How Miami Dade College teaches students to learn, live

Muriel Sarmiento was brought to the United States as a teenager with her immigrant family from Venezuela. She struggled in high school as she grappled with a new language and culture, keeping to herself because she was afraid of others making fun of her heavy accent.

Her school experience in the U.S. changed dramatically when she enrolled in Miami Dade College’s dual-language program, one of the few of its kind in the nation. Students can take classes in Spanish for everything from biology to philosophy. The program is a part of the Honors College and is exclusively offered at the Eduardo J. Padrón campus in Little Havana.
“It is a very specific, niche program. You have to be bilingual. So we don’t teach English, nor do we teach Spanish. And our whole goal is to have you stay bilingual,” said Magda Castineyra, former director of the Miami Dade College dual-language program. She is now the dean of the Honors College.

The Honors College wanted to create a program for high-achieving bilingual high school students who were uncertain about college — because they were recent immigrants, had low standardized test scores or weren’t sure what opportunities were available to them in U.S. higher education, according to Castineyra. It was launched in 2006 and accepts 75 new students each year, with more than 75 percent born outside the U.S.

High school dual-language immersion programs are found all over South Florida and the nation, but such programs are not so common in higher education.