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Funding at Risk: How AANAPISI Programs Transform Student Lives

Dr. Mike Hoa NguyenDr. Mike Hoa NguyenAs a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut Hartford, Dr. Qazi Arka Rahman leads a Critical Refugee Studies course that encourages students to see refugees as more than “simply victims, objects of rescue, problems, and crises.”

Students often express “that they have never studied anything like it before,” an analysis of student evaluations shows.

At Queens College – a City University of New York, or CUNY school in Flushing, New York – the campus Writing Center offers multilingual tutors to “make it easier and more welcoming” for a student body whose ancestries can be traced to 153 countries.

At Mt. San Antonio College – a large, two-year public college in Walnut, California – students regularly credit a program called ARISE with providing peer mentors, culturally relevant courses and a sense of community.

Student Angelyca Sarrol says the program has given her a “place to focus on my studies while also learning more about my culture.”

“I have met so many amazing people who continue to teach me new things and push me to be a better person,” says Sarrol, who now serves as a peer mentor in the program. A communication major, Sarrol hopes to transfer to a California State University system school in fall of 2025.

All three of these initiatives – the refugee course, the ARISE program and the multilingual writing center – are funded through federal grants for schools designated as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution – or AANAPISI. The designation is for schools where at least 10 percent of the undergraduate population is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.

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