The goal of my research is to explore the legal obstacles to access and participation in higher education. I see my role as an academic—and a former civil rights attorney—as that of interlocutor between the legal profession and the education community. Ultimately, the goal of my teaching is also to explore obstacles to access and participation and to work with my students to break down barriers to success. Through all of the classes I have taught, I see three threads: recognition of the knowledge and diverse learning styles students bring to class; emphasis on constructing a classroom that engages students in decision making and meaningful collaboration; and the need for students to engage with multiple communities (university, local, state, national, and global).

Biography:

While I was an undergraduate at University of California, Los Angeles, I became active in the anti-Apartheid movement and also worked in the Salvadoran refugee community. Both of these experiences encouraged me to seek a law degree so that I would have more tools to “open up” the legal system for people who historically have not had access. I went to the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and graduated in 1989.

My first job out of law school was working at Central California Legal Services in Fresno, California. I worked primarily as an immigration attorney, mainly with farm workers seeking legal status pursuant to the amnesty program and with refugees seeking asylum. Because there are a number of crossover legal issues between immigration and labor, public benefits, and family law, I also represented immigrants in a number of employment discrimination cases and worked with battered immigrant spouses to ensure they did not lose their “green card” if they filed for divorce. I was also asked by the county to conduct training on who was eligible for public benefits. I realized by providing the training and showing examples of the documentation that a person might have to prove citizenship (beyond a U.S. birth certificate) or lawful immigration status (for example, a refugee travel document), I was having an impact on many more people’s lives than if I had just represented individual clients.

I was hired by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), a non-profit legal aid back-up center, in 1990 as a project attorney on a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. My role for the next six years was to write training manuals, design curricula, and conduct trainings nationally regarding immigration-related employment discrimination for legally and non-legally trained community-based workers, legal aid staff, and equal opportunity state agency staff. I also co-counseled class action lawsuits. This work—which I view as working collaboratively to open up the legal system—is still at the heart of my research and teaching. I discovered while I was working at NILC that I love teaching and decided to pursue teaching as a career.
My first academic teaching position was at Miami University (Ohio) in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. I left Miami University in 1999 to take a position at the University of Minnesota.

Family:

I grew up in Seattle, Washington, as the youngest child of three. My parents and siblings still live in the Seattle area, and I try to get out to see my folks at least once a year.

My parents were both the first in their families to go to college, and for as long as I can remember, they encouraged and supported my interest in education. When I was in junior high, the school that I went to banned a number of books, including The Diary of Anne Frank. My mother went right out and got each of us a copy at the downtown public library, and we read it together. When asked years later, “What was your first political act?” I answered, “Reading The Diary of Anne Frank with my Mom.” My Dad encouraged me to look beyond traditional gender roles and dream about “what I want to be when I grow up.” He still encourages me to dream.

Most interesting place you’ve lived:

I lived on a fishing boat, The Artic Star, in Alaska for two summers and worked to make money for college. It was a salmon processing barge and the first summer I was on the “slime line.” My second summer season I graduated to packing already cleaned fish. My first day as a port-side packer made me feel as if I was in the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel get jobs packing candies into boxes at a factory. The conveyer belt starts going faster and faster, and Lucy starts shoving candy into her mouth. Well, I didn’t shove fish in my mouth . . . but, I was not very good at figuring out how to quickly shove exactly 50 pounds of fish into a box!

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Recently I spoke at the William Mitchell College of Law on an evening panel regarding the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion striking down the Seattle voluntary integration plan. There were hundreds of people in the audience, many of whom had driven a long distance after a day of work, all with a passion for equity and meaningful access. I was humbled and realized once again how privileged I am to get to “do my passion” and have my passion be my job.

How long have you worked in General College/CEHD?

In 1999 I started working at the University of Minnesota as a fellow in the General College. I applied for a tenure-track position and was hired as an assistant professor in the General College (now Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning (PsTL) in 2002. I am currently in my “decision year” at the U of M and hope to be able to report that I am an associate professor next year!

What are your top three personal publications?

(in press). Widening the river: Challenging unequal schools, 27 UCLA Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review.

(2007). Stand your ground: Legal and policy justifications for race-conscious programming. In G. Orfield & P. Marin (Eds.) Charting the future of college affirmative action: legal victories, continuing attacks, and new research (pp. 79-104). Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

(2005). Unequal access to college preparatory classes: A critical civil rights issue. In Brown v. Board of Education: Its impact on public education 1954-2004 (pp. 227-248). New York: Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.

Could you describe, or what would you recommend, as your foremost future direction for research in developmental education and urban literacy?

The problem we must address is the need to increase access, persistence, engaged learning, and success in postsecondary education, especially for, but not limited to, low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students of color. There continue to be disparities across income groups and racial and ethnic groups in the proportions of students who have access to and persist in college (e.g., Horn & Berger, 2004). In addition to these disparities, Clifford Adelman (2004) documented an increase in access to higher education over the past three decades, but found that the rates of completion have not changed—highlighting the fact that access to higher education alone is not enough. The National Postsecondary Education Cooperative report Reconceptualizing Access in Post Secondary Education (U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 1998) found a similar trend and noted that access to college must include meaningful participation. In my mind, education should deal directly with this structural inequality, represent cultural diversity, and prepare all involved to transform society.

In order to work toward these goals, one area I think we should research is classroom practices based on multicultural education theory. For example, what will higher education classrooms informed by multicultural education theory “look like?” How will students and faculty experience these classes? In what ways can we as educators incorporate students’ knowledge into our classrooms? Do multicultural classrooms increase engagement, deeper learning, persistence, and success? My hope is that through this type of research we will be able to work with our students to transform social institutions so that access will equal participation.

Projects, performances, community services activities outside of work:

I recently worked with a group of education scholars on an Amicus (Friend of the Court) brief to the United States Supreme Court in the Seattle voluntary integration case.

Favorite book:

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

Restaurant recommendation:

Astor Café in St. Anthony Main

References

Adelman, C. (2004). Do we really have a college access problem? Change, 36 (4).

Horn, L., & Berger, R. (2004). College persistence on the rise? Changes in 5-Year degree completion and postsecondary persistence rates between 1994 and 2000 (NCES 2005-156). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (1998). Reconceptualizing access in postsecondary education: Report of the policy panel on access (NCES 98-283). Prepared by Sandra Ruppert, Zelma Harris, Arthur Hauptman, Michael Nettles, Laura Perna, Catherine Millett, Laura Rendon, Vincent Tinto, Sylvia Hurtado, and Karen Inkelas for the Council of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative. Washington, DC: Author.