“It’s letting them know that it’s okay to struggle.”
Enrique Otero
Psychology Professor
Dallas College’s North Lake campus
.…on helping students prepare for life after college, via LinkedIn.
After two decades on the North Lake psychology faculty, Otero does more than simply teach about things like cognitive theories, behaviorism, and the psychoanalytic approach. He also focuses on his students as people facing what could be an uncertain future. So how does he help them prepare for future challenges?
Otero’s passion is to help students through the challenges “they will inevitably experience,” says Dallas College psychology professor. “I relay to them my own struggles and how I was able to overcome them.”
He’s “always thrilled” to hear from students that he’s helped along the way.
After two-plus years of dealing with COVID-related virtual learning and attendant stresses, Otero notes that colleges are coming out the other side much like many North Texas companies, aiming for a better new normal.
“It’s my hope that we get back to the level of collegiality and collaboration that we’ve had in the past,” Otero says. “Now that we’re a single college, I feel it’s important that we all feel a shared sense that we’re together for a common purpose and common good. It certainly starts and ends with students and how we can help them be successful, but we also need to ensure our employees are successful, too.”
The course his career has taken at North Lake College had never occurred to Otero as an option going forward, he recalls in a Dallas College Making a Difference post. But in 2002, while teaching at Irving ISD, “a friend of mine asked me if I’d be interested in teaching at the college level.”
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