A Historian Will Lead A Community College In The Bronx
When Felix V. Matos Rodriguez was growing up in Puerto Rico in an extended family of sea captains, garment workers, teachers, and storytellers, the seeds of a lifelong fascination with Latino history were being sown.
Next month he will take over as president of Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, which in 1970 opened in a converted tire factory in the South Bronx to educate members of a primarily Puerto Rican community.
Like Mr. Matos Rodriguez, who moved to the mainland United States at age 18, many of those students face cultural and linguistic challenges as they make the transition to college life.
Hostos is one of six community colleges in the 23-institution CUNY system. It now enrolls about 5,100 students; about 61 percent are Hispanic and 32 percent are black. Half of the college's students have a native language other than English.
Its new president, who grew up in a suburb of San Juan, has pursued a varied career as a history professor, academic administrator, and public servant in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Mr. Matos Rodriguez, 47, served until December as secretary of the Department of Family for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In that cabinet-level position, he formulated public policy and administered the delivery of services for programs including child support, adoptions, food stamps, and elder care.
As a Puerto Rican historian and educator, he was drawn to the contributions that Hostos has made to Puerto Rican history, he says.
He also says he was attracted by the chance to preside over a bilingual college that provides higher education to an ethnically and culturally diverse community.
"A school with that mission makes it very easy for me to wake up in the morning and feel good about the work that I do."
He said he hopes to create more partnerships with community groups and improve graduation and retention rates.
"We need to be able to tailor our academic offerings and support services to students who come from very different backgrounds to help them thrive and move on to a four-year college if that's what they want to do," says the new president, who was recommended by Matthew Goldstein, the university's chancellor, after a national search. The college is named after Eugenio María de Hostos, a Puerto Rican educator, writer, and activist.
Mr. Matos Rodriguez's fascination with history began early. One grandfather was a sea captain who used to regale him with stories of his adventures plying the Caribbean waters with shiploads of perfume and cognac. A grandmother and great-grandmother took in sewing for garment mills and even stitched together baseballs. Nine of his grandfather's brothers moved to New York City in the 1940s in what was to become a mass migration from Puerto Rico. His mother, meanwhile, read Don Quixote to him at bedtime. Growing up in such a family, "how could I not love history?" he asks.
Mr. Matos Rodriguez, who attended a Jesuit high school, moved to Connecticut to go to Yale University, where he majored in Latin American studies. He received a doctorate in history from Columbia University in 1994 and taught at Yale, Northeastern University, Boston College, and the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan.
From 2000 to 2005, he taught at another campus of the City University of New York, Hunter College, where he also directed the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. His courses have included black and Puerto Rican/Latino studies, as well as Caribbean, Latin American, and Latino history.
In 2005 he returned to Puerto Rico to spend the next two years as social-welfare and health adviser to Aníbal S. Acevedo Vilá, then Puerto Rico's governor. Edwin Meléndez, director of Hunter's Center for Puerto Rican Studies, credited Mr. Matos Rodriguez with mending relations between the college and the local Puerto Rican community. Local residents wanted the center to advocate for issues that directly affected them, while the administration wanted it to also publish articles in leading academic journals.
Mr. Matos Rodriguez struck a balance, helping the center turn out research that was both academically sound and relevant to the center's constituencies.
"For all his accomplishments, he's very warm and down to earth," Mr. Meléndez says. "He always considers a wide spectrum of opinions before making a decision."
Ofelia Garcia, a professor of urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, agrees.
"He'll be the perfect president - he's not only extremely bright, knowledgeable, and committed - especially to the Latino community - but he has worked with all kinds of students who need to be lifted up," she says.
"His greatest strength is that he's a people person who works well negotiating differences without trying to hide them or make them disappear. He treats everyone with extreme respect and can get people from very different ideological camps to work together."
Author: KATHERINE MANGAN, Posted on Fri, Jun 26, 2009
