Middlebury’s life-changing, world-shaping education is possible only when students from every background are able to participate in it. Providing the financial support necessary to attract exceptional scholars from around the country and the world and to keep them here is one of Middlebury’s top priorities.
“So many who deserve a chance don’t get one. I’m
grateful to the donors who made it possible for me to be here.”
— Brian Pacheco
Hometown:
New York City
Major: Spanish
Mentor: Gloria González Zenteno, associate professor of Spanish
“When my first Spanish class got hard for me, I started slacking off. Professor Gonzalez e-mailed asking to talk. I thought she’d say, ‘This is unacceptable.’ Instead, she said, ‘I have faith in you’ and showed such an interest that I wanted to bring my grades back up, and I did.”
In the Time of Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez ’71. The Dominican-born Alvarez is a writer-in-residence at the College and is deeply involved in Alianza Latinoamerican y Caribena, the Latino student organization. “I really like that Julia is so involved in her roots,” Brian Pacheco ’08 says. “That’s how I want to be.”
Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas. “It’s a great book by a Puerto Rican writer talking about his experiences.”
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. “It’s about cultural differences. She talks about how white kids also sit together, but that’s less noticeable, because they’re the majority.”
On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where Brian Pacheco grew up, a good education is not something you take for granted. But there was never any question that he was going to go to college. That is what his mother said, and that was the end of discussion. “I was going to go to college somewhere, whether I liked it or not; it was just expected,” Brian says.
- The U.S. will need more than 2 million new K-12 teachers in the next decade.
- The Latino portion of the U.S. population rose from 12.5 percent to 14 percent between 2000 and 2004 and is projected to reach 20 percent in 2030.
- Two-thirds of the new U.S. jobs created between 2000 and 2010 will require postsecondary education.
- The high-school dropout rate among Latinos, 24 percent in 2004, is the highest among major U.S. population groups.
Brian learned about Middlebury when he was selected for the Posse Program in his junior year at Humanities Preparatory Academy in Manhattan. The Posse Program awards scholarships to students at urban public high schools who show exceptional leadership potential and gives them access to top colleges that might otherwise be out of their reach.
At Middlebury, Brian has been able to connect two of his principle passions: working with children and exploring his Latin American roots. Although his father’s parents were Puerto Rican and his mother was born in Puerto Rico, he had a very American upbringing in a home where English was always spoken. But now he is majoring in Spanish and exploring Latin American culture through documentary films he produces in his spare time. He’s also the president of the College’s Alianza Latinoamerican y Caribena student organization.
Brian’s
career goal is to be a teacher. “I want to work with kids, with
immigrants, with those who don’t have much help,” he says.
In fact, he has already started. He spent one summer working with kids
with chronic and life-threatening diseases at California’s Painted
Turtle Camp, and during January term last year he was teaching at a
school in Costa Rica. “That’s one of my most-prized memories,” he
says. “I really felt proud to be a teacher.”
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