02/18/2013 Women in Higher Education.

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

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VOLUME 23 • NUMBER 10

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® Publisher – José López-Isa VP & COO – Orlando López-Isa

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief – Suzanne López-Isa

Ricardo Fernández, President Lehman College

Editor – Jason Paneque News & Special Project Editor – Mary Ann Cooper

Mildred García, President California State University-Fullerton Juán González,VP Student Affairs University of Texas at Austin

Administrative Assistant & Subscription Coordinator – Barbara Churchill

Lydia Ledesma-Reese, Educ. Consultant Ventura County Community College District

DC Congressional Correspondent – Peggy Sands Orchowski

Gustavo A. Mellander, Dean Emeritus George Mason University

Contributing Editors – Carlos D. Conde, Michelle Adam

Loui Olivas,Assistant VP Academic Affairs Arizona State University

Online Contributing Writers – Gustavo A. Mellander

Eduardo Padrón, President Miami Dade College Antonio Pérez, President Borough of Manhattan Community College

Art & Production Director – Avedis Derbalian

María Vallejo, Provost Palm Beach State College

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Editorial Policy The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine® is a national

Advertising Sales Associate – Cyndy Mitchell

magazine published 23 times a year. Dedicated to exploring issues related to Hispanics in higher education,The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine® is published for the members of the higher

Article Contributors

education community. Editorial decisions are based on the editors’ judg-

Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Frank DiMaria, Marilyn Gilroy, Carolyn Gonzales, Paul Hoogeveen, Mayra Olivares-Urueta, Miquela Rivera, Gary M. Stern

ment of the quality of the writing, the timeliness of the article, and the potential interest to the readers of The Hispanic Outlook Magazine®.

From time to time,The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine® will publish articles dealing with controversial issues.The

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Esquina E ditorial

W

elcome to our yearly tribute to women in higher education, recognizing Latinas in education who are serving as outstanding role models and leaders in their communities. Just as we learned in the recent presidential race that you can’t refer to “women in binders,” presenting one point of view in a “binder” as is so often done in the media doesn’t advance understanding or conversation. When it comes to solutions to most women’s issues, frankly, it’s complicated. Take the wage gap debate, for example. Groups supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act say that statistics are on their side. Women earn significantly less money for performing the same tasks as men in the workplace. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in October 2012, nearly 50 years after the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enacted, women continue to earn less money than do men throughout their careers, and the gap is seen as soon as one year out of college. They were referencing findings of a study conducted by the American Association of University Women examining the earnings of female and male college graduates working full time in 2009, one year after they graduated. But other groups, most notably the International Women’s Forum, say statistics distort what’s really going on the marketplace. Their explanation of the paycheck gap sheds light on seldom discussed aspects of the gender dynamic in the workplace. In this issue, we air both sides in this hotly debated topic.

But there is no debate about the star power of the wonderful women on which we’ve put a spotlight in this issue. In particular, Hispanic women in leadership roles in academia, business, public service and the military thanks to the recruiting efforts going on at Texas A&M International University. There is no mistaking the fact that women are slowly becoming the driving force in higher education. It is so much so that it’s changing “heterosexual relationship patterns.” The Centre for Demographic Studies of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona’s study concluded that the number of couples in which the woman with higher degrees than her male partner is growing steadily and surpassing women “uniting” with men with higher degrees. Brings a whole new meaning to women being referred to as the “better half,” doesn’t it? We think so. … ¡Adelante!

Suzanne López-Isa Editor-in-Chief

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by Carlos D. Conde

LATINO KALEIDOSCOPE

V

The Canonization – in Asterisk – of Hugo Chávez

enezuela is a beautiful and hospitable country. I was a news correspondent based in Caracas in 1967 when Venezuela commemorated the 400th anniversary of its founding, and I must have attended a reception or black-tie ball every other week celebrating the event.

Champagne and caviar, yea.

Venezuela has beautiful people including some of the most beautiful women in the world – winning six Miss World, six Miss Universe, six Miss International and one Ms. Earth title.

It has a blessed landscape of sierras, vast plains and seashore and has the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world. It is among the world’s top 10 crude and oil producers. In 2010, another 40 percent in crude oil reserves was proven surpassing Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest pool of this type.

The poverty rate at the turn of the century was cut in half, and extreme poverty fell from 70 percent to 25 percent. Venezuela was the envy of Latin America enjoying the highest standard of living in the region.

Now the party is over. The economy shrunk, echoing the world recession but also caused by bad politics, generous policies and, to some, dubious leadership. The economy went from 9 percent growth in 2007 to 2.9 percent in 2009 and further down in 2010, labeling a recovery as “delayed and weak” by the International Monetary Fund.

The hangover has the stamp of a demagogic leadership and an overreaching, myopic foreign affairs policy that over a short span of time has plunged Venezuela into the unaccustomed role of a heretic nation – still in its outmode nouveau riche character and with the outcast nation, Cuba, now as its best friend and welfare mistress.

Because of its generosity with oil riches toward selected nations and its penchant for pestering the foreign policy of that colossal to the north, the United States, it counts as best friends, presidential colleagues, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and, recently, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

They all benefit from Venezuela’s largess. None more than Raúl Castro’s Cuba, which has practically been adopted by the Bolivarian nation and whose economy and social well-being depend on Venezuelan oil.

All made the pilgrimage to Havana to visit Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, whose battle with cancer has been treated by Cuban doctors for the past three years but who now, according to reports, is on his deathbed there, if not already dead.

When he goes, it’s expected that much of Venezuela’s generosity by way of Chávez’s government will also go, and the Cubans, who more than any have a crucial need for it, would be the biggest losers. Short on foreign resources, Cuba pays part of its energy bill with Venezuela though a barter system of Cuban doctors and nurses and other services for Venezuelan petro products.

Chávez’s situation has created a constitutional crisis in Venezuela over who rules the country, even if in a caretaker role.

The popular consensus is that Chávez’s critical illness makes him passé, recognizing that he is no longer functional even if by some divine

intervention he overcomes his latest health crisis.

Waiting in the wings are two pretenders to the presidency, Vice President Nicolas Maduro and National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, who must first confront some constitutional issues on succession.

The constitution, reworked by Chávez’s government in 2009, says Chávez should have been sworn in Jan. 10, and failing that, the vice president would assume power temporarily and hold an election within 30 days.

The other option is the National Assembly declaring a permanent absence, which it didn’t and which would have required the vice president to oversee an election within 30 days.

Separately, it could also declare a temporary absence in which case Maduro temporarily would become acting president.

Whichever, it leads to another opportunity by the opposition to gain the presidency, which would probably be Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chávez in the 2008 elections. Any candidate, however, would be hardpressed to overcome the sympathy vote that a Chávez cohort would enjoy.

Chávez is history but not his legacy. His political success was driven by his strong charisma and political chutzpah, like attempting to overthrow the government and having failed and being jailed, then running for president and winning.

He modified the oath of office a bit by declaring, “I swear before my people that upon this moribund constitution, I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformation so that the new Republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times.”

The common folk loved him because by whatever methods he improved the lives of many improvised people and made life a little fairer for them. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American said that the percentage of the population living under the poverty line in Venezuela fell from 49.4 percent in 1999 to 27.8 percent in 2010.

Chávez came from a lower-middle-class background and ascended through the path most available to his social order, the military, and was further stigmatized by his Afro-Indian roots in a country where class identity is still an important distinction.

His biographers said that within a few years of his presidency he “had already earned his place in history as the president most loved and most despised by the Venezuelan people, the president who inspired the greatest zeal and the deepest revulsion at the same time.”

For a president heading a democracy and with Chávez’s energies and personality, it’s not a bad rap.

L K

A T I N O

A L E I D O S C O P E

Carlos D. Conde, award-winning journalist and commentator, former Washington and foreign news correspondent, was an aide in the Nixon White House and worked on the political campaigns of George Bush Sr. To reply to this column, contact Cdconde@aol.com.

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MAGAZINE® FEBRUARY 18, 2013

CONTENTS A Scientific Star Blossoms at San Francisco State University by Gary M. Stern

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Hispanic Women Thrive at Texas A&M International 11

by Marilyn Gilroy

WPIC – a Global Forum for Women’s Voices in Theater by Paul Hoogeveen

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UNM’s Barbara Rodríguez Disentangles Speech

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by Carolyn Gonzales

18 María Téresa Vélez – Tackling, Head On, Challenges Faced by Minority Students by Jamaal Abdul-Alim

Page 8

Veronica Gonzales – Spreading the Word About UTPA by Frank DiMaria

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Mari Carmen Ramírez – Groundbreaker in Latino Art by Michelle Adam

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Wage Gap for Women: Both Sides of the Story

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by Mary Ann Cooper

Yvette Donado and ETS: Promoting a Solid Early Start for Hispanic Students by Mary Ann Cooper

Online Articles Some of the above articles will also be available online; go to our website: www.HispanicOutlook.com.

Page 11

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DEPARTMENTS Latino Kaleidoscope

by Carlos D. Conde

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The Canonization – in Asterisk – of Hugo Chávez

Scholars’ Corner

by Mayra Olivares-Urueta

Interesting Reads Book Review

by Mary Ann Cooper

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25

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Passing the Torch

Page 22

Hispanics on the Move Priming the Pump...

Lessons Through Handwriting

by Miquela Rivera

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Back Cover

HO is also available in digital format; go to our website: www.HispanicOutlook.com.

Page 26 Cover photo: Emile dans les nuages; Samar Hamis, 1994

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WOMEN/PROFILES

A Scientific Star

by Gary M. Stern

Born and raised in Mexico, Vázquez immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 when she was 24 years old to earn a master’s degree and doctorate at Florida State University. She learned English in Mexico and was already bilingual when she arrived in the U.S. The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine interviewed Vázquez on how she came to specialize in DNA topology and became an award-winning scientist.

The Hispanic Outlook: Some people might say that your earning a Presidential Award for Science defies the stereotype of immigrants. What’s your take?

Mariel Vázquez: I think it defies the view that most people have, but it’s really hard to generalize about immigrants. Most immigrants are hard workers. It’s good to receive an award to show that people can do very good work and succeed even if the U.S. isn’t their native country. We’re a nation of mixed people and diverse ideas, and there’s plenty of talent among immigrants.

HO: What adjustments did you have to make when you moved to a new country and started at Florida State University?

Vázquez: I was already 24 years old and had gotten my undergraduate degree in Mexico City. But this was the first time I was taking all my classes in English. I had to adapt to the Southern dialect of my professors. But I adjusted quickly and earned my doctorate at Florida State.

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ariel Vázquez, an associate professor of mathematics at San Francisco State University (Calif.), is a scientific star. In July 2012, President Barack Obama named Vázquez a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers based on her scientific research. She was one of 96 scientists to receive the award.

Vázquez, who is 41 years old, is a pioneer in the emerging field of DNA topology, which applies pure math to the biological mysteries of DNA. San Francisco State University President Robert A. Corrigan said Vázquez “embodied the model of teacher/scholar that San Francisco State values so highly.” Vázquez has been teaching at San Francisco State since 2005.

She was nominated for the Presidential Early Career Award by the National Science Foundation. The award was based on innovative research.

Vázquez’s award cited her “excellent interdisciplinary and international research at the interface of mathematics and biology, and for creativity and dedication to recruiting, training and mentoring, and helping students from underrepresented groups achieve their goals.”

Vázquez’s research has groundbreaking potential. She is investigating how DNA interacts with cells and affects radiation and cancer treatment.

San Francisco State University epitomizes a multicultural campus. Of its 29,540 students who enrolled in fall 2012, 35 percent were AsianAmerican; 30 percent, White; 24 percent, Latino; and 6 percent, AfricanAmerican. Over 4,200 students were majoring in science, though business administration and biology were the two most popular majors.

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HO: What influence did your parents have on your academic life?

Vázquez: Both my father and grandfather were engineers. As a child, I loved numbers and anything mathematical and geometrical. Having a father and grandfather who were engineers stimulated me and helped encourage my curiosity. My mother spent a lot of time with my brother and me, and she was an arts and literature lover. In my work, I combine mathematics with molecular biology, which is also very geometrical, visual and three-dimensional.

HO: What drew you to mathematics?

Vázquez: I always liked the patterns and numbers in mathematics. I did well at math in elementary and middle school. Having parents who were well-educated showed me not to fall into stereotypes that I couldn’t accomplish something. I felt free to explore math.

HO: You earned an undergraduate degree in math at the National University of Mexico (NUM). How did that set the foundation for your mathematical pursuit?

Vázquez: That was fantastic. NUM appears as one of the top 100 ranked universities in the world. One of their specialties is in the pure sciences like mathematics. The environment for learning in the classroom and doing outside research was excellent. The education in Mexico is a hybrid between the American and European systems. When we study math in Mexico, we do four years of only mathematics, but it’s not as rigid as Europe and is more flexible like in the U.S. HO: You started as a mathematician and morphed into a research sci-

Blossoms at HO: Describe the impact of being a research and teaching assistant in the math department at Florida State University.

Vázquez: I had a research fellowship from my Ph.D. advisor DeWitt Sumners, a professor of mathematics at Florida State. He was the reason I chose Florida State. He specialized in mixing pure mathematics and knot theory with the study of DNA. At that time, there were no interdisciplinary programs between math and biology in the U.S. Professor Sumners developed a mathematic theory to understand DNA topology. He allowed me to follow my passion and work on both mathematics and molecular biology simultaneously.

HO: You served as a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley.

What did you do there?

Vázquez: I spent five years at Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow. Half of my time involved doing TNA topology research, working with Professor Rainer Sachs, whose specialty was in mathematical models for radiation biology. You take human cells and eradiate them with low-dose X-rays. In essence, we used mathematics to determine how the DNA had been rearranged. It’s equivalent of finding the right radiation and dosage in cancer treatment. We’re exploring the effect of radiation on human cells and determining how cells are coping. These studies can help understand the instability of the cells.

HO: You were named an assistant professor of mathematics at San Francisco State in August 2005. Describe why the job appealed to you.

Vázquez: I like the academic track, teaching people, mentoring them and doing research. I teach a variety of courses including one I developed in DNA topology with my colleague Javier Arsuaga, who also happens to be my husband. I spend about 20 percent of my time teaching in the classroom, and 30 to 40 percent mentoring undergraduates and graduate students one on one, who are majoring in mathematics, molecular and cell biology, bioengineering. We also have an affiliation with Berkeley, so I mentor their students too. My mentoring of students also involves doing research with them. In fact, I spend about 20 percent of my time doing service to the university and community, including reviewing grants and talking on panels. All told, half of my time is spent doing research.

