Ohio State helping Immokalee student follow her dreams of becoming a pediatrician

Even though she spent a chunk of her childhood in the Midwest, Nallely Segura, a first-year Ohio State University student, has never seen fall colors — or snow.

“The first time I saw a red leaf, I took a picture and sent it to my mom,” she recently told The Columbus Dispatch.

Segura’s parents, who are migrant farmworkers, raised their children on the move as they followed the growing seasons from state to state. Summers were spent in Indiana picking tomatoes, corn and other vegetables. Winters were passed in the watermelon fields of Southwest Florida, where the children attended school. Depending on when the summer harvest ended, Segura and her three siblings would enroll several weeks late each year.

A pre-med student, Segura came to OSU through an innovative program in her hometown of Immokalee, where most students come from farmworker families. Tutor Corps, as it is known, has been run by Immokalee’s nonprofit group, the Guadalupe Center since 2004. It employs high school students to mentor their younger peers while at the same time preparing them for college. In just the past four years, the program has sent about 154 students to campuses across the country, according to staff members.

Sitting on a bench by Ohio State’s Mirror Lake on a chilly October morning, Segura reflected on her journey thus far.

College has been a major adjustment, she said, but “whenever things get difficult here … I just remember where I came from, and where I am now.”

“(The) Guadalupe (Center) is definitely one of the reasons why I'm here,” she added.

Unique challenges for migrant farmworker students

Students from migrant farmworker families face unique challenges, from agriculture-related interruptions to natural disasters and cycles of poverty, said Guadalupe Center Director Dawn Montecalvo.

Immokalee is a farming town of around 28,000 residents, where the per-capita income is about one-third of nearby Naples. About three-quarters of residents are Hispanic, one-fifth are Black and 28% of households fall below the poverty line.

“When I first started working with the students in Immokalee, I remember a parent saying they wanted their child ‘to work in air conditioning,’ " said Montecalvo.

“I thought that they meant they wanted them to be an HVAC technician, but they meant they just wanted them to work indoors …(not) in the fields.”

In the Tutor Corps program, high schoolers are paid to mentor younger students from kindergarten through second grade who are in the bottom quartile of their classes. The high schoolers assist adult teachers to provide after-school reading, math and homework help.

Besides earning a salary, the high schoolers get help from Guadalupe staff members to apply to college and improve their leadership skills. The center also provides each student with a scholarship of up to $16,000, depending on how long they’ve worked, and helps them unlock even more college funding from other sources. The program costs about $2.4 million per year.

Nallely’s cohort of 27 students received around $3 million in total college scholarships to attend campuses across the nation, or nearly $28,000 per student per year, according to Montecalvo. Almost all are going to college debt-free.

“It’s a support system that I didn't know that I needed,” said Segura, whose parents both came to U.S. from Mexico as children. “My parents, as hard working as they are, do not have much insight when it comes to college life or professional careers … simply because we've done agriculture our entire lives.”

Montecalvo noted that Nallely’s peers in Immokalee had experienced the devastating Hurricanes Irma (2017) and Ian (2022), plus COVID while in high school.

“Resiliency is a big thing in our community,” she said. “I think Nallely (Segura) shows that too.”

An aspiring pediatrician

Despite coming from a very different background than some of her peers in the Health Sciences Scholars program, Segura said she’s already starting to feel at home at Ohio State.

She wears a bracelet featuring the tricolor of the Mexican flag and recently joined the Mexican Student Association, where she’s found friends who like her Spanish jokes and who listen to the same Bad Bunny songs.

“It’s really helpful just because it is very easy to get lost in such a big campus. … Whenever I go to those meetings, I'm back at home,” she said of the Mexican Student Association.

Segura wants to become a pediatrician, because she loves children and because of the disparities in health care access she witnessed growing up. In Immokalee, the nearest emergency room is nearly 45 minutes away, she said.

She hopes to one day provide health services right in Immokalee.

Remembering that goal “keeps me motivated to stay,” she said. “At the end of the day, all of what I do is for my community.”

Peter Gill covers immigration, New American communities and religion for the Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You can support work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America at: bit.ly/3fNsGaZ. Connect with Gill at pgill@dispatch.com or follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @pitaarji.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State pre-med student from Immokalee following her dreams