![]() ![]() This experience also inspired Díaz to pursue his master’s degree in student personnel administration at Buffalo State and his doctorate in higher education leadership at Colorado State University. It’s where I realized that administrators work in a university, not just faculty members.” “I developed confidence working in that office. “He hired me as a naïve, first-year student and introduced me to individuals across the institution,” Díaz said. In addition, while Díaz worked a campus job in the student union, he said, his boss, a man of color, changed his career trajectory. “I don’t think I would have graduated or been successful without them.” “Being surrounded by men with similar experiences and having a social network provided a culturally relevant space,” he said. He enrolled at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, and discovered that living on campus and joining a fraternity made a huge difference. Interestingly, his construction co-workers were the ones who encouraged him to give college another try. “I took a short break and worked in construction for a while.” “I had no clue how to do college,” he said. When he originally enrolled in college immediately after high school as a first-generation student, he dropped out after his first semester. That was the case for Díaz, who joined a Latino fraternity during his second attempt at an undergraduate degree. “We discussed how this group of men refuse and resist practices that are barriers to their academic and personal success,” Díaz said, adding that the research revealed that it’s often other men of color who influence Latino men to pursue higher education.” ![]() ![]() In addition to serving as conference chair, he and his co-researchers from the University of Rhode Island and the University of Texas at Austin presented their national study of Latino men enrolled in higher education administration master’s degree programs. “They are not matriculating at the undergraduate level due to a number of barriers and realities.”ĭíaz chaired the 18th annual conference of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education-“La Lucha Sigue: Refusal, Resistance, and Praxis at Critical Junctures”-held in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 1–3. “Basically, half of Latino men who walk onto campus won’t walk across the stage to accept a diploma,” Díaz said. While Latinos make up the second-largest racial or ethnic group in the United States, Latino males have some of the lowest baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate degree completion rates, said Díaz, who joined the Buffalo State faculty as an assistant professor of higher education administration in fall 2019. Hermen Díaz III, ’08, wants to understand how Latino men survive and thrive at institutions of higher education while also recognizing the phenomenon that they’re vanishing from college campuses. ![]()
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