Victoria Rodriguez is a doctoral candidate in Developmental and Psychological Sciences in the Graduate School of Education. She graduated summa cum laude from St. Edward’s University with her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Her research interests center around the academic resilience and identity development of underrepresented minority students. Her dissertation examines how college readiness is defined and what the college preparatory process looks like for Latino students through a case study of a local high school.
Dissertation: The Journey to College for First-Generation Latino Students
Victoria’s dissertation is a case study of a local high school, serving a predominantly Latinx student body, with a 100% four-year college acceptance rate for all of its graduates. Typical measures of college-readiness focus on students’ GPA and standardized test scores. This study investigates how various actors at this school define college readiness and what additional factors may be attended to in order to prepare students for the, at times, unfriendly climate of college.