New coordinator dives into Native Week
USU’s Access and Diversity Center has named a new Latino and Native American student program coordinator: Mario Pereyra.
Michelle Bogdan, director of the Access and Diversity Center, said Pereyra is excited to help multicultural students with their college experience.
“One of the things that we’re really excited about that Mario brings to the table is his work with multicultural students. He brings a lot of excitement and a lot of enthusiasm,” Bogdan said.
Pereyra said he graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in human development and has three years of experience working in BYU’s multicultural student office.
Growing up in Houston with a mother from Mexico and a father from Argentina, Pereyra said he believes he can offer outside understanding for multicultural students.
“A lot of the things they’ve gone through, I went through as well,” he said. “I’m not the typical person here from Utah, so I think I have a different perspective that might be a little refreshing to some students — that might resemble a little bit more of the perspective that they had growing up in their homes with their different cultural identities.”
Pereyra moved to Cache Valley a little more than two weeks ago to take the job, which he said had been vacant for some time since the last Latino and Native American student program coordinator left.
“Our prior program coordinator left in July of last year, so it took us about a good seven months, which is typical of most searches,” Bogdan said. “We are thrilled that we have found someone who was really crazy-excited to come to Logan, because we don’t always get that.”
Bogdan said with his programming experience, excitement and energy, Pereyra is a good fit for the center.
Pereyra said the biggest challenge so far has been jumping right into the planning of multicultural events, because February is the busiest month for them. He said one of his ideas in his position is to create better cohesion between diversity groups on campus, which came together to form the center two years ago.
“That’s something that I really like about this university, that it brings together the multicultural students with LGBTQA, with the veterans and non-traditional students, and ties it all together with the educational programs,” he said. “We’re just brainstorming and trying to see what we can do to mix the groups even more, so that it’s not just the multicultural groups here doing their thing, but we want the multicultural groups doing their thing, inviting LGBTQA, inviting the veterans in doing this stuff, and having the educational outreach do stuff, and letting everybody else know so that we can support them.”
Sandra McCabe, the Powwow coordinator for USU’s Native Week, said, “He’s awesome with the students, he’s a very positive person, and, for the most part, he’s really good with students. He gives them advice with what they need — he can relate.”
McCabe said though Pereyra has had the job for a few weeks, he is working hard.
“I would say he’s highly motivated and he’s eager to learn, especially with the Powwow coming up,” she said. “He’s never really planned one, but he’s eager to learn how it all comes together. He’s a good asset for the Access and Diversity Center.”
Pereyra said his ultimate goal in his position is to make multicultural students feel comfortable and let them know that someone understands them. To participate in that process, he said, is the most exciting part of his job.
“They’re transitioning — to Logan, to the university, to everything — and to see them finally get into that comfort and see them start being able to focus more on their studies and their social skills and be able to thrive, that’s just the best part of the job,” he said.
Bogdan said the center sees the program coordinators as leaders.
“They are cheerleaders, they are advocates, they are mentors, they are educators. Program coordinators do a lot of everything,” she said. “The other thing that we do as program coordinators is to really support our students, because our number one priority is to make sure that all of our students who attend Utah State have a wonderful experience here as students and of course graduate. And then we want them to take that experience with that out to their careers and communities and make a difference.”
Pereyra said he wants students to feel coming into his office both when they need help and when they don’t.
“They can just come and feel that peace, that comfort, that sense of belonging in this university,” he said. “If they have something like that in this university, I think it’s going to foster those feelings and just help them succeed a lot more.”
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