Jose

“I went to college basically with a visitor's pass,” says José Esparza. “I was just there to see how things work and maybe see if maybe I fit in.”

He expected, even wanted, faculty at his community college to validate his negative feelings. If they had done so, he would have quit and gotten a job to support his family, who were struggling financially.

But that’s not what happened. And today, José is the director of PCC’s Hillsboro Center, a satellite of the Rock Creek campus.

“Education was the opportunity to break that cycle of poverty,” he says. “For me, I pay it forward, by helping out as many students as I can.”

José understands that for many students, college feels like a big risk. They don’t expect to succeed or have confidence in their abilities. Before his current position, he worked as the outreach coordinator for the Future Connect program, which provides scholarships and coaching support for first-generation and low-income college students. When he spoke with high schoolers, he avoided the shiny college brochures and instead talked honestly about the future:

“The system is stacked against you. This is what you need in order for you to challenge systems or at least work your way into like a living wage,” he would tell them.

Now at the Hillsboro Center, José relishes the opportunity to connect with PCC students one-on-one. He knows many are hesitant to ask for help directly, so he keeps his door open. When folks walk by or stop in to say hello, he engages them in a conversation. Their chats about financial aid and testing schedules morph into connecting about their larger lives.

“So much of the work happens by building relationships indirectly,” he says.

But in the last two years, those conversations haven’t happened. Since COVID-19 shut down campuses in spring 2020, the Hillsboro Center has been closed. Trying to get students to talk openly about their concerns, challenges and dreams over Zoom is like “fishing in the dark,” José says.

The continued closure has been frustrating on many levels. José thrives on student contact and feels like his mental health has suffered working from home. But more pressingly, he knows that the students are not receiving the support they need remotely.

“There's a lot of risk aversion,” he says about the school’s pandemic response. While he supports vaccination and other health measures, he also wants students back on campus. The risk aversion ends up “putting these other students at a much higher risk,” he asserts. Without in-person relationships, those students are less likely to stay in school.

“We're doing all of this reorganization, but we're not coaching students on how to access these new initiatives,” he asserts. While he appreciates the online resources being developed in the pandemic, he notes that “students still don't know how to access them or feel comfortable asking about them.”