Daisy Pereyra had no money for college and wouldn’t think of asking her mom to pay her tuition.
“She is working to put food on the table,” said Pereyra, a first-generation Community College of Denver student. “I felt like there was no way out at the beginning.”
Then a friend told her to sign up for the college’s first-generation student success program. Pereyra met a case manager who helped her apply for financial aid, sign up for classes and get a work-study job.
The program kept her in college, Pereyra said Monday to a diversity task force formed by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
The panel is looking for ways to recruit and retain minority students at colleges throughout Colorado.
Students from CCD, the most diverse college in the state with 60 percent minority students and 65 percent first-generation students, said the biggest challenge is paying for tuition and books. They said many students rely on a program that allows them to borrow textbooks instead of buying them.
CCD president Christine Johnson said the college engages in “intrusive recruitment” by finding students at cultural festivals and churches – not just by setting up booths at high school college fairs. And minorities make up the recruitment staff.
“Our students need to see role models,” Johnson said. “We feel very strongly about that.”
Several college officials complained that they are not able to keep minority faculty, who are snatched up by higher-paying institutions.
“We have not been able to compete,” said James Shore, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Denver and the Health Sciences Center.
The Minority Success Task Force, made up of CCHE commissioners and state legislators, will visit six campuses in the next three months to view programs designed to retain minority students. They will meet Oct. 3 in Pueblo and plan to issue recommendations in December.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
