By Jenna McLaughlin/reporter
An interactive panel discussion was held on South Campus March 28 to help motivate students about pursuing and achieving higher education.
Presented by history and government instructor Carlos Rovelo and Celina Vasquez from continuing education workforce development, Lipstick: Sparking a Good Conversation sought to give an understanding of the learning process, an awareness of obstacles that can prevail over success in college and ways to ultimately challenge and defeat those obstacles.
As a part of Women’s History Month, the presentation focused on the progressive action women have taken and their successes in higher education and beyond.
The acronym LIP was used in the presentation to signify the importance of language, intellect and power.
The language and intellect that a person uses to communicate is a powerful method to convey image, Rovelo said. These two components begin at home with parents, he said, and children whose parents are active in their children’s growth and evolution are more likely to have academic success at all levels.
Rovelo referred to it as “sowing the seeds of life.” In higher levels of education, peers play a large role as a support system for success, he said.
The power to succeed comes from within, he said. When women served as housewives, caretakers and seamstresses, they were allowed only such roles because they were thought to have a lower brain capacity than men and were not seen as competent in other fields, Rovelo said. In the past, women did not seek higher education, he said, but now women exceed men at universities as well as at TCC.
Because of the growing number of women seeking and achieving higher education, women have outgrown traditional roles and set new standards, he said, giving as examples TCC Chancellor Erma Johnson Hadley, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price and former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Three TCC students served on the panel, each describing her own obstacles in pursuing higher education. One of the women began a family at age 20. It was her daughter achieving a higher education that inspired her to enroll at TCC to pursue higher education on her own.
Elia Hernandez is a first-semester student whose family moved to Tarrant County from Chihuahua, Mexico, eight years ago. She confessed that her obstacle is her self-consciousness in speaking English, her second language.
Stephanie Urias, a second-semester student pursuing a degree in biology, said she is striving to be the first person in her family to graduate from college.
Rovelo and Vasquez asked students in the audience to address their own obstacles to success. Among those mentioned were family members holding the student back, drug and alcohol habits and self-doubt. Rovelo and Vasquez encouraged students to look past obstacles and look forward to achieving goals.
