The low retention rate for minorities is not only present at NIU but at high schools as well, and one determined individual is making a big difference.

Maria Dominguez, who is working towards her education degree at NIU, has helped cut the Hispanic dropout rate in half since she began work three years ago at Community High School District 94 in West Chicago.

The current lowered rate of 14 percent was achieved through the grant supported Educational Opportunity Program, which Dominguez coordinates. Under a joint federal-state grant from the Job Training Partnership Act, she is responsible for “monitoring 30 high risk students very closely,” Dominguez said.

Of the 1,400 students at West Chicago, about 200 are Hispanic. Dominguez also monitors “students who have non-English speaking parents, or who are slipping in attendance or grades,” she said. She works with the parents in encouraging students to stay in school and do well.

Reasons that dropout rates among Hispanics tend to be high involve many factors. “When students move here from Mexico, they come with the thought of just learning English,” Dominguez said. “But they also need an education.” This fact is “one of the big barriers” to keeping Hispanics in school, she said.

Other problems include separated families, pregnancy, and age. “Many students have taken time off to move or work to support their families,” Dominguez said. “By the time they start school, they may already be 18 or 19 years old.”

But the work has become easier over the years for Dominguez, who was hired by assistant principal Richard Waterhouse after he suggested she apply. “The workload has been the same,” she said. “But now the students know me and what I’m here for.”

A typical day for 24-year-old Dominguez starts a 7:30 a.m. when she receives the previous day’s attendance report. She meets with the students and makes phone calls to parents of students who are absent that day. She does paperwork, has meetings, interviews students and serves as a translator at the dean’s office for “the high number of non-English speaking students,” she said. “My work involves a lot of student contact.”

Dominguez plans activities to keep the students interested in acquiring an education. A clean up campaign, “targeted at West Chicago Hispanic communities,” is in the future, as well as dances, field trips to univerisities and a mock Quincineanera. This “big fiesta” is an “educational event for the public and lets Americans know it’s still part of our tradition,” Dominguez said. The event is a social party which celebrates a girl’s 15th birthday.

A car wash, which raised more than $200, recently was held. Dominguez also initiated a Bilingual Club.

The success of the Hispanic retention program belongs largely to Dominguez, who originally thought the job “wasn’t even something I’d be the person for.”

She refuses to take all the credit, however. “If it weren’t for the network here at school of bilingual teachers, tutors, counselors and everybody else that works hard with me, the program would not be successful,” Dominguez said.

“I look forward to every single day of work,” she said. But since the program is state-funded, “if the funds are gone, my job is gone.” She therefore is working towards her education degree at NIU “for security.”

She currently has a second job as the Assistant Coordinator Secretary of the Adult Education Program. In addition to the secretarial work, she sometimes serves as a substitute teacher for the English as a Second Language courses.

Nine years ago, when Dominguez came to West Chicago, she could not speak English. “It takes time to learn it,” she said, noting that it was two years before she could hold a fluent conversation. “The hard part of learning is having the patience.”

Dominguez, who was a recipient of one of the first Distinguished Service Awards by the DuPage Hispanic Task Force last year, also has to set aside time to spend with her husband and two children.