Campus financial aid staff conduct an annual review of the impact of their services and run analyses on what students and communities access services. From the analysis, the team identifies a disparity in the number of Latinx students and families who access services and considers options for how they may do a better job of reaching out.
The team agrees to facilitate interviews and focus groups with Latinx students to better understand why and why not they are accessing financial aid resources. After analyzing the results of a qualitative inquiry, the team realizes that a majority of students and their families are not aware that their team employs Spanish-speaking staff members and all of the materials are printed in multiple languages.
The staff convenes to consider how they may better market multi-lingual resources and determines that the front office is a quick and simple first step to amplifying services designed for Spanish speaking constituents. The team decides to hang signage on the front-facing windows and place sandwich boards in the walkways that market their bilingual services, as well as post signs in Spanish and English. In the weeks following, the team works with colleagues in information technology to mirror these efforts on the website and through social media outreach.
- The Issue: An evaluation of financial aid services reveals that the team’s programs and resources are not reaching Latinx students and families.
- The Deliberation: The team agrees to engage in further qualitative inquiry and finds that Latinx constituents are not familiar with multi-lingual services.
- The Growth: The team is able to identify short-term solutions to improve outreach to Latinx students and families, including posting about resources in multiple anguages and updating the website and social media content.