Multicultural Institute

I have been selected to represent the LKC on the planning team for the Multicultural Institute which will take place from December 10 - 12 in 2009. The conference will take place in Dallas, TX. Please consider attending. I would like to get feedback from the membership at to the types of workshops you would like to see and possibly some ideas for plenary speakers. The budget is quite small, but I thought you might know folks that you work with that might make great plenary speakers. Please feel free to post a comment on this post. Or you can email me directly at jperez@georgefox.edu. I look forward to seeing your comments. Also if you have not had a chance to see the the LKC newsletter please click on the following link: http://naspa.org/LKC_newsletter_F081.pdf

The Things We Care About

In the September issue of Hispanic Magazine a feature artcile was writen about the things we care about as Latinos. Those issues were the following:

Education
Imigration Reform
The Economy and Jobs
Healthcare
The Housing Crises

The peice goes on to describe education the following way:

Whether the issues in the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, underpaid teachers, or even safey in schools, education is always one of the top concerns for Americans of all walks of life.

Not surprisingly, Hispanics have placed this issue at the top of their concerns, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center. In the survey, 93 percent of respondents said that education was either extremely or very important and rated as the top issue even when compared with other such issues such as the economy, cost of living, the war in Iraq and immigration, among others. Plus Hispanics answered that they would be most likely to vote for a candidate who put education at the top of their priority list.

In 2005, NCLR reports that Hispanics made up 19 percent of the nation's elementary and high school population.

Even though the number of Hispanic students is growing, a significant percentage do not graduate from high school, and in some areas the drop-out rate is close to half. This leaves thousands of Hispanics with limited employment prospects and little chance of becoming high-income earners.

Add to that the fact that more than 40 percent of Hispanic students have some sort of English-language proficiency need or are in an English-language learner program, and the issues become more clouded. As more young people leave school before these skills are learned, they could be intering adulthood without the necessary language skills to navigate out of the underserved Spanish-speaking United States.

Lack of education spills into other areas: those with limited education are less likely to have a regular physician, among other things.

At the same time, the Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education reports that the number of Latino public high school graduates will rise by more than half (54 percent), as non-Hispanic white graduate decline. This means that more Latinos will graduate from high school than non-Hispanic whites.

As Latinos/Hispanics working in higher education do you agree with the description and the other issues that the magazine identtifies? It would be great to hear from you.

You blogmaster Joel.

Goals for the LKC in 08-09

The LKC representatives had a planning meeting via conference call this week to review the goals for the upcoming academic year. Adriana Alicea-Rodriguez who serves as the national co-chair facilitated the meeting. Below are the goals that were presented to the NASPA National Board in June.

• Develop a quarterly newsletter.
• Promote usage of the blog and/or listserv as mechanisms to disseminate knowledge of Latino/a issues in higher education.
• Coordinate a NASPA journal article submission, a Forum submission, and/or NetResults series of articles.
• Continue development and coordination of the Latino/a issues in higher education institute at the national conference (Comadre Circle and Latino Male Summit).
• Survey our members to establish a common agenda and goals.
• Solicit program sessions for the national conference.
• Further develop partnerships with other Knowledge Communities.
• Restore the LKC mentorship program for graduate students and new professionals.
• Develop an LKC mentorship program for Latino/a NUFP Fellows.
• Seek support and collaboration from NASPA on national policy issues.

Hot topics were also presented to board and will take center stage during the upcoming year. They are the following:

• Immigration and Higher Education: we must not ignore this controversial issue and provide guidance and support for institutions and participate in the national dialogue through NASPA.
• Graduate School: encourage and support Latino/as to pursue doctoral degrees.
• Access to Higher Education: with the increase in the cost of attending college, need to provide resources for students to access higher education.
• Academic and Cultural Support: To ensure graduation of Latino/a students, need to provide the necessary services to support their educational needs.
• Latino/a Senior Student Affairs Officers: Increase the number of Latino/a administrators on campuses across the country (Senior Student Affairs Officers and Presidents).
• NASPA Leadership: Increase participation of Latino/a in leadership positions within NASPA (President, Executive Board, conference chairs).
• Mentorship: provide mentoring to graduate students, new professionals and Latino/a undergraduate students (NUFP).

Upcoming regional and the national conference were also discussed. If you reside in Region V and would like to assist in coordinating the social events for the Seattle conference please let us know. You can email jperez@georgefox.edu or diazj@seattle.edu for information. The University of New Mexico will be hosting a symposium on immigration in the US on October 14th and 15th for more information you can visit the following website www4.unm.edu/elcentro/.

Sad news to report

Colleagues:

It is with sadness that I report to you that our colleague and friend Cathy Acevedo from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign passed away unexpectedly yesterday evening. I know she leaves behind a husband and at least one child (10 years old). Cathy was such a proud member of the LKC and served on the inaugural Comadre Circle Committee. Many of us saw her in Boston a month ago. This is a great loss and we will lift her family in our prayers.

Juan

Juan R. Guardia, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Multicultural Affairs
Florida State University
A211 Oglesby Union
Tallahassee, FL. 32306-4026
Office: (850) 644-7827
Fax: (850) 644-5994
jguardia@admin.fsu.edu
http://www.oma.fsu.edu

New national co-chairs

In Boston this year we had a change in leadership. Both Jason Casares and Clarybel Peguero transitioned from their roles as co-chairs to imediate past co-chairs. They did an excellent job in moving us forward as an organization within NASPA. The new incoming co-chairs are Adriena Alicea-Rodriguez (Texas A&M) and Alex Gonzalez (University of New Mexico). Here is a short biography about each of them.

Adriana is currently a Hall Director. She is a former fellow of NASPA's Minority Undergraduate Fellows Program (MUFP), now the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program (NUFP). She is passionate about student leadership, social justice and diversity education and international education.

Alex is currently the Special Assistant to the Vice President of Enrollment Management. Alex has been involved with the LKC since 2001 in various roles and as a mentor with the NUFP program. In 2004 he received the NASPA IV-West Outstanding Mid-Level Professional Award.

Please join me in welcoming them to this key role in our organization.

Employment Opportunities

Please use the comment section of this post to list career opportunities that you may know of.

Keep Up with new entries using the RSS feed feature

This post was copied from the Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community Blog

Colleagues,

Please use the RSS feed feature located in the URL of your web browser so that you can be alerted when new entries have been submitted to the MMKC blog.
What is an RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content including, but not limited to, blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays. (from Wikipedia)

Welcome and Opening Discussion/Thoughts

Welcome to the Latino/a Knowledge Community Blog. Yes....BLOG. This should provide our KC with an additional venue for communication and the opportunity to create dialogue about anything student affairs related or issues critical to Latinos/as in higher education. YOU make the call.

We (Clarybel and Jason) invite you ALL to participate in this discussion. Be honest, be open, be willing to listen, and most importantly respect as well as value the opinions of all who choose to participate.

Think about anything you deem as important.

For starters...lets talk about immigration and how it has impacted Latinos/as in higher education (both 4 year institutions and community colleges). ANY THOUGHTS? Does that topic fire you up? Do you care? Best practices or policies?