News Features & Releases

My Summer: Soo Hong

This is the first in a series of articles exploring the summer work of HGSE doctoral students.

Upon the approval of HGSE doctoral student Soo Hong's dissertation proposal in May, she got on a plane to begin her research on a Chicago community organization's work with immigrant parents.

In Chicago, Hong's research focused on the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), a community group offering a program to build immigrant parent engagement in local schools. Logan Square, located on the Northwest side of the city, is the home for many Latino and immigrant families. As part of an effort to address an age old challenge--bringing immigrant families into the school--the organization places immigrant parents--mostly Latina mothers--in classrooms where they become mentors for a year.

Hong, who grew up within a Korean immigrant family and was herself a classroom teacher, explains that she experienced the disconnect that can occur between immigrant families and schools. Although many times schools want to reach out to immigrant families, it is difficult to know how to bridge the gap completely. For many of these parents in Logan Square, this is their first experience being immersed in an English-speaking environment and being active in a school. Hong plans to follow one group of parents at a school as they go through LSNA's training this year.

It was three years ago in Associate Professor Mark Warren's class that Hong first heard about this Logan Square organization. "It was the perfect intersection of my interests in community organizing, immigrant families, and school reform," she says. "There aren't that many places doing this kind of work with immigrant families, and it's an important story to tell."

For the past year, Hong has worked on making the connections possible to do her research. Her initial trips to Chicago this summer involved preparing for her dissertation work and conducting interviews with various community members and LSNA staff. She also took Spanish courses in order to better communicate and connect with parents.

As summer turns to fall, Hong will travel almost monthly to Chicago to conduct research and complete her dissertation work. So far, it is proving that her work at HGSE is never far from her mind.

"The biggest thing that happened this summer is the understanding of how my first four years of taking courses, working on research projects, and understanding methodology and theory are coming together in an incredible way," Hong says. "I'm finally here in Chicago doing my dissertation, and all the pieces of HGSE are coming together in a way that I couldn't have seen when I started."