VGCC Employee Helps Hispanics Expand Educational Opportunities

Hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the population of the four counties served by Vance-Granville Community College. Despite the increase in numbers, enrollment of Hispanics in curriculum programs at the college has decreased recently.

To reverse that trend and to help Hispanics in this area improve their education so they can enjoy a higher standard of living, VGCC has employed its first Latino-Hispanic Services coordinator, Peter Hernandez.

“Vance-Granville Community College is here to help everyone meet their educational needs, and I hope to make known to the Hispanic community that education is their road to better income and a better standard of living,” Hernandez said.

He said he plans to visit Hispanics in churches, on the soccer fields and wherever they gather, to spread the word on the need for education and the opportunities offered by Vance-Granville.

Hernandez appears to be an ideal match for the position. He is a native of Round Rock, Texas, which is near Austin, and he grew up in a fourth-generation Mexican-American family that spoke both Spanish and English in their home. He came to North Carolina during service in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman stationed with the Marines at Camp LeJeune.

Following military service, he earned bachelor’s degrees in sociology and education from East Carolina University and taught school in Dunn. He then earned a master’s in Spanish from Appalachian State University.

For five years, Hernandez worked as an investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor, where he saw farm laborers working in back-breaking jobs in the fields with no futures, he said. After teaching Spanish five years at Wake Technical Community College, the Vance-Granville job recently became available, and Hernandez said he saw it as an opportunity to help people improve their lives.

In addition to contacting people of the Hispanic communities, Hernandez plans to contact businesses in the four-county area who employ Hispanics. “I will try to show the business people that by sending Hispanic employees to Vance-Granville for more education, they will become more effective workers, which will benefit the employers and the employees,” he said.

Hernandez will also work with Vance-Granville’s Continuing Education program, which offers English as a Second Language classes.

Hernandez is located at Vance-Granville Community College’s South Campus in Granville County, but he will be working in the Hispanic communities in Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties, the college’s service area. Any business or individual interested in educational opportunities offered by Vance-Granville for Hispanics may contact Hernandez at (919) 528-4737.