When Pa Her first started at UW-Madison, her parents didn?t come with her to freshman orientation. They picked her up from campus but never saw the inside of a classroom. They didn?t know what she meant when she said she was stressed out by final exams. “My parents, they don?t speak English,” she said. “They had no idea what this university means. They know it?s a great university.” Her?s experience is common among Hmong students, a campus research team has found.
“It became very clear to us from this research project that we needed to bring Hmong parents onto campus for them to be able to see what buildings were, to see what the resources were, to find out about their son or daughter’s educational experiences first-hand,” said Alberta Gloria, a professor of counseling psychology who leads the Hmong Research Team.