HO: Describe your undergraduate thesis on knot theory and DNA. Vázquez: Knot theory is part of mathematics that studies knots. A knot is like your shoelace knot. You take a shoelace and tie the first part of it and then glue the ends of the shoelace together. Once you tape it together, you have a mathematical knot. If you don’t tape it, it can be untied. If you don’t tie the knot, you just have a piece of string that can be untied. It functions like DNA. HO: In what sense?

Vázquez: DNA molecules sometimes are circular, like the chromosomes of bacteria. Our DNA isn’t circular. The DNA of bacteria is circular, and every time you have a circle, the circle can be knotted. It’s like taking your headphone from your iPod and putting it in your backpack. Invariably, when you take it out, it’ll be knotted. The same thing happens inside cells. If the DNA becomes circular, in the process it may become knotted. This process may be helped by larger proteins called enzymes. We’re trying to figure out how the DNA became entangled using mathematics. The long-range implication is we’re trying to figure how the DNA is sitting inside these viruses and how enzymes change the topology of DNA (topology involves how the DNA is sitting inside the three-dimensional space like a rubber band).

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

entist. How? Vázquez: In high school, I loved mathematics and molecular biology. I wanted to apply mathematics to molecular biology. I tried to apply pure math into the study of knots and DNA. Hence, my knowledge of math merged with my knowledge of DNA.

President Barack Obama addressing 2011 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) recipients in the East Room of the White House, July 31, 2012 (Vázquez is in the front row, fifth from the right) 0 2 / 1 8 / 2 0 1 3

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HO: What is the impact of knot theory in biology?

Vázquez: Before cells divide, circular DNA is copied or replicated. It forms two circles that are interlinked or interlaced. The cell is trying to divide into two cells. Each cell requires one circle, but the circles are interlinked. One pulls to the left; and the other, to the right, but either circle can break. Either cell can break or the two circles could migrate to the same cell, leaving one cell with no DNA. But this is not good. You want each cell to have exactly one intact circle. Certain enzymes ensure that this happens. Some anti-cancer and antibacterial drugs target the enzymes that remove the DNA knots and links. If you try to understand the mechanics of these enzymes, you can design drugs that eliminate those enzymes. By doing that, the cancer or bacterial cells will die.

HO: What are your goals in conducting this research?

Vázquez: I would like to standardize ways of studying the topology of DNA. There’s been a lot of attention on DNA because of human genome research. That attention has focused on the sequence and code of DNA. We’ve been moving toward trying to understand how DNA topology affects the cells.

HO: What has being named one of 96 recipients of this Presidential Early Career Award done for you?

Vázquez: It’s been fantastic recognition. It says that so many years of hard work have paid off. It also carries a great sense of responsibility. I’ve been interviewed by the media, and some people consider me a role model. A huge responsibility comes with this award.

HO: What did President Obama say in his invocation?

Vázquez: President Obama said, “I see some women here. We need more. I see some African-American and Hispanic women. We need more of them.”

HO: Why aren’t there more women and more Latino women in the sciences?

Vázquez: Women are hard working, do very well in college, are interested in science, and then we lose them. Part of it stems from the natural time when women marry and have children and raise a family. In science, we need more family-friendly policies. We need graduate schools that support women with families. Women also need to become more assertive, and I don’t mean aggressive. We need to train women science majors to be good public speakers and good managers. Latinos, in particular, need to believe they can do it and that anything is possible.

HO: Describe your personal life.

Vázquez: My husband Javier Asuraga also teaches mathematics at San Francisco State. We have two children: a 4-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl.

I manage to juggle family and career. I do what I like and have a passion for my work. But at home, we try not talk too much about DNA topology.

HO: Five years from today, what would you like to have accomplished?

Vázquez: I’d like to have developed robust mathematical and computational tools to study the entanglement of DNA. I also aim to instill the love for math and science in children by bringing the excitement of the research to them.

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WOMEN/LEADERSHIP/ROLE MODELS

Hispanic Women Thrive at Texas A&M International T

by Marilyn Gilroy exas A&M International University (TAMIU) has a remarkable track record of cultivating Hispanic women for leadership roles in academia, business, public service and the military. This past year, TAMIU Hispanic female graduates, faculty members and students have been making news for their achievements, some of which are “firsts” in their respective fields.

Located in Laredo, Texas, TAMIU enrolls approximately 7,200 full- and part-time students, of which 4,000 are Hispanic females. Although those numbers are impressive, they are complemented by an equally impressive environment that supports Hispanic female success. There are many Hispanic role models on the faculty who become mentors to female students, encouraging and empowering them to aim high and reach their goals.

As Karina Moreno Saldívar, a TAMIU graduate and immigrant from Monterrey, Mexico, said recently, TAMIU can take students as far as they are willing to go.

“TAMIU’s purpose and mission are very noble and admirable,” she said.

“It fuels students like myself who are the first in their families to attend college, and it does so in an individualized way that makes it possible not only to achieve that baccalaureate degree but to do the unimaginable.”

Last August, Moreno Saldívar became the first Hispanic woman to earn a doctoral degree in public administration from Rutgers UniversityNewark, a program ranked as one of the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. She is now working as a faculty member at Kean University’s department of public administration in Union, N.J. Moreno Saldívar earned a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from TAMIU in 2008 while working a full-time job. She says the support of a faculty mentor, Dr. Peter Haruna, propelled her to pursue a doctoral degree.

“TAMIU’s MPA program is a quality program,” she said. “It is what motivated me to continue with my studies. I decided to apply to Ph.D. programs after discussing this possibility with Dr. Haruna. He was always accessible by e-mail and phone and was incredibly helpful throughout my first year at Rutgers.”

When Moreno Saldívar was accepted to Rutgers in 2009, she was one of only six students admitted to the doctoral program in public administration.

She finished her Ph.D. with a 4.0 GPA in three years with two publications in scholarly journals. Her doctoral dissertation studied the effect of Arizona’s immigration law on Latino political attitudes and behaviors. She is proud of the academic work that led to her most recent accomplishment.

“I was able to keep focused due to a combination of factors,” she said.

“Knowing I was representing Latinas in higher education and knowing my dissertation research was giving a voice to a group that is often excluded or underrepresented were extremely powerful motivators.”

She also was inspired by her parents, Israel and Idalia Moreno.

“My parents are two extremely brave people,” she said. “We are immi-

Dr. Claudia E. San Miguel

has been named the first

female Hispanic president of

the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice.

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grants from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. I dedicated my dissertation to them because they were brave enough to venture into something completely new and unknown so that my younger siblings and I could have an opportunity at both a better education and a better life.”

In another TAMIU first, Dr. Claudia E. San Miguel, associate professor and director of Texas A&M International University College of Arts and Sciences Criminal Justice Program, has been named the first female Hispanic president of the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice (SWACJ), a criminal justice academic organization.

Regina Morales was a team leader in every offensive category, according to Michael Blake,TAMIU sports information director.

SWACJ is affiliated with the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Its mission is to promote scholarship in the field of criminal justice, provide opportunities to share research on a wide array of criminal justice-related topics, and encourage communication among individual members, other organizations and associations of higher learning and agencies of the criminal justice system.

San Miguel exemplifies the TAMIU success story. She began her college studies in criminal justice at TAMIU and has just become a tenured member of the faculty. Her career goals took a turn when she enrolled in undergraduate courses.

“I wanted to study criminal justice because I was interested in police work as a way of making a difference in my community,” she said. “But

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when I got here, I discovered I had a passion for higher education and teaching, so I decided to combine my two interests and go to the doctoral program.”

While studying for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at TAMIU, San Miguel also felt the support of faculty members who encouraged her to enroll in the Ph.D. program at Sam Houston State University.

“There were faculty members who kept in touch with me during my doctoral program and let me know that a faculty position was opening at TAMIU and so that’s how I got here,” she said.

TAMIU is the largest undergraduate criminal justice program in the state with more than 470 students; the majority of them are females. When San Miguel surveys her students about their career goals, she gets a variety of responses.

“Some want to do police work as a way of giving back to their communities,” she said. “Others want to go to law school or work in social service agencies.”

Fortunately, the job market for criminal justice majors is very robust, and graduates have many opportunities, says San Miguel. Graduates also can take advantage of TAMIU’s master’s degree in criminal justice, a totally online program that is ideal for working adults.

Now that she has become president of SWACJ, San Miguel plans to focus her efforts on the organization’s yearly conference in which practitioners and researchers share the latest developments in the field. She also takes students to the conference because it is an important experience for them.

“I enjoy going to the conference because it provides me many opportunities to highlight the accomplishments of faculty and students in our program as well as the accomplishments of our university,” she said. “TAMIU is a fantastic place. It has been such a positive experience for me both as a student and faculty member, and I try to pass that on to my own students.”

Leadership Opportunities in Sports, ROTC and Public Service Although these individual achievements are noteworthy, the team spirit is alive and well among TAMIU Hispanic females. It is on display in the six women’s athletic teams (as compared to only five men’s teams), which include basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball and volleyball, all dominated by Hispanics.

TAMIU’s athletic director, Dr. Leonard Nardone, says many of the women receive scholarships and there is an institution-wide support network in place for these student athletes.

“We have a full-time academic advisor as well as designated staff in the registrar and financial aid offices to help our new athletes,” he said.

The teams have been enjoying success and feature several outstanding performers. The women’s softball team made it to postseason play for the past four years in the Heartland Conference Tournament. One of the players, Regina Morales, was a team leader in every offense category, according to Michael Blake, TAMIU sports information director. Morales’ stats include a .353 batting average, 54 hits, 26 runs, 10 home runs and 34 RBI – all team highs. She was also named to the 2012 Heartland Conference All-Tournament team.

As for soccer, Blake said the 2012 team will go down as the best women’s soccer team in TAMIU history.

“The Dustdevils [team name] set records for goals, assists and points in a single season,” he said.

The star of the team is Karina García, a freshman from Laredo, who led the team with six goals and a shooting percentage of .273.

since 9/11, which occurred when she was in the fifth grade. Although it was not easy to meet the demands of training, she is fully committed to her future in the military.

“If you’re on scholarship like me, a national ROTC scholarship winner, I have committed to serve eight years for the U.S. Army, four years active duty and four years as a reservist,” Tinajero explained.

Tinajero has now “commissioned out” of TAMIU and is serving as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

For those Hispanic females who want to render service in the public sector, there is a first-rate opportunity to develop the required skills at one of nation’s best student leadership programs. Each year, six TAMIU students are selected to participate in the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) that brings together students from across the country for a weeklong program at Harvard University.

While in Cambridge, Mass., they participate in LLI classes on public narrative, community organizing, negotiation, moral leadership, innovation, arts and activism, and public speaking. LLI participants also have a chance to build relationships with respected Latino mentors from the government, nonprofit and business sectors. After their week at Harvard, students work in teams with faculty and administration from TAMIU to design and implement community service projects.

Five of the six students selected this past year were senior Hispanic women including Sarah Gómez, a business administration major who wants to obtain a graduate degree in international finance; Agar Hernández, a psychology major whose goal is to study industrial/organizational psychology in graduate school; Stephanie Hernández, a political science major who hopes to go to law school; Guadalupe “Lupita” Osoria, a communication major who plans get a master’s degree in communication disorders; and Victoria “Tori” Rose Young, a communications major with plans to attend law school.

Each year, six TAMIU students are selected to participate in the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) that brings together students from across the country for a weeklong program at Harvard University.

“The head soccer coach said he had never seen a freshman player who has made such a difference in the overall performance of the team,” said Blake.

Hispanic women also find leadership opportunities as members of a different kind of “team,” that of the U.S. Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at TAMIU. ROTC is recognized as one of the nation’s best programs for men and women interested in a career in the military.

Students who enroll in ROTC take an elective curriculum along with their required college courses and receive a scholarship toward their tuition.

Students are thus able to pursue the degree of their choice while preparing for military service.

TAMIU reactivated its ROTC program in 2003 after a 30-year hiatus. For the past two years, the university has been named a top Military Friendly School by G.I. Jobs magazine. The program has seen a growth in enrollment, especially among women.

When Ana Tinajero joined the TAMIU ROTC as a freshman in 2009, she already was familiar with its benefits.

“I was in the ROTC program all through high school, graduating as a battalion commander,” said Tinajero. “I think it’s great that more women are joining the ROTC program on campus. Women have the same opportunities as men and are valued as equal members of the team.”

In a previous interview, Tinajero said she knew she wanted to serve

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WOMEN/CONFERENCES/CONVENTIONS

WPIC – a Global Forum for

B

by Paul Hoogeveen ringing together women college professors, dramatists, writers and social activists from 51 countries, the ninth international Women Playwrights International Convention (WPIC) was held in August at the historic Södra Teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. Hosted by Riksteatern, Sweden’s national theater organization, the event boasted scores of participants presenting play readings, lectures, multimedia materials and workshops for a sector of the arts in which women remain largely underrepresented.

The 2012 conference focused on a theme of “the democratic stage.”

The forum allowed women from disparate and sometimes opposing cultures to express and discuss their sociopolitical and gender-based views in an atmosphere that was at once energetic and vocal – and in which participants displayed a willingness to make room for and engage in expressing sometimes vastly differing viewpoints and ideologies without becoming combative.

The 31 participants from the United States alone, comprising women educators, writers, actors and activists, represented a global breadth of perspectives. Some of these dramatists were native-born; others emigrated from countries as diverse as Spain and Iran. For many, the conference was more than simply a chance to further the goals of women in theater; it was also an opportunity to discuss the ongoing oppression of women occurring in many parts of the world, including the United States.

Pakistani-born writer and teacher Farzana Moon, whose play Osama The Demented was read at the conference, put it this way: “Women from all over the world got together to unfold the essence of ‘women oppression’ still rampant in many parts of the world, and to address those issues with the hope of righting the wrongs done to them.”

Women Playwrights International has been holding WPIC conferences every three years, 2012 being the 25th anniversary of the first conference.

Its beginnings were humble, growing out of advocacy work done by stage veteran Kathleen Betsko Yale in the 1980s.

