08/01/2011 Hispanics with Amazing Grace by Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine

AUGUST 01, 2011

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VOLUME 21 • NUMBER 20

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Sphinx Orchestra

The Latino Art Wave

Culinary Achievement

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® Editorial Board Ricardo Fernández, President

Publisher – José López-Isa

Lehman College

Vice President & Chief

Mildred García, President

Operating Officer – Orlando López-Isa

California State University-Domínguez Hills Editor – Adalyn Hixson

Juán González,VP Student Affairs

Executive & Managing Editor –

University of Texas at Austin

Suzanne López-Isa Carlos Hernández, President

News Desk & Copy Editor – Jason Paneque

New Jersey City University

Special Project Editor – Mary Ann Cooper

Lydia Ledesma-Reese, Educ. Consultant Administrative Assistant & Subscription

Ventura County Community College District

Coordinator – Barbara Churchill

Gustavo A. Mellander, Dean Emeritus George Mason University

DC Congressional Correspondent –

Loui Olivas,Assistant VP Academic Affairs

Peggy Sands Orchowski

Arizona State University Contributing Editors –

Eduardo Padrón, President

Carlos D. Conde

Miami Dade College

Michelle Adam

Antonio Pérez, President

Online Contributing Writers –

Borough of Manhattan Community College

Gustavo A. Mellander

María Vallejo, Provost Palm Beach State College

Art & Production Director – Avedis Derbalian

Editorial Policy

Graphic Designer – Joanne Aluotto

The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine® is a national magazine published 25 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 education community. Editorial decisions are based on the editors’ judgment 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 views expressed herein are those of the authors and/or those interviewed and might not reflect the official policy of the magazine.The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine® neither agrees nor disagrees with those ideas expressed, and no endorsement of those views should be inferred unless specifically identified as officially endorsed by The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine®.

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Article Contributors Marilyn Gilroy, Clay Latimer, Estela López, Miquela Rivera, Edward Rubin, Diana Saenger, Jeff Simmons, Gary M. Stern

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elcome to our annual Arts Issue – profiling poet Juan Felipe Herrera, Argentine ballerina Anna Sophia Scheller, Flamenco Festival Internacional in New Mexico, the Sphinx Organization, the Pinta Art Fair, and prizewinning chefs Valeria Coto and Marcela Ramírez. Bravo to Kristoffer Díaz, named Outstanding New Playwright by The New York Times for “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety,” a satire of professional wrestling, ethnic stereotypes and political imagery, and a finalist for last year’s Pulitzer Prize. Díaz earned an M.F.A. at Brooklyn College, B.A. and M.F.A. at New York University (NYU), and helped develop community theater projects at NYU and at the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. The AP reports that legendary guitarist Carlos Santana, ranked No. 15 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 all-time best guitarists, was receiving a Beacon of Change Award in Atlanta, before a Braves/Phillies game, when he said, “The people of Arizona, and the people of Atlanta, Ga. – you should be ashamed of yourselves.” Georgia’s governor had just signed an immigration crackdown into law. Santana, born in Mexico, called the new legislation cruel and fear-based. John Leguizamo, named Global Ambassador to the Arts for this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, is back on stage with another of his poignant and hilarious solo performances, Ghetto Klown. Jennifer López gets great reviews for her work as a judge on the popular TV show, American Idol, taped and filmed in Hollywood, Calif. And Florida Grand Opera is celebrating its 70th year, making it the seventh-oldest opera company in the U.S. ¡Adelante! Suzanne López-Isa Managing Editor

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by Carlos D. Conde

LATINO KALEIDOSCOPE

America’ s War at Home

are fighting a mind-boggling trillion-dollar war in Afghanistan, and if you haven’t noticed, we are also fighting some fratricidal wars here at home over the argument that we are going broke financing an insatiable, faraway conflict. Well, maybe not that far away if you buy the argument that we fight them there lest we fight them here. No sense risking a band of Allah’s warriors boarding an aircraft at a hub airport and commandeering it toward a target in Washington or New York City. Not to suggest that anyone would dare try to pull it off again or that our involvement in Afghanistan isn’t a just antidote as our Washington leaders try to comfort us by saying the war is winding down. The end is relative, and we probably will be there in some form at least until 2015 and maybe longer, depending on how the transition plays out. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to hear President Obama in a national TV address tell weary and wary Americans that our battlefield involvement in Afghanistan is ending and the troops will start coming home. Expecting that, with the taking down of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida network would unravel and become dysfunctional and that local militia can handle their own security and welfare, the president said it was time to turn our attention to our problems and issues at home. “Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” Obama said. “Now we must invest in America’s greatest resource, our people. “America, it is time to focus on nation building at home,” he said. It struck a positive chord among Americans fatigued with the seemingly endless conflicts. As with most domestic arguments, it’s as much about money as it is about the rationale. The question is whether the Obama administration can make good on its exit plans. It’s a challenge whose time has come, considering the national debate that has ensued. It’s folly to think we can stay in that region indefinitely because jihad against the infidels promises to be forever. We have reached the point where the wars and our national defense budget, along with some entitlement programs, are bankrupting the nation and driving many Americans into want and deprivation. Many reject or prefer to ignore the doomsday predictions. Our nation’s leaders in Washington acknowledge the crisis amidst all the usual politics, divining, as always, that everything eventually gets worked out. It’s hard for many to believe or understand we could be that much in the pits when the U.S. considers itself the most democratic, freedom-loving, powerful and richest nation on this planet and, while at it, also the world’s sheriff. Didn’t John F. Kennedy in his January 1961 inaugural address underscore what seems to have become our creed: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to

assure that survival and the success of liberty.” No doubt we’re bearing the burden now, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Congress approves the fiscal year 2012 funding of $132 billion for defense operations, it will reach a cumulative total of $1.415 trillion over a 10-year span of warfare and nation-building activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the costliest wars and also the longest combined conflicts in our history. In today’s dollars, World War I cost $334 billion; World War II, $4,104 billion; the Korean Conflict, $341 billion; the 10-year Vietnam War, $738 billion; and the Persian Gulf War, which was over in a year, $102 billion. On top of the multiple issues we face is the threat to the lifestyle many Americans have gotten accustomed to but can no longer afford. If the downward spiral continues, we may wind up becoming the wards of countries like China, which today practically owns us. Washington, meanwhile, is drowning in demagoguery over the federal debt and how to keep the federal government from sinking into insolvency unless Congress raises the $14.29 trillion federal borrowing limit by Aug. 2 when the government runs out of cash to pay its bills and creates a financial catastrophe. Surely, it will be worked out – or already has been – by Democrats and Republicans who, as they say in Washington, fight like cats and dogs and then have beautiful kitties, with the American taxpayer paying for the affair. Whatever occurs would be a temporary fix, and the financial bleeding will continue – unless the U.S. rethinks its long-term involvement policy on foreign conflicts such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. The problem with the U.S. bleeding blood and money in countries like Afghanistan is that history and experience tell us such a region with its cultural mores and religious fanaticism is not receptive to our way of nation-building. Many have tried and failed, and there is no evidence that the U.S. has found the formula or that we are even welcome, save for the hordes of cash we provide and which corrupt government officials and tribal leaders siphon off to bank accounts in foreign countries. It seems as though we are forcing our ideals on them, sacrificing our youth and our own national welfare for a people, many of whom fail to understand our intentions and grudgingly accept us with contempt and, on occasion, betrayal. Our education system is wanting; our entitlement programs are threatened; our poor and disenfranchised, ignored, along with constrained government services, for lack of funds. Public revenue is in short supply as state and local governments lay off workers and reduce or phase out pensions. Exiting Afghanistan, which is costing us $10 billion a month, would help to ease our needs at home – but then that’s the price of being the good guys, I guess.

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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® AUGUST 01, 2011

CONTENTS Argentine Dancer a Soloist with New York City Ballet by Diana Saenger

Sphinx Organization Promotes Diversity in Classical Music by Marilyn Gilroy

Festival Flamenco Internacional Awakens Spanish Culture in the U.S. by Michelle Adam

Riding the Crest of the Latin American Art Wave

by Edward Rubin

Cooking Up an International Culinary Achievement 19 by Jeff Simmons

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The Ticking Financial Bomb: Student Loans and Tomorrow’s Impact on Today’s Student

Juan Felipe Herrera: From Migrant Son to Acclaimed Poet by Clay Latimer

Farmworker’s Son Honored at His SFSU Graduation by Gary M. Stern

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

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DEPARTMENTS Latino Kaleidoscope

by Carlos D. Conde

America’s War at Home

Hi gh Sc ho ol For um

High School Arts Programs Produce Innovative Thinkers by Mary Ann Cooper

FYI...FYI...FYI...

Hispanics on the Move

Interesting Reads and Media... Book Review

Page 16

by Estela López

Vote Thieves: Illegal Immigration, Redistricting, and Presidential Elections

Targeting Higher Education: Electoral Changes: Hispanic Realities

Priming the Pump...

by Gustavo A. Mellander (Online only)

by Miquela Rivera

Structured and Casual Conversations Support Faculty-Student Engagement

Back Cover

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Page 19 Cover photo courtesy of Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux Ana Sophia Scheller

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Argentine Dancer a Soloist with New York City Ballet by Diana Saenger 8

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enry Ford said, “You can do anything if you have enthusiasm.” Many youths have dreams of what they want to be when they grow up. Yet it’s a long road from childhood to achieving that goal. A young girl wishing to be a premiere ballerina in a prestigious ballet company can soon change her mind once she understands the arduous road ahead. Ana Sophia Scheller had such a goal. She also had fortitude, talent, incredible support from her family and the enthusiasm to pursue that goal. Today Scheller is a soloist with one of the foremost dance companies in the world, the New York City Ballet. Her desire to dance began in her youth. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Scheller began her dance training at age 6 at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón. “I liked the music and the challenge to move,” Scheller said. “We were bored as kids, so my mom put my younger brother in soccer classes and allowed me to start ballet lessons after school.” What began as a hobby would take a major turn for Scheller, due in part to the school she was attending. “Julio Bocca, a very famous dancer in Argentina and a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), would come to our school at the end of the year because his mother was a teacher there. By the time I was 9, she told my mother I should consider this as a professional career and take more classes.” Scheller has two sisters and three brothers. Managing this large family required hard work and guidance from her parents. Her father was a lawyer. Her mother was busy raising children. Her home life followed a traditional Latino upbringing with trips to grandma’s every Sunday. “My mother took my two older sisters to dance, but they didn’t want to. So it was great for me when she put me in ballet lessons,” Scheller said. Three years in a row, Scheller received a scholarship as part of Argentina’s National Presidential Prize for Cultural Excellence in Classical Dance. Then, with the encouragement of her family and her teachers, Katy Gallo and Raúl Candal in Argentina, she auditioned for the School of American Ballet in New York. “Our school year in Argentina ends in January, so that’s when I went to New York to audition,” Scheller said. “So they thought I was auditioning for the summer course, not the entire year.” Luck was with Scheller, however, as the teachers were so impressed with the young dancer that they wanted her to start classes right away. In 2000, she became a full-time student at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of New York City Ballet. “If I hadn’t had family support, I couldn’t have done this,” Scheller said. “My mother didn’t want to leave me alone since I was only 13, so she came with me and brought my younger brother. I had a sister who lived in New York, so we stayed with her for a while.” It took three and a half years of dedication and endless hard work for Scheller to complete her schooling at SAB. Then she auditioned for the American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, where she danced for six months. Her featured dance roles included Ballo della Regina, choreographed by George Balanchine, and Aurora in the wedding pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty in SAB’s 2002 and 2003 workshop performances. Scheller was awarded SAB’s Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in June 2003. Many youngsters who dream about dancing with sugarplum fairies, beautiful satin slippers or standing on tip-toes in Swan Lake find that dancing with a premiere company requires a full-time sacrifice. There are many grueling shows every week, there are constant rehearsals, and they

are continuing to take classes. “Your schedule depends very much on where you are in your career level,” Scheller said. “When I first started, I had two classes every other day. During the last two years of school, I was taking two classes a day. The first was a technique class and the afternoon a mixture of pointe, variations

“I’m lucky that I’ve never had a serious injury. I sprained a toe once and could not put on pointe shoes for two weeks.” Ana Sophia Scheller, soloist, American Ballet Theatre and character classes. At ABT, they usually had a workshop performance at the end of the year. During Christmas, we did Nutcracker, so these performances required more rehearsals for those shows.” In 2004, Scheller auditioned for and was accepted into the New York City Ballet as a member of the corps de ballet. Scheller said balletmaster

Peter Martins was familiar with her work, but she expressed pure elation when she was admitted into the corps. “I did not know where I would end up, but I always wanted be in the New York City Ballet. In the beginning, when I was doing workshop performances with SAB, I thought I was going to join the company. But I didn’t, and I was upset. The director of the school talked to me and said it was because I was too young, only 15. But I was in the U.S. on a visa that was about to expire, so I needed a job. So that’s when I auditioned for ABT and also a company in San Francisco.” Sometimes what seems to be a setback can instead be good luck. Scheller was hired by ABT, and looking back, said it turned out to be a good transition from school. “It was a paying job, and the performances usually consisted of 12 dancers – six girls and six boys. I realized then it was a good steppingstone because all of a sudden you’re not in a huge company, and you don’t feel lost. It was a way to learn what the work was going to be like, which is very different when you join a huge ballet company. Going from a school performance to a big company where you’re doing all of those different parts and in the corps, it’s a big shock.” The nation got an insider peek into the life of a premiere ballerina last year with the release of the movie Black Swan. With a focus on the endless endurance required for her art, the lead character, played by Natalie Portman, went to very dark places psychologically and had to hide serious injuries to continue her rehearsals. “I found the film more amusing than most people,” said Scheller, who can understand what those injuries mean to a dancer. “I’m lucky that I’ve never had a serious injury. I sprained a toe once and could not put on pointe shoes for two weeks. We’re lucky that we had pilates class at SAB. That’s a great thing to do, and it keeps you strong and prevents injuries.” Moving away from part of her family to a completely different country was a bold move for Scheller. In many ways, she was preparing for it from an early age. Although Spanish was her first language, she learned to speak English in the first grade. While it’s obvious that talent has a lot to do with a career as a ballerina, Scheller said the career success also is about luck. “Many times, it’s about being at the right place at the right time. Sure, you have to be talented in ballet, but sometimes it’s a matter of what they need – sometimes it’s someone short, another tall, or maybe a blonde.” Scheller is certainly on her way to reaching her goal. Since joining the New York City Ballet, she’s performed many featured roles in shows including Cortège Hongrois – her favorite; Jewels (Emeralds); George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (Sugarplum, Dewdrop, Marzipan); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hippolyta); Symphony in Three Movements; Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, Tschaikovsky’s Suite No. 3; La Valse; Vienna Waltzes; Jerome Robbins’ Interplay; Peter Martins’ Sleeping Beauty and Chichester Psalms, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Evenfall. Scheller still has one role she dreams of performing. “I’ve always wanted to play the lead in Swan Lake,” said the 24-year-old ballerina. As this young artist has already proved, setting a goal is as reachable as the effort one puts into it. Along with her fortitude, Scheller maintains that her family was a key ingredient in her career success. “It’s more than me really loving to dance,” she said. “My parents did so much for me. My mother came to New York to be with me and had to be away from my dad for a while. That was a great sacrifice for both of them. With the effort it took to get here, I would never quit. I enjoy every single moment, from rehearsing to the process of appearing on stage. I love doing what I do.”

