When she was a girl growing up near the Rio Grande River in the South Valley area of Albuquerque, N.M., Karen Sanchez-Griego told her family she dreamed of being a lawyer. Family members cheerfully dismissed the little girl with smiles and condescending pats on the head.

“They were like, ‘mijita, that’s good,’ ” recalls Sanchez-Griego, using the Hispanic term of endearment. “I wasn’t encouraged to go to college.” Later, she took the ACT, and like many students at high schools with large numbers of poor ethnic students whose parents didn’t attend college, she didn’t score well on the test. Confronted by a guidance counselor who suggested that she downsize her expectations, Sanchez-Griego recalls her dispirited reaction: “I diminished in the chair.”

Shaking off her disappointment, the stubborn girl persevered, persuading an adult from her church – a college graduate – to help her. With the assistance of this mentor, she enrolled, earned a bachelor’s degree, went on to earn a master’s degree and became the principal of a public school in Albuquerque.

Today she is executive director of ENLACE (Engaging Latino Communities for Education) in New Mexico. The program essentially seeks to re-create Sanchez-Griego’s experience on a larger scale.

“Somebody helped me,” Sanchez-Griego says. “If I can’t help somebody else, what’s the point?”

With 13 programs in seven states and a five-year record of success, ENLACE is one of the nation’s thousands of initiatives that seek to better prepare underprivileged students for college. ENLACE aims to strengthen academic achievement and aspirations and to raise college awareness through the involvement of families and community institutions. ENLACE also works to improve the alignment of K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. The program essentially tries to break down divisions and barriers so that it can create a familia of educators working toward a common goal.

The impetus for the program is found in top-line statistics: Latino students are the fastest-growing population in schools today. Nationally, only about 10 percent of Latino high school graduates attend college. Latino and other low-income students are significantly less likely than their peers from middle- and high-income families to complete a college-prep curriculum in high school, according to ENLACE.

As a result, Latino students and students from other ethnic backgrounds are less prepared than white students to do college work. Among Hispanic high school graduates who go to college, 58 percent require remedial courses in literacy or math, according to data compiled by the New Mexico Higher Education Department. The remediation rate is 66 percent for American Indians, 55 percent for blacks (a small percentage of New Mexico’s population), and 36 percent for whites.

Funded by a $4.6 million startup grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, New Mexico’s three ENLACE programs – in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and the northern part of the state – bring together diverse participants. In Albuquerque, those partners include the University of New Mexico and its law school, the local school district and its administrators, elected members of the school board, teachers, guidance counselors, parents and students in various stages of the educational pipeline – including law school students, undergraduates, high school students and middle school kids.

A critical aspect of ENLACE’s efforts is the collaboration between local universities and school districts. “Given the changes in demographics, if we don’t do a better job of closing the gap between Latino and Anglo [high school] graduation rates, the entire university system in New Mexico will go into an enrollment death spiral,” says Dr. Reed Dasenbrock, provost of the University of New Mexico. “Our ability to reach into the school system and affect the culture is crucial.”

ENLACE also complements states’ initiatives. New Mexico is among a number of states that provide a financial ncentive for students to stay in school and prepare for college. The New Mexico Lottery Success Scholarship promises to pay tuition for recent graduates of state high schools (and earners of general equivalency degrees) who enroll full-time in college immediately after graduation. To be eligible, a student must be a New Mexico resident, omplete at least 12 credit hours during the first semester of college with a 2.5 GPA, and enroll full time for each semester thereafter. Students who remain eligible can receive the scholarship for up to four consecutive semesters at a two-year institution and up to eightconsecutive semesters at a four-year institution. By law, students are eligible for scholarships regardless of their immigration status.