PM in the UC Ski Lodge next to Chili’s. (flyer appended)
  2. They should join us for the First to Go and Graduate Student Organization meetings on Tuesdays at 5PM in the UC Ski Lodge next to Chili’s. It is there that they are likely to find students who would love and appreciate talking to them. We are finding that when staff show up to the meetings, they invariably find students who want to talk. One need not be a first-gener to join us.
  3. Create a signature line in email that indicates they are first gen. My example is below.
  4. Let students know about all of PIVOT programs. Eventually, when we all have access to EAB/SSC, it will be a great way to send referral notes. We’ll get there.
  5. Generally help us to create a UTSA-wide culture that celebrates and encourages our UTSA students who are first-gen. We have a workshop that we have presented to teachers, but that I think is adaptable to advising, we could perhaps host that sometime?

Lots of thoughts here. Again, thanks for having us.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rhonda M. Gonzales, PhD

I’m first-gen!

American Council on Education Fellow

UTSA Department of History

Director, PIVOT for Academic Success