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THE ARTS

Sphinx Organization Promotes Diversity in Classical Music

Elena Urioste

Alexandra Switala

by Marilyn Gilroy

1996, Aaron Dworkin envisioned a society in which classical music would reflect cultural diversity and play a role in the everyday lives of young Latinos and Blacks. To make this vision a reality, he founded the Sphinx Organization as a means of breaking through stereotypes and cultural barriers in the world of classical music. Since then, this national nonprofit organization has reached more than 85,000 students in 175 schools and spent $300,000 to provide quality instruments to aspiring minority musicians. Dworkin, a violinist, has said the ultimate goal of Sphinx is to diversify symphony orchestras and build a broader audience for classical music. There are approximately 1,200 orchestras in the United States, some of which have never had a full-time Hispanic or Black musician. “Nationally, only slightly more than 4 percent of all orchestra members are Blacks and Latinos,” he said. “We need to look at diversity as something that is critical to the evolution and survival of this art form.” According to Dworkin, the mission of Sphinx has three components: to increase Latino and Black participation in music schools; to administer music education initiatives in underserved communities; and to promote the creation, performance and preservation of works by Latino and Black composers. The organization’s results have been impressive, launching careers for minorities who otherwise might not have pursued their interest in classical music. Through its annual string competitions and scholarship programs that have

Juan Miguel Hernández

Paul Laraia

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awarded more than $1.5 million, Sphinx has nurtured and supported talented minority artists. “Sphinx has built a network of nearly 300 young Latino and Black string players who are changing the face of classical music in their communities,” said Alison Piech, manager of leadership investments for Sphinx. “Over the past 15 years, Sphinx artists have made more than 250 solo appearances with orchestras around the country, and reached five million in broadcast audiences.” Sphinx receives support from some of the country’s most prominent foundations, including the Mellon and Knight Foundations as well as corporations such as General Motors and Ford. Although its hometown is Detroit, it also has offices in Harlem and London. As the organization has grown, it has expanded its reach into schools and attracted a growing number of applicants. “We have a national focus,” said Piech. “Our competition materials as well as all other program materials go out nationally to a full range of partner organizations, music instructors and artist educators.” Those who excel in Sphinx competitions have opportunities to perform with major orchestras and to present concerts that are broadcast on National Public Radio and other media outlets. Many Sphinx alumni return to become teachers and role models for students in Sphinx programs. Juan Miguel Hernández, a 2006 Sphinx laureate, says the organization opened lot of doors for him. He is a renowned violist who has appeared with the Atlanta, Seattle and Colorado

symphonies, performed at Carnegie Hall, and toured throughout Europe and the Middle East. For the past three summers, he has returned to the Sphinx Performance Academy to serve as a senior faculty member. He knows that when younger musicians see or hear the performances of Sphinx alumni, it is a great motivator for those who have had few role models in the world of classical music. “When they see us play, it allows them to dream of possibilities they would not have dreamt about before,” he said. Giving minority musicians the chance to pursue their dreams and eventually change the classical music landscape has kept Dworkin focused on expanding and strengthening the Sphinx Organization. He frequently lectures about his own pathway into this profession, which began when he was adopted by a White Jewish couple in New York, who were science professors with a love of music. His birthparents were an Irish Catholic mother and an African-American Jehovah’s Witness father. Dworkin often remarks about his background when discussing why he cares so much about diversity in music. “I am a Black White Jewish Irish Catholic Jehovah’s Witness who plays the violin,” he told an audience at Harvard University when he was honored there last year. “I am the definition of diversity and really had no choice but to do this work.” Dworkin studied at the University of Michigan School of Music, where he received a bachelor’s degree in music and master’s of music in violin performance. Although his goal was to become a professional musician, his plans took a turn when he decided it would be a good idea to have an organization for young Black and Latino string players to come together to play and compete. When it came to naming the organization, the choice was the sphinx, a mythical creature and powerful symbol from classical literature often associated with riddles. Why the sphinx? According to the organization’s website, the sphinx represents an important historical and geographical source for many minorities and exemplifies the power, wisdom and persistence that the Sphinx Organization hopes to instill in its participants. Further, the sphinx constitutes a mystery or an enigma that in many ways is comparable to music. “Music shares this puzzling aspect, as it is born from the experiences and aspirations of the

composer as well as the performer,” Dworkin wrote, explaining the reasons behind the name. “Like the Sphinx, it is up to the beholder, the listener, to interpret and appreciate from the music what is ultimately a reflection of internal emotions and spiritual experiences.” Although Sphinx started out as primarily an

“I am a Black

White Jewish Irish Catholic Jehovah’s Witness who plays the violin.” Aaron Dworkin, violinist, founder, Sphinx annual competition for young Latino and Black string players, it has grown to include yearround programming through the following five major areas: • Artist Development, which focuses on professional development opportunities for young artists of color; this component encompasses the annual Sphinx Competition for Black and Latino string players, the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra as well as three scholarship initiatives: the Summer Education Program, Instrument Fund

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and Music Assistance Fund • Sphinx Preparatory Music Institute, which benefits Detroit area youths with yearlong classes in performance, music theory, ear training and music history with an emphasis on Latino and Black composers; the Overture Division offers free violins plus private and group lessons to students in underserved communities • Sphinx Performance Academy, which offers intensive summer training in chamber music and individual performance to young, aspiring Black and Latino musicians ages 12-17 • Sphinx Presents! which supports Sphinx solo artists and ensembles in national and international performance and offers exposure opportunities including the Sphinx Artist Series at Carnegie Hall, the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra tour, the Harlem Quartet and other Sphinx ensembles • Sphinx Legacy Project, which creates, promotes, disseminates and preserves works by Latino and Black composers through the Sphinx Commissioning Consortium, the Sphinx Journeys radio program, the Sphinx Library and Classical Connections, an in-school curriculum initiative The list of individuals who have come through the Sphinx pipeline includes many distinguished artists. Elena Urioste, a violinist of Mexican-Basque heritage and one of Sphinx’s most accomplished alums, describes herself as “just a girl who loves music.” As a child, she became inspired when she saw Itzhak Perlman performing on Sesame Street and was drawn to both the music and the instrument she saw on the screen. By the age of 5, she owned her first violin and began taking lessons. When she was 16, Urioste was accepted into the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She eventually completed graduate studies at the Juilliard School. Since first appearing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 13, Urioste has had a remarkable career. She was a Sphinx laureate in 2004 and has appeared with major orchestras throughout the United States, including the Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Pops. Last year, when Urioste debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, critics praised her “hypnotic delicacy,” “expressive poise” and “lyrical sensitivity.” In 2009, she received the London Music Masters Award. When she performs at colleges or schools, Urioste is aware that some in her audience have never been exposed to classical music, but she

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hopes they will feel the energy and passion of her performance. “For those who are attending a concert for the first time, I only wish they enjoy the experience,” she said in an interview before an appearance last year at San Joaquin Delta College. “For those who are considering a life in music, I hope to further inspire them.” Urioste is just one example of the high-caliber musicians who participate in the Sphinx Competition, the organization’s signature event and the only one of its kind in the nation. The competition consists of the preliminary audition round, followed by the semifinals and finals. This year’s semifinalists ranged from ages 13 to 24 and included nine violinists, four violists, four cellists and one double bassist. The winner in the junior division was Alexandra Switala, 16, a violinist of Mexican-American heritage, who grew up in Texas and has been playing since she was 4 years old. By the age of 13, she already had notable performances, including as a soloist for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. The first place Laureate in the senior division was Paul Laraia, 21, of Puerto Rican descent, who currently lives in Boston. Laraia studied at the Temple University Center for Talented Youth and the Settlement Music School before entering the New England Conservatory of Music in 2007. He shares the Sphinx philosophy that it is important to bring classical music to new audiences. As part of the Bela Quartet, he has performed in inner-city schools, hospitals and nursing homes. He also has given free master classes to various youth music programs. These winners, like those of the past, will perform with the Sphinx Orchestra, an ensemble of more than 60 Latino and Black musicians drawn from U.S. orchestras and leading music institutions. The newest laureates might also find themselves appearing on one of many broadcast programs that feature Sphinx artists. For example, Gabriel Cabezas, one the 2006 laureates, performed with Yo-Yo-Ma on the Tavis Smiley Show and Good Morning America. Dworkin and his Sphinx disciples are passionate about the work of introducing classical music and string instruments to children who might not be familiar with them. It is even more critical in these times when public school budgets are being slashed. As Dworkin notes, “school music programs are underfunded and often first on the chopping block when budgets don’t balance.” But his convictions about the role of music

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are born from firsthand experience that proves exposure to classical music can open a world of possibilities. “Music has the ability to engage and empower young people like nothing else,” he said, “And it gives them a sense of community and encourages their aspirations.” Despite making progress and feeling proud of Sphinx’s track record, Dworkin sees that the challenge is far from over.

“There is still much work to be done to truly change the face of classical music,” he said. “People of color are still widely underrepresented on stage, in the audience and in the ranks of artistic directors.”

President The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, is seeking to fill the position of president of the nation’s most student-centered public research university. Iowa State University, long recognized for its exceptional student-focused culture, is ranked among the top 50 public universities in the nation by U.S.News and World Report. Numerous Iowa State academic programs also are ranked among the top 50, and its learning communities are consistently listed among the best in the nation. Employers credit Iowa State’s 94 percent placement rate to its land-grant mission of preparing students to apply their knowledge. More than 800 student clubs and organizations have made Iowa State graduates early leaders in business, industry, and service organizations worldwide. The university is one of only 34 public institution members of AAU and also is considered a powerhouse for technology transfer, ranking among the nation’s most prolific research licensing universities. Its extension and outreach program serves all 99 Iowa counties and is a leader in entrepreneurial programming to benefit the state’s citizens. Iowa State’s 1,700-acre campus is nationally recognized as one of the most beautiful in the country, and the community of Ames, Iowa, is listed among the top 10 places to live in the United States. With Iowa State already setting university records for its 29,000-student enrollment, fundraising, sponsored funding, and athletic scholastic achievements, the state Board of Regents seeks a leader who will inspire the university community to build on this momentum and play an even larger role in creating, sharing, and applying knowledge to make the world a better place. See www.presidentsearch.iastate.edu. The new president must demonstrate a student-centered focus; a commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship; strategic planning, fundraising, and external relations acumen; and a commitment to the unique role a land-grant university plays in learning, discovery, and engagement. Internationalization, diversity, sustainability, academic freedom, shared governance, and economic development are key components of the president’s responsibilities. The Board of Regents and Iowa State University invite letters of nomination, applications (letter of interest, résumé/CV, and contact information of at least five references), or expressions of interest to be submitted to the search firm assisting the university. Confidential review of materials will begin immediately and continue until the appointment is made. It is preferred, however, that all nominations and applications be submitted prior to August 24, 2011. For a complete position description, please visit the Current Opportunities page at www.parkersearch.com. Daniel F. Parker, Sr., President Laurie Wilder, Senior Vice President 770-804-1996 ext: 101 dparker@parkersearch.com lwilder@parkersearch.com The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, is an EEO/AA employer.

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THE ARTS

Festival Flamenco Internacional Awakens Spanish Culture in the U.S.

by Michelle Adam

1987, the University of New Mexico (UNM) asked its young flamenco dance instructor to host a special event in honor of its College of Fine Arts 50th anniversary. In response, the instructor, Eva Encinias-Sandoval, organized a small flamenco festival in Albuquerque, N.M. – three workshops and two performances featuring flamenco artists from outside the state. She created what was then the first flamenco festival of its kind outside of Spain. That was 24 years ago. Since then, what began as a humble event has become a worldrenowned flamenco festival attracting Spain’s top flamenco artists, and participants from across the U.S. This year’s 24th annual Festival Flamenco Internacional de Alburquerque, which ran from June 8 to 12, was a huge success, with unprecedented attendance and soldout performances. “It was wonderful! Every year gets better and better. Even for the Spanish artists, it was their best year,” said Vicente Griego, a New Mexicanborn flamenco singer who performed at the festival with Yjastros: the American Flamenco

María José Franco

Repertory Company, and also provided festival workshops on flamenco’s cante. “Art gets better as it holds its roots. It goes deeper and deeper. And you normally can’t see all these artists together in one place, and it all happened in Albuquerque.” This year’s Festival Flamenco Internacional drew about 3,000 people from as far away as Florida to this city of the desert. They attended more than half a dozen performances, a unique flamenco competition, and 23 workshops covering a range of flamenco taught by master artists, including classes in dance, guitar, song, castanets and bata de cola. What attracted many to this year’s festival were Spanish artists such as José Maya and Fuensanta La Moneta. Maya, considered the most dynamic male dancer in Spain, and known for his explosive style, came to New Mexico from his current home in Paris. Raised in Madrid in a family of artists, he began his dance career at age 9, sharing the stage with flamenco greats such as Antonio Canales, Juan Ramírez, Joaquín Grillo and Enrique Monte. He has participated in most of the world’s major flamenco festivals,

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taking first place on several occasions, and has even opened for pop music stars such as Marc Anthony, Beyonce and Björk. Fuensanta La Moneta brought her gypsy passion to New Mexico from Southern Spain. She built her reputation at a young age in the tabloas and zambras of Sacramonte, Granada, an area known for its gypsy caves. She has also appeared in galas organized by radio and TV, studied with the best flamenco teachers, won major awards and performed throughout the world. For Maya and Fuensanta La Moneta – and so many other dancers, among them Carmen La Talegona, María José Franco, and Raimundo Benítez (not to mention the guitarists, singers and other performers) – performing and teaching at this year’s Festival Flamenco Internacional was a unique opportunity. “It’s one of the most important festivals of the world. The most important artists come here,” said Maya, who performed in New Mexico as an invited guest in 1999. “It’s been fantastic. And this time I came with my company. Here there’s a magic in the land and there’s a spirit that’s

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contained in a passionate people with a fusion of Hispanic and Indian roots.” Maya spoke with The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine after his final festival performance, at which he received a standing ovation. “There are festivals in Paris and London, but I think this one is different. For me, it is the most important festival of the world because there’s a fantastic environment here,” he said, and then added, “Flamenco is a way of looking for your origins. People go to study flamenco because they find their origins.” Festival Flamenco Internacional opened its doors on Wednesday, June 8, with five-day workshops and an evening performance with José Maya y Compañía. During Maya’s sold-out performance, he and his company brought a vibrant energy to the flamenco with elements of AfroCuban sound and movement, as well as traditionally improvised Bulerías. The second day provided a continuation of workshops, which ranged from dance technique, dance repertory and castanets, to guitar, cante and percussion classes. Beginning students were offered unique three-hour classes for five days on flamenco dance, technique, rhythm and structure, and youngsters learned in the festival’s Flamenco Kid’s Camp. All workshops except for the Kid’s Camp were held at the University of New Mexico while performances were both at the university’s Rodey Theatre and at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Anthony García and Christina Polycarpou, who traveled from Denver, Colo., to the festival workshops, were delighted by their experiences here. It was García’s third time to the festival, and this time he came to especially take classes from Maya. “The classes at home are not at this level. José’s choreography is unreal, and the rhythm he has is untouchable. He’s 27 and is in his prime and at the top of his game.” After five days of advanced dance classes with Maya and then another Spanish dancer, Carmen La Talegona, in the afternoon, García actually complained of bloody toes. “I’ve never had bloody toes before. After the one and a half hour classes, you are really tired.” Polycarpou traveled to Albuquerque for her first year of workshops at the festival. She took intermediate dance classes with other teachers – Carmen González and Raymundo Benítez, another performer from Spain. She, too, felt the hard work of top-level dance classes. “It was a great experience. By the second day, I was tired and wanted to go home. But then I stuck it out and

