One Student’s Journey

When Raistland Valenzuela began at UCO in 2015, a simple email inviting him to join the Hispanic Success Initiative sparked his amazing journey.

He began to see himself as capable of more than he imagined, developing leadership skills he didn’t know he had while opening up to others about his own life and struggles.

By the time he graduated in spring 2018, he had gone from being a member of the Hispanic Success Initiative to being a “peer fellow” to a “lead peer fellow” — meaning he went from being helped to significantly helping others grow.

He found that “not only do I have the grit to be a leader … but I’ve learned that being a leader is not about making all the decisions. Sometimes being a leader is about allowing other people to take the reins and lead a situation.”

Valenzuela also changed his major to meet his new goals.

“Like a lot of first-generation college students, I hadn’t seen what a professor of biology is all about,” Valenzuela said.

That changed at UCO. He came to see himself as someone who could contribute to a global community as both a scientist and a researcher and as someone with rich cultural, social and academic experiences to share.

Much of his transformation was tied to UCO’s Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR), in which he qualified in all five tenets of the program — Global and Cultural Competencies; Health and Wellness; Leadership; Research, Creative and Scholarly Activities; and Service Learning and Civic Engagement.

The STLR program, developed at UCO, has received national and international recognition for its ability to document student success with transformative learning. Students are challenged to develop a Student Transformative Learning Record that parallels their academic one.

Students like Valenzuela receive STLR credit by submitting STLR-tagged assignments and attending events, or serving in STLR-tagged student groups or out-of-class projects. They write and reflect on these experiences. Their levels of achievement are assessed and validated by a UCO faculty or staff member.

While the program helps graduates demonstrate to future employers that they have mastered more than required academic work, the program also helps students enrich their transformative journeys while at UCO.

Valenzuela went from a “skeptical participant to an engaged one during his first year,” wrote Liliana Renteria-Mendoza, UCO’s director of OKC Cultural Outreach and Diversity Strategies. She also was one who assessed and approved Valenzuela’s work for two of his STLR credits — Leadership, and Global and Cultural Competencies. “His identity flourished … he discovered that he has a passion for teaching and engaging students to become better versions of themselves, just as he has done.”

Camille Farrell is one of UCO’s assistant directors of STLR and another of Valenzuela’s STLR evaluators.

What impressed her about Valenzuela’s growth was his transformation into a “servant-focused leader” whose ability to voice his own vulnerabilities encourages others to follow his lead.

“Raistland has grown profoundly in his being comfortable in his own skin,” she wrote, noting that he had “struggled substantially with support in his personal life.”

However, his ability to share the difficulties of his own journey “helps create an environment where these students can be themselves and feel like they can be vulnerable and open up, too.”

Meaning, she said, that not only did he begin a journey for himself, but he found ways to bring others along with him.

To see a video of Raistland Valenzuela talking about his UCO experience, visit https://youtu.be/Ot1kqnbuPAs.

The Hispanic Success Initiative (HSI) at UCO is a program designed to promote a sense of belonging in the UCO and Oklahoma City communities and aims to positively impact the academic success and career possibilities for Central’s Hispanic student population. HSI includes faculty and staff mentorships, as well as peer mentorships, community events and activities, and service learning projects.=