Search | Menu Profiles from the Pack: Nicole Sandoval
Nicole Sandoval is Madison College’s Latinx Community Liaison in the College Culture and Climate Division. She is a dynamic leader dedicated to integrating the college into the surrounding community.
Tell us about your background and how you came to Madison College.
I was born in La Paz, Bolivia and lived there until I was seven when my family migrated to Middleton, Wisconsin. I remember the exact date – Feb. 24, 2000. It was Y2K and everybody thought the world was going to end, but for me, my world was ending because I was uprooted to a whole new country. I was in second grade at a school where the culture and language were unfamiliar. I learned English quickly and became the family translator for everything from legal stuff to medical appointments. I graduated from high school and went to Edgewood College where I earned a bachelor's degree in political science and ethnic studies. My parents earned college degrees in Bolivia, but I was the first in my family to navigate college in the United States.
After college, I worked as a legal assistant in Chicago on immigration policy before returning to Madison. I began working at the front desk of the Madison College advising office, which was a great starting point because it was the first step for students. I got to touch every part of the college whether it was enrollment, financial aid, student services and counseling. So, I got to understand the student experience. From there I moved to recruitment in the high schools and helped families navigate the system. Eventually, I was appointed to my current role, and I love what I’m doing - connecting with the community and ensuring that the college is an accessible choice for everybody.
Talk about your community engagement work.
Our role is to build bridges with community organizations like Centro Hispano, Institue for Chicanx Studies (XIES), Latino Chamber of Commerce, La Movida Radio Station and several others. We make sure that Madison College is accessible to them for hosting events, bringing different speakers and forwarding different initiatives. For instance, on Oct. 23, we have a bilingual job fair at Goodman South that is very successful in introducing students and community members to employers. I see my role as embedding Madison College’s equity and inclusion work into everything we do out in the community.
What accomplishment at Madison College are you proud of?
I love forming relationships with people. For me it's all about being able to build that bridge with so many different areas and have an impact throughout the entire college. Something I take a lot of pride in is being able to help individuals throughout the college with the work that I do.
What are your super skills?
I like reading and attended a week-long speed-reading retreat. It has been such a hallmark in my life. Now I can read any book in 90 minutes and tell you what it was about, but the real benefit of the training was personal growth, development, and emotional intelligence. It was shocking to me to see the transformation I went through during that week.
As somebody who works in education, understanding how our minds work and how we're not teaching students how to read properly was an ah-ha moment. There's always that drop off where kids either love reading or hate reading. But reading can be fun if we teach it the proper way. Learning all of that while also growing and developing as a professional was just mind blowing to me. I came back a different person.
What’s next for the work you’re doing here?
I focus a lot on the growth of the Latino community at Madison College. We’re what I would call an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). It's an unofficial status right now but my goal is to lay the foundation to become an official HSI and we're getting there. An HSI is an accredited, degree-granting public or private nonprofit high-education institution with at least 25% Latino or Hispanic undergraduate enrollment. Right now, we’re at about 16-17%. It’s something I continue to bring to the attention of leadership and anyone who can help us pave the way to do the training and add to our collective toolkit to formally achieve that designation.
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