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started to catch onto the choreography,” said Polycarpou. “I had heard a lot about the festival from friends in Denver, and I came here very interested in learning from different instructors, especially higher-level ones.” Both Polycarpou and García were among the large numbers of people who came from out of state – about half the festival attendees. In García’s class alone, he trained with students from as far away as Florida, Washington, D.C., Texas and California. “People from the U.S. come from all over. It’s the top of the top,” he said. He and Polycarpou were also able to see the performances after their hard days of study. “I went to all the performances. That was amazing. I’ve never experienced that – seeing the best dancers day after day,” said Polycarpou.

cante or guitar and were judged within one overall category by a panel of selected festival artists. The contest winners were Kayla Lyall, an Yjastros dancer in Albuquerque, N.M., who won first place; Carlos Menchaca, another Yjastros dancer from San Antonio, Texas, who won second place; and Valeria Miranda from Corona, Calif., in third place. Miranda took so many by surprise when she came out on stage to dance flamenco. Nine years old and a complete unknown in the flamenco world, she brought a special element of talent and surprise to the festival. That night of performance and competition were followed by an equally full Friday evening. María José Franco y Compañía performed a more classic flamenco style with her company,

José Maya

One of the shows they saw on the second evening of the festival, June 9, was of Fuensanta La Moneta, the second Spanish performer to take to the festival stage. This fiery, no-nonsense dancer performed “Bailar, Vivir,” sharing with her audience the universal experience of facing a crossroad in one’s life. She also performed on the final nights of the festival, in which all performers gathered for a combined show. It was she who challenged the more refined, conservatory-style of flamenco with a more authentic and down-to-earth gypsy style reminiscent of flamenco’s origins. After Moneta’s exciting performance, the festival held its ninth annual Concurso Nacional de Flamenco – national flamenco contest. Several dozen contestants performed either dance,

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and was followed by Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company, created by Joaquín Encinias, son of the festival founder and UNM teacher, Eva Encinias-Sandoval. Franco brought a quieter flamenco style from her hometown of Cádiz, Spain. She began training in dance at age 5 and has since built her life as a dancer and an organizer of important national and international festivals, including festivals in her native Cádiz. She has also toured with Pepe Habichuela outside of Spain. As the weekend of the festival approached, spectators looked forward to the Fiesta Flamenca shows, which culminated with Franco and all other artists of the week performing. On Sunday, the last night of the festival and the second night of Fiesta Flamenca, all the perform-

ers – dancers, musicians and singers – took to the stage for the last time this year in Albuquerque. The crowds packed the theater and watched about 20 performers give their all. Hearty applause and standing ovations filled the room. By the end of the night, after the performers had taken several bows, an impromptu dance and song ensued – a final hurrah from Spain to this city in the middle of the U.S. desert. The dancers tapped fully and with fury as the guitarists sped up their strumming. The singers called out with their cry of “Cante Hondo” to the dancers, who responded with their moves. In the end, even some of the musicians were dancing, throwing in Michael Jackson moves, and then all together danced and sang their way off stage. “It was a fantastic festival! A lot of people who come every year said it was a good year,” said festival founder Encinias-Sandoval. “There were a lot of workshops, and the performances were selling out more than usual.” According to Encinias-Sandoval, most of the performers this year came to the festival for the first time. “They were young people who knew of the festival, and they were very impressed by the level of performers and the enthusiasm of the audience,” she said. “It’s not just another gig for them – I see it in their performances. A lot of festivals are put on by world producers, but this festival is put on by a family – my family. It’s a passion more than a business for us.” Also unique to this festival were the workshops offered. “We have extensive workshops because of our relationship with the university. In Spain, workshops like these exist, but not all in one place and time,” she said. “People come here from all over the world because of the teachers we have.” While many of those who came to Festival Flamenco Internacional for classes traveled from far away, there were those in Albuquerque who took advantage of this unique opportunity as well. Stephanie Cohen was one such person. She took a beginning cante workshop with Vincente Griegos and was moved to tears. “I cried. I was very moved. I felt a connection with my Sephardic roots (old Spanish Jewish roots) when singing in his classes. And when Vicente sings, oh my God!” said Cohen. “I have no formal music training, except from Vicente now.” Calvin Hazen, former New Mexico resident now living in Madrid, taught a guitar class and performed with Yjastros. “My students were from Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, and in the past

I had students from Mexico and Canada,” he said. “I had a good group this year.” Hazen, who moved to Spain to train in flamenco guitar, returns to the festival every year. He has seen Festival Flamenco Internacional grow and witnessed the impact of this art form on the people of New Mexico. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger and more prominent. We now have several highcaliber artists all at once,” he said. “The Hispanic people here in New Mexico have been here for

Internacional has garnered, this sense of cultural pride has grown from the first days of the flamenco festival 24 years ago. What once was a mere request by UNM to celebrate an anniversary has now mushroomed into a worldrenowned event bringing cultural pride and awakening an ancient art form from Spain in the desert heartland of the United States. This annual festival has placed Albuquerque, N.M., on the map as a place where flamenco is

generations, and they really identify with Spain as their ancestral home. So when Spaniards come here, I see a very strong visceral connection that is made here with these people. Eva and her family’s mission have been to inculcate that cultural identity and pride in the people here.” Clearly, with the tremendous turnout and reputation that today’s Flamenco Festival

alive and well in the U.S. Next year, 2012, Festival Flamenco Internacional will have an additional reason to celebrate. It will once again be a gathering place of flamenco in all its passion and grandeur, but this time will honor a special event – the festival’s 25th anniversary.

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Riding the Crest of the Latin THE ARTS

by Edward Rubin

was only a few years ago, 2007 to be exact, that “The Pinta People,” taking a big gamble, took the art world by surprise by mounting the world’s first international Latin American Modern & Contemporary Art Show at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. With 35 international galleries and countless Hispanic artists from the United States, Spain, Mexico, Central and South America showing their works, the fair was an immediate hit. So much so that Pinta felt secure enough to not only turn this fair into a yearly event but to eventually establish yet another Latin American art fair to be held each year, during the month of June, in the city of London.

Pinta Pablo Coradis opening night crowds

This past November, “the little fair that could” took another gamble and moved its four-day, New York City celebration of Latin American art from its Chelsea habitat to Pier 92 on the Hudson River, the same location made famous by the Armory Show. With daylight streaming in from the pier’s surrounding windows, the new and improved Pinta, with larger and brighter aisles, more galleries and art installations, a bar and café for the public, and a private, upper-level VIP section – with roughly four times more space than the old Pinta – generously gifted its visitors and exhibitors alike with more breathing and thinking room, as well as strolling, eating and oh-my-tired-feet resting options. Again the golden glow of success reared its lovely head, and close to 12,000 art-loving people visited the fair’s 57 participating galleries, the majority being from New York City and São Paulo, Brazil. More importantly, sales to private and institutional collectors, according to Pinta’s favorable wrap-up report, were “significant.” Among those institutions buying

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art were the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York’s El Museo del Barrio, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Harvard museums. Also seen looking for bargains at Pinta’s new space were museum bigwigs, chief among them, wearing a snazzy pink scarf, the Museum of Modern Art’s director, Glen Lowry. Although the art of legendary artists Fernando Botero, Wilfredo Lam, Lygia Clark and Ana Mendieta, as in the first three editions of Pinta, took its customary bows, for the most part, it was the work of the young, contemporary Latin American artists whose fresh and unique ways at looking at life that supplied the majority of the fair’s visual excitement. Though many paintings, sculptures and a few videos were on view, it was the quietly inventive work of the photographers – digital and otherwise – that depicted life, in its myriad postures, most interestingly. The work of Brazilian artist Rochelle Costi at the Celma Albuquerque Galeria De Arte (Rio de Janeiro) is about scale and perception of space. In one photograph, two stacks of hand-cut paper, lined up side by side, inhabit a one-window, dollhouse-sized room. In another, titled Disproportionally, the floor of the room is covered with a few dozen little metal containers, the type that holds rolls of film. Both objects, deliberately placed in their miniaturized settings by the artist, add a disorienting effect to the photos. Our eyes dart back and forth, from the window to the ceiling to the floor, to the object and back, trying to make visual sense of what we are looking at. Are the objects large or small, and what size is the room? As Costi wrote, “The series was made using a model of a house where odd objects were introduced to stress the difficulty that we have in realizing the amount of space we really need to live. Have we grown up too much?” Costi asks. “Has the environment swallowed us? Is growing up not fitting anymore?” In his digitally composed photographic series “Travelers in Time at Dean Project (New York),” Barcelona-based artist Lluis Barba startles the brain by adding unexpected contemporary images, somewhat humorously, into the scenario of classical paintings. In Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding (1568), modern-day tourists are seen posing and partying among Brueghel’s 16th-century wedding guests. Project of the Adequacy of the Great Gallery of the Louvre Barba re-envisions Hurbert Robert’s 1796 painting of the Louvre, by re-hanging the museum’s walls with the work of 20th-century masters such as Picasso, Magritte and Rothko, and adding present-day museum goers into the mix. Even more topical, a portrait of Michael Jackson and what seems to be the figure of designer Karl Lagerfeld, wearing his trademark sunglasses, has been slipped into the scene. The artist seems to be saying that art and fashion continually change

American Art Wave but human behavior remains the same. the Argentine chanteuse’s song “Electrodomesticsr.” None of the videos on view were as visually exciting, lushly colored and Opposite in their ability to excite are the photographs of Brazilian phoas intellectually stimulating as those of Nicaragua-born, New York City- tographer Felipe Morozini at the Zipper Galeria (São Paulo, Brazil). Using based artist Jessica Lagunas at the Rollo Contemporary Art (London, a zoom lens, Morozini – exercising his voyeuristic rights – secretly docuEngland). In this series, the artist herself – in three separate wall-mount- ments the lives of his neighbors from the window of his apartment. In one ed screens – is seen putting on lipstick, applying mascara and painting photograph, a woman soaking up the sun in a two-piece bathing suit is her nails, all in an overly exaggerated manner. Frantically transforming her seen lying precariously on the ledge just outside her apartment window. In lips, eyelashes and fingernails, until another, a naked woman standing on they become almost clown-like, her balcony is examining herself in a Lagunas’s videos using Little Red mirror. As luck would have it – chance Riding Hood titles – The Better To plays a large part in Morozini’s work – Caress You, The Better to See You the very instant he took a snapshot, the With, and The Better to Kiss You With mirror was reflecting his neighbor’s – parody the various “must do” nipple. In Bride of the Wind (2007), female beauty routines that Madison the artist turning his gaze on the tempoAvenue and Hollywood have been ral qualities of nature, depicts – in 16 hawking for decades. In doing so, she sequenced frames– the various effects is attempting to undermine the authorof the wind on a set of curtains hanging ity of contemporary visual culture’s out of an apartment window. Following representation of the female body by the twisting and turning movements of re-presenting it in terms of insecurity each curtain, frame by frame, I found and obsession. A few months later, the windmill of my mind making its own much to my surprise, these same little movie. Lagunas videos, apparently making the Galería Christopher Paschall S.XXI rounds, were entertaining crowds at (Bogotá, Colombia), one of a handful of the opening of curator Sasha galleries that did so, dedicated its entire Okshteyn’s exhibition “Basic Instinct” exhibition space to Casa Tomada at the Black and White Gallery in (Seized Home), Colombian conceptual Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Known for artist Rafael Gómez Barros’ traveling having a keen eye and finger on the installation. Using nature’s little but pulse, I have a sneaky suspicion that hardworking creatures, for political Okshteyn – like a few curators I know purposes – his intent is to symbolize – must have been doing some prethe people displaced by the continuing exhibition shopping at Pinta. armed conflict and the resulting forced The narrative work of Paris-born, migration in Colombia – Barros attachGlen Lowry, director of MOMA at Pinta Argentina-based photographer Luna es hundreds, sometimes thousands of Paiva, at the Galeria Teresa Anchorena fiberglass ants, enlarged to the size of (Buenos Aires, Argentina), is all about drama. Whether it’s her edgy series scary, to the facades of government buildings and revered historical monuof scantily clothed showgirls, known as vedettes, posing inside their homes ments such the National Congress of Colombia and Quinta de San Pedro or her telling portraits of everyday people at home and at work, behind San Pedro in Santa Marta, one the nation’s many shrines dedicated to every photograph lurks a fascinating story. One eye-popping surreal Paiva Simón Bolívar. One gallery wall, covered with a trail of giant black ants, photograph of a woman manically plucking a chicken pulled me right into was stopping people in their tracks. Another wall featuring photographs of the gallery. With one arm in the air, and feathers magically flying every- Barros’ ants invading various buildings brought to mind the countless sciwhere, the lady stands behind a long fruit-, fowl- and vegetable-laden table ence fiction movies popular in the ’50s and ’60s, like Them (1954), in that would do any still-life painting proud. As the story goes, Paiva, at the which giant ants made large by an atomic bomb explosion threaten to take bequest of singer Candelaria Sáenz Valiente, composed this sumptuous over the world. scenario – reminiscent of Peter Greenaway’s 1989 movie The Cook, The Even before I entered the Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery (Santa Domingo, Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover – at a friend’s antique shop, to illustrate Dominican Republic), Brooklyn-based, Dominican-born Gerald Ellis’ stun-

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ningly composed painting Birthday Piñata (2010), with its knockout vibrant blue sky, took me prisoner. The artist’s beautifully drawn images of a dinosaur, and cartoon-like white clouds, under which a birthday boy with a toy sword in his hand stands, captures all of the innocence of childhood. Autobiographical by nature, the painting channels the negative feelings that Ellis experienced as a child when called upon to smash open the

Pinta 2010 Lluis Barba - Travelers in Time

piñata. “I hated going to birthday parties and always tried to stay away from clowns and the piñatas,” Ellis wrote to me. “I think this funny-looking object (the piñata) can detonate a very strong and violent behavior on the child, who is, after destroying the object, fighting his way through into getting as much as he can from what was inside it. I view this as an early example of what really moves us as humans, from a selfish point of view.” No fair is complete without a touch of eroticism and Brazilian artist Vincent Gill more than made up for it in his series “Read the Book, Watch the Movie” (2004) at Galeria Nara Roesler (São Paulo, Brazil). Each drawing, executed in India ink on pages taken from a psychology book – like a modern-day Kama Sutra – lustily depicts various sexual positions. A few of

