Ruben Perez-Schulz

2017

Currently, Latinas are the fastest growing population in the United States and comprise one-fifth of the female population (Roach, 2015). It is estimated that by the year 2060 Latinas will make up one-third of the females in the US (Roach, 2015). Gandara (2015) suggests there are several potential barriers that are holding back Latinas from academic and professional success. There are several critical factors that could explain why Latinas are underachieving: family obligations, work obligations, affordability, systemic barriers, lack of information and lack of role models and mentors (Espinoza, 2015, Gandara, 2008; Nunez & Murakami-Ramalho, 2012). This narrative inquiry examined the personal and professional lived experiences of Latina administrative leaders in higher education to gain a deeper understanding of how they navigated their educational and leadership trajectories. The primary conclusion of this study is the need to continue diversifying leadership roles in higher education. The participants in this study support previous findings that suggest that their firsthand experience and their support networks serve as catalysts along their educational and leadership trajectories (Espinoza, 2015; Gándara, 2015; González, 2007). In addition, their stories can provide critical information to not only serve the Latina student population and other under-served students in higher education, but can also help propel and influence women in nonleadership roles to new heights. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank my savior, Jesus Christ for giving me the grace to not only begin this educational journey eleven years ago but to finish it as well. He has kept me and guided me along the way. My scripture throughout my journey has been Philippians 4:13-"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." I would not have been able to complete this journey without the love and support of my family, friends, and professors but most importantly, my amazing and loving husband, Adam. He has been a constant support and encouragement from the start and has never allowed me to give up. I could not have done this without him. He has been my sounding board, shared in my frustrations and in my victories, listened to all my crazy ideas, taken up the slack in many areas of our lives, and has been a constant support through his unconditional love. He is my rock, my hero, my biggest cheerleader, and my best friend; I love you with all my heart, Adam. I would also like to thank my children, Alexandria and Caleb. Their love and support has been amazing. I could not have done this without them. They were 13 and 11 when I started this journey, and they gave up many "mommy" and "mom" moments for the last eleven years. As my pastor, Rev. Larry L. Booker would say, "Everything in life is a trade-off" and my prayer has been that the trade-off would be worth it. I am so proud of the young adults they have become. I am blessed to be their mother. v I would also like to thank my committee for their guidance, support, patience, expertise, and kindness. Thank you to my dissertation chair, Dr. Enrique Murillo, for believing in me and helping me throughout the doctoral journey. He has been a tremendous support to me. A big thank you to Dr. Edna Martinez for her constant encouragement and support. She has enriched my knowledge and strengthened my research and presentation skills. She has been an amazing role model and mentor, not only as a successful Latina but an incredible educator. Another big thank you to Dr. Alexandru Roman for pushing me out of my comfort zone and for challenging me to become a better scholar through this program. He has been a tremendous supporter, role model, and mentor to me. I will forever be indebted to the amazing committee I was blessed with. A special thank you to Dr. David Baker for encouraging me to apply to the program and for challenging me to extend myself academically and personally to see beyond my perceived limits. Thank you to Dr. Donna Schnorr for her constant support, guidance, and encouragement throughout my doctoral journey. A want to extend my deep gratitude to my editing team-Victor Hernandez and Dr. Risa Lumley, my friends. They have not only encouraged me throughout the last two and half years but also gave generously of their time to edit and provide feedback on my dissertation. Additionally, thank you to cohort 8 for all your help and support throughout this incredible doctoral journey. I am a better person because of all of you. You have all enriched my life in one way or vi another. I will cherish the wonderful memories we have shared over the last few years. Furthermore, I want to thank all my professors in the program for making my doctoral journey challenging and exciting. I am also grateful for the prayers and support of my pastors, Larry L. Booker and Joel Booker. Thank you to my family and friends not listed who have encouraged me and supported me throughout this journey. I love you all. Lastly, thank you to the seven incredible Latina leaders who took time out of their busy schedules and opened their lives up to me. I walked out of each interview with a tremendous amount of respect for each one of them and their journeys. Their stories will forever be imbedded in my heart and soul. Muchisimas gracias! DEDICATION This is dedicated to my amazing husband, Adam, the love of my life. I could not have completed this journey without your unconditional love. You believed in me when I did not believe in my own abilities. Your words of encouragement kept me when I was on the verge of quitting. We have faced many challenges and sacrifices together through this eleven year educational journey, so this accomplishment is not mine along but ours. Together, with God's guidance and grace, we made it. We are all done! Thank you for loving me, supporting me, and for always being there when I needed you the most. You helped make my dream a reality. I love you, Adam. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

2015

Considerable attention has been paid to the matter of diversity in higher education in recent years. Yet, the discourse around this critically important phenomenon has typically failed to include experiences regarding the diversity agenda at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), serving as yet another example of how these historic institutions continue rigorous journey to completion. Indeed, this idea definitely applies to my situation, considering that I started the Individual PhD program at the University of Washington in September 2001 while serving as a full-time sociology instructor at Highline College. Despite a series of starts and stops, ups and downs, and professional and personal twists and turns, I am humbled, relieved, and excited to finally complete this last stage in the marathon. My late father, Jerry Greenfield, always pushed me to finish this degree, and I made a pledge to him in his final days that I would walk the stage. For his passionate support of his children and celebration of the power of education, I make the first dedication of this dissertation to my father. My mother, Maxene Greenfield, has never wavered in her encouragement of a son who marches to a slightly different beat. She was present when I received my first doctoral degree from Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa, and I cannot wait to see her face after I receive the doctoral hood. Thank you for being great parents and role models. My brothers, David Greenfield and Jeffrey Greenfield, as well as their spouses, Susan Greenfield and Johanna Greenfield, have continued to offer support and guidance. A host of wonderful friends, colleagues, and mentors have served as invaluable sources of inspiration and insight throughout my life. Most notably, I am blessed that the following individuals in academia and social justice have been so present and helpful during this journey:

2010

WZ: Good afternoon, my name is Wenxian Zhang, Head of Archives and Special Collections. With me are two students, Alia Alli and Jennifer Ritter. We are going to interview Dr. Roger Casey, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of Rollins College. So Roger, share with us some of your family background. I understand you are also a Southerner, graduating ... RC: Yes, so I grew up in South Carolina in sixties and seventies and I am a first generation college student. No one in my extended family had ever gone to college; my father was an automobile mechanic and my mother was a housekeeper. Growing up, I think probably the thing that got me so interested in education first of all, teachers. I really developed a very strong relationship with teachers in school. And then my grandmother, who grew up in a very rural area in South Carolina next to a one-room school house. This school house was going to be torn down, and she went in the school and she was told that she could get anything out of the school. She got a set of Encyclopedia Britannica from the early 1950s-I think they"re 51s or 52s-and gave them to me when I was a kid; I read them cover to cover. Between that and then television was just coming along-well television had been along-but our family got a television set and I watched a lot of television. Television really, I think, opened up my eyes to a lot of the world; and in fact, I just read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, so I guess it was May 3, 2010 Chronicle, about how so many working class-particularly the lower class people who found their way in academics over the past forty years-how television and rock music were two of the things that really helped them to get beyond the boundaries of their live that they grew up in. So, you know, I felt a lot better now that I have verified that television and rock music actually can turn you into an academic. So, uh, I went to college and wound up being Valedictorian when I was at my little high school of a graduating class of, I think about of one hundred and twelve students, and went to Furman, a liberal arts college. And that"s what changed my life. WZ: Yeah, I been to Furman and I"m also impressed by its campus; it"s a great school. Tell us about your experience as an undergraduate student at Furman. RC: Well, the uh, I love to tell this story because you just can"t make up a story this good. My very first week of school, I went down to the dining hall at Furman to eat breakfast. I grew up eating wonderfully healthy foods-donuts were my favorite breakfast food. So I went to get my donut, and I got my donut from the dining hall, and I sat down with my tray and I started eating, and this was the worst donut that I ever had in my life. This thing, it was awful; it tasted like a brick. And I looked at this guy who was from New Jersey-I"d never met anyone from New Jersey before-and he was sitting at the table down from me. He was on my freshman hall, and I saw him slice his donut in half and put cream cheese on it. Because I had never seen a bagel-(laughter) and I had no idea what a bagel was. And so from there, I went to college pre-med and while I did well in chemistry, I was having nightmares about benzene rings, and decided organic chemistry was not the thing for me. My first love was literature and so I remember explaining to my dad that I was going to be an English major because being a theater major wouldn"t really

2010

WZ: Good afternoon, my name is Wenxian Zhang, Head of Archives and Special Collections. With me are two students, Jennifer Ritter and Alia Alli. Today is Friday, June 4, 2010. We are going to interview Connie Holt, Director of Student Services at the Hamilton Holt School of Rollins College. So Connie, tell us about your childhood, where you grew up? CH: I was born in Los Angeles, California and I"m one of seven children. I grew up in a very musical family. In fact, my dad was a professional jazz pianist and all of us were required to take music lessons. I probably learned more music than the rest of them, and I"ve actually been the pianist for the gospel choir at Rollins a couple of times. So, my dad"s family had their own band. One of his brothers played with Duke Ellington for years, so they were very well known in the Los Angeles area. I went to public schools there. I went to three different colleges in California. In my first year of college, I went to Cal Western University, it"s now called US Western something another-now they"ve changed names, but what was really interesting about itthis was 1965, I was the only black female in the whole college and there were twelve black guys, so it was quite an experience. I met my husband there and as it was back in those days (laughs) we married. He was a senior and we got married after our first yearmy first year there, and he went on to seminary, so we lived on campus at the seminary. He went on and did a master"s and then did a doctorate in divinity. He became a pastor of the church and he pastured churches in California for twenty-six years. And we came to Floridawe were in the Methodist church and it"s like being in the military; when the bishop says go, you go. We were moved to Orlando, Florida, and we were at a Methodist church here for five years and the bishop said you are going to Bessemer, Alabama. Well, neither one of us had ever heard of that place. At that time, our daughter was a senior in high school and we decided we weren"t going to go anymore, so we got out of the Methodist church and he went independent, so right now, he pastors at the community church. Our kids are all grown. I-let"s see, we moved to Florida in 1983, and when we got here, it was like culture shock. Los Angeles to Orlandoback then, it was like a sidewalk rolled up at ten and there was nothing to do. Well, there was something to do as long as there was football season, but when the high school football season ended, everybody went home, and I felt like I had ODed on caffeine for a good while. When I first got here, I worked for the Winter Park housing authority. It was notit was kind of sad, yeah. And when you compare wages from California to Orlando-every time I got paid my husband would come because I would just break down and cry (laughs); it was awful, it was really awful. I stayed there for a while and then I went on to a law firm and worked as a paralegal. And I was reading the paper one day and I saw this ad for Rollins. I hadn"t really heard much about Rollins, but the thing that fascinated me was my husband had a PhD and I had three years of college that I had never completed and when I read the sentence in the ad about free tuition if you worked there, I decided I would apply because by then we had these kids that were rapidly becoming teenagers and no college plan for them as well. So I came to work here in "85. I needed-I already had three years of college; I was a music major before then, and you can"t really do that with kids and practice and stuff, so I switched to anthropology-sociology;

2009

Theatre Topics, 2019

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