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Hello everyone welcome again to another segment of find your business hosted by IBC Commerce Bank and myself Gabriel Castillo executive vice president at IBC I would like to take the opportunity right now to say thank you and welcome back actually to Dr. Benita Ramirez president at Laredo College so good to have you back again. Thank you, Gabriel, and thank you to IBC and Commerce Bank for hosting this incredible show. I know that we all watch it on Sunday mornings, and it's a real pleasure to get some insights to some of the things that are happening in town, and today we're going to do the same. Yes, and exactly, especially right now, because this is a very special segment for me, because you kind of saved my life the first time we did our first show, because I needed a guest, I needed someone dynamic, someone great that would kick this off, launch the show. And you said yes, and I was very happy about that, especially because you were starting on a very important journey back then as well. I think you were already kind of working your way, getting your feet wet with running the college. And a lot has happened since then. And I'm so pleased and so proud about everything you've done because I only hear great things from the community, from our community leaders, and most importantly from our students. And I think that's a great thing. And let me start off with that. Tell me some of the highlights of what's happened lately, because I don't even know where to start. I see the nursing program. I See some of your other programs in education, etc. What what are some of them? So we've got, we're certainly blessed, right? We've had incredible support from the community, our partnerships with the school districts, our partnerships with businesses like IBC and others. We're certainly blessed to continue to do the work here in Laredo and providing the education to our students. But along the same lines, I think we've encountered some changes in how people expect their kids to go to college. The workforce has changed and we're looking at how do we continuously make ourselves nimble enough and flexible enough to move into new programs and new opportunities for students so that as the economy changes, as business changes, so do we. And we're able to provide the appropriate workforce for the community. And that's been one of the greatest opportunities for us to stay in touch with where do students want to work? What futures do they want? And how do we facilitate that? It's been an incredible experience for us. And And certainly recently, those of you that are keeping up, we had a car show, we had Fun Fest, and these are some of the fun things. But we're having the biggest graduating class this next Friday. We have over 1,300 students graduating. My God. And it could be with a certificate, a licensure, an associate's degree, an applied associate's decree, a bachelor's degree. So we're really trucking along here. In two short years, we've already awarded 161 bachelor's degrees. Can you imagine? Whether they're bachelors of nursing or a bachelor's of applied science in organizational leadership. And so this gives our community an opportunity to get a promotion, to move up, to gain more responsibility and really make a difference for us. And the good thing is that a lot of these students, thankfully, are staying in our city, which is what we want, right, for our students. And you're giving them the opportunity also, if they can't afford it, to work their schedules around work, around family, all the things that kind of sometimes hinder the progress of higher education. Right. We recently finished a study. It's called a SESI program. And where we ask our students, how many of you are working? How many of your working part time? How many of You're working? And, and the vast majority and of our full time students are have either a full time or part time job. And we're looking at somewhere about 80% of our students are working either part-time or full-time and so but along the same lines we have about about 82 percent of our students that are receiving full Pell grants and so the reason they're working is because they're either part of or the sole breadwinner for a family and so the age range of our student is from 14 to I think our oldest student right now now is 72 years old. Wow. And, and so people who want to come back, reskill, retool, we welcome them back. If you're in dual credit programs with us, we Welcome you too. If it's someone that says, I've been working at this job for a long time, and I have missed out on promotions, because I never got my bachelor's degree, then our bachelors of applied science and organizational leadership is for you because you're going to learn or have the opportunity to learn leadership skills to help you manage an office or help you manage your department. And it's been extremely, extremely successful. This summer, we're starting a program with some of our law enforcement folks, specifically our fire department, for leadership development training for them. And so that I think is going to spark another interest. That was in partnership with our fire chief, who's become very much involved at our college and supporting our EMS program. But we really do have something for everyone. Whether you're reskilling, whether you're starting fresh, whether you never went to school, whether you wanted to come, this is your chance. Right now, you have money. IBC has money. We have money to offer scholarships. We also have funding available through the Pell Grant process. And so if you've never used your entitlements, use them now. If you don't know how to come to school, come and ask us. We're open Monday through