{"id":19127,"date":"2013-02-20T12:41:27","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=19127"},"modified":"2022-09-27T11:20:44","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T15:20:44","slug":"wright-state-student-sees-herself-in-young-latino-youths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2013\/02\/20\/wright-state-student-sees-herself-in-young-latino-youths\/","title":{"rendered":"Student sees herself in Latino youths"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Kathryn Brown currently attends Wright State University full time and has a full-time job at Children\u2019s Medical Center, where she manages medical information and the release of patient records.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mentoring Latino teens sends volts of motivation through Wright State University student Kathryn Brown, who at age 27 is within two semesters of being the first in her family with a college degree.<\/p>\n

Brown was born and raised in Dayton, but is of Mexican heritage. She volunteers at the League of United Latin American Citizens, which operates a learning center for Latinos in Dayton public schools to tutor them, help them with their English and encourage them to stay in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see myself in them. I see them struggling, and I feel like I\u2019m still kind of struggling to get finished,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI see these kids, and I see so much potential in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown was raised by a single mother, who worked two jobs\u2014at Miami Valley Hospital during the day and at a call center at night\u2014to send her daughter to Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School in Dayton.<\/p>\n

Brown said that since no one in her family had gone to college, the emphasis was always on getting a job after high school rather than pursuing a college degree. At Chaminade Julienne, she was told that 98 percent of the students there go on to college or are otherwise high achievers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say to myself, \u2018I guess I\u2019m that 2 percent,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

After graduating in 2003, Brown worked a full-time job, but also took classes at Sinclair Community College. She moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where she worked and attended a community college. Then she returned to Dayton because it felt like home.<\/p>\n

Brown currently attends Wright State full time and has a full-time job at Children\u2019s Medical Center, where she manages medical information and the release of patient records.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tiring because I work all day and then I\u2019m here until 9 o\u2019clock at night most nights,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I just try to look at the bigger picture\u2014that it will be worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said that when it came to balancing school and work, the need to earn money was always the priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if the class schedule didn\u2019t work out with the work schedule, then sorry, I was going to choose work,\u201d she said. \u201cIn some cases I guess that\u2019s almost still true today. I have to pay my bills. I just hope that it doesn\u2019t get to that point where I would have to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown is majoring in international studies because she wants a career related to diversity and\/or public service. Her naturally inquisitive nature coupled with a pride in the military has her setting her sights on being an analyst with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.<\/p>\n

Brown said she loves the diversity of Wright State.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a huge deal,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve had a good experience as far as professors, counselors. Any time I had a question about anything, I felt welcomed and didn\u2019t feel like I was a burden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown says her role model is Tony Ortiz, Latino community liaison for Wright State and member of the Ohio Commission on Hispanic\/Latino Affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s done so much for the community, so I\u2019m just kind of following his lead,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s almost like the president of the Latino community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown also volunteers with the Puerto Rican American and Caribbean Organization, a local group that distributes turkeys at Thanksgiving and gifts to children at Christmas, and stages the annual Hispanic Heritage Festival.<\/p>\n

Brown says people need to appreciate and respect that Latinos are the fastest-growing minority population. But she says Latinos also need to step up to the plate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to succeed and do better than our parents did,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Brown says she appreciates Dayton and what the city represents, noting that it was recently named an immigrant-friendly city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can remember when I was younger going to grade school being the only brown person,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t always the best experience, but look at kids now and it\u2019s so much more diverse. I see how much Dayton has changed. It just makes me happy, and I want to make sure that it continues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mentoring Latino teens sends volts of motivation through Wright State University student Kathryn Brown… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":19136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,729,2025,725,747,715,4855,719],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-around-campus","category-community-service","category-home-news-sidebar","category-liberal-arts","category-news","category-social-sciences-and-international-studies","category-special-categories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19127"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129675,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19127\/revisions\/129675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}