Building Pipelines for a Better Future

Dr. Daniel Jean often recounts with sadness the story of Robert Daniel Cuadra, an 18-year-old honor student from Paterson, New Jersey, who was planning to embark on a promising college career at Montclair State University in the summer of 2022.

Dr. Junius GonzalesMike Peters/Montclair State UniversityBut Cuadra would never actually enroll at the public research university just a few miles from his home. Five months before he was set to graduate from high school, the Puerto Rican youngster fell victim to gun violence, senselessly murdered while unloading groceries outside of his home.

“The violence and anti-intellectual culture permeating our urban centers must stop,” an angry Jean wrote in an op-ed that appeared in a local New Jersey newspaper shortly after Cuadra’s death. “Access to high-quality higher education is perhaps the strongest path towards reversing the poisonous culture, but today, the success of males in college lags behind their female counterparts-– with ‘cis’ and ‘identified’ Black and Hispanic/LatinX male outcomes the most concerning.”

To address this problem, Jean — who is the assistant provost for special programs at Montclair — has been helping to lead the charge to increase male enrollment at the university, all the while forging collaborative partnerships with the surrounding community.

Responding to a crisis