2026 CHHS Annual Faculty and Staff Retreat

Mr. Jose L. Posos, Executive Director of Circle of Care for Families and Children of Passaic County, New Jersey, will lead a discussion on the wellness of the Massachusetts Latino community and how we can prepare our diverse student population to meet the health care opportunities in our region.

Following Mr. Posos’ presentation, MMCHHS students and faculty will share what they learned at this year’s AHSIE conference, recently held in Boston, and what they would like to bring to SSU.

Bios
Mr. Jose L. Posos, M.Ed., LPC, is the Executive Director of Circle of Care for Families and Children of Passaic County, New Jersey, where he leads a team serving nearly 1,000 youth and families with complex behavioral health needs each month. A licensed professional counselor, Jose brings experience across hospital settings, higher education, and public systems. He has worked directly with college students navigating mental health challenges, identity development, and the realities of being first-generation and from immigrant families. He is also a first-generation college graduate and the son of immigrant parents, experiences that continue to shape how he understands student success.

Jose focuses on the gap between what institutions intend and what students actually experience. His work highlights the pressures that often remain invisible in academic spaces, including financial strain, family expectations, immigration-related stress, and the tension students carry as they move between different cultural worlds. He challenges institutions to look more closely at how policies, practices, and everyday interactions can either create access or create barriers, with an emphasis on what is within our control to change.

He has delivered testimony at the state level and presented on mental health, equity, and system accountability. His perspective connects what happens outside the classroom with what faculty experience inside it, offering a practical lens on how institutions can better support student engagement and success.

Dr. Elisa Castillo serves as the Assistant Vice President of Hispanic and Minority Serving Initiatives at Salem State University. A licensed psychologist in Massachusetts, Dr. Castillo has been a higher education professional focused on wellness, prevention and inclusion for the last 20 years. In her current role, her goal is to prepare the university to become an intentional Hispanic and Minority Serving Institution with a focus on “Servingness” that considers the needs of Latinx and other underserved students to close equity gaps and help all students thrive. Under her leadership, Salem State has developed a “Roadmap to Servingness” to prepare to become an intentional HSI-MSI. She led a statewide consortium of emerging and designated HSIs that hosted the first New England HSI-MSI Conference in 2024.

A G E N D A
8:30-9:00   Breakfast and Informal Interaction 
9:00-9:15   Welcome by Dean Ansari, MMCHHS
9:15-9:30   Remarks from Dr. Elisa Castillo – Servingness at SSU: Centering our Students
9:30-10:45 How to foster student success with first – generation and immigrant college students with Jose L. Posos, Executive Director of Circle of Care and specialist in immigrant youth mental health 
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 Student and Faculty Voices Panel Discussion: MMCHHS sponsored students and faculty to attend the national HSI conference (AHSIE) in Boston 
12:00 –2:00  Lunch and Team Building Activities