“Turning on the Lights puts students at the center, and it is starting a new student success consciousness. There is nothing out there like this. This is very, very unique. We’ve talked about it in the past, but we hadn’t given it a structure, and what the Corner Man (Rafael Alvarez) has done is provide a structure for student success, especially in STEM, called Turning on the Lights. Employing this particular approach gives us everything to gain. We will personally gain from this, but our students in particular will be much better prepared. It is very helpful to have this model that can provide a tool for us to work with students in a way that we’re going to change the six-year completion rates so that they look much, much better.
One of the best things that Turning on the Lights does is that it exposes the hidden curriculum for our students. What it does is help students to develop the academic skills that make them stronger academically, and it provides these wraparound student support services. When students feel academically strong, when they have those support services, when they’re no longer in the dark, that makes them stronger, that makes them feel ‘I can accomplish pretty much anything.’ I was (once) in the dark too. But at this stage of my life, when I am older and wiser than I was as a 15/16-year old kid in Laredo, I now know that had I had something like this, I could have entertained any major, any field that I wanted to study. But I couldn’t at that time because the lights were not turned on for me. Turning on the Lights really does a lot in terms of helping our students to open themselves to new horizons, new ways of being, and really helping them explore everything that they can be.”
Dr. Laura I. Rendon is a nationally recognized higher education leader and student advocate. These insights were shared in an end-of-immersion-activity virtual check-in with educational leaders in the Texas Hispanic Serving Institutions Consortium, who participated in a professional development learning culture immersion activity (June/July 2022).