Pinta 2010 Lluis Barba - Wedding Banquet

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the book’s words, those not blotted out by the black ink which covers most of the page, serve to illuminate each image, while white, topsy-turvy line drawings illustrate the lovemaking figures. The words on one drawing of a penis penetrating a vagina read “Another was the one who introduced the concept for the first time.” Another text accompanying the image of a man and woman in head-to-toe position announces that “All kinds of things come together.” A third, somewhat ambiguous drawing of a naked woman leaning over a bed – it is left up to the viewer’s imagination as to what is going to take place – reads “anxiety by chastisement.” At first glance, the simple paintings of Mexican artist Hugo Lugo at the Ginocchio Gallery (Mexico City, Mexico), executed on pages torn from a spiral notebook, the type we took with us to college, appear to be a simple mix of drawing and collage. On closer inspection – talking about trompe l’oeil – each work, down to the page’s torn holes and the solitary men that occupy each page, is a fully realized oil and acrylic painting. Equally deceiving is the subject matter, for here the artist, waxing existential in his presentation of solitary thinking characters in a simple situations, forces us to consider our own existence. In one painting, the artist turns the page’s straight lines into a wavering whirlpool and places a barefoot man, with shoes in hand, and head bent down, at its very center. The painting, aptly titled Cuadernode de Reflexiones (Book of Reflections), seems to be saying that we are at the center of everything that is going on around us. Another less felicitous reading could be that it is only a matter of time before we are sucked into this circle of nothingness. The most unusual installation at the Pinta belonged to Venezuela-born, Miami-based fashion designer Nicolás Felizola, who dedicated exhibition space to the memory of Mexican actress María Félix (1914-2002), Latin America revered movie goddess. Known as La Doña to her most loving fans, myself included, Félix was a huge star throughout Central and South America and Europe during the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Cast in films by Renior, Buñuel, Emilio Fernández and Juan Antonio Bardem, with such greats as Rossano Brazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Jean Gabin and Yves Montand, Félix refused to work in Hollywood unless she made her grand entrance from the “big door” and not the small roles offered by Cecil B. de Mille. “I was not born to carry a basket,” Félix is reputed to have said. The back story here is that in 2007, Felizola, attending Félix’s afterdeath auction at Christie’s, left the premises owning the most comprehensive collection of the movie star’s couture-designed wardrobe, some of which – Dior, Balenciaga, Hermes, Chanel, Halston, Cardin and some of Felizola’s own Félix-inspired creations – are displayed on mannequins. Running alongside what is essentially a visual timeline of Félix’s devotion to fashion and film through her costumes, garments, hats and accessories is Carmen Castilla’s 2001 documentary film, María Félix, The Making of a Myth. Structured around an exclusive interview in which the still-radiant 87-year-old Félix responds to an unseen narrator, Félix talks about her films, her men, her clothes and jewels. Thus, little by little, the legend unfurled. Fully saturated, after having spent a wonder-filled half-day at Pinta, I made for the door.

INNOVATIONS/PROGRAMS

Cooking Up an International Culinary Achievement “M

by Jeff Simmons ole is one of the most representative dishes of Mexican cuisine; the origin of it is lost in the legend or placed in the large convent poblano kitchens of Cologne. In these convents were strengthened and perfected the Mexican cuisine, as they frequently entertained large civil and religious personalities of the viceroyalty. “Each region printed in the mole their own label and so emerged the mole poblano, the black mole from Oaxaca, mole amarillito the southeast, the mole coloradito of the Valley of Mexico, many others who amaze us both by its complexity and its simplicity.” Their descriptions of mole and other native cuisines recently led Valeria Coto and Marcela Ramírez to culinary honors. The two students from the Universidad del Valle in Mexico proved an invincible team when they cooked a Tarasca soup with shrimp and an entree of duck with a traditional manchamanteles, a typical mole from Oaxaca and Puebla in Mexico. “I chose the dishes that were really not that complicated but had a lot of details and took a lot of time and patience,” Ramírez said. “I was really proud of the dishes because every flavor tasted like Mexico.” Those flavors won the pair the Laureate Culinary Cup and gold medals in a two-day international competition at Kendall College in downtown Chicago earlier this year. Culinary students from schools in seven countries and the Laureate International Universities Culinary Network competed with dishes from their native countries. “We really had a good organization in the whole competition,” an elated Ramírez said. The Top Chef-style competition at Kendall College, a 2,400-student campus that offers undergraduate degrees in culinary arts and hospitality management, among many others, capped off a series of earlier culinary contests in other countries. In the end, students from six other schools took part after prevailing in competitions in their homelands. Joining two students from Kendall College were competitors from the Universidade Potiguar in Brazil, Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, Heredia, Universidad de Las Américas in Ecuador, Royal Academy of Culinary Arts in Jordan, Universidad Interamericana de Panama, and Universidad del Valle de México (which dispatched two teams to the event). “They had to demonstrate they were up to the challenge, if you will, before they could come to the United States,” said Christopher Koetke, the executive director of Kendall’s School of Culinary Arts who first dreamed up the international competition. In the first leg of the competition, finalists had three hours to prepare for their high-end, four-course meal. And on the second day, they had an additional two and a half hours to complete dishes and a half-hour to serve all four courses to the judges. Chef Steve Jilleba, corporate executive chef for Unilever Foodsolutions North America and manager of Team USA in the Culinary Olympics, led the

Winners Valeria Coto and Marcela Ramírez

panel of judges. “The students took some of the ingredients that were very common to them and some very traditional recipes and brought them up to another level,” said Jilleba, a competition veteran who has won dozens of awards, including nine gold medals from various International Culinary Olympic competitions. Joining Jilleba at the judges table were Stephen J. Miller, vice president and chief operating officer for Midway Airport Concessionaires and a World Association of Chefs-approved judge; Chef Leo Waldmeier, retired executive chef of the Drake Hotel in Chicago; and Chef Carlos Gaytan, owner of Mexique in Chicago. The judges carefully scrutinized all aspects of the students’ culinary

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setting and represent their part of the world, but they had to write an essay that explained the choices that they made.” “And, that’s what guided them in the competition,” Koetke added. The essays described their cultural and culinary perspectives. Both winning students noted that their love of cooking was spurred by family through generational lessons and recipes passed along. “Amaranth was a highly regarded plant for the pre-Columbian people – one of the main foods of the cultures of America and the main source of protein. It was so appreciated that [it was] part of the religious rites of these cultures, with the result that with the arrival of the Spanish cultivation was Executive Director Christopher Koetke with winners almost eliminated. “The characteristics of amaskills and mindset, such as their explanations of the dishes they chose, and ranth have facilitated the work of rehabilitation, because it can take the dishes’ execution. Competitors were judged on taste, skill and presen- many forms such as grain, as a vegetable or as fodder. Amaranth was tation, essentially everything from inception to sanitation practices to orga- included among 36 plants with potential. Comes from a plant that can nizational skills in the kitchen. reach up to three meters high and is a family of amaranthacea, which “You looked at the menus, the way things were cooked,” Jilleba said, gathers 800 species of amaranth whose characteristics change dependexplaining the added challenges for some students of cooking in a foreign ing on the environment and region in which they occur. country and using equipment different than what they were used to. “The amaranth plant has a particle containing many small flowers, “Tarasca soup with shrimp. This is one of the most representative which are home to a small seed that represents the main product of the soups in Michoacán. It is made with a base of black bean puree, fumet, amaranth plant, which are made with grain, flour, candy and other dried chili sauce, roasted garlic, tomato and dried shrimp, avocado products.” pearls, crispy tortilla with sauté shrimp, a cotija cheese tuile and a Ramírez was born in Queretaro, Mexico, and attended the Universidad touch of dried yogurt. Del Valle De Mexico in Queretaro. Her grandmother, who grew up in “As a main course we are offering duck with a traditional man- Barcelona, was her inspiration, “the most amazing chef ever.” Her family chamanteles, which is a typical mole from Oaxaca and Puebla. We loved good food, and good wine. “Since I was little, I learned about good, added our own touch of artisanal membrillo fruit jelly. The duck has tasty food, and I grew up eating paellas and rabbit, snails,” she said. been seared, covered with a mezcal and piloncillo syrup and then Ramírez regularly cooks for members of her family – pastas, paella – roasted in the oven to perfection. As a first garnish we have deep fried but not for all at once, since, she confides, “they are so hard to please.” bananas and soft curd cheese, and as a second garnish we made sweet Not that all dishes have worked out. She recalled a wheat and squid ink potato and glazed in orange juice, honey and spices. We also added an pasta dish that “was like rubber. It was a shame.” epazote oil infusion.” When discussing her career track, she waxes enthusiastic, describing Koetke, also vice president of the Laureate International Universities her love of travel and cooking. Centers of Excellence in Culinary Arts, said the inspiration for the competi“Culinary arts is amazing, and it is the most gratifying career,” Ramírez tion came from his experiences abroad. said. “I love what I do. It’s a dream study, pastry-making, and “I would “I work with all of our schools around the world. I’ve been in profes- love to have a job where I can keep learning.” sional kitchens since I was 13 years old, and I lived abroad for a part of “In this dessert, we are representing three eras in Mexico, and they my career, in France and Switzerland. I have a real love for international are presented in three desserts. The main ingredient is amaranth plant things, and cross-cultural experiences. So it was a natural to bring students and seed – we wanted to use as much of it as possible. In order for you together to compete.” to fully enjoy this experience, we will kindly recommend you taste our Koetke said culinary competitions can often focus primarily on the dessert from right to left, starting with tascalate. It is important for completion of dishes, but the Kendall College event folded in the require- you to try this drink first, since it is a little less sugary than the other ment that students showcase dishes specific to their native lands. components of the dish. “Those four courses had to represent your part of the world, whether “The first dessert is the one on your right hand side. It is a tascalate your region, your city or your country,” Koetke said. “On top of that, not beverage. It is made with cacao beans, dried tortillas, achiote paste, only did they have to make these dishes in a fine-dining, white-tablecloth pine nuts, honey and water. We also made an amaranth and caramel

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alegria spoon, which is for you to dip in the tascalate and taste together. Since the tascalate mixture is a prehispanic beverage, it is kind of bitter when you taste it alone; but when you taste it with the alegria all the flavors come together.” Coto has known Marcela for some time. And this helped them understand each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and helped form a solid partnership in the kitchen. Coto, as well, acquired her love of cooking from relatives. “My family is my biggest motivation on my way to become a great and international chef, Coto said. “My mother’s family is a ‘culinary family,’ beginning, as far as I know, with my great-grandmother, who was a great cook, continuing from generation to generation, as I learned from my grandmother all about Mexican food. She teaches and gives me advice.” And she, too, endeavors to test new dishes – some successful, some not – on her family. She admitted to a less-than-stellar experience cooking a traditional dish: tamales. “We did a complete mess, my grandmother was very angry with us. I think it was the worst I’ve done!” she said. “Now, we finally learned how to do them; they’re not easy, they have their difficulties.” Preparing for the competition required a rigid schedule. Coto said she and Ramírez trained every day. “We just did what we knew to represent a small part of Mexican Cuisine and we put all our effort to get the win,” Coto said. A 24-year-old who graduates this year with a degree in Culinary Business Administration, Coto is planning to pursue a master’s degree in baking as well. In the end, it was that determination that led them to the front of the class, but only by a narrow margin. Coto and Ramírez won only by one and a half points separating first place from third place. Kendall College’s Alison Honiotes and Adam Harralson came in second, preparing a trio of raw oysters appetizer and a main course of pheasant saltimbocca. In third place were Mohamad Irshied and Khaled Haddad from the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts. “The second dessert represents the contemporary culinary age in Mexico. We made an amaranth, piloncillo, guava and chocolate cake. As our modern and final dessert, we decided to risk it all with an amaranth leaf ice milk, financier and tuile. All of the desserts come together with a piloncillo cream anglaise.” Months later, both teammates were still awed by the experience. “I am still in shock about this achievement,” Ramírez said. “We worked as a team, and we really cooked with a lot of passion. We were proud to represent our country. We put in a lot of hard work and passion into every dish. We had strong competitors, and it was amazing to win.” Her only regret was that she didn’t get a chance to taste all of the other dishes in the competition. That was for the judges, she said. “I was looking forward to tasting all of them. My parents took pictures,

and I can honestly say they looked really good,” Ramírez said. However, what her taste buds missed out on her mind still received: she talked with the other competitors, about their dishes, their skills and their countries. Her partner in the competition expressed similar sentiments. “It was an opportunity that the university gave us to grow in our career,” Coto said. “From the beginning, I gave my best to achieve first place. It was not an easy competition. All of the teams were aware of the degree and complexity, and we all gave our best.” The atmosphere among all competitors, she said, was collegial. “It was an experience that changed the course of my life,” Coto said. “Discovering new techniques, new ways of working, meeting other contestants from different countries and being in the International Culinary World, and meeting great personalities.” “In few days, we made friends with people who shared the same pas-

Student competitors

sion, and so far we are all in contact, and looking forward to meet again,” Coto said. That collegiality was something organizers had hoped for, bridging both culinary and cultural gaps as students learned from each other, acquired new skills and, hopefully, lifelong friendships. “I think the networking is probably as big as anything else, just working with the teams from different countries,” Jilleba said. “They make friends and acquaintances for life, and this sharing, seeing each other’s food, all of this is important.” The competition will most certainly become annual event, he said. For Ramírez, winning was great, but the experience of traveling to the United States, and developing those budding friendships, was the icing on the cake. “It was really good,” she said. “I made a lot of friends, inside and outside of the school. We always had a lot of respect and companionship, so I almost felt like it was not a competition at all.”

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FINANCE/TUITION

The Ticking Financial Bomb: Student Loans and Tomorrow’s Impact on Today’s Student Editor’s Note: Taking out a loan to attend an institute of higher education has become the norm for most, as resources for grants and scholarships fail to keep up with the growing number of college bound students. But students about to sign on the bottom line to secure those loans have little idea what they are getting into and how it will affect their postgraduate lives. IHEP’s report, Delinquency: The Untold Story of Student Loan Borrowing, sheds some light on the process. This report examines the repayment experiences of student loan borrowers using data provided by five of the largest student loan guaranty agencies. It examines more than 8.7 million borrowers with nearly 27.5 million loans who entered repayment between October 1, 2004 and September 30, 2009. The primary focus is on the nearly 1.8 million borrowers who entered repayment in 2005. A snapshot of borrower experiences, it can help inform policy discussions about student loan programs and the tools available to help borrowers avoid delinquency and default. What follows is a summary by the authors of the IHEP report, offering insight into the borrowing process and borrowers themselves:

Delinquency: The Untold Story of Student Loan Borrowing by Alisa F. Cunningham and Gregory S. Kienzl for IHEP (Institute for Higher Education Policy) Characterizing Borrower Behavior: experiences in repayment Borrowers in the 2005 cohort faced a range of circumstances and options as they started repaying their loans, and continued to do so as they moved along the path of trying to meet their repayment obligations. The study looks at whether these borrowers became delinquent at some point during that period or availed themselves of various options to postpone or delay repayment during their first five years in repayment. • the “expected” path through repayment. About 37 percent of borrowers managed to make timely payments without postponing payments or becoming delinquent, representing almost 667,000 borrowers in the 2005 cohort with nearly $13.1 billion in loans. In other words, more than a third of the borrowers in the 2005 repayment cohort seem to be willing and able to use the federal student loan repayment framework in the intended way. Student financial aid – including grants and loans – plays a key role in supporting students’ access to and suc-

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cess in college. Yet, despite periodic increases in grant funding, students and their families have increasingly relied on borrowing to cover more of the costs of higher education. As the number of student borrowers has increased and their cumulative indebtedness has grown, so too has concern about whether the resulting debt levels are manageable and about the long-term impact of student loan debt on other life choices and consumption patterns. Absent more complete data, policymakers have often focused on default rates, which are an incomplete measure of the range of experiences of contemporary students, including those who may have difficulties repaying their student loans. Default rates do not include the many borrowers who become delinquent on their federal education loans, but manage to avoid default. These borrowers face some of the same consequences as borrowers who default, but until now, the size and significance of this group has not been recognized or been part of the policy discussion about default prevention and financial literacy in general.

