| While I was growing up, I was always navigating that terrain of being the 'other,'" Arenas said. Where Arenas felt comfortable, however, was in the classroom. During high school, she was a straight A student and she excelled at learning. While students of color face greater barriers in obtaining a college degree, Arenas seemed a likely candidate to overcome these odds. Her family thought differently. Arenas'mother believed that females should not attend college and that it would be a "waste of money" to send Arenas to school. "I was a female," Arenas said. "I was supposed to get married and have children. My parents not only discouraged me from going to college, they prohibited it." Arenas worked for 11 years at an insurance company where she processed premium payments and eventually moved up to assistant manager. She was miserable. "I was extremely unhappy and bored," she said. Arenas would eventually make the decision to go back to school. Her experiences as a minority in an all-White community and as a female who was discouraged from attending college would actually lead to her becoming a formative force in both racial justice and education. After receiving a B.A. in professional communications from Alverno College, she would go on to receive an M.S. in Educational Administration-Higher Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration-Higher Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Arenas has held jobs that unite both her passion for higher education and racial justice. She has served as the director of the Race Awareness Training Institute for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a consultant on issues relating to student of color development, multicultural organizational development, racial conflict reconciliation, and cross racial alliance building. She was the Assistant to the President for Multicultural Affairs; Executive Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs for the University of Wisconsin System for seven years; and Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs and Senior Advisor to the President for Academic Diversity for five years. Just last year, Arenas joined the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to tackle a new challenge. In short, she is serving as a bridge between the college and the community in an exciting new project that plans to increase service learning and community-based research curriculum in L&S courses. In September 2005, Dean Gary Sandefur announced the College of Letters and Science's Service Learning and Community-Based Research Initiative. Sandefur named Arenas as the director. "Service learning, which provides hands-on opportunities for students to apply their education through community service, has remained an area where our college has not lived up to its potential," Sandefur said in his announcement. "[Arenas] will evaluate models for service learning courses and identify the human and financial resources necessary to implement a service learning program throughout the college. She also will develop means to educate faculty about service learning and the role it can play, and help to link interested faculty with service learning opportunities." The college defines service learning as "a class of courses using a pedagogical model that integrates classroom learning with community engagement. The classroom/community partnership provides structured opportunities to apply academic theories, principles, and constructs to solve real world problems and enhances students' analytical, creative, and problem solving skills." Arenas says that service learning is a unique opportunity to more meaningfully reinforce classroom learning. "Service learning can be a transformative experience," Arenas said. "The students are able to grasp the course material in a deeper and more meaningful way. It is an exciting way to teach and an exciting way to learn." Arenas recently co-taught a course which strongly leaned on the service learning and community-based research approach. She and three professors accompanied 12 UW-Madison students to the University of Texas-Brownsville for the three-week course "Environmental Justice at the U.S.-Mexican Border." The course sought to give students an understanding of the environmental justice challenges along the border. In addition to readings, lectures, and homework, students were required to provide approximately 25 hours of service learning to an agency involved in environmental justice issues. Rather than simply lecture on these issues, the students were able to see them first-hand. "We were hoping to create a transformative course," Arenas said. "I wanted to shake the students to their core. According to the student evaluations, we did just that." After a year of planning this new initiative, Arenas is now on the move to create more courses in L&S that utilize this community-based approach to learning. She is excited at the prospect and ready to help enhance the way that students learn at UW-Madison. Not only will the students benefit, but the community will as well. "I feel very blessed," she said. "[This career move] has allowed me to broaden my base, as well as stay true to who I am and what I believe in." |
| Andrea-Teresa "Tess" Arenas Passionate about higher education by Laura Salinger |
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| Tess Arenas |
| Andrea-Teresa "Tess" Arenas learned hard lessons about race relations at a very young age. When she was just five years old, her mother and siblings moved from a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on Milwaukee's southside to a nearly all-White neighborhood. Her formative years were spent trying to fit into an environment where she often felt marginalized. |
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