LUIS ANDRES HENAO, of Associated Press, reports on how a US community college professor, despite facing a personal tragedy, spearheaded the development of a multi-lingual brochure to help different ethnicities in the US and elsewhere access information on COVID-19…
When the coronavirus pandemic struck New York City, LaGuardia Community College professor Lucia Fuentes assigned students in her honours biology class to compile all the information they could find about COVID-19.
The result? An online multilingual brochure based on research from peer-reviewed journals, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has become a valuable resource for immigrants in the United States and their families abroad.
“Science is complicated and we have to make it more accessible,” Fuentes said. “This is why…I thought it would be a good thing for the students, and that it would be a contribution.”
LaGuardia Community College professor Lucia Fuentes teaches her honors biology class via videoconference from Ontario, Canada, on Tuesday, 4th May. Fuentes assigned her students to create multilingual online brochures on the science of the coronavirus and vaccinations to help make the information more accessible. PICTURE: Lorena Fuentes via AP.
Nothing stopped the project – not even the death of Fuentes’ husband on 25th March, 2020, due to complications from COVID-19, or her own bout with the disease. In her grief, she remains committed to her students and determined to prevent others from getting sick.
“I wasn’t going to drop my students, and I knew they were going through tons of really horrible stuff,” she said. “I talked to some of them afterwards … and they really appreciated that.”
“Students gave me strength. Knowing that they expected me to be there, that’s what propels me. It always has. I love my students.”
– LaGuardia Community College professor Lucia Fuentes
She also valued their support.
“Students gave me strength,” she said. “Knowing that they expected me to be there, that’s what propels me. It always has. I love my students.”
This illustration provided by LaGuardia Community College shows an online brochure on COVID-19 produced by students at the college, which has been translated into Chinese and several other languages. The multilingual project was spearheaded by professor Lucia Fuentes, who guided her honours biology students in researching, preparing and publishing information on the coronavirus and the vaccines developed to counter it. PICTURE: LaGuardia Community College via AP.
The class brochures were also printed and distributed in her native Guatemala as well as in Colombia. Her most recent work involves information about COVID vaccines.
Students have already helped translate the latest brochures into their native languages, including Albanian, Korean and Portuguese.
Fuentes’ project is rooted in her own life experiences. She fled Guatemala after her father – Alberto Fuentes Mohr, a respected political leader, economist and diplomat – was kidnapped in 1970 and killed in 1979. When she went into exile to Switzerland, she didn’t know French, and she felt like she fell behind in class because of the language barrier.
“It was an eye-opener in every way in terms of how I realise the struggle and the questioning of the `fairness’ of those of us who get the possibility of having an education,” she said.
When she became a college professor, she saw how her students faced a similar struggle.
“I realised that it was the language. They were smart, they knew the stuff, it was just the language.”
Ruben Felipe Perez, a LaGuardia student from Colombia who hopes to attend medical school, called Fuentes an “amazing human being” who inspires many by overcoming great challenges in her quest to keep others safe.
“She just turned all that grief into giving to the rest of the community,” he said.