“I am, in a way, the mother of the conference,” Yale said of WPIC. “The event grew organically out of a book I published with a colleague called Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights in 1986. It was the firstever book of interviews specifically, entirely of women dramatists. There are many now, but I’m glad to say ours was the landmark production. Out of that initial book came the First Conference of International Women Playwrights at the State University of New York-Buffalo in 1988. Professor Anna Kay France of the university and I put together a large steering committee, and together we worked for two years to present that first quite successful conference. It is a triennial event, and the conference in Stockholm in 2012 was the ninth international gathering and our quartercentury anniversary. I was so pleased to be there.”

According to WPI’s current president, Lene Therese Teigen, the Stockholm gathering not only saw the largest number of countries ever represented at a WPI conference – it also marked the first time that African and Middle Eastern countries were well-represented, both through speeches and play readings. Not surprisingly, many of the plays presented approached themes associated with war and conflict, and the ways in which woman are particularly affected. While many of the plays presented

by U.S. participants dealt more with social aspects of oppression of women

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– and even the oppression of women by women – plays by women from Middle Eastern countries often introduced far darker images. For example, the play Ana Hurra (I am Free), by Palestinian playwright Valantina Abu Oqsa, presented a unique perspective of the complex dynamic that develops between a Palestinian prisoner and her Israeli interrogator. (Ana Hurra later saw limited production in the United States.)

The topic of women in a military setting also appeared in the work of several U.S. and Canadian participants – a timely subject given increasing public anti-war sentiment, along with issues that many returning female veterans are now facing. Dr. Sarah Cole, who is in the process of establishing a theater program at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, presented a reading of her play Aftermath, which portrays the interplay among three women veterans during a series of group therapy sessions at a VA clinic.

“It was a great thing professionally,” said Cole, “because I was able to have my material heard by a wide and varied audience, and this gave me perspective on my own work that I may not have otherwise had. Some things within plays translated wonderfully well, and some did not. I found that the base emotions or general experiences are something that, if handled well, can find common ground in many cultures. It reinforced personally something that I knew, but is always nice to get confirmation for: we are more alike than different.”

Cole observed that vastly differing viewpoints on such difficult topics sometimes led to heated confrontations. She added that this was one of the more dynamic aspects of the conference’s theme of the democratic stage.

One such confrontation involved Nidal Al Achkar, founder and director of Al Medina Theatre in Beirut.

“One of the most poignant examples of two women trying – and perhaps failing – to find a common ground was something I observed at lunch one day,” Cole commented. “The keynote speaker from that morning was a Lebanese woman named Nidal Al Achkar. She and another conference participant were having a very, very serious conversation over the salad table about the content of her speech, ‘The Arab Word.’ You can tell that they were upset, but each was trying to make a point. I think the keynote speaker was more successful at understanding the other’s viewpoint, as she seemed calmer and was offering her viewpoints in a much more level-headed manner.”

While growing the domestic and global presence of women’s perspectives in theater is a primary goal of WPI, some dramatists took the conference as an opportunity to compare the cultural perceptions of theater in the United States with that in other countries. One such participant was Barbara Blatner, a multidisciplinary dramatist and musician currently teaching at Yeshiva University in New York City. Blatner presented her play Years of Sky, which portrays a biracial couple who witness John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

“My plays are pretty political in that they explore the intersection between personal and collective experience,” said Blatner. “I do not think that the United States uses the arts wisely as a tool for global and political discourse – theater in particular. I think other countries perhaps take theater very seriously; I’m thinking of the British Isles and Germany at this moment, because I do not know how theater is viewed in other countries, but I know the potential is there and that theater can stimulate genuine and vital discourse.

Women’s Voices in Theater For example, several weeks ago I attended in Brooklyn, N.Y., a play based on August Strindberg’s Miss Julie: it was called Mies Julie and was produced stunningly by a South African cast, who adapted the play into a commentary on post-apartheid Black/White power relationships. I heard that in South Africa, in response to this play, audiences sat silent, unable to speak, because of the power and immediacy of what they had just seen enacted onstage. This is what theater can do when it is taken seriously, when it is political and not polemical, and produced at the high pitch of brilliant performance that I saw in this production. I think theater can be something that causes riots, opens minds and hearts and moves us forward.”

Above and beyond sharing ideas on leveling the playing field for women playwrights, establishing new connections, and opening themselves to ideas and issues from parts of the world that are often largely closed to them, one of the most positive sentiments about the conference expressed by many of the U.S. participants was how globally collegial and personally enriching the event proved to be. Angelina Llongueras, a Spanish Catalan native now living in the United States, and whose professional background includes work with such Hispanic film legends as Almodóvar, typified this perspective.

“I am a ‘global’ citizen who is at present working in [the United States], but who has also worked in others – Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador,” said Llongueras. “I am a Catalan; this means I am very aware of linguistic and identity oppression. I have traveled extensively and am an internationalist at heart, so my theater deals with events that would happen in the U.S., in Mexico, in Catalonia, in Spain. I am unavoidably global.”

Llongueras did not present a live play reading, but did present and discuss a videotaped excerpt of a performance of her play Phoolan Is All of Us. “I was happy to see that many women from India were present at the presentation of my play, whose main character is Phoolan Devi, an Indian woman who actually existed and was killed in 2001,” she continued. “The play was received with appreciation and respect, and the contextualization of its creation and presentation process was highly valued.”

But aside from the positive reception of her own work, Llongueras most appreciated the ways in which some core universal concerns of women were shared.

“I was especially fascinated at being given a glimpse of what many women playwrights in Arab countries are creating and their reasons for doing so. The similarity in concerns about the systematic violence inflicted on children all over the world, while at the same time the diversity of reasons for the use of this violence – and how this comes out in these plays – was most enlightening. Every time you have the lucky chance to be put in a context that allows you to mingle with lots of creative people who care about what is going on in the world, and who want to find creative ways to do something about it, is very enriching, and this fosters one’s own thought and creativity.”

A similar sentiment was offered by playwright and Ezzat Goushegir, who had enjoyed success in Iran in the 1970s – even having two of her plays produced by Iranian National Television and Ministry of Arts and Culture – before a crackdown on feminists, political activists and secular intellectuals forced her into exile in the United States in 1986. Now based in

Chicago, Goushegir brought her own unique perspective to the conference via her play My Name Is Inanna.

“The second period of my artistic life started in

Angelina Llongueras

Ezzat Goushegir

Cole Sarah

the U.S., living in exile, struggling as a single mother and writing in English for different audiences,” Goushegir said of her views on her own work and her contribution to WPIC. “The new society inspired me to channel myself in finding ways to communicate with new audiences as well as enlighten them about the origin of my mother country by writing numerous plays on Iranian women and plays about my adopted country. Internationalism widens my perspective about the whole world. I consider myself a citizen of the globe, and at the same time a fourth-world woman playwright – a woman who belongs and at the same time is a stranger.”

Of course, an event as large and dynamic as WPIC, while largely posi-

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tive, can suffer from certain drawbacks. One common complaint (at least among U.S. members) was that because of the large number of play readings presented over the course of just one week, the small number of Riksteatern actors sometimes appeared overburdened with too many roles to read. Also, some members found it difficult to choose which presentations to attend. Given the sheer number of playwrights represented, such shortcomings were inevitable.

“A gathering of so many women from around the world must be a powerful experience for all who attended,” observed New York playwright Donna Spector, who presented her play about homelessness in New York, Manhattan Transits. “The one weakness I can think of is that so many plays are presented at the same time that we have to pick and choose

which ones to attend and we miss many great works.”

But despite these minor issues, and regardless of – or perhaps even because of – cultural differences of perspective both small and large, participants came away from the event with a renewed consensus that the power of performing arts to reach beyond the mere reflection of society, and ultimately to affect social change on a national and even global level, is the greatest intrinsic value of theater. And that is precisely what makes it all the more important for women to achieve a stronger voice in theater.

Farzana Moon summed it up this way: “Theater is the only tool in this busy world which touches the heart of audience globally with its power of words and artistic rendition, and the only tool in political discourse which doesn’t divide, but unites.”

Scholars’ Corner I have served as a volunteer assisting in a clinic as a translator and cultural broker for Spanishspeaking patients during their interactions with non-Latino and non-Spanish-speaking clinicians. My experiences as a translator made me question how patients without translators make their needs clear to their clinician.

In addition to the language, I learned about other important issues that arise during these crosscultural interactions. I wondered why some Latino patients are so quiet during their visits with the clinicians. Why do they forget that they are in charge instead of the person in the white coat? They knew I was not a clinician, but why did they wait until they were alone with me to say that a treatment was not working or making them uncomfortable? It might be that they felt rude saying things were not working out, or they assumed the clinician knows best, when in actuality, the best treatment requires the input of the clinician and the patient. It might also be that they could relate to me on a cultural level and that created a trust they had not achieved with their clinician.

Latinos/as make up only 5.9 percent of the entire health care work force even though they make up 15.4 percent of the U.S. population. Researchers argue that increased diversity in health care can increase access to health care for underserved populations. Others also recognize that underrepresented students who complete health professions degrees are more likely to practice because they want to give back to their communities by increasing health services for members of their own ethnic group. According to a 1996 survey of physicians in California, Latino/a physicians care for three times as many Latino/a patients than their non-Latino/a counterparts; they also care for many more uninsured patients. Furthermore, research states that cultural congruence in health care improves patient satisfaction and can improve patient health outcomes.

As a doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas, I study practices that increase the number of Latinos/as in the health professions. My goals are to strengthen the Latino health professions pipeline, develop clear health professions career pathways, and inform and develop policy for both higher education and the field of public health. Likewise, I want to help improve Latino/a health outcomes by increasing the number of Latino clinicians.

As a 2012 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Graduate Student Fellow, I entered a familia of mentors and colleagues who continue to provide guidance that advances my work as it responds to critical issues and carries clear implications for further research, theory, practice and policy. AAHHE provides a home in which my distinct research focus and nontraditional experiences are valued. This sense of belonging and comunidad is what is helping me persist through my doctoral education and in academe. I look forward to serving and mentoring the AAHHE familia coming through the pipeline. Los esperamos con los brazos abiertos y listos para trabajar.

By Mayra Olivares-Urueta Higher Education Program, University of North Texas, 2012 AAHHE Graduate Student Fellow

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WOMEN/FACULTY/MENTORING

Barbara Rodríguez Disentangles Speech

When

by Carolyn Gonzales

teaching, Barbara Rodríguez, associate professor of speech and hearing sciences at the University of New Mexico (UNM), might mention to her class that she is from Española, N.M. “Students come up to me and say, ‘I’m from Española, too!’ or they might say they’re from Las Vegas, Taos or Mora. I think they respond that way because it’s the first time they’ve come across a faculty member from home,” she said.

She is one of eight siblings from a longtime northern New Mexico, southern Colorado family.

“Six are still in Española, and one is in California,” she explains.

Like many students from Northern New Mexico, she set her sights early on attending UNM. “I come from a long line of educators on my mother’s side. My high school counselor told me that there were jobs in accounting, so that’s what I came to study,” she said. However, by her junior year, she decided she wanted to work with children in a nonclassroom setting, and so began her path to a career in speech-language pathology.

Rodríguez earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in communication disorders from UNM before going to the University of Washington for her Ph.D. Her passion for the profession is palpable.

She said that people view the scope of SLP practice very narrowly. They know that speech-language pathologists work with children who have a lisp or a stuttering problem. But they don’t know that SLPs assess and treat voice, speech and swallowing in adults with head and neck cancers.

“They don’t know that we help children who are nonverbal to use augmentative and alterna-

tive communication devices. Nor do they understand the speech and language connection to reading,” she said.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) don’t just work with children or adults with communication disorders, either. “We work with the spouse or family of a patient with dementia to help them remember and use compensating strategies. For example, we might suggest the spouse put together a communication notebook with photos of family members, places and objects,” Rodríguez said.

Another way they help is for individuals undergoing gender reassignment. “If we have a transgender male transitioning to female, she needs to learn female speech patterns and nonverbal communication,” she said.

Rodríguez and her colleagues also work with international students, helping them reduce or modify their accents to promote effective teaching. “We also work with people who have voice disorders from misuse or overuse of their voices,” she said.

For students looking for a career track with openings, speech-language pathology could be a good option. “New Mexico has a huge need right now. UNM, Eastern New Mexico University and New Mexico State all graduate SLPs, but there are still openings statewide,” she said, adding that one must have a master’s to practice and that UNM graduates about 20 per year. “Each graduate gets multiple job offers. People come looking for them, from in state and out of state,” she said.

The Albuquerque Public Schools, hospitals and state agencies are all clamoring for SLPs. There is also a tremendous need for bilingual SLPs,” Rodríguez said. She added that they also need more Native American SLPs.

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Rodríguez’s research – with colleagues in Pennsylvania and Florida – involves developing tools to use to ascertain if English-language learners whose first language is Spanish have legitimate speech disorders or if their speech is typical for speakers of a particular dialect. “The test we’re developing takes dialect into account,” she said.

Carol Hammer, Rodríguez’s colleague at Temple University in Pennsylvania, is looking at distinctive patterns among Puerto Rican Spanish speakers. Lisa López, at the University of South Florida, is looking at Cuban Spanish speakers, while Rodríguez looks at Mexican Spanish speakers. The trio got a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. They are close to handing the test over to a publisher.

“We are looking to put the tool into the hands of SLPs to use with the kids they are assessing.

The tool is designed to disentangle dialect from disorder. Often, something can sound like impairment where none exists,” she said. For example, Puerto Rican speakers might drop a final “s” in Spanish as a normal speech pattern, but it might not be the norm in other varieties of Spanish or in English, Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez taught a graduate research course last semester and this semester teaches an undergraduate course on multicultural considerations in communication. “In that course, we look at cultural and sociological factors in the delivery of effective speech-language pathology services,” she said.

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WOMEN/PROFILES

María Téresa Vélez of Tackling, Head On, Challenges Faced by Minority Students

As

by Jamaal Abdul-Alim longtime associate dean of the Graduate College at the University of Arizona (UA), Dr. María Téresa Vélez has garnered quite a few accolades with her efforts to recruit and retain students for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields from underrepresented groups. But to truly appreciate Vélez’s work in this regard, it pays to look at more than just her curriculum vitae or her many honors and awards.

Perhaps the best way to understand Vélez’s contribution to diversity in higher education is to talk to some of the many former students she has helped launch into STEM careers.

“I think I’m partly responsible for 500 Ph.D.s,” Vélez, who resides in Tucson, Ariz., said during a recent interview with The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine.

And those Ph.D.s are not hard to find.

