A Letter From COCEAL’s Current President
Dear CoCEAL,
It’s that time of year again, the start of another semester has arrived. I hope you have been taking care and finding time to ground yourself in what makes you the most happy. As many of us gear up for what’s ahead this fall, please know la familia de CoCEAL is here for you in solidarity and as a community resource.
I am very pleased to welcome us into the new academic year and am honored to serve as your CoCEAL President for 2022-2023. This is something I could not have imagined when I first started going to CoCEAL meetings back in 2016. When I think back to my first meeting, I can remember how uplifting it was to see mi gente come together; building upon the knowledge we all hold and learning from one another. It was then, for the first time, that I felt seen, validated and connected to really amazing, dope humans as a new professional in higher education. CoCEAL is a special community and I am grateful to those who have paved the way for me as well as for this organization.
Me siento muy… excited! Excited for what’s to come as I am fortunate enough to lead and collaborate with such a wonderful group of CoCEAL Board members and the entire CoCEAL membership as a whole in the next year. As a Board, we were able to come together for our summer retreat and dig into some deep discussion on how we’d like to approach this year. We took time to reflect on the evolution of CoCEAL; from impact strategies being driven by policies and legislation to increase graduation rates of Latinx students to shifting the focus towards inclusive excellence best practices and community healing. Now toss in a global health pandemic and a greater fight against patriarchy and white supremacy in the mix, we are finding ourselves needing to get grounded and re-centered once again. Therefore, we are trusting that the direction to go in is to honor those who came before us and rebuild our membership engagement. We will rethink the structure of membership meetings with the intent to host more frequent roundtable discussions on topics that are important to our members throughout the year. CoCEAL offers many benefits such as networking, professional development and inspiration in which we encourage our membership to take full advantage of being a part of la familia.
Our Mission: The mission of CoCEAL is to influence, challenge, and lead higher education systems that advance equitable Latinx student access, success and graduation in Colorado.
Our vision: CoCEAL envisions educational equity for Latinx communities to liberate ourselves, enrich Colorado, and transform society.
Our work is empowering, challenging and absolutely essential to a liberating future for our comunidad. I am looking forward to continuing learning and growing with you all.
Un dicho especial para nosotros: “They tried to bury us, but didn’t know we were seeds” – Mexican proverb
P.S. Please be on the lookout for membership renewal information coming from our Past-President, Dra. Mary Sauceda
Andrea Rascón (she/her/ella)
President | Colorado Coalition for Educational Advancement of Latinxs (CoCEAL)
President
Andrea Rascón
KIPP Colorado Schools
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President-Elect
Manuel Del Real, Ph.D.
Metropolitan State University
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Past President
Mary R. Sauceda, Ed.D.
Southern Methodist University
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Secretary
Sydney Pedregon
Community College of Aurora
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Treasurer
Sherie Muñoz
Community College of Aurora
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Communications Director
Marcey Flores
University of Northern Colorado
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