Supporting Latinx First-Generation Professionals

Institutions must adequately support Latinx first-generation professionals if we are to make significant progress in our racial equity work. While in the Educational Leadership doctoral program (CANDEL) at the University of California, Davis, my personal and academic experiences led me to conduct qualitative research on the experiences of Latinx first-generation professionals in student affairs. I sought to understand how institutional norms influenced their self-efficacy and how Latino and Latina professionals experienced them differently. Among the findings was the pervasiveness of professional invalidation and how Latina participants viewed their perceived shortcomings as personality traits, compared to Latino participants who viewed them externally and more skills based (Fuentes, 2021). These are critical findings that colleges and universities need to assess to understand how workplace norms contribute negatively to their experiences. As higher education institutions continue to work towards better serving Latinx first-generation students, Latinx-first generation professionals must not be ignored or taken for granted.