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• the appropriate and timely use of repayment tools and options. Other borrowers, about 23 percent, used the repayment tools and options provided by the federal government to postpone their payments, thereby avoiding delinquency. Some of these borrowers-11 percent-used only deferment, mostly because they re-enrolled in college. But 12 percent of borrowers used forbearance (often in combination with deferment) to postpone monthly payments. These borrowers were aware of federal repayment options and used them for the intended purpose. • the magnitude of delinquency without default. Although repayment options were available and could have been used earlier, more than one fourth of the borrowers who entered repayment in 2005-26 percent-became delinquent on their loans at some point, but did not default. Most of these borrowers eventually used deferment and/or forbearance as tools to avoid default (21 percent), while a smaller proportion (5 percent) was able to resolve the delinquency, presumably by making payments to get their account current.

• the defaulters. About 15 percent of borrowers not only became delinquent, but also had defaulted on their loan(s) at some point during the first five years of their repayment term. In total, 41 percent of the borrowers faced the negative consequences of delinquency or default. It is important to recognize that for every borrower who defaults there are at least two others who were also delinquent on their student loans, but successfully avoided default. These data illustrate that many more borrowers are having difficulty repaying their loans in a timely manner than is generally recognized when the focus is on default rates alone. These patterns are both a cause for concern and an opportunity for improvement. Key differences in Borrower Behavior: Who Did What and Where Given the breadth of repayment behaviors these borrowers exhibited, it is important to better understand what types of borrowers were or were not able to make payments on time. Borrower behavior varied depending on whether the borrower graduated. • Most of the borrowers who left postsecondary education without graduating had difficulty in repaying their loans – 33 percent of undergraduate borrowers who left without a credential became delinquent without defaulting, and 26 percent defaulted. • Forty-eight percent of undergraduate borrowers who graduated with a credential were repaying in a timely manner, but 21 percent became delinquent without defaulting and 16 percent defaulted – a considerably lower number than among nongraduates, but still significant. Borrower repayment patterns varied depending on the type of institution last attended. • A third or less of borrowers at four-year, public or private nonprofit institutions became delinquent or defaulted on their loans, while nearly half or more (45 percent and 53 percent, respectively) of their borrowers were making timely payments on their loans. • In contrast, only one-quarter to one-third of borrowers at for-profit and public two-year institutions were making timely payments on their loans, and more than half of all borrowers in these sectors were delinquent or had already defaulted. Borrowers’ repayment experiences also differed by the highest grade level attained. • Most borrowers who entered repayment in

2005 last borrowed after only a few years of enrollment – 37 percent after just one year of college or less, and an additional 18 percent after two years. • Of those who last borrowed after enrolling one year or less, two-thirds either became delinquent (30 percent) or defaulted (34 percent), compared with 21 percent and 6 percent, respectively, of borrowers who last borrowed in their fourth year. Certain borrowers are particularly likely to become delinquent, which has implications for policies and practices that attempt to lower delinquency rates. • Of borrowers who started repayment in 2005, those who left school without a credential, last borrowed after attending only one year of college or less, or attended a public two-year or for-profit institution were far more likely than their counterparts to become delinquent or default during the first five years of the repayment. • Many, if not most, borrowers who entered repayment after leaving college without a credential became delinquent or defaulted. For four-year public and private nonprofit institutions, the percentage of noncredentialed borrowers who were delinquent – but did not default (30 percent and 27 percent, respectively) – was twice that of those who defaulted (15 percent and 11 percent, respectively). The opposite is true for two-year for-profit institutions, where half of borrowers without a credential defaulted and 26 percent were delinquent without default. • The rates of delinquency and default were generally much lower for borrowers who had graduated than for those who had not. However, even among borrowers who successfully completed their programs at two-year for-profit institutions, 27 percent became delinquent without default and 30 percent had already defaulted. Borrowers who graduated and last attended four-year public and private nonprofit institutions had much lower rates of delinquency or default. However, almost a fifth of this group became delinquent at some point, although 5 percent or fewer defaulted.

OPEN FACULTY POSITIONS WWW.STKATE.EDU ST. CATHERINE UNIVERSITY in St. Paul/ Minneapolis invites applicants for the following ranked faculty positions. Consistent with the university’s Catholic identity, its commitment to women, diversity and social justice, we seek candidates to work in a climate that promotes multicultural understanding. • Chemistry and Biochemistry • Education-Montessori • Economics • Nursing - Assoc, Bacc & Grad programs Assoc &Grad programs enroll both men and women. For more information on positions, please visit our website. Smoke free campus-EEO employer

Cleveland State University invites applications for the following:

ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS OF ACCOUNTING Accounting Department Cleveland State University is a public, comprehensive university serving Cleveland and the northeast Ohio region, enrolling some 16,000 students and employing 550 faculty and more than 1,000 staff. The metropolitan Cleveland area approximates 2 million people and features a thriving business community and outstanding cultural, recreational and intellectual activities in a pleasant environment with a wide choice of attractive communities in which to live. Cleveland State University offers an outstanding benefit package to full-time faculty and staff that includes medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance as well as tuition assistance. Cleveland State University is committed to nondiscrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, genetic information, disability, sexual orientation, disabled veteran, or Vietnam era or other protected veteran status, and to equal access in education and employment. All positions are contingent on maintaining existing levels. Health and sustainable communities are signature research areas for CSU. For complete job descriptions and application requirements, please visit www.csuohio.edu/HRD/ or www.HigherEdJobs.com. www.csuohio.edu

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Juan Felipe Herrera: THE ARTS

From Migrant Son

to Acclaimed Poet

by Clay Latimer

uan Felipe Herrera, angry and frustrated, had hit his limit. It was fall 1994, and the Proposition 187 debate was consuming California, spilling over into meeting halls, the streets and, now, Herrera’s office at California State University-Fresno. Sitting in front of a typewriter, the groundbreaking Hispanic poet began to impulsively tap away, pouring out pyrotechnical words and images as quickly as they passed though his thoughts. “I gave myself two hours to let it all out,” he says. By the time he surfaced, Herrera had produced 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border, a searing work that received the PEN USA Award and confirmed his position as one of America’s major poets. Herrera hardly stopped there. The son of migrant workers and now a professor at the University of California-Riverside, he has published 28 volumes of poetry, prose, theater, children’s books and young adult novels during his 40-year career. In 2008, he published Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008. Herrera also has received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, International Latino Award in poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, and fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. In January, he was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, a group whose previous chancellors include W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill and Robert Penn Warren. No less an authority than Stephen Burt, leading poetry critic of his generation, compared Herrera to legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg in a glowing New York Times review. “Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed,” Burt wrote. Born in Fowler, Calif., Herrera earned a bachelor’s degree in social anthropology from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), a master’s degree in social anthropology from Stanford University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. But his appreciation for words and storytelling comes naturally. Though his parents moved with the seasons in California, living in one makeshift

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camp after another, they found time during the long, dusty days for fun. “My father was a great storyteller and played the harmonica. In earlier years, he’d played guitar and violin. He had a lot of ways of expressing himself,” says Herrera, who has written about his campesino upbringing in three award-winning bilingual children’s books. “My mother was a magnificent storyteller. She had a photo album, and would tell me stories of her family, which ‘left Mexico at the tail end of the revolution.’ It was like a teaching book, a storybook. In a way, they were like adult stories told to me as a child through photographs. She was a natural.” The Herreras settled in San Diego when Juan was 8, ending his carefree “gypsy” days. In elementary school, Herrera was afraid to talk until his thirdgrade teacher called him to the front of the class. “I sang ‘Three Blind Mice.’ It was like breaking the sound barrier. I started the whole theater experience in eighth grade because I wanted to get out of my clammed-up shell.” In 1967, Herrera became part of the wave of Hispanics to receive an Equal Opportunity Scholarship to UCLA. He was an activist there, forming a theater group and immersing himself in experimental poetry. His first major poem came about as he made his way to the school’s recently opened Mexican American Center. “I was walking down a hallway when I had a flash of a phrase – ‘Let us gather in a flourishing way.’ I hit the page as soon as I could find a pen. It became the first line of a poem of that same title, and it became the first poem of the first book,” he said. Like Ginsberg, Herrera writes swiftly and spontaneously, rejecting traditional formalist considerations for open, ecstatic expression of thoughts and feelings that are naturally poetic. “Most of my poems are impulsive,” Herrera says. “You can’t plan a moment, because a moment is a moment. There’s no way to predict it.

“I get a big bang at just what the language does with itself, how it fizzes,” Herrera added. “At times, it’s more about what the language does when you just untie it and you put it where it doesn’t typically belong. When you swing stuff around – subject, object, noun – when you pile on seven adjectives with commas; or seven nouns, and throw in adjectives, numbers, periods in one line without commas and explanations. Sometimes I’m after the fizz of language more than the content of the sentence.” Herrera’s interests in indigenous cultures, which started at UCLA, inspired him to lead a formal Chicano trek to Mexican Indian villages. The experience greatly changed him as an artist, and added to the sense of outrage that animates his poetry. “It’s hard to admit – a hard word to use – but there’s definitely rage there,” he said, “that volcanic, emotional feeling of smoldering pressure that I suppressed and was suppressed by others that finally started blowing, particularly during the civil rights movements. “I felt myself having grown up very restricted in many ways, in schools as well as in a general way. Being an only child, I didn’t have the experience of brothers and sisters – and you’re always in your head as an only child. Plus being on welfare all my life as a kid, plus being a farmworker kid, plus being a brown kid, plus being a Spanish-speaking kid, and a traveling migrant kid. Each one of those had a backpack of rage attached to it.” With his literary career on the rise in the late 1980s, Herrera enrolled in the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. “I learned a lot about the architecture of poetry. They said: ‘Here’s your toolkit.’ I’d never seen these tools before. I’d used some of them, but I didn’t know the complete tool set was available,” says Herrera, who became a teaching fellow at Iowa, winning an Excellence in Teaching Award in 1990, the year that he received his Master of Fine Arts degree. Arriving at Cal Riverside in 2005, Herrera began to assemble a collection of his selected work, a two-year project that culminated with the release of Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (The University of Arizona Press) and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 (City Lights). The importance of Herrera’s nearly 40 years of work was fully evident in Half of the World in Light, particularly his capacity to reinvent himself from book to book. In his New York Times review, Burt wrote: “He has been and should be admired for his portrayals of Chicano life. Yet he is no mere recorder of social conditions. Herrera is instead a sometimes hermetic, wildly inventive, always unpredictable poet, whose work commands attention for its style alone. If there is one earlier writer Herrera resembles, that writer is Allen Ginsberg, whose volatile temperament he shares.”

Once a renegade outsider, Herrera received the establishment’s seal of approval when he was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. The board elects the recipients of the Wallace Stevens Award and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. It also acts as a consultant to the organization on matters of artistic direction and programming, and members serve as ambassadors of poetry in the world. Academy Chancellor Sharon Olds says that Herrera “is a poet of intense passion, imagination, empathy and wit. And he lets each poem take him where it will, into its own inward strangeness and outward clarity. I came across Juan Felipe Herrera’s Inside the Jacket during a time of upheaval in my life, when I needed to be aware of the full range of what I was feeling, and I did not know how. I would say the poem over and over to myself, and its love and anger and beauty kept me company, and empowered me.”

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THE ARTS/LEADERSHIP

Farmworker’s Son Honored at His SFSU Graduation by Gary M. Stern youngest of nine siblings – five sisters and three brothers. He attended Exeter Union High School in Exeter, Calif., a small town of 10,000 in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In this Q&A interview, Aviles-Scott reveals what drove him to academic success, why he took several detours before returning to earn his degree, and what he expects to do in the future. His story and success serve as a role model for Latino students and others whose young lives were not privileged. The Hispanic Outlook: You grew up in a large family of farmworkers who had little formal education. Where sparked your desire to be educated? Abraham Aviles-Scott: I always knew that an education was important. Even though my parents never went beyond fifth grade, they always said, “knowledge is power.” However, out of my eight siblings, only three of us received a college education.

braham Aviles-Scott, son of farmworkers, was named a Hood honoree representing the College of Health and Human Services at San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) graduation ceremony in May. One student at each of nine colleges is honored as a Hood scholar. “It is the highest recognition for being an outstanding student at SFSU,” said AvilesScott. Typically, graduate students, not undergraduates, are recognized. And while this honor reveals how far Aviles-Scott has come academically, it doesn’t hint at the many obstacles he had to overcome to achieve this recognition. Aviles-Scott was an unusual honoree in several ways. When he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social work in 2011, he was 39 years old. He started at SFSU in 1994 and took a 14-year hiatus to help out his family, moved to New York to pursue a career in opera, gained a social work job, and then returned to college to earn an undergraduate degree. SFSU is one campus of the 23 colleges that make up the California State University system. In fall 2010, SFSU enrolled about 25,000 undergraduates. Of its student body, close to 5,000 are Latino, 1,260 are AfricanAmerican, and 5,800 are Asian-American, so about 44 percent of its student population is minority. More than half of its undergraduates, 13,688 students, receive some form of financial aid. Growing up, Aviles-Scott faced many difficulties. Raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, he came from a family of farmworkers. Both his mom and dad worked in the fields picking grapes, citrus and olives. His parents were Mexican immigrants, but Aviles-Scott was born in Visalia, Calif., the