You can find them working in laboratories throughout the Southwest or in classrooms at UA where they have followed Vélez’s footsteps to pursue careers in the realm of academe.

They are individuals such as Dr. Julius Yellowhair, senior optical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Yellowhair first met Vélez in 2003 when he began graduate school at UA. He ultimately earned a Ph.D. in optical sciences in 2007, an accomplishment he says he owes to Vélez for connecting him with scholarship money to get through school. But the most important form of assistance that Vélez provided wasn’t monetary, Yellowhair said.

“The biggest resource Dr. Vélez provided was an environment of comfort for Native American graduate students, some of whom were far away from home and their communities,” Yellowhair said, recalling how Vélez occasionally organized social gatherings for Native American students to have camaraderie and networking opportunities.

“This was also when Vélez engaged us to talk about any issues that we may be having,” Yellowhair recalled. “Dr. Vélez became a mother figure for a lot of us.”

“Her approachable and caring nature made it possible for her to fit this role easily,” Yellowhair said. “Even though she was a very busy person, she always made time for us.”

Dr. Karletta Chief, assistant professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Arizona, recalled similar efforts by Vélez to mentor Native American students, such as herself.

“It’s important because, especially for Native American students, there is not enough support for Native Americans to pursue higher education, and the challenges that they face are very different from other minorities, especially because Native Americans typically come from the reservations, which is a very different upbringing than others that might grow up in the city or not the tribal areas,” Chief said. “And so mentoring is important because the students can receive the guidance they need to successfully

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maneuver through college and adjust to college culturally and academically.”

Chief – who credits Vélez with supporting her decision to enter academe – now serves as a vital link between Native American communities and higher education. Specifically, she works to bring relevant science to Native American communities in a culturally sensitive manner by providing hydrology expertise, transferring knowledge, assessing information needs and developing applied science projects, her university bio states.

Given Vélez’s role in helping to catapult students from diverse backgrounds to find success on campus and beyond, it’s a small wonder why her work has been recognized and honored in so many different quarters.

Organizations that have given Vélez awards include the American Chemical Society and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanos and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS).

Most recently, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) bestowed its Diversity Vision Award upon Vélez.

“The basic reason we selected Dr. Vélez is because we believe she is an outstanding individual who is dedicated to underrepresented minority students in the STEM fields of study,” said Brenda O. Krulik, director of strategic communications at NACME. If you ask Vélez what lies behind her success, she is quick to give credit to others.

We are a team,” Vélez said. “I may lead the team, but I’m not doing this by myself. I have the best team anybody could have.”

And it’s a team that is eager to see their leader recognized.

“I have worked closely with Dr. Vélez for several years and stand in awe of her vision and leadership when it comes to increasing the number of underrepresented students enrolled at UA,” Nura A. Dualeh, assistant director of the McNair Achievement Program at UA, wrote in a 2008 letter to nominate Vélez for the University of Arizona Honorary Alumni Award, which Vélez received.

“She has succeeded in obtaining millions of dollars in grant funding to assist students in their undergraduate and graduate education,” Dualeh wrote. “Dr. Vélez enjoys a strong national and international reputation amongst graduate education administrators for her creative and impactful leadership and her energetic promotion of graduate education for all students.

“Her innovative partnerships with institutions in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia are leading to summer research training opportunities, undergraduate and graduate exchange programs, and the recruitment of top-notch international graduate students.”

Vélez is a strong believer in preparation. That’s the reason she created the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Consortium (UROC), a 10week summer program that prepares underrepresented students by engaging them in original research as a means of helping to prepare them for

graduate school.

“Nowadays, what graduate programs are looking for is students who as undergraduates were able to do research,” Vélez explains of one of the purposes behind the program, which is about to enter its 19th year.

“Because Ph.D.s are about doing research. And to a certain extent, master’s can be about research a well.

“So if graduate programs know that the students have already had that experience, understands it and likes it, it increases the chances of finishing their graduate program.”

UROC involves a collaboration between various groups and programs on the UA campus, including the McNair Achievement Program, Minority Health Disparities, Minority Access to Research Careers, Biosphere 2, the Latin American Group, the Hooked on Photonics Summer Research Program and Integrated Optics for Undergraduates, according to a description of the program on a UA website.

UROC participants are supported by federal grants or by their home institutions. The program teaches students about graduate school admissions, provides training for the GRE and gives them the opportunity to present research on a poster.

While a firm believer in preparation on one hand, Vélez also believes in looking at the big picture when it comes to determining who is graduate

school material. This is particularly important, she said, for students who have only had access to substandard schools.

Vélez says it’s not about admitting unqualified applicants into graduate school, but rather about looking at student qualifications in a more comprehensive way.

“I have never ever recommended a student who I don’t believe is excellent and absolutely qualified,” Vélez said. “That does not mean that I don’t point out to a program how a particular student is outstanding in ways that they have not considered.

“So the definition of excellent and of being outstanding may be different,” Vélez said. “But I can convince people with the arguments.”

Her arguments include making the case to look beyond a student’s GRE score, which she said an emergent body of research has shown to be limited in terms of its ability to predict graduate school success.

Indeed, the current ETS guide on how to use GRE scores says: Special care is required in interpreting the GRE scores of students who might have had educational and cultural experiences somewhat different from those of the traditional majority.

“So I will tell programs: ‘Look at the student grades, look at their research that they have already engaged in, in particular, look at the distance he or she has traveled,’” Vélez said. “[For] a Navajo kid who grew up on the reservation where they had no electricity and no bathrooms, and has now obtained really good grades and done research, why are we going to look at the GRE score if they don’t predict anything except first-year grades?” Vélez said. “Once they hear that, they understand. Grades, research and distance traveled are much better predictors of success in graduate school, at least for minorities, than a GRE could ever be.”

Vélez said when she first started making these arguments, she “may have felt like a voice in the wilderness.”

“But more and more as research comes out supporting my position, and graduate programs, empirically they find [that GRE’s are limited], I have become more credible,” Vélez said. “And in fact, I can think of several students I had to intervene in this way who ended up getting NSF graduate fellowships, which is sort of the cream of the crop. But they have to submit a research plan, and that’s what they’re being judged by.”

Looking forward, Vélez spoke of what she sees as the biggest challenges for students from underrepresented groups.

“The biggest challenge that I see in the coming year in terms of underrepresented minorities getting into and through college, particularly in STEM fields, is the exponential increase in tuition at all universities,” Vélez said. “Underrepresented minorities tend not to come from upper-middleclass families.

“We have many who do, but the vast majority do not come from upperincome families, and their income cannot afford their education.”

She noted how Pell Grants have “not kept up with” the cost of higher education and would like to see the federal government create a Pell Grant program that covers more of a student’s higher education costs.

Vélez is a widow with two adult children, Mariel, 34, and Damian, 30.

She said both have pursued careers as medical doctors in neuroscience and neurology, respectively, at Stanford.

Asked what she does outside of work, Vélez said: “My whole life is consumed by work in higher education. That’s my hobby. That’s my passion.”

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WOMEN/PROFILES

Veronica Gonzales – Spreading the Word About UTPA

“We

by Frank DiMaria never know in life what doors are going to open for us or where life will take us. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be working for a higher education institution,” says Veronica Gonzales, vice president of university advancement at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA). Gonzales, who took over in July, oversees the office of development, responsible for funding at the university, as well as the department of marketing and communications, which comprises the offices of alumni relations, public affairs and Studio Twelve01, the university’s marketing office.

Her fist order of business after arriving on campus was to craft a strategic plan for the university. “We need to fund raise like we never have before. That has been a real challenge because of the area and the economic times,” says Gonzales. In less than a month, Gonzales implemented a plan for increasing alumni participation, marketing the university, creating a brand and engaging with the community.

As part of her plan, Gonzales sought greater participation from UTPA alumni, which she calls the heart of the university. She started a program called Broncs at Work (UTPA’s mascot is Bucky the Bronc). This program features photos and videos of UTPA alumni who work in the community. “It’s really taking off. We have about 25 of them, and we have 30 more in the works,” says Gonzales. This type of marketing is a “win-win,” she says, because it benefits UTPA, the alumni and the businesses for which they work.

UTPA student workers comb the area newspapers daily searching for stories featuring UTPA alumni. When a student finds one, UTPA sends a personal letter to the alum thanking him or her for their hard good work in the community. Gonzales stays visible within the community, attending Rotary meetings and other events, and she asks her staff to do the same.

“So we can network and really move the ball in marketing the university,” she says. “It’s public relations, and that’s what we have to do because over the years Texas has funded universities less and less.”

Currently, only 29 percent of UTPA’s budget is funded by the state. The rest comes from tuition and private donors. Since many of its students are from families that struggle financially and rely heavily on financial aid, UTPA makes an effort to keep its tuition low. But grants within Texas were cut by $1 billion in the last legislative session. “To keep tuition low, we have to rely on the generosity of donors,” says Gonzales.

For the most part, UTPA is a commuter school. Unfortunately, many who live in and around the Rio Grande Valley take the university for granted and view it as the school that one attends only after being rejected by the larger universities. Gonzales hopes to change that view by broadening the school’s appeal geographically and spreading the word about its impressive rankings.

No other school in Texas awards more graduate degrees than UTPA, and it ranks No. 2 in awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics nationally.

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“We are considered one of the top 100 best colleges for Hispanic students.

Our business school is in the top 300 business schools, and our physician assistant program ranks 38th out of 164 in the nation. We rank ahead of Cornell and Stanford and other prominent universities,” says Gonzales.

Students who graduate from UTPA and apply for medical school have a 64 percent chance of being admitted, compared to 33 percent statewide.

Ninety percent of UTPA students who attend its law school preparation institute are accepted into law school.

Gonzales knows a little about law schools. Before coming to UTPA, she served in the Texas House of Representatives for eight years while practicing law as a partner at Kittleman, Thomas and Gonzales, LLP. She was born and raised in San Marcos, Texas. Although her parents had little chance of attending college, Gonzales considers them two of the smartest people she’s ever known. Her mother was born to a family of farmworkers. Her father always said he received his education in the Army, joining right out of high school. Although both stressed education, it was her mother who had the most ambitious plans for Gonzales. While her father praised her for doing her best, her mother insisted on straight A’s. She encouraged her to be a doctor or a lawyer because either of those professions would pay the best. When Gonzales was 14, her parents were involved in a traffic accident that left her mother dead and her father severely injured. This was a critical juncture in her life. “I remember thinking, ‘What am I going to do.’ You get into that mode that no one is there necessarily pushing you; my dad was working all the time, and my mom was gone. But I always had in my head her words about going to college,” says Gonzales.

When it came time to enroll in college, she chose to stay close to home where she could help her father to raise her younger brothers. Rather than attending the University of Texas, she enrolled in Texas State, which at the time

was known as Southwest Texas State University. She graduated cum laude in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish and took a secretarial position in a law firm. One of the lawyers at the firm recognized Gonzales’ talent and encouraged her to attend law school. She did and earned her doctorate of jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law in 1991. Soon after, she moved to McAllen and built a career as an attorney.

In 2004, the citizens of McAllen, Mission, Edinburg and Altonezens elected Gonzales to represent them in the Texas House of Representatives.

She was the first female to represent District 41 and is considered a standout in her first legislative session in 2005. Her peers elected her secretary of the state Democratic Caucus, and in that position, she passed the highest percentage of bills of any democratic legislator in the Texas House that year. Her first-year success prompted the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus to name her “Freshman of the Year.”

Gonzales gained the confidence of the speaker of the House, Joe Straus, who entered the House with her in 2005. Although in the minority party, she was named chairwoman of the Border and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, only one of 34 chairs out of 150 members. Straus recognized her leadership on border and security issues, and later appointed her to the National Conference of State Legislators’ Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Taskforce. Gonzales was thrilled to be dealing with national concerns that directly affected her constituents. “One of the big issues for us here in Texas has been security along the border. It’s been a tightrope to walk because on the one hand, we do, at least on this side of the border, feel secure. But the media attention has always focused on the violence taking place on the other side of the border,” says Gonzales.

The role of the Border and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and National Conference of State Legislators’ Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Taskforce was to secure the border without stifling commerce. The committee and taskforce continued to support those businesses already operating on the border while encouraging others to relocate to the area. Gov. Rick Perry, Gonzales says, supported initiatives funding “boots on the ground,” those soldiers that keep peace. “We had good collaboration between local, state and federal law enforcement authorities. I was fortunate to get to know all of them and work with them to assure that the types of initiatives that we were funding were going to be successful ones to keep our borders safe,” says Gonzales.

One initiative of which Gonzales is particularly proud is the one that created and implemented Joint Operating Intelligent Centers (JOICs), a collaborative effort between the state, local and federal agencies. They are the brains of the law enforcement agencies, gathering and processing intelligence information. “These have increased the ability of Homeland Security to do its job.

Whether its Homeland Security from a Texas standpoint or Homeland Security from a federal standpoint. The sharing of the information has been really helpful,” says Gonzales. Before her committee and taskforce created JOICs, the various departments were territorial, often reluctant to share information. With drug cartels gaining power and influence over the years, JOICs have proven instrumental in fighting border battles in Texas.

Gonzales represented 150,000 Texans living on or near the U.S.-Mexico border in Hidalgo county, one of the largest counties in Texas. More than 85 percent of her constituents were Hispanic with income and education levels that varied wildly. Although Hidalgo is home to numerous financial and medical jobs, many of her constituents worked in the fields as farmworkers. By and large, her constituents were poor, with some families earning as little as $13,000 a year.

As though she were paving the way for her move into academe, Gonzales passed several pieces of legislation addressing education as a state representative. One increased access to education for underrepre-

sented individuals by allowing them to pay their tuition in payments. The other allowed community colleges to waive tuition and fees for employees wishing to continue their education. Even as a young girl, Gonzales believed that education was the key to economic and personal growth. “In order for us not to be one of the poorer areas in the state, we have to give every incentive possible for people to go to school,” says Gonzales. When UTPA and South Texas contacted Rep. Gonzales looking for support to help the poorest of the poor to attend college, she was quick to act. “These two pieces of legislation were intended to get more students to be able to go because even today [at UTPA] over 70 percent of our students are on financial aid. We encourage our employees, our staff, to continue their education. [This legislation] was a way to get them to do so by helping them do that at a low cost or no cost,” says Gonzales.

Another piece of legislation that Gonzales is quick to take credit for is the Hook’em amendment that she attached to another bill that is relevant today.