Thursday from 8 to 6, and then on Fridays from 8 to 12. And you know, that's very important to let people know where they can find the funding. I know a lot of people are lost. Parents, especially first-time parents, first- time parents of high school students i want to talk a little bit more about that and some other items that you're offering within the school because they're very important to us and most importantly by fyi i'm going to plug in ibc uh we do offer scholarships to our students but we give them through the counselors at every high school and i know that we've received some already with applications so more to come and we could we could graduate all those high school in college students are about to graduate. There's a bright future ahead, but we're going to talk a little bit more about that bright future and what Laredo College is doing and what IBC is doing, trying to do more for everybody. We'll be right back. We'll see you next time. you haven't discovered yet. If you have a story to share or want to be featured, send us an email at hola at kgns.tv. We'd love to connect with you. And don't forget to follow us on social media to keep up with everything we've got going on. Laredo, this is for you. See you soon. Today, we're teaching the children to save. IBC Bank teaches children to say, At IBC bank, we believe financial education starts early. That's why we're bringing fun, interactive learning straight to the classroom. from hands-on workbooks to exciting prizes. Our financial literacy sessions teach students how to make smart money moves they'll carry for life. Want your school to be part of the fun? Contact IBC Bank today and schedule your free financial literacy class. 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I am your host, Gabriel Castillo, Executive Vice President at IBC Bank. and this show is brought to you by IBC Bank and Commerce Bank and we're very happy to come back and talk to a Dr. Benita Ramirez who's sharing a lot of very potentially important information for soon to be college students soon to be college student parents and hopefully soon to be successful individuals so that's that's a whole idea so tell me a little bit more we were talking when we took a little break about your next steps for the college and what you were doing tell me about the programs that you've implemented so far that you think have gotten you further so aside from our what I call our crown jewels right our nursing program is definitely a crown jewel and we have now we have a third bachelor's degree we have a bachelor's Degree of Science in Nursing a Bachelor's of Applied Science science and organizational leadership and the third one that we added this year is a applied a bachelor's of applied science in data analytics and so the the whole technology opportunity for people to to learn and understand is going to be the wave of the future I was just at an international conference where I was speaking but one of the other keynote speakers was talking to us on agentic AI and the whole artificial intelligence move and how do we take that data and make it our own and use it to our advantage and individuals have to be trained how to use that and so we're trying to get ahead of that game requiring all of our students to somehow get comfortable with using that every day employers now more and more are adding statements in the all of their job postings that if you're not comfortable with AI you're not going to be considered for the job and so we're encouraging our students to make sure that they take these courses and and start getting familiar with what it is that they can do on using some of these technologies the other thing we're embedding into most of our in all of our workforce programs is what we consider essential skills. How do you interview? How do prepare for an interview? how to dress for an interview? What can you expect when you go try to apply for a job? How to fill out a job application? What is your resume supposed to look like? All of that is being embedded into our workforce programs so that individual students aren't lost when it's time to apply for for either a job or a university where they want to transfer to they need to understand how to do that hopefully the communication skills you and I don't have a problem communicating with each other or anybody but certainly how do we help individuals gain that confidence yeah and I've always told students as early as kindergarten the more you read it's true the more you know and the easier it becomes for you to have those fluid conversations about what's important to you or what's important to the public or the community right now and you know i had to mention that when i had my when i have my three i was raising my three nephews i knew that they had to do what i didn't do because i should have read more but um i literally started just enticing them with comic books and it's amazing because i i literally made it more difficult as time went on to get comic books with more information more text and once i started that it was funny because the leader and i got to the point where their punishment was you're not going to read the book if you don't do this so they wanted to read absolutely and it was amazing how that happened but you also have to be part-time psychologist if you're a parent and figure out how to get into the psyche of your kids and and how to work through them well you have to i think the key thing is understanding what are your your child's strengths right and and you know we i talk to parents a lot people call me all the time this morning i had two people call and say well he doesn't want to do this and i said well why do you want him to do that if that's not what he wants to do