But its empanada night last semester \u2013 which Criollo organized in the small kitchen at the Puerto Rican\/Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC)<\/a> and during which the beats of salsa and reggaeton were drowned out by the chatter of students debating the level of spice in the meat – is just one way of building community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe empanadas were delicious and the whole experience was great,\u201d Lilliana Moreno \u201927 (BUS) says. \u201cJust being able to talk with each other, being in the moment with each other, and making those memories. It was just so nice, and it was so fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreno will be an LCI floor mentor in the fall, one of 49 mostly freshmen and sophomores who live together in the Peter J. Werth Residence Tower as part of the learning community that celebrated its 10th anniversary last academic year.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that I wanted to be in a place where I felt comfortable, where I felt welcomed,\u201d Moreno says about her decision to join LCI last year as an incoming freshman. \u201cI knew that with LCI I would be surrounded by people who are just like me.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents always told me they came here to give us education because they were not able to have that in El Salvador,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey told us to get involved, do things that you love, and try new things. My parents weren\u2019t able to go to college, so for us it\u2019s a big deal. They want us to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Students say what they love about LCI is the community\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n H. Kenny Nienhusser, an associate professor in the Neag School of Education<\/a>, has seen two cohorts of students move through the program in the four years he\u2019s served as faculty director, and says one of his primary responsibilities is offering a vision for LCI.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that Latine students who come to UConn are able to succeed if they\u2019re given the right supports,\u201d he says. \u201cLCI is part of those supports that allow them to be seen and heard, to know that they matter, that there are other students like them, that there are other faculty like them. Time and time again, students say what they love about LCI is the community they\u2019re able to build.\u201d<\/p>\n A decade ago, a trio of UConn faculty and staff members representing PRLACC, El Instituto<\/a>, and Residential Life<\/a> came together with First Year Programs and Learning Communities<\/a> to form LCI as one of the first identity-based learning communities<\/a> at the University, Nienhusser explains. That means nearly all the students in LCI identify as part of the Latine or Caribbean communities, even though their majors vary.<\/p>\n Students from or with familial roots in places including Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico have all been members, and all come with similar yet diverse backgrounds:<\/p>\n Parents who immigrated to the U.S. for more opportunities. Family members who might not have U.S. citizenship and struggle without health insurance, food benefits, or even a driver\u2019s license. Students who are responsible for younger siblings or are relied upon as caretakers for older family members.<\/p>\n Teenagers who have jobs for more than spending money; they help support the family. Speaking Spanglish \u2013 that is, inserting Spanish words in an English conversation or vice versa, oftentimes unwittingly. Translating for others at doctor appointments, the bank, even the supermarket.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s those mutual experiences that kind of create community,\u201d Criollo, who is a graduate assistant with LCI, says. \u201cOur shared experiences connect us, so even if someone is from a different town, you might say, \u2018Wait a minute, you\u2019re from Peru? I\u2019m from Peru. We have the same heritage. We share the same cooking and values, and we all go to church on Sunday.\u2019 And suddenly, that\u2019s how you make a new friend.\u201d<\/p>\n LCI comprises mostly first- and second-year UConn students, Nienhusser says, and is often the learning community with the largest percentage of first-generation college students. Last academic year, about 80% of members were the first in their family to attend college.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a first-generation student, I definitely feel a lot of pressure to do well and not let my parents down,\u201d Moreno says. \u201cIt was definitely scary because you can\u2019t ask your parents about their college experience: Was it difficult? Was it easy? They don\u2019t have those answers, so you\u2019re going in having to rely on only yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Easing the transition to college, young adulthood<\/strong><\/p>\n In each of the four semesters students are in LCI, they are required to enroll in a one-credit class that meets weekly and, among other things, helps with the transition to college and young adulthood and provides time to learn about Latine and Caribbean communities and identities, Nienhusser says.<\/p>\n Understanding the complex University landscape can be challenging for some students, he adds, so LCI intentionally incorporates those supports in its classes.<\/p>\n What does it mean to withdraw from a class? What is pass\/fail? What are office hours? How can one get a question answered if it can\u2019t be asked in class?<\/p>\n You might not know the vocabulary of college unless we tell you. What does it mean to use the W Center? What does it mean to use the Q Center? You maybe wouldn\u2019t even know there are resources like that out there. UConn is huge, and there are so many resources available it\u2019s hard to navigate them all by yourself. It\u2019s our job to teach students how to successfully maneuver campus because we don\u2019t want them to fail. — Erik Criollo \u201923 (CLAS), \u201925 MSW<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou might not know the vocabulary of college unless we tell you,\u201d Criollo says of some of those early lessons. \u201cWhat does it mean to use the W Center<\/a>? What does it mean to use the Q Center<\/a>? You maybe wouldn\u2019t even know there are resources like that out there. UConn is huge, and there are so many resources available it\u2019s hard to navigate them all by yourself. It\u2019s our job to teach students how to successfully maneuver campus because we don\u2019t want them to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n LCI has an academic mentor program for students with GPAs of lower than 2.5 or who might be on academic probation, Criollo says, explaining that students meet biweekly with their mentor, either a graduate assistant or the faculty director, for help on how to improve their grades and ensure they are doing well socioeconomically.