Years ago, a female South Texas legislator wrote legislation that forced the University of Texas-Austin and Texas A&M to accept all high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. UT-Austin challenged this top 10 percent rule because its freshman class was being quite nearly filled by these students. “They didn’t have the ability to allow as many other students in as they could,” says Gonzales. The legislation was originally intended to diversify UT-Austin and Texas A&M, both racially and geographically. “So more of the smaller towns in Texas would have their students attend those schools and we’d see more Hispanics and African-Americans attend. It worked. We were seeing an increase,” says Gonzales.

Gonzales’ Hook’em amendment lowered the percentage to eight, and she had the votes for it in the House. But representatives were still concerned that there might be challenges to the law and that a change in regions would cause the institution to use other factors in admission. Gonzales feared that all the work she and her predecessors had done to level the playing field would be lost. So Gonzales revamped the amendment to state that if regions change and if colleges can no longer consider race, then they would revert back to the top 10 percent rule in a way to ensure diversity.

When Gonzales ended her eight years in the Texas House of Representatives, she resumed practicing law full time with the firm at which she had worked since 1991. However she found that work unfulfilling and missed rubbing elbows with members of the community and the feeling of making a difference. She attended a panel discussion at UTPA and was approached by representatives of the university about the vice president job. When she looked into the job, she found that it is exactly what she had been doing in her role in the House and at her law firm.

Soon she was accepting the position she holds today.

Gonzales’ future plans for UTPA are ambitious to say the least. Currently, 19,000 students attend UTPA. Gonzales wants to increase this number to 30,000 and transform the Rio Grande Valley through education. Under her leadership, UTPA has partnered with companies in the health care, business and education sectors within the community. Through a number of UTPA programs, Rio Grande Valley students of all ages visit the university where they become more and more comfortable with higher education in general and the university specifically. “It’s not whether they will go to college, it’s when they will go and where they will go,” says Gonzales.

UTPA hosts health care summits where health care professionals discuss the improvement of health care and the university’s role, given that the Rio Grande Valley has one of the highest diabetes rates in the nation. In the business world, UTPA partners to train employees in customer service, part marketing and part community service “The idea is that if we have a strong relationship with our community, we are really going to see advances both for the university and where we are as a community,” say Gonzales.

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WOMEN/PROFILES

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Mari Carmen Ramírez –

Groundbreaker in Latino Art

by Michelle Adam

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ari Carmen Ramírez had just returned from Colombia where she had served as the distinguished lecturer at a museum and cultural center. It might seem a far distance for her to go from her home in Houston, Texas, yet the breadth and depth of her work has transformed her into a well-known name in the art world throughout the Americas.

In Colombia, she spoke to a subject she knows well: Latin American and Latino art. This mid-50s, spiked-hair curator of Latin American art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has been breaking new ground for Latin American and Latino art and artists for the past 20-plus years, and the results of her hard work are finally showing.

Last year, she launched the ICAA’s digital archive on Latino and Latin American art (Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project) – seemingly the first of its kind in breadth and depth. By Internet, anyone can now access information on Latino and Latin American art – 3,500 documents are currently visible online, with 10,000 more being uploaded – and the true Latino contributions to modern art can finally be seen. So many journalists from across the globe marked this historic event that the center was able to produce a 300-page book on clippings and articles about this momentous occasion.

Ramírez’s work has not only helped scholars and researchers access information on Latin American and Latino modern art rarely seen in the past, but has also brought its artists into the everyday fabric of modern art in museums throughout the world – and especially in Houston. The reality she has established is a far cry, though, from the art world she studied when she was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1980s.

“There was no one teaching Latin American art in the U.S. The information was there, but no one to teach it,” said Ramírez. “I built my own bibliography of Latin American art and had to carve my own way. It was a pretty lonely endeavor.”

Recognizing the absence of scholarship and teachings in modern art of Latin America – and the need to move far beyond the limited view that this art was only made up of Mexican muralists, Frida Kahlo and a mere handful of other artists – Ramírez began paving the way for Latin American art to move from the fringes to the center of the modern art world.

Ramírez has been able to do so because she herself knows what it’s like to come from the fringes, while brokering two worlds. She was raised in a middle-class family in Puerto Rico, a place she describes as colony of the U.S. to this day. Her parents sent her to a bilingual Catholic school run by American nuns because they understood the importance of learning English. They also raised her with nationalistic values, stressing the importance of Puerto Rican values and history.

“I don’t consider myself American because of my strong nationalistic values, but I’ve learned the notion of straddling two cultures,” she said.

Ramírez was strongly influenced by intellectuals and artists in her family, yet never learned much Puerto Rican history or culture in school (the focus was on American history and culture). She came to see that even in Puerto Rico the culture was officially marginalized – to such a degree that later, when she worked as director of the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte de La Universidad de Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, she was the first to put together a retrospective of a Puerto Rican artist.

“Before no museum had ever presented an exhibition like that,” she said. “They had mostly Spanish, European and American art, but this was the first retrospective of a Puerto Rican artist.”

The work she began at the museum in Puerto Rico – and her graduate

studies – set the tone for what Ramírez would do in her life. In 1988, shortly after obtaining her Ph.D., she was appointed the first curator of Latin American art in the United States, at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas-Austin. She also became an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History there.

During her 12 years at Blanton, Ramírez organized various shows that were recognized by many in the field, and produced written works that challenged the cultural hegemony of the United States on the modern art movement. In a New York Times article from March 23, 2008, she was quoted as saying, “It is important to stress that Latin American art is part of the West, it is not hanging out there as neo-Aztec or neo-Mayan culture.”

The MFAH curator was instrumental in changing these views, but it took hard work and time to do so. “When I started out in the field, Latin American art was extremely marginalized. A handful of people focused on this, and it was an uphill battle. I remember when I started at the Blanton, we offered our exhibitions to other museums, and they would say ‘no.’

Nobody knew anything about these artists,” she said. “You had to travel to these countries and work hard to get this art. And then there were a lot of prejudices. So people like me have had this missionary zeal to promote these artists against all odds.”

Latin American art had been in a constant dialogue with American and European art, but it didn’t fit neatly into the art categories invented in the U.S. and Europe 20 to 30 years ago, explained Ramírez. Latin American artists took modern art ideas, turned them upside-down, and produced something new – like the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García and his work, which combines a style similar to the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian with pictographs.

During her last year at Blanton, Ramírez embarked on a huge undertaking. With her husband, Héctor Olea, a Mexican poet and translator, she curated the “Heterotopias” exhibition at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid in 2000. The show, which would later create a huge stir in the U.S., highlighted conceptual and minimalist art from Latin America rarely seen before. It challenged the very limited notion that all Latin American modern art boils down to the Mexican muralists and Frida Kahlo.

Artists like Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Díez from Venezuela, Léon Ferrari from Argentina, and Rio de Janeiro artists Hélio Oiticica and Lyfgia Clark were some of many Latin American artists represented in Spain, and later at the MFAH, when the show, under a new name, “Inverted Utopias,” made its debut in the U.S. While some artists’ names were already familiar, many of the Latin American artists were seen for the first time. Their works ranged from steel-wire hangings and calligraphic drawings to left-wing sculptures and much more.

Ramírez left Blanton shortly after completing the Spanish exhibition, and was soon offered a position by Peter Marzio, the MFAH director at the time, to curate Latin American art. Before moving to Houston in May 2001, though, Ramírez convinced Marzio to create a research center on Latin American artists that she would also run.

“I had spent 12 years before that at the University of Texas and was conscious of the fact that people here lack the inside perspective of Latin American art and Latin America as a whole. So I knew you couldn’t start a program without a research component. I argued for the establishment of a research center, and it was enthusiastically accepted,” she said. “The key to all was research and education. You have to expose people to what artists were thinking, so people understand where the ideas come from.”

Ramírez was thus invited to establish a curatorial department for Latin

American Art and direct the new International Center for the Arts of the Americas at MFAH. “Peter was a great visionary and had it very clear from as early as the 1980s the role that Latino art would play in this country,” she said.

The new curator embarked on her journey at the MFAH with several mandates: to build a collection of modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art; to create exhibitions that are all heavily researchbased; and to develop the ICAA and its archive.

To date, 10-plus years later, Ramírez has done exactly that and more.

She has built the Latin American collection from almost nothing to more than 550 works (the museum began with some Latin American photography and works on paper in other departments, but had nothing in terms of paintings, sculptures, videos and installation).

Since Ramírez began, MFAH has also had more than a dozen major research-based exhibitions of Latin American art. “We spend three to five

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years researching the artist and movement and organizing the material. For many Latin American artists, they have not archived or organized their work,” said Ramírez. “We work to restore works and put together catalogues that we reference. For many artists, this is their first reference guide. We position these artists inside the narrative of 20th-century art.”

The most noteworthy exhibition to this date was “Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America,” a continuation of “Heterotopias” in Spain, in the summer of 2004. It was considered a blockbuster exhibit that not only challenged the notion of modern art in the U.S., but also brought recognition and acceptance of many Latin American artists to the U.S. art market. The show was named “Best Thematic Museum Show Nationally” in the U.S. by the International Association of Art Critics.

Within a year of the 2004 event, Ramírez’s contributions were soon recognized. She became the recipient of the Award for Curatorial Excellence by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and Time magazine named her one of “The 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.”

But Ramírez’s work was far from over. She also spearheaded the ICAA, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. “This is the only center of its kind in the world that is dedicated to the research and promotion of Latino art. I believe there is no initiative of this kind, where a center like this is linked to a museum,” she said.

Through the center, the curator first gathered scholars, curators and educators from the Americas to determine how to approach research of Latin American art. “Everyone’s concern was about the issue of archives and the fact that, up until this point, Latin American art had no funding,” she said. “In the case of any archives on Latin American art, there was nothing. Documents were under grandmother’s beds and hidden in closets. These groups wanted to preserve these memories.”

Recognizing the importance of documenting and archiving information on Latin American art, these groups set out to gather documents and stories from across the Americas. And technology was on their side – they were able to scan all materials and upload them ultimately to the Internet. “By January

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2012, we had been working for eight years behind the scenes. It had been so difficult to give people a sense of what we were doing. It wasn’t until we launched the database that this became a reality,” said Ramírez. “This was the first archive like this with all of its interactive functions. The reception was amazing, and I was amazed at the impact it had and how far it extended.

It had a large impact in the U.S. and Latin America and Europe.”

Although only 3,500 documents had been uploaded to the current archival site at the time of the launch, ICAA and its research groups are continuing to upload more than 10,000 more documents in the next years.

For now, however, the site has become a strong arm for academics to use with their students to further research on Latin American art, and has complemented MFAH’s niche as a leader in Latin American art.

“The combination of these three factors (research, investment in a collection and exhibitions) sets us apart from other museums. Most are dedicated to building a collection and doing exhibitions, but none of them have a hardcore research component to them. And no other museum has invested financially as much as we have in the area of Latin American art.”

With MFAH’s great commitment and Ramírez’s unrelenting passion for Latin American Art, the museum and its curator have made a bold mark in the world of modern art. Museums throughout the U.S. and beyond have begun showing works by Latin American artists unfamiliar to the public a decade ago, and the value of these artists’ works have grown by $100,000 or more during the same time period.

MFAH’s work is far from over, though. The museum is prepared to create a third building for its 20th Century Art and Latin American Art collection, and its Latin American art collection will soon be permanently displayed – no U.S. museum has yet to do the same. The ICAA archives will also continue to grow and reach further audiences.

“I’ve never been closer to what I’ve wanted to do than I am now,” said Ramírez. “It’s been a tough climb, and I owe the work I’ve done to the reception I’ve had here in Houston. It’s been an amazing ride these past 10-11 years.”

Interesting Reads

Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810

By Andrew McMichael This book is a study of the factors that affected the loyalties of non-Spaniards living under Spanish rule on the southern frontier. The Spanish borderlands systems of slavery and land ownership used a system of land distribution and government patronage to foster loyalty and kept the peace for a while. The author focuses on the Baton Rouge district of Spanish West Florida from 1785 through 1810, analyzing why resident Anglo-Americans, who had maintained a high degree of loyalty to the Spanish Crown through 1809, rebelled in 1810. The author draws on Spanish, French and Anglo records to paint the picture of life in those times.

2008. 256 pgs. ISBN: 978-0820330235. $24.95. paper. The University of Georgia Press, (800) 266-5842. www.ugapress.org.

Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona

By Eric V. Meeks South-central Arizona is home to many ethnic groups, including Mexican-Americans, Mexican immigrants and semiHispanicized indigenous groups such as Yaquis and Tohono O’odham. Kinship and cultural ties between these diverse groups were altered, and ethnic boundaries were deepened by the influx of Euro-Americans, the development of an industrial economy and incorporation into the U.S. nation-state. The author explores how ethnic Mexican and Native American communities struggled to define their own identities as Arizona began to take its place in the national economy of the United States, primarily through mining and industrial agriculture.

2007. 342 pgs. ISBN: 978-0292716995. $30.00. paper. University of Texas Press, (800) 252 3206. www.utexaspress.com.

Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform (Latin America Otherwise)

By Enrique Mayer The author reveals the human drama behind the radical agrarian reform that came about in Peru during the final 30 years of the 20th century. It began in 1969, when the leftleaning military government implemented a drastic program of land expropriation. Seized lands were turned into worker-managed cooperatives. The author interviewed exlandlords, land expropriators, politicians, government bureaucrats, intellectuals, peasant leaders, activists, ranchers, members of farming families and others. Weaving their recollections with his own commentary, he offers a series of dramatic narratives about this chaotic time in Peru.

2009. 328 pgs. ISBN: 978-0822344698. $24.95. paper. Duke University Press Books, (919) 688-5134. www.dukeupress.edu.

Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations?

by Paul Attewell, David Lavin and Tania Levey 2009. 268 pgs. ISBN: 978-0871540386. $17.95. Russell Sage Foundation, (212) 750-6000. www.russellsage.org.

In

a world where even good news is questioned and dissected for negative spin, it’s not surprising that there are some analysts who question the wisdom of driving up enrollment at colleges and universities in the United States. Critics of this push to increase access to higher education say that there is no evidence that sending otherwise disinclined students to college will translate into a smarter and more successful population.

This book seeks to address the ripple effect that the higher education of a first-generation college student has on the student’s family and subsequent generations of that family. The authors do this by examining generations of student families to find out how higher education improves the lives of the student and the student’s family as well as the student’s descendants. And their conclusions are not based in conjecture. They are based on their own dataset using a national database of research as a control comparison. Written in terms that professional researchers and scholars as well as those not well-versed in higher education issues can readily understand, Passing the Torch addresses the steady expansion of college enrollment rates over the last generation. It has been heralded as a major step toward reducing chronic economic disparities.

