Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2014 | Page 20

irma casTañeda ’13
COmmuNITy WORkeR WITh The IllINOIs sTuDeNT assIsTaNCe COmmIssION
maJORs: sOCIOlOgy aND sPaNIsh

“There’s nothing more empowering than education,” says Irma

andrew
Thompson ’13

One of the first two graduates to earn Wheaton’s new journalism
certificate, he spent his junior year interning for a nonprofit
organization and for Christianity Today magazine. He had two
stories published in print and several more on the Christianity Today
website—in English and Spanish.
Conducting interviews, and research, and writing stories while
completing his senior capstone classes fanned the desire to use
writing to spark change in his environment, as well as the desire to
learn better how to live for Christ.
Now part of a one-year internship taking the concept of
integrating faith and learning to the next level, Andrew is living
with five other young men in the program. He works four days a
week for a lobbying firm called Thorn Run Partners and one day
a week focuses on service at a homeless ministry as well as spiritual
development initiatives.
He sees this new chapter as an extension of things he started as
a student at Wheaton. Through the internship, he is paired with a
mentor and will also participate in several retreats, the 2014 National
Prayer Breakfast, and a weeklong international service trip.
His plans for the future include living abroad in a Spanishspeaking country, working in a corporate communications
setting, and living in community with a small group of believers.
“Community is absolutely essential to thriving,” he says.
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Castañeda. A first-generation college graduate, Irma learned
English at school and spoke only Spanish at church and at home.
“For most of my life, I had these two separate worlds that I
floated in and out of. Over time English became my dominant
language, and because my mom grew up in rural Mexico and
spoke only Spanish, it became very hard for us to understand one
another,” she says.
After having to trudge through the FAFSA application process
by herself and learn the college-going procedures through
trial and error, once at Wheaton, Irma applied to work for the
BRIDGE (Building Roads to Intellectual Diversity and Great
Education) program to help other prospective students not have
to go it alone. BRIDGE is a means for Wheaton to connect with
first-generation minority or low-income college-bound students
in the Chicago area.
BRIDGE Program Director Veronica Ponce ’08 became a
mentor, as did Dr. Henry Kim, associate professor of sociology.
Through BRIDGE, her coursework, and a semester abroad
in Nicaragua, Irma not only prepared for life ahead, but also
gained a new appreciation for her family.
“I did a rural home stay in Nicaragua that showed me how

irma
casTañeda ’13