A 2003 study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics found that half of Hidalgo County’s population lacked basic prose literacy skills.
The issue of illiteracy was presented during the School of Medicine Office of Interprofessional Education’s Meet and Greet, held Nov. 18 in the San Carlos Community Resource Center.
Bilingual education senior Leslie Velasquez, who was among 25 campus and community members who attended the event, sees the problem as an opportunity to start a program to assist people in expanding their language proficiency.
“Me, as a bilingual teacher, I would like to come with some of my other classmates, come and see maybe if there’s someone who can professionally do it,” Velasquez said. “Maybe help them to learn how to read or the same as the bilingual classes, maybe just give them a little more help with that.”
The first Meet and Greet took place at Proyecto Desarollo Humano in Penitas, where some residents took part in community asset mapping, which will display the needs of the area.
“The students were distributed among the four different tables with community residents and we asked the residents to tell us what they considered as the community assets or resources,” said John Ronnau, School of Medicine senior associate dean for Interprofessional Education. “We’ll analyze those assets, those strengths and then go back to the community for the next meeting and start to identify where there may be gaps, there may be needs.”
The UTRGV Community-University Partnership, Community Hubs was created in collaboration with the UTRGV Colleges and the UTRGV Division of Governmental and Community Relations.
“The primary purpose of this project is to provide opportunities for students to learn how to work effectively in interprofessional, collaborative teams,” Ronnau said. “We are giving them those opportunities by assigning teams of interprofessional students to communities.”
With the help of the Hidalgo County Department of Health and Human Services and other county health departments in the Rio Grande Valley, other community centers that signed up for the inaugural teams are the Alamo Community Resource Center in Alamo; El Paraiso on Mission’s north side; La Feria Community Resource Center in La Feria and La Victoria Community Center in Rio Grande City.
“All six communities are providing space in their community resource center at no cost to UTRGV,” Ronnau said. “We have classroom space. They’ll even renovate space for us, if we need it, create small clinics for us, if we need to, for medical services.”
The project is still identifying the rest of the students who will participate in the inaugural team. Those already identified are majoring in nursing, business, biology, engineering and medicine.
To sign up, students must contact and be approved by the Interprofessional Education liaison in their college and must also call the School of Medicine Office of Interprofessional Education at 665-6401.
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