Unlike previous research into the benefits of higher education, Passing the Torch follows the educational achievements of three generations over 30 years. The book focuses on a cohort of women who entered City University of New York (CUNY) between 1970 and 1972, when the university began accepting all graduates of New York City high schools and increasing its representation of poor and minority students. The authors conducted surveys with these women to determine how the opportunity to pursue higher education affected not only their long-term educational attainments and family wellbeing, but also how it affected their children’s educational achievements.

Comparing the record of the CUNY alumnae to peers nationwide, the authors recorded data that showed when women from underprivileged backgrounds go to college, their children are more likely to succeed in school and earn college degrees themselves. Mothers with a college degree are more likely to expect their children to go to college, to have extensive discussions with their children, and to be involved in their children’s schools. All of these parenting behaviors appear to create a breeding ground for higher test scores and college enrollment rates among their children. In addition, college-educated women are more likely to raise their children in stable two-parent households and to earn higher incomes; both factors have been demonstrated to increase children’s educational success. As the first study to indicate that increasing access to college among today’s disadvantaged students can reduce educational gaps in the next generation, Passing the Torch makes a powerful argument in favor of college for all.

Reviewed by Mary Ann Cooper

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WOMEN/RACE/GENDER ISSUES

Wage Gap for Women: Both Sides of the Story Some

by Mary Ann Cooper arguments seem like no-brainers. Equal pay for equal work seems to be one of those arguments. How could anyone be opposed to such a democratic concept?

And in a year where one political party is being accused – justly or unjustly – of waging a war on women, the equal pay for equal work battle cry is especially resonant with working women in America. But like every other debate we are having these days in our polarized nation, the issue is complicated.

Here are the main arguments that support and refute the equal pay for equal work argument: The Center for American Progress (CAP) uses hard statistics to make its case. It says women who work full time year round continue to earn only about 77 percent of what men earn. The gap between the median wage for a man and that of a woman in 2010 was $10,784 per year. The gender wage gap gets larger with age and builds up over time. For young women at the beginning of their careers – between the ages of 25 to 29 – the annual wage gap is about $1,700. But for women in the final five years of their careers before retirement, the wage gap grows to a whopping $14,352. Over a 40-year career, the average woman will lose $431,000 to the gender wage gap.

The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) acknowledges that women do make less income than men, but don’t view this as discriminatory and hits back at liberals for inflating this issue.

When the Paycheck Fairness Act was being debated, Sabrina Schaeffer, executive director of Independent Women’s Forum, issued this statement: “Democrats, who frame the issue as a ‘War on Women,’ should be embarrassed by this story not only because it hints at possible sexism, but also because it reveals the absurdity of the debate over the ‘wage gap’ and the Paycheck Fairness Act. These ‘raw’ salaries tell us nothing about the qualifications, educational background or work-life preferences of any of these individuals.”

The IWF has its own statistics to promote its argument. They say the average full-time female worker spends 7.81 hours per day on the job, versus the 8.3 hours for the average full-time working male. Men make up 55 percent of workers averaging more than 35 hours a week. In 2007, 25 percent of men working full-time jobs worked 41 or more hours a week, compared to 14 percent of full-time women. Men were found to be more likely to work in dirty or dangerous conditions, and sustained the overwhelming majority of workplace injuries and deaths. It is reasonable that these additional risks often warrant higher salaries, concludes the IWF. CAP says that opponents to equal pay for equal work are using these statistics to confuse the issue. Arguably, people working longer hours or in dangerous or unsavory conditions should be compensated more than those working less and in safer conditions, but the Paycheck Fairness Act is about EQUAL pay for EQUAL

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work. Differences in hours logged or working conditions have nothing to do with the basic premise of equal pay for equal work. IWF’s point, however, is that differences in working conditions and hours on the job can skew the same statistics that proponents of new legislation use to make their argument.

CAP also points to the fact that women are now earning the majority of college degrees, but that has done nothing to mitigate the pay gap between the sexes. The American Association of University Women found that college-educated women begin their careers earning 5 percent less than their male peers – even when they went to the same schools, had the same GPA, were hired for the same jobs and had the same marital status and family makeup in terms of the parenting of children. After 10 years on the job, the wage gap expands to 12 percent, even when women don’t miss a beat competing with their male counterparts at the same job.

The IWF points out that college women tend to major in less lucrative professions and fields of study because, according to survey research conducted by Basit Zafar in 2009 for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, women often consider issues like parental approval and enjoyment of future work when choosing a major, while their male colleagues are more concerned with salaries and status.

The Federal Reserve report seems to show the universality of the societal differences between men and women when it comes to education, since CAP’s crunched numbers show the gender wage gap exists for all women, regardless of race or ethnicity. White women earn 21.9 percent less than White men; Black women earn 10.2 percent less than Black men; Latinas earn 8.7 percent less than Latino men; and Asian-American women earn 20.3 percent less than Asian-American men. They say the wage gap is smaller for African-American and Hispanic women primarily because wages for people of color tend to be lower overall.

The IWF explains that when women take a leave of absence for weeks, months or even years to rear their own children or care for a family member, it stunts their earnings potential because men in the same jobs are racking up more experience during their absences. Kay Hymowitz, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in April 2012, “One study by the American Association for University Women looked at women who graduated from college in 1992-93 and found that 23% of those who had become mothers were out of the workforce in 2003; another 17% were working part-time. Fewer than 2% of fathers fell into those categories. Another study, of M.B.A. graduates from Chicago’s Booth School, discovered that only half of women with children were working full-time 10 years after graduation, compared with 95% of men.”

Hymowitz went on to cite more of the New York Federal Reserve report stating that, “‘opting-out’ by midcareer college-educated wives, especially

win their case. It explains that new measures could actually be detrimental to women. For example, proposals to create rigid compensation guidelines for women and men would lead to less flexibility and more compliance costs, which would depress job and promotion prospects for all.

Proponents argue that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – which helps women and minorities who have been discriminated against by restarting the clock on the statute of limitations with each discriminatory paycheck – was a step forward, but it fails to get to the root of the problem. The Paycheck Fairness Act, however, would empower women by outlawing workplace policies that make disclosing one’s salary to co-workers a cause for being fired and would provide negotiation training for women and girls.

The Historical Perspective on Paycheck Equality The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has as its mission to empower women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research. Its nonpartisan, nonprofit organization has more than 150,000 members and supporters across the United States, as well as 1,000 local branches and 700 college and university partners. Since AAUW’s founding in 1881, its members have examined and taken positions on the fundamental issues of the day – educational, social, economic and political.

The AAUW lists these events – going back nearly a century – that were historical milestones in the fight for paycheck equality:

Lilly Ledbetter those with wealthy husbands, has been increasing over the past 20 years.”

Still, that doesn’t explain the fact that single women face an even larger, on average, gender wage gap than married women. Single women typically earn less than married women – 21.2 percent less. They also earn only 57 cents for every dollar married men earn. There is also a wage gap between mothers and women without children. This “mother’s wage penalty” reduces a mother’s pay by about 7 percent per child.

Critics of the equal pay for equal work legislation say that this gap can very often be explained. Part of the reason women earn less than men is related to the fact that they are more likely to work in so-called pink-collar jobs, which offer low wages. The top 10 occupations for women include secretaries and administrative assistants, cashiers, retail salespersons and waitresses. These types of jobs tend to pay less than those in male-dominated industries and professions.

But proponents say that only about a quarter of the wage gap is due to occupational differences, and about 10 percent of the gap is due to the fact that women are more likely than men to leave the paid labor force to provide family care. And while there could be a national dialogue about why women are always expected to assume the role of caregiver while men are not expected to put their career on hold to perform similar functions, it doesn’t negate the impact it has on wages and career paths.

Critics of new legislation like the IWF say that pay discrimination is already illegal in the U.S. Both the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 make pay discrimination illegal, and women can and do sue their employers when they feel they have been wronged.

The IWF points out that about 12 percent of job-discrimination plaintiffs

1. During World War I, women were first guaranteed pay equity in the form of regulations enforced by the War Labor Board of 1918. The board’s equal pay policy required manufacturers, who put women on the payroll while male employees were serving in the military, to pay those women the same wages that were paid to the men.

2. During World War II, a large number of American women took jobs (most for the first time) outside the home. Many of these women worked in the war industries, and in 1942 the National War Labor Board urged employers to make “adjustments which [would] equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations.”

3. The first bill prohibiting pay discrimination against women was called the “Women’s Equal Pay Act of 1945” and was introduced by Sens.

Pepper and Morse on June 21, 1945. The bill was not passed. Bills were introduced every year but were not passed because they called for equal pay for comparable work. “Comparable work” is the theory of providing equal compensation for different jobs in the same organization or community based on a comparison of the intrinsic worth and/or difficulty of the job.

4. Until the early 1960s, advertisements for job listings were separated by sex. Almost all of the higher-level jobs were for men, and some ads for the exact same job would offer different pay for men and women.

5. In 1963, women earned 58.9 percent of the wages men earned, according to the U.S. Women’s Bureau and the National Committee on Pay Equity. On June 10, 1963, John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law to become effective on June 11, 1964. With the EPA, it became illegal to pay women lower wages than men based solely on their sex.

6. In 2009, President Obama signs into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act as the first piece of legislation in his presidency. It gave employees greater rights in challenging employer payment practices.

7. Despite the passage of the EPA over 40 years ago, women still do not earn equal wages. In 2010, women earned 77 percent of men’s wages, which is only an improvement of a penny a year since 1963 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Yvette Donado and ETS: Promoting a Solid Early Start for Hispanic Students WOMEN/PROFILES

C

by Mary Ann Cooper

hosen as one of Hispanic Business magazine’s “Top 50 Influentials for 2012,” Yvette Donado is an outstanding role model for Latinas trying to break through the corporate glass ceiling. But there is so much more to her than that. As chief administrative officer and senior vice president of people, process and communications at Educational Testing Service (ETS), Donado wears many hats. But all her duties come down to one common goal that she has pursued her entire life. That goal is to be, as she says, that “granito de arena” (grain of sand) that joins community, educators, parents and organizations to make a mountain that can move mountains of resistance to the ascendance of Hispanics in schools, the marketplace and society.

Donado grew up in New York City, after her parents moved there from Puerto Rico. She and her four sisters witnessed, firsthand, how low expectations could stifle ambition and success in Latinos. She recently admitted that when she began her career, she had to disabuse people from assuming that as a woman and a Latina she was not up to the task at hand. Instead of feeling discouraged, Donado set about changing minds. She worked hard to win over her co-workers’ respect by overachieving and succeeding in whatever she put her hand and mind to.

Part of Donado’s strength comes from her father, who was uncompromising in his belief that the workplace should be a healthy environment, where everyone was treated with respect and dignity. She told Latina Style magazine in December of 2012 that his example was a life lesson for her.

“Of course I did not understand what I was learning at the time, but it was very powerful that he had non negotiable requirements of what was acceptable behavior. There was something about his sense of justice that stayed with me. And I know that somewhere I got this thing about treating people with respect and that there needs to be fairness and justice.”

Donado earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Queens College in New York and a diploma in human resources studies from New York University. She also received a certificate in strategic human resources management and an executive MBA (AMP) from Harvard University. She completed the Executive Development Program at Wharton Business School and took classes at Cornell/Boston University in labor relations and conflict resolution.

Before joining ETS, Donado was senior vice president/director of human resources at Donovan Data Systems Inc., a leading provider of software services for the worldwide advertising industry. Prior to that, she joined Donovan Data Systems in 1975 and began her career there by serving as corporate vice president, director of personnel, and manager of the firm’s New York headquarters.

Now at ETS, Donado supervises a staff of more than 500 employees.

And in that capacity, she has focused like a laser beam on the needs of the nation’s English-language learners (ELLs). Of the more than five million ELLs in this country, 80 percent are Hispanic. So it’s not a surprise to her that Hispanic dropout rates continue to be high, even though they are edg-

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ing downward in recent years.

To Donado, starting as early as possible to reverse the attitudes and difficulties that perpetuate high Hispanic dropout rates is the key to success. And when it comes to starting early, Donado is a firm believer that local efforts are an important part of the efforts of ETS in addressing this problem.

She issued a statement recently that read in part, “Assuring our global competitiveness is a goal no one can argue with. Turning around our comparative decline in educational attainment depends greatly on local commitment. And when I think ‘local,’ I often think of San Antonio, where Educational Testing Service (ETS) has its K-12 division headquarters. So education in San Antonio, especially at the Pre-K-12 levels, is of keen interest to me personally and to ETS.” Donado insists that nursery schoolchildren’s academic success in later years depends upon intervention by companies like ETS, community organizations and the family. “Research shows that parental engagement – in a child’s Pre-K years – is pivotal for a strong start in school. Oregon and Colorado, among other states, have researched Pre-K education and its predictive value for educational attainment in the lower grades. They have initiated programs to strengthen early education,” she explains. “In a 2010 report, the Anna E. Casey Foundation said: ‘Reading proficiency by the end of third grade can be a make-or-break benchmark in a child’s educational development.’ It also said that in 2008, ‘16% of children in the United States lived in a household where the head of household was not a high school graduate.’”

Donado points to an ETS report in 2008, The Family: America’s Smallest School, to make her point that learning begins in the home. She says, “Socioeconomic levels affect the home learning environment. The conclusion is inescapable: Parents and the home must be conducive to early education. Too many families, however, are at or below the poverty level. The youngsters for whom we must assure a solid early start are our future work force, and are tomorrow’s instruments for global competitiveness. Providing the right learning environment for them at home and a solid early start in school is everyone’s job.”

In the final analysis, Donado is determined to be that “granito de arena,” knowing full well that grains of sand can be irritants as well as the foundation for building a mountain. But it should be noted that were it not for irritating grains of sand that find their way into an oyster shell, there would be no pearls in the world. She is determined to be one of the catalyst grains of sand for change. “We’ve got to engage the parent,” she told Latina Style in that same interview. “We’ve got to figure out why kids are absent so much. What is going on with the absenteeism? What is it with the school that makes it unappealing to our youth? The reason I feel so privileged to be part of this organization at this moment is because I really think we’re at a tipping point with this nation. I hope we can all work together to make things better.”

