Applying Cultura in the Community College Counseling Practice

Latino students represent the fastest-growing population in the state of California, the United States, and the California Community College (CCC) system. Unfortunately, compared to other ethnic groups, Latino community college students continue to lag academically. Given the importance of counseling services and the scarce research related to community college students and community college counseling services, this study explored how 26 first-generation, low-income, Latino community college students perceived, negotiated, and developed a relationship with their community college counselor. Using a qualitative grounded theory research design, participants' counseling experiences were captured through face-to-face semistructured in-depth interviews, and a theoretical model was developed. This study extended the literature on the importance of community college counseling services in assisting and motivating students to reach transfer and graduation and emphasized students' positive and negative counseling experiences. The research findings suggest a need to improve community college counseling services. Thus, based on the research findings and other published research, this study proposes a set of the following: (a) guidelines for applying cultura (culture) to community college counseling that can assist relationship building between students and counselors; (b) questions that can be included in students' evaluation of counselors; (c) counselor interview questions that may elicit behavioral response and assess cultural competence; and (d) community college students' preferred counselor characteristics that may be used by hiring committees.