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HO: Can you comment on growing up in a family of nine children? Aviles-Scott: The good thing was there was always a sibling to take care of me, because I was the youngest. I liked being around my family. I enjoyed the family unity. However, we were extremely poor, and that was a limitation. Since we had only three rooms, I slept with four other siblings in the living room. Since my parents worked in the fields and had limited income, my dad grew fruits and vegetables so we had enough food. HO: You graduated from Exeter Union High School in 1989. Describe your high school education. Aviles-Scott: I didn’t apply myself in high school as much as I should. Since I was the youngest of nine, my teachers knew everyone in my family. My sister graduated at the top of her class, and one of my brothers excelled in math. Because of that, I felt some pressure to do well from my teachers. I didn’t take it very seriously. HO: What did you do after you graduated? Aviles-Scott: My mom got sick with a rare disease, and we thought she was going to die. I was helping take care of my mom. I did some home study while I helped her out and worked at odd jobs, including as a dishwasher. HO: What sparked your interest in college originally? Aviles-Scott: A friend told me about the Equal Opportunity Program (a nationwide program helping disadvantaged students succeed in college) when I was 19 years old. I applied and got accepted to Fresno State, a fouryear college, in 1991. I decided to major in social work. I started the program there and moved to the San Francisco Bay area. Around 1993, I transferred to San Francisco State as a sophomore. But my mother was still

ill, and I started commuting four hours to help take care of her. Finally, the pressure of taking care of her got to me, so I dropped out in 1994. HO: But in 1995, you changed the course of your life, and your interest in music took over. What did you do? Aviles-Scott: I needed to take care of myself. I was always involved in classical music. In 1995, I moved to New York to study opera. I spent 1996 to 1998 in New York studying music privately as an opera singer. To pay the bills, I managed a travel agency. I got my first music job with the New York City Opera Forum. But it’s hard to make a living from opera, which is why I worked in the travel agency. I performed at several small opera companies, but it didn’t sustain a living. HO: Why did you leave New York? Aviles-Scott: I missed California and returned to the Bay Area in 1998. I ended up working at the Community Music Center in the Mission District of San Francisco, a school that provides private and group music lessons. I served as a registrar for the school and worked in development until 2005. I was still singing opera locally at small opera companies. I left in 2005 and got hired as a case manager for Kinship Support Services, which offers support to adopted and foster children and their caregivers. I worked there until 2007. HO: What sparked your interest in social work? Aviles-Scott: Helping other immigrants who came to this country seemed like a natural thing for me to do. While I was working as a dishwasher after college, if any of the Mexican workers needed assistance with English translation, I helped them out. Since I had been in the field of social services, it was important for me to get a college education to help the community I was working in. I worked as a case manager within Children and Family Services in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco/Bay area. Earning a college degree would enable me to realize some of my career dreams. HO: Why did you decide to return to college? Aviles-Scott: I saw so many social workers who had college degrees but weren’t always focused on the clients. I knew I could do a better job, but I needed a college degree to prove that. I wanted to find a way to advocate for people in the community who didn’t have a voice. I thought many of the Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrants and other disenfranchised people needed an advocate. I decided to go back and gain my degree in social work in 2008. When I returned, I only had enough credits to be considered a sophomore. I took a 14-year hiatus and returned as a 36-year-old. Returning to college was an easy transition. I loved the environment of learning. I gained my bachelor’s degree in two years. HO: Could you describe your academic experience at SFSU? Aviles-Scott: I had access to passionate social work professors who were very giving of themselves and allowed me to stretch my imagination and develop my skills as a leader and social work practitioner. The School of Social Work department allowed me to spread my wings within the education community at San Francisco State. I also served an internship in the transitional housing program at my job, working with youth emancipated out of the foster care system.

HO: What factors enabled you to be named a Hood recipient? Aviles-Scott: I made the Honor Roll in 2009 and earned mostly A’s. I was actively involved with the student organization, Social Work Advocates for Visions of Empowerment. We raised funds for graduation ceremonies for the social work program as well as local and international organizations such as Doctors Without Borders. I received the honor based on a combination of academic achievement, volunteering and social involvement. HO: How did you fit in at San Francisco State? Aviles-Scott: I attended college at night. I connected well with the other Latinos in the social work school. Some Spanish-speaking students needed assistance with their papers. I felt as if there was a strong community on campus, in social work and in general education courses. Many Latino students gravitated toward each other and helped each other out. HO: What do you do now? Aviles-Scott: I’m a family specialist at the nonprofit agency EMQ Families First in Richmond, Calif. It focuses on family maintenance and intervention work involving Children of Family Services cases, wards of the court or cases investigated by county social workers. In Richmond, there’s a high level of gang activity. In fact, I’ve been caught in the crossfire of gun fights while working in the field. HO: Do you still perform opera? Aviles-Scott: I’m active in the Performing Art Society of Contra Costa County. I’m also a co-producer of “La Posarela,” an annual traditional Mexican Christmas show performed in the Mission District. HO: Through your many detours, what have you learned about yourself? Aviles-Scott: It’s all about timing. At first, I had to take care of my family and put out fires. With many Latinos, family comes first. At times, I put family before myself. Referring to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, my life changed when it stabilized. I had a regular income and stable relationships, which enabled me to return to college. I never became bitter or lost hold of my dreams of wanting to finish college. It’s never too late to earn your degree. Now several paraprofessionals in their late 30s and 40s ask how I earned my degree. I help them create a personal plan to attend college. HO: Personal plan? Aviles-Scott: You need a self-care plan to find avenues to take care of yourself. It also takes family. I couldn’t have done it without my family saying “you can do it” and giving me permission to succeed. HO: You’re 39 years old, and you have a bachelor’s degree in social work from SFSU. What’s next? Aviles-Scott: I’m starting a master’s program in counseling at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., in fall 2011. Since I’ve worked five years doing direct services, I want to develop my clinical skills. My goal is to get my marriage and family therapist license and open up a practice with other professionals within the community.

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High School Arts Programs Produce Innovative Thinkers

by Mary Ann Cooper ccording to a newly released report by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH), Re-Investing in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future, high school and elementary school students who are exposed regularly to arts studies have distinct advantages over arts-deprived students as they enter higher education and the workplace. Arts studies, the report indicates, foster creativity, collaboration and innovative thinking – traits that are very attractive to businesses and a great asset for achieving academic success. On the one hand, it’s easy to suggest that in troubled economic times education needs to return to the basics. Indeed, No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration program with the goal of improving academic achievement in primary and secondary schools, has focused on reading and math levels as an indication of successful learning. Art programs have become a casualty of the emphasis on reading and writing. On the other hand, according to the PCAH report, “arts education is more than helping students find their undiscovered talents, it is an effective tool for fixing some of the nation’s biggest educational challenges.” During the Arts Education Partnership meeting earlier this year, PCAH was introduced by Melody Barnes, domestic policy adviser and director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, and President’s Committee ViceChair Mary Schmidt Campbell. The introduction was followed by a panel discussion with business, education and government leaders, including former AOL President, internet entrepreneur and investor Ted Leonis, Acting Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools Kaya Henderson, PCAH CoChair Margo Lion and moderator Gene Wilhoit, executive director, Council of Chief State School Officers. The panelists discussed how integral the arts and humanities are to a complete education that gives young people the capacity to innovate and meet the challenges of a global marketplace. Melody Barnes underscored this point in

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her opening remarks, saying “Education without the arts is an incomplete education.” There is tangible evidence to support this assertion by the panel and Barnes that the arts build the necessary skills and habits to succeed. The report cites lower truancy rates “because the arts engage students, and a stronger work ethic because the arts demand repeated practice to master different skills” as well as fostering creativity and innovative thinking that shapes entrepreneurs and companies. Ted Leonis cited Apple and Groupon as two companies driven by innovation and creative thinking. Leonis noted that these companies are examples of what he calls “the creative class engine” that helps the United States compete globally. It has been 10 years since art studies data have been this thoroughly gathered and examined at the federal level. In preparing this report, the President’s Committee interviewed education leaders across the U.S., visited schools and compiled research. According to its report, “The results from this process of firsthand observation and research clearly showed the effect of arts education on student academic achievement and creativity. Schools are improving test scores and fostering their students’ competitiveness in the workforce by investing in arts education strategies, even in the toughest neighborhoods.” The report cited the following as the state of the nation in terms of education realities: in today’s U.S. schools a dropout rate nearing 50 percent for some ethnic and/or economic demographics needs to be reversed. Financial considerations and previous failure rates have narrowed curriculum and instilled a strict focus on standardized testing where students, taught to the test, are asked to fill in multiple-choice boxes rather than engage in creative thinking and problem solving, thus missing out on learning needed skills to thrive in today’s economy. They also found that creative skills fostered by art studies were most attractive to those hiring in the private and public sector as well as decision

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makers in higher education. As the report stated, “The value of arts education is often phrased in enrichment terms – helping kids find their voice, rounding out their education and tapping into their undiscovered talents. This is true, but as the President’s Committee saw in schools all over the country, it is also an effective tool in school-wide reform and in fixing some of the nation’s biggest educational challenges.” Two studies from the late 1990s demonstrated the potential of the arts as a deterrent to dropping out, increasing “motivation and engagement in learning.” Anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath studied nonschool youth organizations in low-income neighborhoods. Her research released in 1998 showed that those students who were involved in arts education for at least nine hours a week were four times more likely to have high academic achievement and three times more likely to have high attendance. In addition, researcher Milbrey McLaughlin released a longitudinal study in 2000 reporting on the lives of youth in low-income neighborhoods. That study found that those who participated in arts programs were more likely to be high academic achievers, be elected to class office, and participate in a math or science fair. There have been updates to these studies in the past few years, tracking the same students into their mid-20s. The results showed that the academic advantage they exhibited increased over time, and that “arts-engaged low-income students are more likely than their non-artsengaged peers to have attended and done well in college, built careers, volunteered in their communities and participated in the political process by voting.” In the last five years, research has been conducted to see if art studies can improve the function of the brain, especially during cognitive development. It has been shown that music training is closely correlated with the development of phonological awareness – one of the most important predictors of early reading

skills. Also, “children who practiced a specific art form developed improved attention skills and improved general intelligence. Training their attention and focus also leads to improvement in other cognitive domains.” Additionally, “arts integration techniques, which use multiple senses to repeat information, can cause more infor-

mation to be stored in long-term – as opposed to short-term – memory, and may actually change the structure of the neurons.” The thrust of the PCAH report is that art study is not just for aspiring artists. Barnes concludes, “That means that arts education can’t be an afterthought – an investment that our schools can

make only after they’ve solved all the other challenges they face. Instead, we must see it as a tool for keeping students more engaged, for closing achievement gaps and lowering dropout rates.”

Theory into Practice The report from the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities (Re-Investing in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future) not only advances the argument that arts are a crucial part of education in primary and secondary schools, its 18-month investigation and study also produced some crucial guidelines for injecting more art study into cash-strapped schools that see the value of arts education, but see them also as a frill that can’t be figured into their budgets. The problem is that art classes are seen as an adjunct to regular academic classes and not integrated into the curriculum. Here are several recommendations the report makes to establish “collaboration between arts specialists, classroom teachers and teaching artists to create collaborative, creative environments,” and preserve arts education: • Build robust collaborations among different approaches to arts education – First examine how your community is trying to address the challenge of getting more arts in schools. The delivery models for arts studies can include standards-based sequential arts curricula; formal and informal arts integration strategies; and short- and long-term teaching artists residencies. Once you know the framework, you can try to establish a strategy to work within that delivery system. If your community doesn’t have an established framework, you might examine how the community operates and come up with something that would be a good fit for neighborhood schools. In working within the system, recognize the role that organizations as well as school and state officials play in directing arts education in your community. Finally, don’t get hung up on how art studies education is delivered. As the report points out, “Small successes – such as a visiting artist leading a two-week dance workshop – can often be the gateway to more arts, and more learning, and more engagement.” • Develop the field of arts integration – Enhance the importance of arts education by making it an integral part of classroom teaching. Art teachers and classroom teachers should find ways to work together to incorporate art into the teaching of other subjects such as math, science and reading. On the other hand, the art teacher should inject math, science and reading into art study as well to create a seamless learning environment. According to the PCAH study, integrated study of this kind raises morale among students and teachers and increases student attendance. “There’s a pride and a collegiality in an arts-integrated school. Learning seems more fun; students and teachers are more engaged, and the whole school seems like a more creative place.” • Expand in-school opportunities for teaching artists – One of the best ways to make the case for real collaborations between art teachers and schools, classroom teachers and their students is to bring in teaching artists who can be more flexible to accommodate the time and budget restrictions that many communities may impose on their art studies programs. • Utilize federal and state policies to reinforce the place of arts in K-12 education – If you need a little muscle to make your case, remember that district superintendents and principals who determine school priorities will respond to simple, focused statements from leaders in federal and state education agencies about how the arts fit into their current priorities. What they want to hear is how arts programs strengthen the curriculum, as well as teacher effectiveness, and improve low-performing schools. Look to studies such as the PCAH report for success stories in other communities to cite as examples to follow. It is also important to provide information about how to address the new Common Core Standards through the arts and how to use the arts to develop critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation. • Widen the focus of evidence gathering about arts education – For the last 10 years, there has been an effort to measure art studies as they enhance reading and math test scores. The emphasis was established as part of the evaluation of No Child Left Behind. However, the PCAH study points out that there has been “much less sustained research on the connections between arts education and 21st-century skills such as creativity and innovative thinking, as well as the effect of arts education on engagement, attendance, behavioral problems and other factors that are early indicators of a student’s likelihood of dropping out.” The PCAH study suggests that more research be conducted on how arts education affects “innovative thinking and creativity, engagement, motivation, focus and persistence.”

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The Hispanic Outlook In Higher Education

www.hispanicoutlook.com

2010 Census Shows Nation’s Hispanic Population Grew Four Times Faster than Total U.S. Population

August 01, 2011

About three-quarters of Hispanics in the United States reported as Mexican, Puerto Rican or Cuban origin in the 2010 Census. Mexican origin was the largest group, 63 percent of the total U.S. Hispanic population – up from 58 percent in 2000. This group increased by 54 percent and saw the largest numeric change (11.2 million), growing from 20.6 million in 2000 to 31.8 million in 2010. Mexicans accounted for about three-fourths of the 15.2 million increase in the total Hispanic population between 2000 and 2010. The Mexican-origin population represented the largest Hispanic group in 40 states, with more than half of these states in the South and West regions of the country, along with two states in the Northeast and all 12 states in the Midwest. Puerto Ricans, the second-largest group,

comprised 9 percent of the Hispanic population in 2010 – down from 10 percent in 2000. The Puerto Rican population grew by 36 percent, increasing from 3.4 million to 4.6 million. Puerto Ricans were the largest Hispanic group in six of the nine states in the Northeast and in one western state – Hawaii, with a population of 44,000. The Cuban-origin population increased by 44 percent, growing from 1.2 million in 2000 to 1.8 million in 2010. Cubans made up approximately 4 percent of the total Hispanic population in both the 2000 and 2010 censuses and were the largest Hispanic-origin group in Florida in 2010 with a population of 1.2 million. Since 2000, three detailed Hispanic-origin groups surpassed a population of one million: Salvadoran (1.6 million), Dominican (1.4 million) and Guatemalan (1.0 million).

AFT Recommends Ways to Promote their campuses by addressing and eliminatGender Diversity in Higher Education ing barriers in educational attainment, hiring and retention. Faculty

and excellence on our higher education campuses,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. The report offers specific recommendations, including correcting inequities in compensation, expanding family-friendly campus policies, providing more flexibility in tenure and promotion policies, fostering opportunities for women in math and science, and ensuring women have a voice in their workplaces and in their unions. The report also notes that women of color face a double challenge. As was detailed in an AFT report released last year, Promoting Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Faculty: What Higher Education Unions Can Do, people of color are underrepresented in the faculty ranks and face a number of barriers in pursuing the tenure track.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The U.S. Census Bureau released a 2010 Census brief that shows the Hispanic population increased by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010 and accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population increase of 27.3 million. Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent, or four times the nation’s 9.7 percent growth rate. The Hispanic Population: 2010 brief looks at an important part of the nation’s changing ethnic diversity, with a particular focus on Hispanic origin groups such as Mexican, Dominican and Cuban.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

While women have continued to play a greater role in higher education instruction in the last half-century, progress in faculty diversity has not kept up with student diversity, according to an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) report released recently that recommends ways to make positive changes on campuses. The report, Promoting Gender Diversity in the Faculty: What Higher Education Unions Can Do, calls on colleges, universities and faculty unions to do a better job of promoting gender diversity on

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Women make up 57 percent of all college students, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education, yet women represent about 40 percent of the full-time instructional work force and about 50 percent of the part-time staff, the AFT report says. Also, on average, women earn less than their male counterparts, in general as well as in specific disciplines. For instance, women faculty in the life sciences earn on average $13,226 less than men earn. “Role models make a difference in student success. Research shows a direct correlation between female undergraduates’ success and the percentage of women faculty members. We must do better to ensure equity

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The Hispanic Outlook In Higher Education

Diverse Organizations Speak Out About Need to Help Students Finish College, Not Just Get In WASHINGTON, D.C.

