Opening Doors

Career devoted to creating access to higher education

BY DANE KUTTLER

Irene Rodriguez-Martin, associate dean for graduate enrollment and student affairs, has seen and shaped more than 30 years of the School for Social Work’s relationship to its students. She has seen thousands of once-applicants matriculate and finish their master’s degrees, and has devoted her career to opening the School’s doors to a broad range of students—especially those at historical and structural disadvantages, including low-income students, students of color and those who were the first in their families to pursue higher education.

After all this time, it can seem as though Rodriguez-Martin has always been an integral part of the School. However, she remembers clearly her first impressions of Smith College—a place where “people like us” didn’t belong.

Rodriguez-Martin grew up in nearby Westfield, the daughter of immigrants who believed that education was the best path to success. They were proud of their daughter for pursuing a college education—but when it came time to choose where to go, hesitations surfaced. “One of my teachers encouraged me to go to Smith,” said Rodriguez- Martin, “so I asked my father what he thought, and he told me, ‘People like us don’t belong at Smith.’”

While she didn’t end up attending Smith, Rodriguez-Martin never forgot the conversation. “I think that my father’s early comments saying that I didn’t belong, and my own feeling that education was the key, moved me to really work hard to make sure that [the School for Social Work] was a place for anyone.”

The position that ultimately brought her to Lilly Hall was in alumni affairs. During her time in that department, Rodriguez-Martin developed an appreciation for the role that alumni could play in the recruitment of new students.

“So much literature out there talks about the value of mentorship, and about half of the students of color at the School are first-generation college students,” she said. “So we used alumni at the School to reassure new students that they can fit in. We started a program called Reaching for Excellence, where we invited alumni to identify people working in the field who could be superstars if they got their master’s degrees, and then we paid to bring those people to Smith for a three-day ‘mini-exposure’ to inspire them and help them imagine what they could do with a master’s degree. … About 75 percent of the people we invite to this program apply to the School.”

She also points out that the School’s practice of giving financial package and internship location information to accepted applicants as soon as possible gives them the chance to make the necessary arrangements in order to enroll. “As a Hispanic woman for whom family is everything, I couldn’t fathom people taking that leap of faith,” said Rodriguez-Martin. “So we tell people, ‘If you apply by the early admission date, we will give you your admission decision, as well as the location of your field placement and your financial package,’ so people could make informed decisions. That was the beginning of more people of color applying to the School.”

Rodriguez-Martin is quick to point to mentors at the School who helped frame her path and empower her. “After alumni affairs, I was very strongly mentored by Dean Ann Hartman. She would tell me, ‘People believe that women get where they are by happenstance—don’t believe it! Everything you do is a deliberate step.’”

It was Hartman who called on Rodriguez-Martin to help craft an institutional response after an incident in which vandals scrawled obscenities and racial slurs across the stone steps of Lilly Hall. They decided to invite all alumni of color—“we need someone to guide us”—to a three-day conference to advise Dean Hartman. “That,” said Rodriguez-Martin, “became the beginning of the School for Social Work taking a critical look at our own activities. There’ve been lots of wonderful partners along the way who stepped up and moved forward toward implementing the School’s Anti-Racism Commitment.”

But Rodriguez-Martin’s work does not end—or even begin—at the School. Rather, it’s her work in the community—the place she has always belonged—that fuels her the most. “My parents were both big-time volunteers. My father taught English, my mother worked for the church, and I’ve been involved in community my whole life.”

That drive to work in community led Rodriguez-Martin to positions on two boards, at the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and at Baystate Health. She described Baystate’s CEO, Dr. Mark Keroack, as having “a social worker’s soul.” He invited her to the board because he was doing research on how social factors and poverty affect health. each year to give to promising students, into a fully endowed scholarship. The fund, Rodriguez-Martin is quick to note, does not seek to reward students with the top grades. They, she says, will find a way to college and beyond more easily. Instead, it focuses on students with promising, if not perfect, performances who show a demonstrated commitment to their communities. That commitment can come in the form of volunteering, or even holding an afterschool job to support their family.

Though her ideas and innovations have shaped several of the institutions of which she’s been a part, Rodriguez- Martin said that often her presence at the table is itself a game changer. Having been hired as not only the first Hispanic administrator, but a daughter of immigrants who was among the first generation in her family to attend college, Rodriguez-Martin said that the most important thing is that, “I could hold the door for all the people coming after me.” ◆