well i always wanted to be a but well this is not your life this is your child's life and so it's hard for us to sometimes understand that our kids have different desires wants and needs and and all kids are different all students are different especially as the age range changes but I will tell you this for parents whose kids are getting ready to graduate in May if your child has not taken an SAT or ACT you need to get on that immediately yeah TSI scores are critical they that's what what colleges and universities use for placement and in some even for acceptance and so you need to make sure that that you stay close and on top of that if your child has not applied yet for for colleges or universities we're open enrollment come see us at Laredo College we'll do it immediately but ApplyTexas.org is your quickest solution and it's online and it is free. The moment an application tells you that there is a fee, you better check to make sure that you are on the right website. And so those are little key things. The other is certainly financial aid and you and I talk about that a lot. There are opportunities. The Star Scholarship is open right now and they are always looking for folks to apply to their scholarship program the south texas rising scholars program and uh and the lamantia family does a great job with that program but but more and more of our students or fewer and fewer of our are applying for scholarship and so we want to encourage uh encourage students to apply for scholarship because like ibc offers wonderful scholarships to high school students you just need to apply and uh and don't be afraid there's nothing to fear and and so we we the federal pell grant application is open too and that's a free application as well and i'm going to talk a little bit about that uh when we get to our next segment because we've got a section just on how to survive college and how to survival financially and that one thing that's very important i think that parents realize is that they need to start teaching their kids about financial literacy at a very early age and by early I mean the minute they're walking in the minute that they comprehend that they want a toy you have to teach them about money because nothing comes for free want versus need right and your child and sometimes even the parents have to realize there's a difference and you have to realise that difference but I think that moving forward I see a lot of accomplishments here and I know there's there's so much more to cover I want to go ahead and talk about that in our next segment so don't go away please stay with us because we're going to be talking to me need that let me do some more about Laredo College and all the great things that are happening there we'll be right back why pay a monthly fee free checking at IBC how strong is your app security Hola, Laredo. Marcela Delgado here, inviting you to join the fun. there's a little bit of everything for everyone lifestyle fashion wellness local shops and services yummy eats life music entertainment and of course so much more catch the hola segments on air only on cajun s plus visit our website holalaredo.com follow us on our social media too want an interview for your business or event send us an email talk soon Why pay a monthly fee? Free checking at IBC. Welcome back to another segment of Mind Your Business. My name is Gabriel Castillo, and I have the pleasure of having as our special guest Dr. Benita Ramirez, President of Colorado College, who's sharing all the great things about the college and then some advice to our parents and to our students, which is so important. You know, we were talking a minute ago about what we did, what we do and how we were raised, how we're trying to raise how we tried to raise our own children. And I remember the one thing that was very difficult, I think now looking back for my mother, not my father, my mother was more of the running the show. But she told me at a very young age that you're not as smart as your brother, but that's not a bad thing. He said, you just have to realize that you're going to have to try harder and you're going to focus more and you have to pay attention more. So you pay, I mean it was so, because she said it maybe three times in my whole life. But they were important times. Didn't I tell you to pay attentions? You didn't do this, you missed that. And then my teachers noticed it. And I had some great teachers that I think to some extent probably even covered for me sometimes because they knew I was trying. I really felt like that sometimes. They were like, or they would tell you, they would take the test and they would say, read number three again. Start again. Start again, yeah. Are you sure you want to put this answer? I know, I know. But, you know, as parents, we have to be realistic, too. And every child is different. Absolutely. No one's lesser in any way. They're just different. So you have to, you don't. I have a quick story about that during my teaching days. uh i used to bonus question was when was the war of 1812 and people would leave it blank i would say you all i put the answer in the question 1812 right so uh but but it's because they people panic it's not something that was rehearsed it wasn't something that was practiced and so people don't want to be wrong and and and i had those students that were teacher is this right teacher is this right because people are afraid to be wrong and and it's not somebody else's fault it's yours and we want to place blame on someone all the time you can't sometimes we do make mistakes we're all human beings and and we're not perfect but there are things we can do like your mom says you need to pay attention you need you need to get your work done and you