In response to the nation’s urgent need for more college graduates, a broad coalition of organizations announced the launch of the National Coalition for College Completion (NCCC). Led by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), the coalition is a group of leaders from outside the education space, including business, civil rights, community-based, and student and youth advocacy organizations, ranging from CEOs for Cities and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to the National Urban League and mobilize.org. The coalition is especially focused on helping more minority and lowincome students finish college, as those students are also the fastest-growing segments of society and the populations with the lowest educational attainment. “Though we as a country have made great

NCES Releases The Condition of Education 2011 WASHINGTON, D.C.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released a progress report on education in America that includes findings on the demographics of American schools, U.S. resources for schooling and outcomes associated with education. Findings in The Condition of Education 2011 include:

www.hispanicoutlook.com

August 01, 2011

strides in helping more students get into college, we aren’t doing enough to help them get out. Our elected officials and education leaders at all levels must do more to increase college completion,” said Michelle Asha Cooper, Ph.D., president of IHEP. “That’s why the coalition is activating our members and constituents to let everyone know how important college completion is to people outside the education sector, whether ‘completion’ refers to a four-year degree, a two-year degree or a recognized credential program.” According to the latest data, nearly half of all four-year college students are not graduating. The numbers are even lower for those attending community college. Low rates of completion have a direct and alarming impact on the U.S. economy. Today 97 million U.S. jobs require high-level skills, but only 45 million Americans currently qualify for such positions. In the coming decade, two-thirds of all new jobs will require some level of college education. The current work force does not have the skills to fill these new jobs. IHEP, a leader in

shaping higher education policy, convened NCCC to address this growing gap. “Starting today, the National Coalition for College Completion is activating our members from coast to coast to reach out to their elected officials and higher education leaders and urge them to do more to support today’s students,” said Lorelle L. Espinosa, Ph.D., director of policy and strategic initiatives at IHEP and the director of the coalition. “On the coalition’s website, FinishHigherEd.org, anyone interested in joining us can find tools and materials to help educate policymakers and education leaders about the importance of helping students get to graduation day.” The newly launched FinishHigherEd.org is a resource center for policymakers, media, education leaders and anyone interested in speaking out in support of today’s students. The site provides fact sheets, policy one-pagers, template outreach materials and an ever-growing library of promising practices from colleges and communitybased organizations across the country.

• In 2007-08, about three-quarters of the 2003-04 freshman class graduated with a regular diploma from public high schools • From 2000 to 2009, undergraduate enrollment in postsecondary institutions increased from 13 million students to 18 million; during this period, undergraduate enrollment in private for-profit institutions quadrupled – from 0.4 million students in 2000 to 1.6 million in 2009. • Between 1975 and 2010, the percentages of White, Black and Hispanic 25- to 29-year-olds who had a bachelor’s degree increased; yet during this period, the gap in

bachelor’s degree attainment between Blacks and Whites increased from 13 to 19 percentage points, and the gap between Whites and Hispanics increased from 15 to 25 percentage points To view the full report, please visit nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid =2011033.

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HI S PAN I C S O N T H E MO VE León Named Professor of Construction Engineering at Virginia Tech

ment ceremonies in May. De Molina is the multiple Emmy Award-winning co-host of Univision network’s highly rated entertainment news show El Gordo y la Flaca. He graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.

Roberto León, who will join the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech as a tenured professor in December 2011, has been named the David H. Burrows Professor in Construction Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors. León has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, master’s in structural engineering from Stanford University and Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin.

Cambridge College’s Abreu Honored Cambridge College (Mass.) announced that School of Management faculty member Claritza N. Abreu, M.S., has been named to Mass High Tech’s 2011 Women to Watch list. The award honors local professionals for their contributions to the technology sector and their ongoing roles as leaders in their communities. Abreu is coordinator of the Cambridge College School of Management Healthcare Informatics program and assistant commissioner and chief information officer of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

Murguía Receives Honorary Doctorate from CSU-Dominguez Hills California State University-Dominguez Hills recently presented an honorary doctorate to Janet Murguía, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the nation. Murguía is a prominent voice on issues concerning Latinos in the United States and has been recognized numerous times for her leadership in the Latino community and the nonprofit world. She has two bachelor’s degrees and a law degree from the University of Kansas.

Mondragon to Chair Board of Central New Mexico Community College Dr. John Mondragon is the new chairman of the Governing Board at Central New Mexico Community College. Mondragon, a member of the Diversity Committee for the Association of Community College Trustees, has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from New Mexico Highlands University and a doctorate from the University of New Mexico.

De Molina Receives Honorary Degree from Montclair State University

HACU Leader Speaks at Hudson County Community College 2011 Commencement

Montclair State University (N.J.) awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters to Univision television host Raúl de Molina at the university’s 2011 commence-

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Antonio R. Flores, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), spoke at the graduation of Hudson County Community College’s (N.J.) class of 2011. HACU is a national organization repre-

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senting more than 450 colleges and universities that collectively serve two-thirds of the more than two million Hispanic students attending U.S. colleges and universities in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

U.S. Senate Confirms Reyna as Circuit Judge By a vote of 86-0, the Senate confirmed President Obama’s nomination of Jimmie V. Reyna to serve as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). Reyna, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Williams Mullen, becomes the first Latino to serve on the CAFC.

Albany Law School Honors Meléndez LatinoJustice PRLDEF has announced that board member María D. Meléndez was presented with the Albany Law School Kate Stoneman Award, given annually to individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to actively seek change and expand opportunities for women. Meléndez is a partner in Sidley Austin’s litigation group.

Interesting Reads Coda: Last Poems – Karl Shapiro Compiled, edited and introduced by Robert Phillips This collection is compiled from unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro. They appear largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his Manhattan apartment. 2008. 69 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-933896-21-2. $14.95 paper. Texas Review Press, (800) 826-8911. www.shsu.edu/~www_trp

Messages from Home By Phyllis Levenstein and Susan Levenstein This book gives an overview of the Parent-Child Home Program, created by Phyllis Levenstein in the 1960s as a way to improve the cognitive, social and emotional school readiness of tens of thousands of children. The story is told from the viewpoint of the program’s participants. 2008. 288 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-59213-677-3. $28.95 paper. Temple University Press, (215) 204-8787. www.temple.edu/tempress

Reinventing the Lacandón: Subaltern Representations in the Rain Forest of Chiapas By Brian Gollnick The author’s aim is to show how popular and elite cultures have interacted in creating depictions of life in the jungle. He explores how both the jungle region and its inhabitants have been represented in literary writings from the Spanish conquest to today. 2008. 256 pgs. ISBN: 978-0-8165-2629-1. $49.95 cloth. The University of Arizona Press, (520) 621-3920. www.uapress.arizona.edu.

and Media...

Eyes Wide Open This program, which is in Spanish and Portuguese with English subtitles, travels to Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay to explore how socialist governments in South America are forging economic alliances. 2009. DVD (152 minutes) ISBN 978-1-61733-000-1. $199.95. Films for the Humanities and Science, (800) 257-5126. www.films.com

Vote Thieves: Illegal Immigration, Redistricting, and Presidential Elections by Orlando J. Rodríguez 180 pgs. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011, ISBN 97881-59707-671-8. $26.95 hardcover.

nce in a while there is a book that hits you in the face and forces you to question accepted assumptions. This is exactly the book Orlando Rodríguez has written. With his knowledge of demographics and census data as well as of the political process, Rodríguez proposes that instead of the current system “we base congressional apportionment on the number of voters that participate in federal elections – voter-count apportionment.” What this means is that only the voting population should be the basis for adjudicating representatives. Allocating congressional seats should not be based on the population number, but only on those who can vote. At first, this argument seems unfair and even anti-democratic, but Rodríguez builds his case slowly, showing the historical impact of not having used his proposed approach. Counting slaves while not allowing them to vote gave the South additional power in Congress because the South had added representation. This political power did not translate into giving slaves their freedom or more rights. On the contrary, it served to “forestall the abolition of slavery.” As the book emphasizes, “being counted does not guarantee being represented.” In the case of illegal immigration, Rodríguez reminds us that this population is also counted when apportioning representatives to a state. Thus, based on the new census data, states such as Arizona and Texas will get additional representatives in Congress because of the growth of the undocumented population in those states. But these additional congressional seats will be elected by only those who can vote. “There is little benefit to a person to be counted in apportionment but not allow to vote.” There are no incentives either to ensure this population is truly represented in Congress. A good example is what happened in California after reapportionment in 2000, where the state obtained 13 representatives because of the Hispanic population. Rodríguez reminds us, however, that in 2009, “California only had seven Hispanic congressional representatives.” The book also tackles redistricting and gerrymandering and provides evidence of how these practices have muted Hispanic political influence in several states in spite of the growth of our population. Rodríguez can be controversial, but he builds his case using historical evidence as well as data. His perspective forces us to think twice about whether accepted practices have led to empowering our community and our elected officials. Also, whether these officials have a mandate to better represent our needs and defend our rights. As the author suggests, “voter-count apportionment will create an incentive for political parties to increase the number of voters among minorities and to turn noncitizens into voting citizens with an ownership stake in the country’s future.” After reading the Rodríguez arguments, the political election process is seen from a totally different perspective. He has raised a number of important questions regarding whether the way we are being represented truly reflects the spirit of the Constitution. Reviewed by Estela López

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Loyola Marymount University invites nominations and applications for a

Provost and Executive Vice-President. The University is comprised of a main campus in a dramatic setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Frank Gehry designed law school in downtown Los Angeles. Established in 1911 in the Catholic intellectual tradition, and shaped by the commitments of the University’s sponsoring religious orders, the Society of Jesus and the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, LMU offers a diverse student body an education that springs from the core of its Catholic identity and mission: the encouragement of learning, the education of the whole person, the service of faith and the promotion of justice. LMU is the most ethnically diverse of the nation’s 28 Jesuit colleges and universities and the five Marymount institutions. It serves approximately 2500 graduate and law students and about 5500 undergraduate students, making it the largest Catholic university on the West Coast. LMU engages with the most ethnically and religiously diverse city in the nation, Los Angeles. LMU is proud of its nationally and regionally ranked undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. The University is celebrating its centennial, completing a $380 million capital campaign, and entering a new phase in strategic planning. It recently opened a new main library that was awarded LEED gold certification, and received city approval for a 20-year master plan that includes construction of a new life sciences building. Reporting to the President, the Provost is responsible for the academic and operational aspects of the University: academic affairs, administration, business & finance, and student affairs. The Deans of all the colleges and schools at the Westchester campus will report directly to the Provost. Like the President, the Provost serves as an institutional role model by demonstrating a keen understanding of higher education, diversity, and the ideals and values expressed in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Minimum requirements include a terminal degree from an accredited institution, tenured, full professor status, and administrative experience at the level of a dean or equivalent. The most competitive candidates will demonstrate the following attributes and core competencies: • • • • • • •

a distinguished record of academic scholarship, teaching, and academic administration demonstrated leadership effectiveness, characterized by discerning judgment and integrity. ability to articulate and advance the University’s mission and Catholic identity effective administrative skills and leadership style in a higher education context demonstrated success working with diverse populations student-centered approach to undergraduate and graduate education experience with university budget, finance matters, and business processes

LMU is an equal opportunity institution actively working to promote an intercultural learning community. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Prospective candidates are encouraged to review the additional materials including a Provost Profile posted at: www.lmu.edu/provostsearch. The deadline for applications is October 15, 2011. Nominations and applicant materials should be sent to: Ms. Carol Gilbert, Executive Recruiter, Loyola Marymount University, 1 LMU Drive, University Hall, Suite 4800, Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659, cgilbert@lmu.edu 310.338.1796

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08/01/2011

Samuel Merritt University, founded in 1909 and located in Oakland, California, educates health science practitioners to be highly skilled and compassionate professionals making a positive difference in diverse communities. Over 1,400 students are enrolled at SMU, with campuses in Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo. The University offers an undergraduate degree in nursing; master’s degrees in a variety of nursing fields, occupational therapy, and physician assistant; and doctoral degrees in physical therapy and podiatric medicine. For more information visit the SMU website:

www.samuelmerritt.edu

Persons of color are encouraged to apply. Samuel Merritt University is an Equal Opportunity Employer

fellowships available The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University awards 0 funded residential fellowships each year designed to support scholars, scientists, artists, and writers of exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishment.

For more information, please contact: Radcliffe Application Office 8 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138 617-496-1324 fellowships@radcliffe.edu www.radcliffe.edu

Cleveland State University invites applications for the following:

TENURED/TENURE-TRACK FACULTY HEALTH LAW Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Cleveland State University is a public, comprehensive university serving Cleveland and the northeast Ohio region, enrolling some 16,000 students and employing 550 faculty and more than 1,000 staff. The metropolitan Cleveland area approximates 2 million people and features a thriving business community and outstanding cultural, recreational and intellectual activities in a pleasant environment with a wide choice of attractive communities in which to live. Cleveland State University offers an outstanding benefit package to full-time faculty and staff that includes medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance as well as tuition assistance. Cleveland State University is committed to nondiscrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, genetic information, disability, sexual orientation, disabled veteran, or Vietnam era or other protected veteran status, and to equal access in education and employment. All positions are contingent on maintaining existing levels. Health and sustainable communities are signature research areas for CSU. For complete job descriptions and application requirements, please visit www.csuohio.edu/HRD/ or www.HigherEdJobs.com.

PRESIDENT

Skagit Valley College Board of Trustees invites applications for the position of President. SVC is a regionally accredited, state-supported community college located one hour north of Seattle, WA.

Candidates for the position of President of Skagit Valley College will be evaluated on their ability to provide the opportunities, traits, and experiences that the college seeks in a new president. The successful candidate must demonstrate a strong record of achievement, including administrative experience in a college or university.

To learn more about Skagit Valley College, visit our website at www.skagit.edu. Information regarding the position, the search or application process may be found at www.skagit.edu/presidentialsearch or by contacting: Sue Williamson Executive Director of Human Resources 2405 E. College Way Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Email: presidentialsearchHR@skagit.edu

Although applications will be accepted until the time that a new president is selected, candidates should plan to submit materials by September 12, 2011 for the most favorable consideration.

