1st Generation Ph.D., 1st Generation Master’s, and 3rd Generation Undergraduate

From The University of Toledo (UToledo)
Because it is “not a sprint, but a marathon!”

After many years of never giving up, changing my dissertation title a few times, scrapping my initial data set, and getting stuck in the dissertation process, I finally did it!!! After this week, I will be Dr. Linda Alvarado-Arce. Finally, I will have my Ph.D. in Education, Foundations and Leadership, with a minor in Gifted Education from The University of Toledo (UToledo). And I owe all of this to my wonderful husband, Roman (Ray) Arce, and my very supportive parents, who came to el Norte (Northwest Ohio) as Spanish-speaking teens, escaping the poverty that is so rampant along the southern U.S. border. My mother was 16 when she was pregnant with me, and my father was 18. The highest grade they both completed was Christian Junior High School in Laredo, Texas.

With nothing to lose, my parents decided to make a trip North with friends to seek employment and a better life for me and later my siblings. This car ride landed them in Lansing, Michigan, where the automobile factories were taking anyone and everyone. This is where I would be born, and my father would work his whole career at Power Train, AKA General Motors (Union PROUD), until his retirement. This decision to move North, out of Laredo, Texas, to give birth to me, and raise us, my sister and my brother, in Defiance, Ohio, was the best decision they could have ever made. Although I love Laredo, poverty remains rampant along the southern U.S. border, and educational opportunities are limited.

Once my father transferred to Defiance, Ohio, we lived across the street from Defiance College most of my life. There, my parents would take English as a Second Language (ESL) classes because they only spoke Spanish. They would get their General Educational Development (GED) degree. And my mother would go on to get her Bachelor’s from Defiance College in social work, and become a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) in the State of Ohio. She worked for Five County Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, doing education around the negative effects of drugs, alcohol, and domestic violence, and at migrant farm labor camps, doing the same thing.

She even did her social work internships at Compass & SASI, right here in Toledo, Ohio. At that time, SASI was run by former Mayor Jack Ford, who, in this position and with my mother as his intern and numerous others in the Latinx community, created Adelante, a Spanish language substance abuse prevention agency once located in the historic South End of Toledo. She was friends with Sofia Quintero and is still friends with Arturo and many of the other founders of the Guadalupe Center. She retired from Children’s Services in Paulding County, where she was a Child Abuse and Neglect Investigator and is currently working as a social worker at Compassion Toledo for a program she co-founded called “Con-Pasión,” which is a mental health and recovery services agency specializing in the Latinx, Spanish-speaking population, and that fills the gap Adelante, Inc. left behind.

My father earned an Associate’s degree in criminal justice, worked at GM, volunteered as a police officer when needed, was an active member of the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Knights of Columbus, and opened with his best friend, Jessie Juarez, the first “Taco Wagon” food truck in Northwest Ohio that was at every local festival and county fair. All my parents ever wanted to do was share their culture, language, and food with the folks in Northwest Ohio. My dad would bring pottery, marbles, and Mexican products from Mexico to el Norte and sell them out of the barn we had outside of our house on the northside of Defiance. This love and preservation for our Latinx culture were also the reasons why my parents became founding members of the Hispanic Awareness Organization (HAO), and numerous other Latinx community organizations and churches, i.e., the Latin American Club, Vida Church, and now Compassion Toledo.

My parents were also very political, they worked on Richard Celeste’s campaign, state voting rights committees, and immigrant rights groups. Some of the most life-changing Latinx advocacy events my parents ever took me to were in Columbus, Ohio, with the establishment of the Ohio Latino Affairs Commission, the Latino “Get Out the Vote” Initiatives of the 1980s, and when we marched with Cesar Chavez for the United Farm Workers’ (UFW) when he came to Toledo. My mother was even the first Latina to run for the Board of Education in our hometown of Defiance, Ohio.

Due to my parents’ love for education, and my mother always taking me across the street from where we lived to her alma mater, either for classes she was enrolled in or campus events, I quickly fell in love with learning and university life. And, well, it also helped that we lived among all the college professors, I played and went to school with their children, and learned early on the importance of an education and being bilingual. My mother and I even taught Spanish out of our home to all the neighborhood kids when I was a child.

My uncle Eduardo would even take me to his alma mater, Michigan State University (MSU), in Lansing, Michigan, where he earned his Bachelor’s in Education and retired as a bilingual education teacher in Denton, Texas. But this is not surprising because my great uncle, his uncle, was one of the first Latinos to graduate from Baylor University. So, education and the love of education, especially bilingual education, runs in my blood. I have spent my whole life going between the U.S. and Mexico, visiting and staying with family on both sides of the border. My family is scattered throughout Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, and Saltillo, Mexico. I have spent my whole life bicultural, bilingual, translating, and code-switching between English and Spanish.