need to submit your applications in on time and that's the one thing that i think is very important and with that said the other part that's very important is also teaching your kids about financial matters and this college degree is going to help you now it's going to be sacrificed now but it's for the best of the future for your future so i you know i know that we talked about things that you were offering within the college and earlier uh i was speaking to a colleague here who was taught we were talking about uh loans and the different horror stories of taking out student loans and how you have to work that out too you know that's why when you i go back to the the part-time jobs and and getting uh working and paying your own you know tuition and paying those things there are programs there that you're a lot you all are offering we do uh gabriel right off the top, let me just say that Laredo College does not do Stafford loans. We do not do government supported loans.We do not offer our students loans. We are committed to making sure that students finish their program degree without debt. We have made a very strong and concerted effort with the help of some amazing donors and the help of of our students because we have the flexibility to to internally make some very strong decisions the first decision I have to give credit to our Board of Trustees for the last 12 years this is year 13 we will not raise tuition fees again I saw that I realized that what I saw your report and so that means that you're getting a 2026 education for a price that was paid 13 years ago Wow so I think that speaks volumes to the kind of commitment that Laredo College has to this community the other thing that we are committed to is if you don't qualify for any kind of grant or federal or state assistance that you're entitled to, if you don't qualify, we do have an opportunity for students to apply for what we call the Palomino Pledge. And we have set aside from our regular tuition and fees a certain percentage of money. We set that aside to support students to pay for their tuition and fees. Now, your personal expenses are your personal experiences, but your tuition and fees will be covered. And if you're enrolled full-time, you're going to get a meal plan. You're going get to eat twice a day. You have total access to our food pantry and total access to our clothing pantry. So we're trying to help our students not only prepare themselves and graduate without debt, graduate with the essential skills that you need to be successful, but more importantly, get the kind of education you want. You talked about what kinds of programs. We run the gamut. Whether you want to do a general construction program, which so generously is being supported through the DDHR Foundation, we have that program. We have welding. We have electronics. Wehave HVAC. All of those programs, all of our automotive programs. but then you have your academic programs so you want to transfer to a major four-year institution or to TAMIU or to any one of the other universities you come and complete your core curriculum which we used to call the basics now it's called the core curriculum you finish your core curriculum with us you get your associate's degree and then you transfer to that institution and all of your credits will transfer because that core curriculum is decided by the state yeah so it has to transfer with you so there's no money lost that's wonderful and so we're here we partner strongly with businesses so that they help we have some incredible partners that say we're going to send you our our employees we're gonna pay for the tuition you need to get them through this program because these are the skills we need and that's what we do and you know the the The reality is that we have to look very carefully as parents at what we can really afford and what your child can really afford. I have a cousin who has two daughters. One daughter decided she wanted to go out of town. She wanted to got a teaching degree. The other daughter stayed here in town, started with Laredo College and went on and went to higher education here. This one walks in, comes back with 40,000 some dollars worth of loans. this one with no long stone i think this one who stayed here is already buying her house yeah he's already this one cannot afford because your credit is bad because she's still trying to pay off stuff who same degree same plan you know but that's the thing it's like be realistic you know and why take advantage of the fact that we have it you know a perfect facility here perfect teachers great teachers to to get you there and uh help you succeed well and and the University, the TAMIU is a great place to finish your bachelor's degree if that's what you want to do. We partner very closely with them. We partner with Kingsville. We partner mit UTSA. We partner wit Sam Houston State University. We partner whit UTRGV. We have incredible, incredible universities that come to our campus to try to work with our students. And, you know, we're here to support you through the process. my biggest concern always is get your applications in on time because people want to try to do things at the last minute there are deadlines and those deadlines sometimes are out of our control so call us come see us we'll help you and don't get in debt yeah on that note thank you so much there was so much information we would never have enough time to talk but thank you audience as well and I hope y'all will look you up at laredo.edu right I remember that how good I am lareda.edu look them up and check them out for your college your students your family you'll want to do more there trust me thank you for joining us today and keep watching We'll see you next time.