<\/p>\n But Nienhusser notes, LCI members collectively maintain a 3.0 or better GPA.<\/p>\n Catherina Villafuerte, a Ph.D. student who works as a graduate assistant with LCI, says she focuses the third semester course on helping students understand their Latine and Caribbean identities, essentially, \u201cunderstand that they have something to offer that contributes to the growth and support and uplifting of their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n This oftentimes translates to service-learning projects with various area nonprofits, she explains, during which students also get the chance to work on their soft skills and build their resumes \u2013 a project that continues in the final semester as they prepare for life after LCI in graduate school, an internship, or the job market.<\/p>\n LCI gave Moreno the push to join the Central American Student Association<\/a> and serve as its secretary, pledge the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin<\/a> sorority, get involved with the Real Estate Society<\/a>, and take advantage of PRLACC and UConn\u2019s Academic Achievement Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t be out there partying,\u201d Moreno says of the lessons she learned her freshman year. \u201cYou can\u2019t be doing that because you want to succeed. You want to make your parents proud.\u201d<\/p>\n Finding community and a place to breathe<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne Gebelein, associate director of El Instituto, says LCI, PRLACC, and El Instituto collaborate closely to support Latine students at UConn. Latino Studies faculty members often visit LCI\u2019s classes to offer career advice and students are encouraged to attend PRLACC events or join one of the many clubs that operate within the center\u2019s walls.<\/p>\n \u201cOn their first day at UConn, our students find people who look like them, maybe have music interests like them, family connections like them, foods that connect them,\u201d Nienhusser says. \u201cBut when they go to their classes, they might be the only Latine-identifying student or one of a very small number of BIPOC students. That can be intimidating.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of the day, though, they return to Werth and can breathe because they\u2019re with a familiar community, he continues.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cycle he\u2019s proud has spanned 10 years in Storrs and has been expanded with sister programs<\/a> at UConn Stamford<\/a>, which started last fall, and UConn Waterbury<\/a>, which is set to open this fall. Both campuses are designated by the U.S. Department of Education as Hispanic-Serving Institutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nienhusser praised the work of Dean of Students Fany Hannon, who previously served as director of PRLACC; Diana Rios, associate professor in the Department of Communication and with El Instituto; and Robert Yanez, who previously worked in Residential Life, as LCI\u2019s co-founders who laid the foundation on which he\u2019s been building.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s Rios, Gebelein says, who deserves credit for simply having the idea to establish a learning community based on the Latine and Caribbean culture. She sought to cultivate at UConn the same sense of camaraderie she felt when she was a member of a Chicano-themed dormitory at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n Ten years on, that camaraderie indeed exists.<\/p>\n \u201cI got a beautiful email a couple weeks ago from a graduate who was a floor mentor when I started in the fall of 2020 during COVID,\u201d Nienhusser says. \u201cI supported him that year, and he was part of our legacy leadership program that\u2019s done with Student Activities, where I served as his mentor. He got into medical school, and in this email told me about what his experience in LCI meant to him and how the support he received from me and what he saw me do for our learning community is something he\u2019ll take with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Nienhusser hopes LCI\u2019s new banner, unveiled during an anniversary gala last spring and replacing one that featured a starburst with a map of Connecticut and the globe, can visually impart how he and others feel about LCI.<\/p>\n This logo represents what I\u2019m constantly sharing in our learning community: When one of us falls, we all fall, and it\u2019s important that we all go ahead and lift ourselves back up. — H. Kenny Nienhusser, an associate professor in the Neag School of Education<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not about geography, we\u2019re about community, care, diversity, inclusion, support, among many other things,\u201d he says. \u201cThis logo represents what I\u2019m constantly sharing in our learning community: When one of us falls, we all fall, and it\u2019s important that we all go ahead and lift ourselves back up.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s something Moreno says she hopes to impart as floor mentor to the newest LCI members when they move in later this summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to make LCI a home because that\u2019s what it felt like for me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a home away from home. I want to be able to be there for them, and I want them to feel comfortable to come to me when they need to talk about any situation, any problems, or how they\u2019re feeling. I want to be able to have those fun moments with them, but above all I don\u2019t want them to feel scared. I want them to feel like, \u2018I want to be here, and I feel like being here is a good environment and it\u2019s going to help me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘We\u2019re not about geography, we\u2019re about community’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":216104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2460,2467,2459,1855,99,2235,174,2306,90,2227,2458,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-216052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-global-cultures-perspectives","category-graduate-students","category-neag","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-waterbury","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-undergraduates","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 22:56:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216052"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216142,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216052\/revisions\/216142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/216104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216052"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=216052"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=216052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Artwork](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/La-Comunidad2-Art-300ppi-300x300.jpg\")
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