I have a Bachelor of Arts with a major in social work. I am also, like my mother, an LSW in the state of Ohio. I am a certified mediator and a grant writer. Since my undergraduate years, I have always worked within the Latinx community in one way or another. And my first undergraduate social work internships were at Adelante, Unison, Harbor, and the Community Health Centers that were once located in the old South End and the Eastside of Toledo. After interning at these local agencies, I became the program coordinator, program evaluator, and grant writer for Adelante, a Family Service Worker for E.O.P.A./Head Start, and later a Deputy Director for Monroe (MI) County’s Head Start program where I oversaw Program Governance, Social Services, Parent and Family Involvement, Fatherhood Initiatives, numerous classrooms, and the transportation department.

However, when one of my sons was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer that required my full-time care, and I had just given birth to my fourth child, I divorced and left my employer in Michigan. I took a position with the Toledo Public School (TPS Proud!) as their District-wide Parent Coordinator to be closer to home and to better care for my newborn, my child with cancer, my autistic child, and my gifted son. It was at this time, under the direction of Superintendent Eugene Sanders, that I re-established the TPS’ Parent Congress, and thanks to him and Richard Jackson, I was offered a full scholarship to pursue my Master’s degree at UToledo and Bowling Green State University (BGSU) through the College of Education. I was actually offered a full scholarship to BGSU upon high school graduation, through a Latinx program my parents and others developed in Defiance, however, I wasn’t ready for college at that time and decided to marry and move to Virginia Beach, Virginia, instead.

My decision to return to school and attend UToledo was because I needed a job that would pay well, had days off to be with my children, and needed to be close to home. So, I switched my area of specialization from social work to education, THANKS to Dr. Laurie Dinnebel and Hernan Vasquez, a former UToledo Board of Trustees member. I was given a full-time graduate and research assistantship, scholarships, and employment at the university, which allowed me to provide for my family and complete my Master’s in Education, in Educational Foundations and Leadership (FOED), minoring in Gifted Education. I worked with Judge Devine, David Kontur, and others to create a Parent Center at UToledo. I worked with Dr. Dagmar Morales through the Office of Latino Initiatives (OLI), and once she retired, I was offered her position under President Dr. Daniel Johnson and the Provost of Academics. In that position, Dr. Dagmar Morales and I created the Latino Alumni Association (LAA), PRIMOS (an undergraduate mentorship program), and I re-started the defunct Graduate Student Association (GSA) at UToledo. My Master’s thesis topic was on The Factors Related to the Academic Success of Undergraduate Latino/a Students at a Large Midwestern University.

Since obtaining my Master’s, I have taught undergraduate classes at UToledo and BGSU on democracy and education, race, class, and gender, schools and society, and bilingual education for preservice students going into the education and teaching field. And I have presented, co-authored, and published reviews in educational academic journals that ranged from topics specific to the Latinx culture and higher education, qualitative research, book reviews, and co-authored a book chapter on Teachers’ Cultural and Professional Identities and Student Outcomes (Kumar & Alvarado, 2013, pp. 250-253).

I was the first Latinx director for the Board of Community Relations (BCR) for the City of Toledo until Mayor Kapszukiewicz’s administration rewrote a city ordinance to eliminate this position. I purchased and became the owner of the only feminist mobile bookstore in Ohio, People Called Women, LLC. I am the editor of this bilingual (Spanish/English) newspaper, La Prensa, Inc. The president of the nonprofit board, Avance Latinx Académico Society (ALAS), which oversees the only Latinx bilingual Toledo Public School, Escuela SMART Academy. I volunteer my services along the U.S. northern and southern borders and in other countries, such as Poland, Germany, and Mexico. I cofounded the Greyhound Connection, am a member of the International Sanctuary Declaration Campaign Committee, the Canadian Border Network, and co-chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)-USA, sit on the International Committee (ICOMM) for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), and I am an Ambassador at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA).

As a speaker at this year’s 2025 UToledo’s Multicultural Graduation said on Saturday, April 26^th, higher education is not a sprint- it is a marathon. He couldn’t be any more right about that. It has been a very long and tiresome marathon for me, but I am finally at the finish line, and I THANK GOD for all of these experiences and for giving me the strength and courage to never give up!