Small Steps, Big Impact Episode 6 – Higher Education Experiences of our Hispanic and Latinx Students
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Our guests today are Dr. Delma Ramos, Assistant Professor of Higher Education within the Department of Teacher Education & Higher Education here at UNCG and Dr. Elsa Camargo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Texas Arlington. Our conversation today focuses on the importance of understanding the experiences of our Latinx and Hispanic students as they navigate Higher Education environments.
Link to full transcript here.
Music, A Short Walk, from Zapsplat.com
Quote from the Episode
“Stay away from notions that sustain the idea that ethnic communities are homogeneous.”
About our Guests

Dr. Delma Ramos
Dr. Delma Ramos is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Ramos’ work examines the experiences of historically minoritized populations in higher education from an equity and social justice lens. Thus, she studies issues at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Her research is unified by a focus on interrogating paradigms and ideologies that sustain inequity in higher education while highlighting the assets, agency, and resistance of historically minority communities. Dr. Ramos’ work is informed by her methodological training grounded in Qualitative and Mixed-Methods approaches and paired with critical theory. Dr. Ramos is a first-generation graduate; she earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education with a concentration in Research Methods and Statistics from the University of Denver.

Dr. Elsa Camargo
Dr. Elsa Camargo is an assistant professor and holds degrees from Virginia Tech (Ph.D. in Higher Education) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (B.A. in English and Spanish and M.A in Hispanic Studies). Her research interests are in the areas of college access and success for minority students and career advancement of underrepresented faculty in higher education. Her research areas of expertise are in institution-wide diversity, inclusion and equity issues, organizational culture, and faculty. Currently, Dr. Camargo is researching the experiences of Latino/a/x college students in the Nuevo South. Prior to joining UTA, she was an assistant professor of Higher Education at the University of Arkansas and while there also served as a Junior Research Fellow at the Office for Diversity and Inclusion.
Resources from the Episode
- History.com resource titled, “Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano: The History Behind the Term”
- Flores, A., Lopez, M. H., & Krogstad, J. M. (2019). U.S. Hispanic population reached new high in 2018, but growth has slowed. Pew Research.
- Gill, H. E. (2018). The Latino migration experience in North Carolina : New roots in the old north state (Second edition, revised and expanded, Ser. Jstor eba). University of North Carolina Press. (This link requires you to log into the UNCG library with your credentials.)
- Jones, J.A. (2019). The Browning of the New South. University of Chicago PressProQuest Ebook Central
- Sox, K.A. (2019). Latino immigrant students in Southern schools: What we know and still need to learn. Theory into practice, 48, 312-318.
- Whitaker, W., Hardee, S. C., Johnson, L. C., & McFaden, K. L. (2018). The Southern mind and the savage ideal: Deconstructing identities of place in the Cracker State. Teaching Education, 29(4), 407-420. (This link requires you to log into the UNCG library with your credentials.)
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A CRT discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. (This link requires you to log into the UNCG library with your credentials.) - Ramos, D., Camargo, E., Bennett, C., & Alvarez, A. (2021). Uncovering the effects of the sociopolitical context of the Nuevo South on Latinx college students’ ethnic identification. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
- Ramos, D., & Kiyama, J. M. (2021). Tying it All Together: Defining the Core Tenets of Funds of Knowledge. Educational Studies, 57(4), 429-449.
- Salinas Jr, C. (2020). The complexity of the “x” in Latinx: How Latinx/a/o students relate to, identify with, and understand the term Latinx. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 19(2), 149-168.