Wright Welcomes Director of Bilingual and Undocumented Students.

By: Reanna Sturgill

The Director of Bilingual Programs and Undocumented Student Liaison, Jocelyn Martinez, began working at Wright College in January.  She is the first to hold this position institutionalized at Wright. Martinez said, “It’s important to have a position like this.”

As director of bilingual programs, Martinez works on supporting and providing resources for Latinx or Spanish-speaking students. She hopes to expand programs to include more languages in the future.

Bilingual students are given a cohort-based model for one year in the AVANZA program to increase their chances of success at Wright. 

Martinez is currently recruiting for the fall 2025 cohort, hoping to expand the cohort past one year as the program grows. This will be the fifth cohort at Wright in the program.

A cohort is a group of about 25 students who will take classes together throughout their time at Wright. The smaller size is to better work with students more individually and focus on the support. These students are put in classes with bilingual faculty.

Director Martinez’s flyers are in Spanish and English outside her office, room A252.

Martinez is actively working to get more tutoring support for bilingual students in the tutoring center. There is an undocumented liaison at each seven city colleges. Martinez oversees activities for Wright College and the satellite college, Humboldt Park.

All students, regardless of status, are protected through FERPA, a law to protect students’ information from being shared among faculty or staff. This means, Martinez has no way of finding documentation status of students through Navigate. 

Martinez discovers most of her students through conversation. Students disclose their status to her or to a trusted advisor who will then work with Martinez to best help the student’s needs. 

To build trust with faculty and staff, Martinez has been following up with members after introductions for 30 minutes to an hour. During this time, she finds out who they are, what they do at Wright, and how to collaborate with them. 

Martinez said, “I am just kinda inserting myself where possible so that they know that I’m here to support them in any way that I can because it’s a community effort.”

Martinez is collaborating with the English faculty to create a resource guide for bilingual and undocumented students. This guide will be available in Fall 2025. 

In response to the new anti-DEI agenda, Martinez fears for her students more than herself. 

Martinez said, “From what I’ve been told, I think Wright College has the mindset of ‘unless something drastic happens, we’re moving how we’ve been moving. I also come from a background of different areas of higher education. I know it’s scary to belong to something like that right now. But I think, just continue to– all I can do in my personal job or the way I see it is take it one day at a time.”