Liberation Scholar Program Provides GFU Students Valuable Mentorship Opportunities
By: Olivia Aragon
Photographed by: Victoria Prieto
In July of 2021, George Fox University (GFU) held its first Liberation Scholars seminar. The Liberation Scholars program is a free two-week-long seminar held for primarily Latinx students from Woodburn High School. The program’s mentors are pulled from GFU’s student body.
This year, mentors were in charge of assisting high school students with the college decision and admissions process, and spoke about challenges and experiences they’ve faced throughout their experiences at GFU.
One of these mentors was GFU senior Susana Montes, who is majoring in Social Work with a Hispanic Cultural Studies minor. Montes is the president of the Latinx Heritage Park on campus and is also the Resident Assistant (RA) for Villa, Anderson, and Austin houses.
Montes had always had a passion for helping the Hispanic community: “I wanted to focus my studies [on] social justice and a way to advocate for people from marginalized communities. And so I always came in with a passion to advocate for Latinx communities.”
Montes’ friend Jesse Cetz is a project manager for the Liberation Scholars program. He told her about the program and helped her become a mentor. Montes found the experience really rewarding. She was particularly inspired by “see[ing] the students at the beginning not [able to] see themselves going to college. [At the end,] they all wanted to go to college and apply for these big scholarships [and] find their calling.”
Acting as a mentor in the Liberation Scholars program has led Montes to recognize her own privileges with being documented. She said, “After listening to so many different stories from the scholars, I felt very empathetic, but in some way I didn’t understand all of their experiences, and that’s okay. I think a lot of times I sit with this privilege guilt, and while that’s okay to sit with, I don’t want to focus so much on me. [I also need to focus on] how I can continue listening to these stories and continuing advocating for them, even though that’s not my same experience.”
Montes hopes to become a social worker that works with high schoolers. She credits her motivation to how she and her peers missed out on key resources in their high school experience without a school social worker.
Another one of the Liberation Scholars mentors is senior Ivette Uribe who is majoring in Psychology. Uribe was the treasurer for the Psychology Club for the 2020-2021 school year, and she was also part of the LatinX Heritage Club and the Women of Color club at GFU.
Uribe got to witness how the Liberation Scholars program changed and shaped the participating students. Uribe said, “[They] left that program with confidence in themselves to do anything, [...] accomplish anything they aspire to be [or] to do. I think we gave them one last push for whatever it is that they want to do.”
Some of Uribe’s favorite moments from the program were the moments where the students became more comfortable and vulnerable and began to tell their stories.
Uribe is currently studying abroad in Lithuania. She chose Lithuania to study abroad because she wanted to go to a place that would challenge her, rather than a place that was more familiar or easier to navigate. After she graduates in the spring, she hopes to become a clinical psychologist who specializes in children and adolescents.
Both Uribe and Montes credit their mentoring passions and success at GFU to individuals who took time to guide them. For Montes, it was Mari Ortega, who works at the Intercultural Resource Center. Montes stated “[Mari has] been a second mother to me while I’m here and she has definitely been through the highs and lows. I think having her support during my time at Fox has been probably one of the highlights and I always appreciate her mentorship, even though she probably doesn’t see herself as a mentor.”
Uribe had a similar experience with her Peer Advisor Meg Cecil who graduated this past spring. Uribe recalled, “I was about to drop out of college the first week. [I felt like] ‘I don’t know what I am doing. I don’t know if I belong here.’ [Meg said] ‘Yes, you do. Yes, you do belong here, yes, you can do it.”
The Liberation Scholars program will return next summer, although the official dates are still undecided. If you want to become a mentor for this program you can take a look at the GFU Liberation Scholars page here.
