Christina is the Assistant Director of Student Success and Retention at Millersville University. Her main purpose is to help various groups of students adjust to life at a university. Whether working with students of color, first generation students, or anyone from underserved neighborhoods, Christina works to ensure they are set up to succeed as incoming freshman. Christina acts as a liaison with local school districts to help high school students transition into Millersville and, equally important, keep them in Millersville through graduation.
Transcript
My name is Christina Pantoja-Williams. I work here at Millersville University as assistant director of student success and retention. So, our office serves pretty much special populations. So, I work with a lot of freshman students, typically first-generation students of color, students who are coming the the university that are coming from underrepresented populations, underserved neighborhoods. I work specifically with the local school district here, the School District of Lancaster. We have a partnership with them. And so, I work with their students, helping them transition into Millersville, also creating a college-going culture at the high school. I always tell individuals it's a dual position because I'm pretty much the community liaison in our office, so I work with Lancaster County, so their community and their community agencies that are serving inner-city Lancaster, as well as, specifically, I'm responsible for the Lancaster Partnership Program, which is a program that I came into when I was a high school student, which works with our local inner-city high school, JP McCaskey High School. I am placed in the building, I work with their students from 9th through 12th grade creating that college-going culture, helping them understand why is it important to remain in high school, why is it important to get good grades, and then, once they become seniors, helping them with that college admissions process and applying and getting to colleges. Then, on the other side, I'm working with, also, college students, so helping our freshman students transition in, working with our summer program, the Pre-scholar Summer Institute, and working with those students to get them to understand the value of an education and why it's so important to leave some of the behaviors that they're used to doing at their high school, how it's not gonna transition into a college setting as well, and so, helping them understand the importance of time management, et cetera. And also, the big piece is working with the parents and helping them understand what are the things they need to do in order to get their kids into Millersville and keep them here, while they're here.
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