HI S PAN I C S O N T H E MO VE UCR’s López Named Tomás Rivera Chair

Dr. José M. Ortiz, chancellor of the Peralta Community College District (Calif.), recently named Dr. Norma Ambriz-Galaviz (pictured) the new president of Merritt College, calling her an “accomplished a d m i n i s t r a t o r. ” Ambriz-Galaviz has served since 2008 as vice president of instruction for Mission College of the West Valley Mission Community College District.

She was employed for 17 years at Chabot College and also worked at Cabrillo and Hartnell Community colleges, holding various academic and student services positions.

Ambriz-Galaviz has an associate degree in administration of justice from Hartnell College, a bachelor’s in criminal justice administration and master’s in counseling from San Diego State University and a doctorate in education-organizational leadership from the University of La Verne.

Tiffany Ana López, a professor of theater at the University of California-Riverside (UCR), recently became the second scholar to hold the Tomás Rivera Chair in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at UCR, succeeding Juan Felipe Herrera, who had held the position since 2005. López joined the UCR English department in 1995 as the university’s first specialist in Chicana/o literature. Her current research focuses on issues of trauma and violence and the ways that theater, literature and art provide avenues for personal healing, community building and social change. She has a bachelor’s degree from California State UniversitySacramento and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of California-Santa Barbara.

UALR Names Toro-Ramos New Provost Zulma Toro-Ramos became the new provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock (UALR) in January. Toro-Ramos had been dean of the College of Engineering at Wichita State University, where she also had served as director of the Center for Innovation and Enterprise Engagement.

She has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, a master’s in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Regueiro Honored by South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce The South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (SFHCC) in November honored María Cristina Regueiro, Florida National University’s (FNU) president, with the Education Leader of the Year Award. Chamber President Liliam M. López and Chairman Santiago Quintana Jr. presented the award to Regueiro at the Hispanic chamber’s 18th Annual Sunshine Awards. “María Cristina is a vital presence in the community and has become an influential figure in education,” said López.

“This award recognized Mrs. Regueiro’s exceptional commitment to higher education and contributions to the community.”

Rodríguez Nieto Discusses Her Experiences Covering Crime in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Núñez Presented with “Transforming Lives Award”

Investigative reporter Sandra Rodríguez Nieto examined how Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, became one of the most dangerous cities in the world, during a recent presentation at California State University-Northridge.

Rodríguez Nieto talked about her book La Fábrica Del Crimen, (The Factory of Crime). Rodríguez Nieto has worked as an investigative reporter in Ciudad Juárez since 2003 for the daily newspaper El Diario de Juárez.

Elsa M. Núñez, president of Eastern Connecticut State University, received the 2012 Transforming Lives Award from Hartford-based Family Life Education during its 25th anniversary gala in November. In accepting the award, Núñez said: “When someone in a Puerto Rican family, an African-American family, or an inner-city student from a low-income family is the first family member to attend college, it not only transforms one life. ... Graduating from college tells a student, ‘Yes you can.’ It tells his or her family, ‘We are strong.’ It tells an entire neighborhood, ‘We can succeed.’ It is like a pebble tossed into still water – it ripples and ripples and ripples, until it reaches all shores.”

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Photo © José Naranjo

Ambriz-Galaviz Becomes President of Merritt College

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The

University of South Florida System is a high-impact, global research system dedicated to student success. The USF System includes three institutions: USF Tampa; USF St. Petersburg; and USF Sarasota-Manatee. The institutions are separately accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. All institutions have distinct missions and strategic plans. Serving more than 47,000 students, the USF System has an annual budget of $1.5 billion and an annual economic impact of $3.7 billion. USF is a member of the Big East Athletic Conference.

Associate Vice President for Human Resources Located near Manhattan, New Jersey City University, an urban institution of distinction in the State of New Jersey enrolling over 8300 undergraduate and graduate students, invites nominations and applications for the position of Associate Vice President for Human Resources, a newly created position.

NJCU is seeking a strategic, accomplished HR generalist, dedicated to working in a vibrant, mission-driven, and culturally diverse institution, to lead its Human Resources department.

Reporting to the President, the new Associate Vice President will be the chief human resources officer for the institution and will be responsible for designing and implementing leading-edge human resources services for the University, which employs 770 full- and part-time faculty and 670 staff. As a member of senior staff, the AVP for Human Resources will serve as a strategic advisor on human capital issues, the development of policies and procedures, and culture and climate initiatives on campus. The Associate Vice President for Human Resources will oversee the areas of Recruitment and Staffing, Employee Relations, Compensation and Records, Benefits, Payroll ($84 million), HRIS, and Performance Management and Training.

The Associate Vice President for Human Resources will work collaboratively with administrative and academic departments across campus. Through effective and proactive HR policy and operations, the Associate Vice President for Human Resources is responsible for developing practices and programs that support the University’s mission and position NJCU to attract and retain a highly qualified, diverse workforce.

The successful candidate will have at least ten years of progressively responsible experience as a human resources generalist in higher education or a related industry with a successful record in change management; proven strategic leadership experience in the areas of organizational effectiveness, labor relations, and performance management; comprehensive knowledge of employment and labor laws, and a record of implementing process and systems improvements as well as HR best practices. A bachelor’s degree is required; master’s degree in a related field is highly preferred. Advanced training or PHR/SPHR certification is highly desirable.

Administrative and Executive Positions: Director of Financial Management (University College) Sr. Director of Development-Gift Planning (Advancement) Sr. Director of Development-COB (Advancement) Regional Chancellor (St. Petersburg Campus) Sr. Director Academic Learning Design & Technology (University College) Director of Counseling Center (Student Affairs) Director of Development (Advancement) Director of the Center for Student Involvement (Student Affairs) Director of Quality Enhancement-Academic Success (St. Petersburg Campus) Faculty Positions: College of Arts and Sciences College of Education Assistant Professor (8) Assistant/Associate Professor (1) Assistant/Associate Professor (3) Assistant Professor (3) Assistant/Associate/Full Professor (1) Dean (1) Associate Professor/Professor (1) College of Business College of Engineering Assistant Professor (3) Open Rank (Full Professor) (4) Associate/Full Professor (2) Assistant Professor (3) Assistant/Associate Professor (2) Open Rank (Full/Associate/Assistant) (2) College of Arts Assistant Professor (2) Director & Professor (1)

St. Petersburg Campus Assistant Professor (3) Assistant/Associate Professor (1)

College of Public Health Assistant Professor (2) Assistant/Associate Professor (1)

Sarasota Campus Assistant Professor (2)

College of Medicine Assistant/Associate Professor (8) Assistant Professor (11) Assistant/Associate/Full Professor (4)

College of Nursing Nursing Faculty (2) Assistant/Associate Professor (1)

Mental Health Law & Policy Assistant Professor (2) Professor (1)

Coll. of Behavioral and Comm. Sciences Professor (1) Assistant Professor (2) Associate/Full Professor (1)

Behavioral Sciences Assistant Professor (1) Associate Professor/Full Professor (1) For a job description on the above listed positions including department, disciple and deadline dates: (1) visit our Careers@USF Web site at https://employment.usf.edu/applicants/ jsp/shared/Welcome_css.jsp; or (2) contact The Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, (813) 974-4373; or (3) call USF job line at 813.974.2879.

Inquiries, nominations, and applications (cover letter and resume) can be directed, in confidence, to: Paula Hurley Fazli, Partner, Sage Search Partners; pfazli@sagesearch.com; 617-964-0406.

USF is an equal opportunity/equal access/affirmative action institution, committed to excellence through diversity in education and employment.

EOE

www.usf.edu • 4202 E. Fowler Ave,Tampa, FL 33620 02/18/2013

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Anticipated Faculty Positions 2013-2014 Kean, a comprehensive New Jersey state university, is committed to excellence and access and to developing, maintaining and strengthening interactive ties with the community. Kean University takes pride in its continuing effort to build a multicultural professional community to serve a richly diversified student population of almost 16,000. The University sits on three adjoining campus sites covering 180 acres, two miles from Newark Liberty International Airport and thirty minutes from New York City.

All open faculty positions are ten-month, full-time, tenure-track assignments at the rank of Assistant Professor, effective September 1, 2013 unless otherwise indicated. Teaching assignments and related responsibilities may include day, evening, weekend and online courses. Courses are taught at the Union campus but some positions may include assignments at Ocean County College in Toms River, New Jersey or other locations.

All faculty are expected to demonstrate a commitment to teaching excellence and an on-going program of research and publication or creative and performance activity. Participation in curriculum development, student advisement and service at the departmental/ school, college and university level is also required.

Interest or experience in using advanced instructional technologies to improve the teaching/learning process is highly desirable. All positions are subject to availability of funds, due to financial exigencies.

College of Business and Public Management School of Accounting and Finance: Accounting College of Education Department of Special Education and Literacy: Autism Spectrum Disorders Department of Physical Education, Recreation and Health: Athletic Training College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences Department of Computer Science College of Visual and Performing Arts Robert Busch School of Design (Three Positions): Motion Graphics and Animation; Interactive Design; Interactive Advertising and Brand Strategist Nathan Weiss Graduate College Department of Advanced Studies in Psychology/Psy.D. Application, Salary and Benefits Information on All Positions For detailed job descriptions and application information, please visit: http://www.kean.edu/KU/Faculty-Positions.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until position is filled. Salary is competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Comprehensive benefits program included. Contingent on Budgetary Approval and Appropriated Funding.

Kean University is an EOE/AA Institution

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Vice President of Academic Affairs http://www.kckcc.edu/ Kansas City Kansas Community College is committed to excellence in higher education. The college’s mission is to provide higher education and lifelong learning to the varied communities, primarily in its service area of Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties of Northeast Kansas. The Vice President of Academic Affairs serves as the Chief Academic Officer of the College and reports directly to the College President.

The Vice President for Academic Affairs, Chief Academic Officer of the College, provides college wide leadership to develop and implement academic programs and services designed to promote student success. S/he will assume the responsibilities of the President during her absence and represent the institution at national and state meetings. As the academic leader of the college, the Vice President for Academic Affairs articulates an academic vision and works collaboratively with 7 deans, 3 directors and approximately 450 full- and part-time faculty.

EDUCATION MEANS

A BETTER FUTURE. We th We thank ank the w women omen at U UTB TB aree settingg the example who ar example andd ppreparing an reparing i future future leaders. lead l ders.

For more information about this College and to view the full Job Posting listed under Employment Opportunities, please click this link: http://www.kckcc.edu/ or contact: John Steinecke Search Services Specialist jsteinecke@acct.org | 202.775.4468(w) | 202-384.6539(m)

You, make difference.

Y ou, too, can can m ake a differ ence.

Narcisa A. Polonio, Ed.D. Executive Vice President for Board Services narcisa_polonio@acct.org | 202.276.1983 Target Date: March 1, 2013

Visit utb utb.edu .edu tod today ay to learn mor more. e.

Santa Barbar Barbara aA Advanced dvanced School of Quantitative ative Biology

2013 S Summer ummer R Research esear arch hC Course ourse @ UCSB B Presented Presented by KITP & CNSI New Appr New Approaches oachess to to M Morphogenesis: orphogenesis: Imaging and Quantitative Modeling Modeling g Live Imaging Jully 22 August August u July 24, 2013 For information and to to apply apply visit isit: For www.kitp.ucsb.edu/qbio www w.kitp.ucsb.edu .kitp.ucsb.edu/ Application deadl Application deadline: February F ebruar y 28, 2013 + ) − Uij (1 dUij = kDi Fj (1 + Uij dt

Director, School of Science, Engineering and Technology Penn State Harrisburg invites nominations and applications for the position, Director, School of Science, Engineering and Technology. Reporting to the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, the Director will provide leadership and promote excellence in administering academic and budgetary oversight for the interdisciplinary School. The Director will set the standard for intellectual engagement and maintain and promote high quality teaching, research, scholarship and service and have demonstrated experience in the tenure and promotion process. The Director will guide the strategic vision and provide operational leadership by creating a learning community that supports and advances the School's faculty and academic programs and identifies and capitalizes on opportunities for external funding. The successful candidate will demonstrate leadership in the enhancement of undergraduate and graduate education; as well as defining the standards of excellence in diversity, recruitment, development and retention of its diverse faculty to advance the mission of the School. The successful candidate will be an accomplished scholar in one of the disciplines of the School and must be eligible for appointment at the senior rank with tenure. Anticipated starting date is July 1, 2013.

Please visit the College website at http://harrisburg.psu.edu/jobs/director-schoolscience-engineering-and-technology to see a detailed description of the announcement.

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Please submit a letter of application, curriculum vita, and the names, addresses, and phone numbers of five references to: Chair, Director of School of SET Search Committee, c/o Mrs. Dorothy J. Guy, Director of Human Resources, Box HHE 38646, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057-4898. Review of applications/nominations will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled.

Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.

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“CULTURAL LTURAL AL COMPETENC CE...”

COMPETENCE...”

Welcoming

Community

Diversity

Regard

R Respect t

Inclusion

Sensitivity

Awareness

Oakton Community College employs p y individuals who respect, are eager to learn about, and have a willingness to accept the manyy ways of viewing the world. d.

Oakton serves thee near northern suburbs of Chicago with campuses in Des Plaines and Skokie. ie.

Individuals with a commitment to working in a culturally competent mpetent environment and who reflect the increasing diversity ersity of Oakton’s student body and community are sought ught for the following opening: ning:

•D Director irector ooff W orrk for o ce Workforce De evelopment Development aand nd Corporate Corpoorate T raining Training The full consideration deration deadline is March ch 3, 2013.

To learn more about this position and complete mplete an application, visit ourr Web site at:

www.oakton.edu on.edu Listening

Experiences

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Click on “employment” oyment”

Oakton Community ty College is an equal opportunity ty employer.

Director, Patterson Center for the Health Professions The Patterson Center for Health Professions identifies students and supports alumni pursuing careers in the health professions to provide them with ongoing academic and career advising; preparation for graduate and professional school applications; internships, shadowing, and mentoring experiences; and opportunities for additional study at affiliated educational institutions and organizations. The Director of the Patterson Center leads the Center’s efforts in providing educational opportunities for students and in collaborating with other programs, both within and beyond the College. The Director identifies and facilitates the development of new programs, courses, events, experiences and affiliations available to students interested in the health care professions. The Director coordinates the Center’s efforts with other College centers, academic departments, and offices. The Director maintains and expands relationships with both individuals in health care fields and affiliated schools, programs, institutions, and organizations. It is desirable for the Director to teach one class a year, in either the traditional undergraduate or the adult programs. The Director is an administrator with faculty rank, who reports to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty. Qualifications: An earned doctorate in a field related to the health sciences, experience with and/or a strong understanding of higher education administration, advising of students, and teaching, experience with and/or a strong understanding of a broad spectrum of health care professions, strong leadership, management, communication, networking, and collaboration skills and energy and skill in promoting the Center to a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Apply online at www.elmhurst.edu.

