First Gen student finds tutoring, community in the Minority Engineering Program
An impromptu invitation into the Minority Engineering Program at Purdue University welcomed First Gen student Oliver Juarez in a way he had never expected.
MEP’s “Persist Until Success Happens” (PUSH) initiative was taking place in the Academic Success Center (ASC) in Lambertus Hall in West Lafayette when Juarez passed a friend briefly. Said friend invited him to come inside to pick up a mid-semester PUSH kit.
“I’ve found my community,” Juarez said. “I made a lot of cool friends inside (the ASC).
“If you don’t have your community around you, it feels like you’re just going through the motions. If you see other people working towards (their goals) with you, then it motivates you. It gives you that extra push.”
Juarez is the first person from Ponder High School in Texas to attend Purdue. College, especially attending a Big Ten school, hadn’t even crossed Juarez’s mind until a chance conversation toward the end of his junior year of high school. Many of the adults in his hometown of Denton, Texas, didn’t attend college, his parents included.
“The highest level of education my parents (from Mexico) have is the equivalent of middle school here,” he said, “and I didn’t try a lot in school because I didn’t know it mattered.”
Juarez proved to be a bright student with an ability for quickly memorizing and using concepts he was taught. He also liked to learn. By seventh grade, he was taking classes, especially advanced in mathematics, typically offered to sophomores in high school.
In eighth grade, his progress was stunted by a transfer to a smaller school. He had no access to advanced-level courses and lamented about returning to eighth grade mathematics instead of the advanced algebra he had been taking. The reset was “demotivating” for Juarez, and he found it easy to glide by without much effort. He still achieved good grades, even though he didn’t care about the material.
Most of Juarez’s friends and classmates did not plan to attend college, and if they did, it would be a local community college. While over 90 percent of Denton’s population hold high school diplomas, only about 40 percent hold a college degree. What’s more, most of Juarez’s friends and family who had attended college never finished, instead pursuing families or work. The standard in his neighborhood was settling down in Denton with solely a high school education.
But Juarez dreamed of something outside of Denton. So did a friend from high school who wanted to pursue engineering. Time with this friend and his supportive family directed Juarez to decide engineering was his path as well. Juarez had been a tinkerer since he was a child, dismantling old phones (but not putting them back together) to see how they worked. He could be an engineer ... once he gained an understanding of what an engineer was, exactly.
“Within the next three months (after that conversation), I was relentlessly looking up, ‘What is college? What does it mean to go to a top 10 school?’” Juarez said. “Purdue wasn’t on my radar at the time.”
After several months of grueling applications and constant rejections, Purdue came up in an engineering college search Juarez conducted. He was uncertain if he would be accepted, given the competition, but he was accepted in 2024. Halfway through his first semester in West Lafayette, he discovered the MEP community with which he could resonate, connect and grow.
Most importantly, Juarez was thrilled to hear they offered tutoring. “People want to help you, and that’s really encouraging.”
A first-generation college student in his first semester of engineering, Juarez found himself needing to learn more than just the material in his classes. He had to learn how to study, how to prioritize and manage schoolwork and, finally, how to find a community that would help him grow and thrive. His introduction to the MEP was a chance encounter of being in the right place at the right time.
Through MEP, the ASC provides guidance and opportunities for engineering students like Juarez who are looking to survive and thrive as engineers. ASC offers study tables, individual and collaborative study, alongside its free tutoring services to help students get the quiet time they need to learn and the time to ask questions about their material. Tutoring can be scheduled based on classes or concepts that students need help understanding and is primarily equipped to help with engineering courses.
Thankfully for Juarez, one course with ample tutoring opportunities is his chemistry class, CHEM 11500.
Preparation for exams is offered as a series of sessions, equipping students with the basics of how to study for specific courses and ways to increase self-efficacy going into exams, combat test anxiety and maximize information retention.
Juarez has begun to take full advantage of these spaces and tutors. He is focused on laying the foundation of good study habits to succeed as an engineer. It was precisely this desire that took him to MEP to talk to senior recruitment and retention analyst Jessica Perkins, PhD. The spontaneous invitation Juarez received into the ASC space directly introduced him to all that MEP had to offer to help him flourish.
Students can also use the ASC for one-on-one academic success coaching, which helps students set goals, keep accountable to those goals, find mentors and structure plans for success. Juarez also takes advantage of these sessions to keep himself focused and committed to flourishing at Purdue.
The ASC space is frequently full of tutors and students, including the creators of MEP’s podcast, “Next Gen.” Inspired by the community found in MEP, Kaleia Maxey and Clifford Underwood created a student-run podcast detailing their experiences with classes, clubs and community and advice for incoming or new students such as Juarez. Students also have frequent opportunities to connect with MEP alumni through the Don and Liz Thompson Distinguished Alumni Coffee and Chat series.
For Juarez, one of his goals is to encourage his younger brother and cousins to consider college and know that it’s possible. He seeks to be a mentor, much like he is finding mentors on campus through MEP’s student-led peer mentor program. With the support of the MEP community, Juarez is confident he can tackle chemistry. He wants to provide the same encouragement to his family, in whom he sees the same drive to pursue college and a career like he has.
“(I can say), ‘I was able to do it, and you have me as a supporter.’ My cousins in Mexico see me in (college), and it makes them want to keep going, too.”
