Impact of Service-Learning on Hispanic College Students: Building Multi-cultural Competence

This article explores the experiences of Spanish-speaking heritage language university students in a sign language interpreting program who were enrolled in service-learning classes. In the service-learning classes, the students partnered with a community service-agency for the deaf that provided intervention services to Spanish-speaking families with deaf children. The findings indicate that the students developed a deeper awareness of their own multicultural and multilingual identity. Moreover, the students gained authentic experiences in brokering linguistic and cultural differences between the American deaf and Hispanic communities in an effort to enhance intervention services for the deaf Hispanic children.

Acceptability of the “Love, Sex, & Choices” HIV Prevention Intervention by Hispanic Female College Students

Introduction: Hispanic women are affected by HIV. “Love, Sex & Choices” (LSC) is an innovative 12-episode urban soap opera video series targeting young adult Black women streamed to smartphones. This study purpose was to determine whether LSC is an acceptable HIV prevention intervention for female Hispanic college students in South Florida. Method: After institutional review board approval, female Hispanic college students were recruited from two campuses to watch the LSC video series and complete an online evaluation survey. Results: Study participants ( n =101) evaluated LSC as definitely/probably important for women (97.0%), helpful for making relationship decisions (86.2%), changing attitudes about having sex (79.2%), asking partners to use a condom (80.2%), leaving partners who won’t use condoms (74.2%), handling oneself in tough situations in a relationship (79.2%), and getting an HIV test (83.2%). Participants liked/related to LSC and thought their friends would also like the series. Conclusions: Results indicated that young Hispanic women related to the video series, were likely to get HIV tested after watching the video series, found the story lines realistic, and thought their friends would like the series. The next step is to test the effectiveness of LSC to change behaviors of young Hispanic women at risk of HIV.