Elmhurst College, an equal opportunity employer, seeks candidates with demonstrated ability to contribute positively to a multicultural campus community.

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Assistant Vice President for Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment California State University, Bakersfield is seeking an individual to oversee institutional data collection and management and to coordinate strategic planning and assessment activities. The person will facilitate the use of institutional data in campuswide planning and decision-making. The individual will monitor progress toward achieving institutional goals, and compliance with CSU, federal, state, and other agencies’ mandates and regulations. This position will coordinate university strategic planning efforts, and provide leadership for the evaluation and assessment of educational effectiveness and institutional-related outcomes.

The AVP will oversee the design and conduct of timely research studies in areas related to the institution’s strategic objectives and student learning outcomes, and will work with units in developing a “culture of evidence” including appropriate measures and indicators for assessment. The individual will be responsible for the operation of the IRPA Office which will provide data to external agencies and campus constituencies on topics such as student recruitment, retention, and graduation; faculty, staff, and student satisfaction; enrollment planning; campus diversity; faculty workload; and institutional effectiveness.

For complete advertisement, application instructions, and detailed job description for this position, please visit our webpage at http://www.csub.edu/provost/MPPSearches.shtml California State University, Bakersfield is committed to Equal Employment Opportunity. Applicants will be considered without regard to gender, race, age, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, genetic information, marital status, disability or covered veteran status.

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CAL POLY POMONA DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS, AND SOCIAL SCIENCES California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) invites nominations and applications for the position of Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences. The Dean reports to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. One of the major responsibilities of the Dean is fundraising and development work in the College, as State funding declines. Additional core responsibilities are to stimulate excellence in teaching, research, and scholarship and creative activities; to direct faculty and staff recruitment, development, and evaluation; to support initiatives that promote diversity and collaboration within the College, and further the mission of the University; to manage fiscal and personnel components of the College; to oversee the College’s efforts in strategic planning, enrollment management, program review, and accreditation; to develop partnerships with the surrounding community and represent the College to external constituents.

Candidates must possess at least four years of administrative experience as department chair, associate dean, dean, or equivalent; professional activity consistent with a senior faculty appointment; administrative experience and experience managing a budget; experience or understanding of strategic planning and external fund raising; a collaborative style of leadership and a commitment to shared, transparent governance in a university setting; a commitment to excellence in teaching, service, and research/creative activities as manifested in the College’s diverse disciplines; strong written and oral communication skills; and an appreciation and respect for diversity and for working in a multi-cultural, and multi-lingual environment.

Cal Poly Pomona, one of 23 campuses in The California State University system, is located 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The beautiful and historic 1400acre campus, once the Arabian horse ranch of cereal magnate, W.K. Kellogg, has an ethnically diverse student population of 21,000 students enrolled in 62 undergraduate majors and 19 master’s degree programs.

Additional information about the University may be found online at http://www.csupomona.edu/.

First consideration will be given to completed application packages received no later than February 20, 2013. A completed application package will consist of: (1) a letter of interest in the position including a statement addressing the candidate’s experience in regards to the position’s qualifications; (2) a current curriculum vitae; and (3) names and contact information of at least 5 references.

Finalists will be required to complete a University employment application. Additional information may be requested. Send completed applications electronically to: Search Committee, Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences C/o Laura E. Valdez, Search Coordinator International Center Cal Poly Pomona University (909) 869-3267 Email: classdeansearch@csupomona.edu California State Polytechnic University, Pomona is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer.

Complete and full information, including the duties, and required and preferred qualifications for this position may be found online at http://www.csupomona.edu/~jobs/ dated/employ%202013/DEAN%20of%20CLASS.html

Join our 1,000-member team of outstanding full- and part-time employees. Be part of a noble cause on one of the most beautiful, growing campuses in Maryland.

Love where you work and live—Frederick is a gem of a community about an hour outside of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Thank you for your interest!

Vice President For Learning (Chief Academic OďŹƒcer) (#01427) Salary Range: $87,195 - $145,329 Best Consideration Apply Date: April 4, 2013 Provide vision and leadership to all Learning programs within a student-centered, Learning College environment. Administer and provide oversight to all areas within the Learning Division to include Academic and Professional Studies, Academic Operations and Extended Learning, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Continuing Education and Workforce Development. As the Chief Academic OďŹƒcer of the College, provide oversight of quality and eectiveness of learning including all new and existing curricula and provide leadership in the development of external partnerships that advance the College’s mission. Collaborate with other vice presidents to support the learning college philosophy. Demonstrated success in management of ďŹ scal and academic aairs and professional/support sta in a college or university setting is desired. College teaching experience is required and community college teaching experience is preferred. The individual in this position reports to the President.

Vice President For Learning Support (Chief Student Aairs OďŹƒcer) (#01428) Salary Range: $87,195 - $145,329 Best Consideration Apply Date: April 4, 2013 Provide vision and leadership for all administrative units and programs to support students in a student-centered, Learning College environment. As the Chief Student Aairs OďŹƒcer of the College, provide oversight for quality and eectiveness for learning support and student success initiatives throughout the College and provide leadership in the development of external partnerships that advance the College’s mission and student success. Administer, manage, and lead all departments reporting to the Vice President for Learning Support. Collaborate with other vice presidents to support the learning college philosophy. Demonstrated success in management of ďŹ scal aairs, student development programs, and professional/support sta in a college or university setting is desired. The individual in this position reports to the President.

Minimum Qualifications for each position: t "O FBSOFE %PDUPSBUF EFHSFF SFRVJSFE BU UIF UJNF PG IJSF t 4FWFO PS NPSF ZFBST PG QSPHSFTTJWF IJHIFS FEVDBUJPO BENJOJTUSBUJPO FYQFSJFODF 'JWF ZFBST experience in supervision of personnel and administration of programs in higher education.

Proven ability to deal eectively, cooperatively, and tactfully with faculty, sta, administrators, students, business/industry, governmental and community representatives.

To find out more about this exciting opportunity, visit http://jobs.frederick.edu for more details and instructions on how to apply. Additional assistance regarding applying online may be requested by contacting 301.846.2622.

Start date not later than July 1, 2013.

FCC, an equal opportunity employer, values campus diversity in students and sta and strongly encourages members from historically under-represented groups to apply.

0QPTTVNUPXO 1JLF t 'SFEFSJDL .BSZMBOE t XXX GSFEFSJDL FEV 02/18/2013

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ADVERTISING INDEX POSITIONS CALIFORNIA

Cal Poly Pomona California State University, Bakersfield University of California, Santa Barbara

Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Position (FNP or PMHNP) Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington, College of Nursing This full-time position will be at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank depending on qualifications.

Responsibilites: 1) teaching undergraduate, master and/or doctoral students; 2) advising undergraduate and graduate students; 3) participating in research teambuilding by complementing or augmenting current areas of faculty research; 4) maintaining an ongoing program of research; 5) publishing and presenting research findings, 6) serving on master’s and doctoral committees; 7) providing service to the university community and profession of nursing.

Required Qualifications: 1) A doctoral degree in nursing or related discipline by date of hire; 2) Clinical expertise and eligibility for licensure in Washington State; 3) Eligible for certification as an ARNP (FNP or PMHNP) in Washington State; 4) Demonstrated ability to design and conduct studies addressing salient nursing and health care issues congruent with College of Nursing research foci; and 5) Demonstrated commitment to diversity and the reduction of health disparities Preferred Qualifications: 1) Expertise in teaching and advising undergraduate, masters, and/or doctoral students; 2) Expertise with technology assisted education modalities; 3) Expertise working with diverse populations and/or students.

To apply, to go www.wsujobs.com search WSU Vancouver. Applicants will submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae and contact information for four references. Find out more www.nursing.wsu.edu.

WSU is an EO/AA Educator and Employer.

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FLORIDA

University of South Florida University of West Florida

31 39

ILLINOIS

Elmhurst College Oakton Community College University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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KANSAS

Kansas City Kansas Community College

33

MARYLAND

Frederick Community College

37

NEW JERSEY

Kean University New Jersey City University Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark

32 31 35

NEW YORK

SUNY/Onondaga Community College

38

OHIO

College of Wooster

32

PENNSYLVANIA

Penn State Harrisburg

33

TEXAS

University of Houston

32

WASHINGTON

Washington State University

38

INSTITUTIONAL

University of Texas at Brownsville

TX

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*To see all our “Employment and other Opportunities,” including all Web Postings, visit our website at www.HispanicOutlook.com

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Digital Magazine!

FACULTY VACANCIES 2013 - 2014 Academic Year

Onondaga Community College invites qualified professionals with a strong commitment to community college teaching to apply for the positions listed below. We offer a supportive environment that emphasizes the importance of holistic student development demonstrated in part through faculty-student interaction both in and outside of the classroom. Strong candidates will offer demonstrated success in: • Curriculum development • Outcomes assessment • Academic advisement

• Use of technology to enhance learning • Working with diverse populations of students, especially underrepresented students

INTRODUCTORY BIOLOGY PHYSICAL SCIENCE/METEOROLOGY ELECTRICAL ENG TECHNOLOGY HUMAN SERVICES MUSIC/ VOICE SOCIOLOGY

ANATOMY& PHYSIOLOGY COMMUNICATIONS ENGLISH MATHEMATICS READING

Faculty Opportunities

Minimum Qualifications include: Master's degree in the content area or closely related field from an accredited college or university and college teaching experience, preferably at the community college level. Visit our web site at www.sunyocc.edu for specific position discipline requirements along with other related information about the application process, Onondaga Community College and the Syracuse community.

www.hispanicoutlook.com

To Apply: Please see https://sunyocc.peopleadmin.com/ for instructions on how to apply.

Please include within your cover letter how you have introduced technology within the classroom to enhance learning, inclusive teaching pedagogies/approaches you use, and your experience in teaching from a multiethnic and multicultural perspective.

Application Review: Begins immediately and continues until appointments are made.

Check us out!

* All appointments are subject to budgetary approval.

A committed and diverse faculty is our most important resource. We invite applications from women, people of color, individuals with a disability, veterans and others who would enrich our diversity. OCC...an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer.

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2013 Publication Dates & Ad Deadlines

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• March 18 Community College Issue

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• May 27 • June 17

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Volume 23 Editorial Index

Sept. 11

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Outlook@sprintmail.com Visit our Web site for all your advertising possibilities

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P.O. Box 68 Paramus, NJ 07652-0068 CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

P ri min g the Pump. ..

LESSONS THROUGH HANDWRITING

The

Miquela Rivera, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist with years of clinical, early childhood and consultative experience. She lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

growing trend of eliminating penmanship classes from elementary school curricula deserves much consideration, for there is more to handwriting than copying letters.

It affects all students, including Latinos, in many respects, now and in the long run.

Handwriting class helps young children develop fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination. Some children now, though, do not know how to hold a pencil or pen properly. With their hand cramped and their wrist tight, they struggle to make the letters legible and uniform.

Keyboarding might be easier, but the other lessons learned in penmanship class will be lost.

I always wondered why my Catholic schoolteachers made a big deal out of penmanship. Thirty minutes a day we practiced our handwriting.

Using “control paper” with multigraduated lines, we wrote capital letters, then lowercase. Discrete letters came first, later connected to form complete words. I didn’t directly question why the worry if my upstrokes on cursive “f” letters weren’t high enough or down strokes on my “p” characters weren’t low enough; I corrected my errors and tried to perfect the craft. Now I know penmanship class was about more than handwriting for its own sake. It was about developing discipline, commitment and personal style.

Handwriting, like one’s manner of speaking and dressing, reflects personal style. While few of us have a John Hancock-like signature, everyone conveys a bit of who they are by how they write with a pen. I tried a few flourishes or style changes and even dabbled in chicken scratch over the years, but always returned to my basic script – uniquely my own. I now appreciate that legible, neat handwriting is a sign of selfrespect and pride. Names and ideas are unique and meaningful; clear handwriting punctuates that.

Penmanship, though, is also about the care we take with words and how we present ourselves. Choosing words carefully – whether written or spoken – increases the chances of being heard. Through their choice, crafting and presentation, the world knows who we are.

Then there’s discipline. The red correction marks on those penmanship worksheets showed me exactly where I needed and was expected to improve. And there was only one way to achieve it: practice, practice, practice. I was hardly a scribe-in-training, but the teachers obviously

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knew that mastery of a skill and competence in any endeavor require discipline. We might have practiced the letter “Q” (my favorite letter) for two days, but after that time it was in pretty good shape on the page.

Penmanship class helped me hone my patience through daily, dedicated practice.

Practice and feedback work nicely together, too, when you’re trying to master something complex. Playing golf, planning a conference, driving, caring for children, using a computer, cooking a meal or writing an essay become easier with practice. And the better you can do something (especially when people tell you so), the better you feel about yourself.

Penmanship class also provided lessons about commitment, like “Do things right the first time.” It wasn’t that mistakes weren’t allowed in penmanship class; it was that they could be costly. The elementary schoolteachers did not permit us to cross out errors in our work, so we had to rewrite the entire page if we botched it. Tough? Yes, but I learned to take my work seriously, plan ahead, concentrate and dedicate ample time for success. Some things in life like raising children, performing surgery or trying a case in court do not allow a “do-over,” so the hours of handwriting and costly mistakes requiring rewriting taught some essential life lessons for saving time, money and frustration.

Beyond dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s” in script, attention to detail mattered. It still does, at work and home. Despite being occasionally teased or labeled because of it, I anticipate problems and address details that can make something ordinary, extraordinary. It makes a difference in getting recognized and selected for doing well, and it certainly felt good.

My rewards for satisfactory cursive were acknowledgement from my teacher and a gold-edged holy card – an icon of a saint with a short biography or prayer printed on the back. I kept my stack of holy cards bound by a rubber band in a special corner of my desk. The teacher’s praise and those holy cards taught me the wisdom of making good choices. I thought I was just working on my longhand. Now I realize Latino students deserve to be working on their handwriting, too.