Q&A with Goshen College Dean of Students Gilberto Pérez Jr.
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Originally from South Texas, Gilberto Pérez Jr. has lived in Indiana for over two decades and serves as vice president for student life and Hispanic serving initiatives and dean of students at Goshen College.
He launched Bienvenido Community Solutions in 2012 to provide mental health support to immigrants adjusting to life in a new country and has worked in several roles across the state providing services to Latino immigrants.
Pérez spoke with Inside INdiana Business on his work advancing mental health in immigrant communities, responding to student needs on Goshen’s campus and celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month.
This article has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What does being VP of student life and Hispanic serving initiatives and dean of students at Goshen College entail?
So I have three primary roles. I talk about my vice president work as partnering with other vice presidents and the president to think about the strategic direction of the institution, areas that we should consider growing. We launched our Connected Cause $68 million campaign this Saturday and we’ve already raised $60 million. So part of the work as vice president for student life is to bring the needs of students to the other vice presidents. Should we look at residence halls? What type of remodeling or renovations do we need to do to residence halls? Are there standards within the student life that we need to change that would make the student experience better? Are there things that would enhance the student experience around belonging and inclusion for all students?
The dean of students role really gets into the weeds of supporting students with their experiences in residence life, as commuters, in campus ministries, in diversity, equity and inclusion, in relationship building, sexual assault prevention, counseling activities, campus safety, health and wellness counseling etc. So I have direct reports or directors that support those areas and so my role as dean is to meet with them on a weekly basis to see how the work is going.
I also oversee the Student Senate and the Commuter Student Association, so I have a lot of direct contact with students, making sure that they are having a good experience. We want retention to stay high. We want graduation to be high, and it requires us in student life to ensure that we can develop programs and activities that move our students in the positive direction. Having 72% retention for our Latino students, 80% retention for our students in general, that’s really good. Sometimes public schools have more difficulty with that. We’re spending a lot of time with our students in that area.
Pérez talks about his role supporting Hispanic serving initiatives.
I’m also involved with Hispanic serving initiatives. About two years ago, we were designated as a Hispanic serving institution, which means that we have more than 25% of Latino students at Goshen College. We actually have 30% of Latino students at Goshen College. So my work is to support the Hispanic Serving Institution Committee to oversee the Latino Advisory Council, which would be leaders from the community that are coaching Goshen College on the kinds of things to do. We partner with a local organization on putting together a Hispanic Heritage Festival. This year, we had over 12,000 people in attendance. Being on the planning committee, being on the board of that organization, connecting Goshen College, we have a really tight connection with the Latino community.
We see the work we’re doing with Hispanic serving initiatives positioning Goshen College as a destination for families to come and enroll here. We’re one of three Hispanic serving institutions in the whole state of Indiana, and the only one in north central Indiana. We feel very good about the relationship we’re building with the community. In part, it’s because we’re saying, “We want to be with you in difficult situations and we support you.” We’ve stood by them, by the Latino community in different situations of challenges.
I really enjoy my job as VP and dean of students because I get to see students flourish, I get to see when the students are doing really well and I also get to see when they’re not doing as well. And that’s okay because that’s part of the development. Being in college, you’re really trying to build your identity, you’re trying to figure out your purpose. You’re trying to figure out how you become an independent person but also an interdependent person.
What’s Bienvenido Community Solutions about?
In 2012, I launched the Bienvenido Community Solutions, an organization that works on supporting immigrants with their mental health and adjustment to life in this country. So I spend a lot of time connecting with people to teach them how to facilitate a group, how to lead people in dialog and discussion about their mental health.
Bienvenido Community Solutions partners with a lot of tier one research universities to do health disparities research. For example, right now, we have a contract with Harvard Medical School. We are working with about 340 Latino youth on their mental health and how they cope with possible discrimination.
We’ve worked with the Indiana University School of Medicine to understand the the mental health of youth and how they cope with potential depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and mental health generally. We’ve also worked with Columbia University School of Social Work for another national study for about 5000 Latino youth.
Part of my role through the organization is to link the researchers to local communities. These communities sometimes may not be so excited about talking to people who don’t come from their community and so Bienvenido Community Solutions serves as a bridge for many communities and for the research universities.
We’re currently running a training with the University of Nebraska Medical Center for 50 leaders from the Midwest (Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Illinois and Indiana) to then take the mental health promotion curriculum and implement it in their communities. We have the curriculum in several languages including English, Spanish, Korean and Bahasa, which is Indonesian. Just last week, I met with a few Indonesian leaders, putting together a working group that would help make the curriculum more culturally adaptive to what folks from Indonesia might experience, the same with folks from Korea.
