University of Idaho Office of Multicultural Affairs Director Jesse Martinez was 11 years old when he and his brother first accompanied their family to work in the expansive farm fields of southern Idaho.
By the next year, Martinez said he and his brother had gone from playing in the dirt to working full days alongside the migrant and seasonal farm workers who had formed a community that was all their own. They shared jokes and trials and support in an environment that wasn’t always easy but was valuable to defining his character, he said.
“It’s those experiences that really help you identify who you are and be proud of who you are,” Martinez said.
That kind of pride in identity is what Martinez said he loves to instill in students through the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).
Through welcoming students of varying cultures and backgrounds, Martinez said the OMA strives to educate and encourage multicultural students as well as the UI community to appreciate diversity.
“It’s really about having the people understand those differences, appreciating those differences and looking at ways to work together with people from different backgrounds,” Martinez said. “Ultimately what we want is that all students, when they graduate from the University of Idaho, they can go anywhere and work with anyone and be successful in that.”
In addition to fostering a sense of community acceptance and appreciation, Martinez said other major goals of the OMA include the recruitment and retention of multicultural students. Like many other high school students who come from migrant or seasonal farm working families, college was not a possibility Martinez said he had envisioned when he was younger.
“Being the youngest of my family, with nobody who had gone to college, I did have a TRiO advisor talk to me about going to school,” Martinez said. “That was the first time I’d ever heard about higher education and the College Assistance Migrant Program.”
The College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) helped him through the admissions and financial aid process, and he said with that help, he was able to enroll at UI.
Martinez said the OMA also serves as a channel for programs that help students gain access to a college education, like TRIO, CAMP, Vandal Challenge and the Peer Advising and the College Experience (PACE) mentor program.
Such programs have increased the recruitment and retention of multicultural students, Martinez said, especially for Latinos.
In comparison to the first-year retention rate of 77 percent of the general student population, Martinez said the first-year retention rate for Latinos is 84-85 percent, a percentage Martinez said continues to improve.
“CAMP had this model for the last 15 years, and we saw that it was very effective and very successful so we implemented that in OMA,” Martinez said. “That’s the model we approach, which is that academic, cultural and social support, and we’ve been very successful in connecting our students to campus and helping them stay at the University of Idaho.”
UI senior Vivian Gonzalez, also a first-generation student, said the service opportunities UI offered were what first attracted her to the school, but CAMP was what ultimately solidified her decision to come to Moscow. Gonzalez said as soon as she arrived on campus, OMA gave her opportunities to be involved and instantly provided a support system, a service she has seen
consistently generated by the staff in the OMA throughout her four years attending UI.
“The staff is very personable, and they genuinely care about your well-being, but also about your academics,” Gonzalez said. “I think that is the best thing this office provides, is that support.”
Gonzalez said OMA deftly connects students, multicultural or not, with outside resources and opportunities.
Through the OMA, Gonzalez has been involved in Movimiento Activista Social, UNITY, an umbrella organization that houses 17 multicultural student organizations, and currently serves as the Chief of Staff for ASUI.
Each involvement opportunity has helped her to appreciate the diversity at UI, Gonzalez said, as well as improvements that could be made to nurture multiculturalism.
“I’ve been very happy with my experience here at UI,” Gonzalez said. “I think our university has a lot of diversity and multiculturalism. It’s just fostering that and making sure people are aware of these different cultures and they appreciate and they learn, because this is what the real world will be.”
Third-year student and current ASUI Director of Diversity Affairs, Izaiah Dolezal, said his success is also due to his involvement in the OMA. Dolezal became involved on campus after the previous Director of the Office of Human Rights, Access and Inclusion, Carmen Suarez, directed his energy and passion toward revitalizing the Black Student Union and the PACE program.
“I would define multiculturalism as the difference in people “¦ It’s your culture, the things you do, the things you practice,” Dolezal said. “Everyone has different traditions because of where they come from.”
Dolezal said it is the coming together to learn from, appreciate and celebrate different cultures that the OMA does so well. Dolezal, like Gonzalez, said he believes helping students prepare to live and work in a diverse world is a vital part of student success.
“The OMA, CAMP, the Native American Student Center, they have shown improvement with the little they have and they’ve done a lot,” Dolezal said. “They’ve touched a lot of people’s lives, and if I had come here on my own and never had any connection with the OMA, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today.”
Through his experience with the OMA, Dolezal said he has seen how the office changes lives every single day and, while UI does foster and support these efforts, there is always more that can and should be done to promote and embrace multiculturalism.
“Everyone can stand to learn something new,” Dolezal said. “I believe in staying in the present but glancing to the future, and one such way is to get out of your own comfort zone, your own perspective and learn how someone else lives because you’ll grow as a person “¦ you’ll see not everyone has the same upbringing and the same background as you, and that’s important.”