When Weber State University began looking for ways to better serve Northern Utah’s Spanish-speaking communities, leaders saw an opportunity to expand access to bilingual education. Building Puentes emerged as a way to help bridge that gap.
Launched in fall 2024, Building Puentes is a program designed to offer bilingual courses to individuals fluent in Spanish as a way to earn certificates that count towards an associate and bachelor’s degree.
Building Puentes is built off a series of programs run by academic colleges, such as childhood education, run out of the College of Social Sciences and Education; entrepreneurship run out of the Goddard School of Business and Economics; and other programming that’s run out of the College for Engineering, Applied Science and Technology.
Colleges hire adjuncts, or assign members who are fluent in Spanish to teach courses. “The adjuncts have to meet the same qualifications that any other adjunct in that department has to meet to teach English courses, but they have the additional qualification that they speak Spanish,” said Yesenia Quintana, the director for the Community Education center.
The program is designed for individuals who can do academic work in Spanish and have a higher level proficiency in Spanish. Students who participate in Building Puentes are still required to apply for financial aid, scholarships and go through admissions.
As students progress through classes taught in Spanish, courses would level off to courses entirely taught in English. Throughout the process, students are given resources and help through one-on-one meetups, support from bilingual tutors and staff and English as a Second Language classes to help improve their English skills.
“As students gain more English proficiency, and we would have those tutoring services built in for students and everything, “ Quintana said. “So that way students can begin realizing their dreams of a college education.”
Quintana said most students involved in the program are adult learners, ranging from 25 to 45 years of age.
According to recent estimates from the U.S. Census, only 25.9% of Ogden residents age 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. In a city where 31.1% of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino and 23.8% speak a language other than English at home, programs like Building Puentes aim to expand access to higher education for Spanish-speaking communities.
“This is just one way that they can enter Weber State — start their higher education journey,” Quintana said. She added that it was exciting to see the impact Building Puentes has on people’s families and neighborhoods, and to see the program growing — a lot of that growth coming from word of mouth.
She said the program, which started off with one certificate, will now have five starting in the fall.
“I get so many notes from students about how inspired their own children are, how they’re, you know, the younger members of their family are to see their parents and the older members of their family completing these certificates,” Quintana said. “And that has been very exciting to me and really informs the younger generation of the community.”
As the program grows, Quintana said her hope is for anyone to seek higher education through the Building Puentes program. “It’s another avenue for them to begin and not let language be a barrier to their dreams.”