One of my more recent initiatives is a leadership program we launched in June, about 30 leaders are involved in the program. We’re really working on leadership and their destiny, leadership and advocacy, leadership and public service, leadership and civic engagement. The purpose of the program is to motivate leaders from the Latino community to see themselves as people who can influence things in the community, so they can start seeing themselves as participants and co-creators of community initiatives versus simply sitting back and watching things unfold.
Having been an elected official for four years as a city councilman, I learned a lot about the way the system works in terms of how the resources get pushed out into the community and I’m really excited to try to help other Latino leaders do the same. One of our leaders has already been appointed to a city board here in Goshen and we have about 10 other leaders who are actively volunteering in the community.
How do you integrate your work with Bienvenido Community Solutions with your role working with students at Goshen College?
At Goshen College, we’re always trying to figure out the mental health of students. Bienvenido is a mental health organization and so there are staff on campus who are trained in the Bienvenido program. They work at building relationships with the community. Our mental health is one that just moves in many different spaces so there are principles for working together, cultivating relationships, empowering one another, listening to one another, offering those opportunities to serve and encouraging one another.
Last week, all of our first year students, 200 and some were at nine different organizations doing volunteer work all day. So I think there are many correlations between the work that happens at Bienvenido Community Solutions and Goshen College. I get some really valuable experiences working with young adults and the college benefits because we bring resources from partners that support the college for our students’ mental health.
For example, I’ve been recommended to serve on a Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee. The school’s president is very excited about that because it allows us to be in contact with people across the country who are looking at issues of health and mental health on college campuses, working to make sure that Goshen College and north central Indiana are plugged into national resources. It’s in process but it’s a great honor to be considered. It’s wonderful to know we can bring resources to Goshen College that help all of our students.
You mentioned your role as a city councilmember. What inspired you to run for office and what were your most important learning points from your time in office?
Growing up in Texas, I always admired my father. He was not into politics but my father was into community. He spent a lot of time with leaders, talking, listening, organizing and being present. As I got older, I realized that I was doing similar things. We don’t get to these positions just because we get to them; we get to them because we really believe in the aspect of service. If we serve our community, if we serve the people in our neighborhoods, opportunities arise to either do more service or to serve in a public way.
I had been serving in my community and the mayor at that time encouraged me to serve on the Goshen Housing Authority, so I did. After that, the mayor suggested I serve on the Plan Commission and I did that. The next mayor asked if I had any interest in running for office so I thought about it, consulted with my wife, with my mentors and it was essentially a natural progression. Other people saw the work I was doing and asked me to try more things. Seeing people in my community desiring to be more connected with the city officials…encouraged me to be one of those city officials that they could be in contact with.
While in office, I was able to better understand how resources flow into the community and I was able to make decisions on where those resources would go. That wasn’t my own decision, but it was a group of seven of us who had to put our minds together and decide if we wanted this type of development in Goshen. Going out and engaging the community.
My second learning is that if we tap young people for opportunities, they will show up. Our local mayor at that time, Jeremy Stutsman, launched a youth advisor program to city council. For the last eight years, we have had a high school senior on our city council. They come to every meeting and they vote. Their votes don’t count but the idea is that young people in the future will be our leaders, and the only way we can teach our young people to be leaders in the future is to place them in situations of leadership.
Third, politics really relies on us listening to one another, trying to partner and compromise. I learned that I need to compromise and that I can challenge my colleagues to make sure that they also compromise. So if you go back to my voting record, if we go back to the work that we did in those four years, we got a lot of things done. We were the fastest growing city in Indiana for three years straight. Faster than Marion County, than Indianapolis, than East Chicago. And it’s not all because of city council, it’s because of the partnering and the really good things that are happening in Goshen and Elkhart County.
What’s the importance of colleges spotlighting how Hispanic people have contributed to the American economy?
I actually believe that our young people need more education regarding the history of our nation and Hispanic Heritage Month. Many years ago, it was one week, then it turned into a month-long celebration.
It gives us opportunities to present to college students what past leaders have done in terms of their contributions to make, whether it’s Goshen College, whether it’s the city of Goshen or the country, or anywhere else where Hispanics have lived, making sure that we don’t forget. As my grandfather Felix Tijerina always said to me, “Don’t forget where you come from. Make sure you remember that your roots are important.”
Students come to college with the knowledge they’ve been given in high schools and we want to just expand that. Hispanic Heritage Month on college campuses is really about expanding knowledge, awareness, engagement, leadership, opportunities that afford them more opportunities to aspire.
At Goshen College, our motto is “Culture for Service,” so with Hispanic Heritage Month, we can teach students to learn from the people who have gone before them, their service, their leadership, their giving. Right now, we have a record number of leaders on our campus who are engaged in many different activities. We feel very proud of that because it demonstrates that they feel like they can be included, they feel they can serve, they feel that they’re people who have something to contribute.
If we can get young people to do this, not just during Hispanic Heritage Month but all throughout the year, we’ll have stronger communities. We will be richer culturally, ethnically and spiritually.