Confidential inquiries about the position, the search or application process should be directed to Dr. Preston Pulliams, 503-704-3425, or preston@goldhillassociates.com. AA/EOE

www.csuohio.edu

GTCC has the following Full-Time Faculty Positions available: Full Time Positions: Mechatronics Engineering Technology Instructor Requirements: Associates Degree Required Dental Hygiene Instructor (Time-Limited) Requirements: Bachelors Degree Required Computer Technologies Integration Instructor Requirements: Master’s degree with 18 graduate hours in the teaching discipline For a GTCC application & additional information, Visit our website: www.gtcc.edu. Applicants must submit an unofficial transcript with application. EOE

VICE PRESIDENT PRESIDENT, T, ACADEMIC ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AFFFAIRS Riverside City College is seeking an exceptional xceptional individual to serves serves as the chief instructional structional officer ffor or one of Southern California’s Calif ornia’s oldest and most prestigious prestigiouss community colleges. Riverside City College is the largest of three accredited colleges within Riverside Community mmunity College District, which serves serves nearlyy 1.6 million people living in a 540 nearl 40 sq. mile service service area. RCC is home to strong ong programs programs in liberal arts, sciences, performing perf orming arts, nursing and athletics. athletics. Serving Serving more than 19,000 students each semester, semester emester, RCC provides students with a wide range of choices including associate’s associa ciate’s degree degree programs, programs, transfer to four-year four-year institutions, or career certificates certificates that that prepare them to enter the workf workforce. orce. Position description: Under the super Position supervision ervision of the College President, the Vice President dent serves serves as a line officer in planning, organizing, and administering the instructional uctional programs programs of the college.

Truckee Meadows Community College is accepting application for, Vice President for Finance and Administrative Service position. POSITION IS CONTINGENT UPON FUNDING. For a detailed position announcement and instructions on how to apply, please logon to http://jobs.tmcc.edu or phone 775-673-7169 for further information. TMCC is an EEO/AA employer

Qualifications: Three years of successful cessful experience in administration, administration, preferably preferably at at the community college level, is required. Three years of full-time teaching ching experience in an institution of higher education, educa ducation, preferably preferably at at the community college level, is also required. For a complete mplete list of qualifications, qualifications, please refer to thee job announcement that that can be found found aatt jobs.rcc.edu. Only on-line electronic aapplications Only pplications andd supporting materials materials are accepted. Applyy aatt http://apptrkr Appl http://apptrkr.com/197122 r.com/197122 Deadline is August 22, 2011. For assistance stance call (951) 222-8595 An Equal Opportunity Employer

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VICE PRESIDENT

FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

California State University, Fullerton is a large, comprehensive, urban university with approximately 1,670 full- and part-time faculty and a diverse student body of approximately over 35,500 enrolled in Fall 2010. The university offers a broad spectrum of degree programs in liberal arts and sciences as well as applied and professional fields with 55 at the baccalaureate level and 50 graduate programs including a doctorate in education. Learning is preeminent at Cal State Fullerton. We combine the best qualities of teaching and research universities where actively engaged students, faculty and staff work in close collaborations to expand knowledge. Research and other creative activities are enhanced by the proximity of the campus to nationally recognized business, cultural, and educational institutions. Faculty members were awarded more than $28.7 million in grants and contracts for research and scholarly activities in 2009-10. The university has a longstanding tradition of collegial governance. Cal State Fullerton is strongly committed to achieving excellence through cultural diversity. CSUF is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution (the only one in Orange County) and an Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution. We are ranked 5th in the nation in terms of baccalaureate degrees awarded to minorities. In addition to meeting fully its obligations under federal and state law, Cal State Fullerton is committed to creating a community in which a diverse population can live, work and learn in an atmosphere of tolerance, civility and respect for the rights and sensibilities of each individual. To that end, all qualified individuals will receive equal consideration without regard to economic status, race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin or cultural background, political views, sex or sexual orientation, disability or Veteran's status or other personal characteristics or beliefs.

POSITION SUMMARY: The Vice President for Academic Affairs is the chief academic officer of the University, is a member of the President’s Administrative Board, and reports directly to the President. The Vice President is one of five vice presidents of the University. The Vice President provides academic leadership for all the University’s undergraduate, graduate, research and public service programs. The Vice President is responsible for managing more than 3,000 faculty and 300 staff members, as well as eight colleges, contracts and grants, institutional research, outreach, admissions and records and international partnerships. Academic programs are initiated, developed and recommended by the faculty through the Academic Senate and its many committees. The Vice President’s leadership and administrative style must complement this process and be effective in stimulating collegiality and cooperation. The academic Vice President works closely with the President, the academic associate vice presidents, college deans, and program directors regarding all instructional related planning and operational matters. Responsibilities include: academic program planning, budgeting, development and implementation; faculty recruitment, review and development; institutional and funded research; external funding and partnerships; university library and extended education. The Vice President chairs the Council of Deans which includes Deans from the Colleges of the Arts, Communications, Education, Engineering & Computer Science, Health & Human Development, Humanities & Social Sciences, Natural Sciences & Mathematics, Mihaylo College of Business & Economics, University Extended Education, Irvine Campus and the Director of the University Library. QUALIFICATIONS: • An earned doctorate acceptable for appointment at the rank of full professor within a discipline encompassed in the university. • Distinguished record of achievement in university teaching, scholarship and/or creative activity. • A minimum of six years of successful administrative experience. • A minimum of three years of responsibility for a major academic unit at the level of Dean or higher. • Demonstrated ability to provide sustained leadership in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment. • Demonstrated competencies in budget planning and administration; faculty/staff development and management; program planning, development and evaluation; and resource allocation. • Broad knowledge of various facets of a large multi-disciplinary university. • Keen understanding of the instructional, research, and creative needs of undergraduate and graduate programs in the liberal arts and sciences, professional disciplines, and interdisciplinary studies as well as doctoral programs in Education and Nursing. • Commitment to providing leadership that encourages external grants and contracts. • Ability to collaborate effectively with faculty, staff, students, and all other major units of the university as well as the broader educational community. • Demonstrated commitment to shared faculty governance in a collective bargaining environment. • Demonstrated effectiveness working in a multi-cultural environment with a commitment to campus-wide educational equity and retention. • History of communication and cooperation with faculty, staff, and students in a clear, open and democratic manner. • Familiarity with the application of instructional technology. • Flexible working style. COMPENSATION: The University seeks to fill this position by January 3, 2012. Starting salary will be competitive and commensurate with experience and qualifications. The position includes a broad attractive benefits package. APPLICATION PROCEDURE: To assure full consideration, submit application materials by September 16, 2011. Position will remain open until filled. Applicants are asked to provide a cover letter with statement of qualifications, a curriculum vita, and the names, addresses and telephone numbers of at least five (5) references. All materials should be sent to: Chair, Search Committee for Vice President for Academic Affairs, Office of the President, California State University, Fullerton, P.O. Box 6810, Fullerton, California 92834-6810, Attention: Cassandra Newby, Executive Secretary to the President, Email: cnewby@fullerton.edu ACHIEVING A CLIMATE OF SUCCESS THROUGH DIVERSITY & EQUITY An Equal Opportunity/Title IX/503/504/VEVRA/ADA Employer

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School Law (Assistant Professor) The Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University seeks applications for a tenure-track, assistant professor position in school law in the educational leadership program to begin August 2012. We seek outstanding candidates with research and teaching interests related to K-12 law and at least one other area of expertise. The individual will have responsibilities across the IU core campus that spans Bloomington and Indianapolis. Candidates should send a letter of application describing research and teaching interests and experience, curriculum vitae, sample of scholarship, evidence of graduate teaching effectiveness, and three letters of reference to: Suzanne Eckes, Search Committee Chair, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 201 North Rose Avenue, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 47405. Screening of applications will begin on August 10, 2011, and continue until the position is filled. Indiana University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Please see http://education.indiana.edu/academicaffairs/ AcademicOpenings/tabid/465/Default.aspx for additional information.

GTCC has the following Full-Time Staff Positions available: Full Time Positions: Financial Aid Assistant (Time-Limited) Requirements: High School Diploma/GED Required System Administrator II Requirements: Associates Degree Required Financial Aid Advisor II (Time-Limited) Financial Aid Advisor II-Scholarship Requirements: Bachelors Degree Required For a GTCC application & additional information, Visit our website: www.gtcc.edu. Applicants must submit an unofficial transcript with application. EOE

Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine

Bowdoin College anticipates tenure-track openings, beginning fall 2012, in the following fields:

Anthropology: Political anthropology Art History: Asian Chemistry: (2 positions) Physical; Biophysical Economics: IO; game theory; international Mathematics: Statistics Psychology / Neuroscience: Cognitive Romance Languages: Spanish

For more information about Bowdoin and these positions, please visit: http://www.bowdoin.edu Bowdoin College (founded in 1794), a highly selective liberal arts college of approximately 1,730 students of distinction from across America and around the world, is located on the Maine coast approximately 21/2 hours from Boston. Bowdoin is committed to equality and diversity and is an equal opportunity employer.

The Hispanic Outlook MagazineÂŽ is also available in a digital format

www.hispanicoutlook.com for additional information

GTCC has the following Full-Time Faculty Positions available: Full Time (Time-Limited) Positions: *Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Instructor Requirements: Associates Degree Required *ACA Instructor *Dental Hygiene Instructor Requirements: Bachelors Degree Required *Astronomy Instructor *Biology Instructor *Chemistry Instructor *Communications Instructor *English Instructor *History Instructor *Sociology Instructor Requirements: Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree with 18 graduate hours in the teaching discipline For a GTCC application & additional information, Visit our website: www.gtcc.edu. Applicants must submit an unofficial transcript with application. EOE

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business wishes to hire tenure-track faculty in the area of organizations and strategy. We will consider candidates who are completing their PhD as well as more experienced candidates. Candidates must have earned a PhD (or equivalent) or expect to receive a doctorate in the near future. Typically, candidates are intellectually grounded in organizational theory, social psychology, sociology, and strategy. However, we regularly consider applications from other related intellectual traditions. More critical is whether the candidate has clear promise of research productivity and talent for bringing empirical data to bear on theoretical questions.

The organizations and markets group (O&M) develops theory and research on organizations and markets, the ways in which actors organize to manage their variable interdependence within a social structure, and the attitude and behavior implications of the resulting social organization. We are especially interested in people skilled in network analysis, however our taste in substantive applications is broad, including how organizations operate, why they differ, leadership and labor mobility within and between organizations, competitive advantage as a function of leader and organization networks, as well as processes by which leaders and organizations emerge, evolve, and change.

Appointments would begin in the 2012-13 academic year. We will begin formally reviewing applications on November 1, 2011 and strongly encourage you to complete your application by then. We will continue to accept applications until November 15, 2011. Please submit an application online, including a cover letter briefly describing your plans for future work, a vita, a written sample of your present work, and the names of two references at http://facultyapply.chicagobooth.edu. The University of Chicago is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action employer.

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Lecturer - Art Education Full-time academic year appointment beginning 8/22/2011. Teach art methods classes for art education majors and elementary education majors, teach art survey, supervise art education student teachers, and other duties commensurate with expertise and abilities. Minimum of an M.F.A. in studio art, or M.A. or M.S. in Art Education (ABD in Art Education preferred). Full announcement, qualifications, and application procedure may be seen at www.uwplatt.edu/pers/employ/Emp_PVA-LAE11Art.htm. Complete applications may be submitted electronically to Daniel Fairchild at fairchig@uwplatt.edu. Employment will require a criminal background check. Review of applications will begin July 15 and continue until the position is filled. AA/EOE.

08/01/2011

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DEAN, JAY AND PATTY BAKER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a Manhattan-based, internationally renowned college of art and design, business and technology of the State University of New York, invites applications and nominations for the position of Dean for the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology. Founded in 1944, FIT now has over 10,400 students studying in the heart of the fashion industry. The College has gained an international reputation for its unparalleled success in preparing students for cutting-edge careers. The College prepares students for professions in design, fashion, and business, and maintains strong ties with the industries it serves. FIT is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, and the Foundation for Interior Design Education Research. The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a college of the State University of New York (SUNY), is the premier educational institution for fashion, design, and related professions. FIT provides an unmatched combination of specialized curricula, an in-depth liberal arts education, and an extraordinary location in the center of New York City - world capital of art, fashion, and business. With unmatched ties to private industry, the College's faculty - drawn from the City's art, business, and design elite - interweave creativity and commerce to provide a curriculum rich in real-world experience. The Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology has a budget of $12.5M and serves nearly 4,000 students in 10 different majors with a focus on business in fashion and related professions. Candidates must have a Master’s degree, Ph.D. (preferred), and 7-10 years of effectiveness as an academic administrator preferably in an area of business and/or experience as a top-level executive in a fashion or design-related business. The ideal candidate will be an energetic and effective leader with superior communications skills, knowledge of current trends in education including technology and distance learning, experience in working with diverse constituencies in a collective bargaining environment, and the ability to work well with members of an administrative team and foster a collegial and collaborative environment among members of the entire FIT community.

LECTURER IN COMMUNICATION SCIENCES AND DISORDERS

The Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University is searching for a faculty member, at the rank of Lecturer, who can teach undergraduate courses in speech-language pathology and/or audiology. The department houses research laboratories studying hearing, speech, language and learning; vibrant BS, MS, AuD, and PhD programs; and state-of-the-art clinics in audiology, speech-language pathology and learning disabilities. Employment term: September 1, 2011 through the end of the regular academic year.

Duties: Teach two to three courses per quarter over the academic year. Course topics to be decided based on the successful applicant’s area of expertise and the needs of the academic programs.

Qualifications: Earned Masters in Speech-Language Pathology or Audiology, or AuD required. The candidate must have clinical experience and interests appropriate to teach courses in the department.

Salary: Commensurate with experience.

Application procedure: Send cover letter describing your teaching, research and clinical interests and experience, a current vita (including e-mail address), and three letters of recommendation to the Search Committee Chair. Mail to: CSD Lecturer Position Search, Communication and Sciences Disorders Department, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208. Forward questions to Professor Charles Larson at: clarson@northwestern.edu. For more information about the Department, please visit: http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/csd/. Closing Date: Ongoing until position is filled. Review of applications will begin immediately.

Northwestern University is one of the nation’s largest private research universities. The main campus is located in Evanston and the medical campus is located 12 miles south in Chicago. Both campuses are located on the shore of Lake Michigan. There is continuing expansion of University facilities and programs, particularly in the sciences and medicine. Diverse cultural, social, and recreational activities abound on and near each campus. Northwestern University is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Hiring is contingent upon eligibility to work in the United States.

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Greenwood/Asher & Associates, Inc. is assisting the Fashion Institute of Technology in the search. Initial screening of applications will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made. For best consideration, materials should be provided by August 31, 2011. Nominations should include the name, position, address, and telephone number. Application materials should include a letter outlining qualifications, a current resume, and the contact information, including email and telephone numbers, for at least five references. Because of the sensitive nature of this position, a pre-employment background investigation, including education, employment, criminal, credit, an professional reference checks will be required. Submission of materials as MS Word attachments is strongly encouraged. All inquiries, nominations, and application materials should be sent to the executive search firm Greenwood/Asher & Associates. Jan Greenwood or Betty Turner Asher Greenwood/Asher & Associates, Inc. Attn: Fashion Institute of Technology Search – Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology 42 Business Center Drive, Suite 206 Miramar Beach, FL 32550 Phone: 850.650.2277 Fax: 850.650.2272 E-mail: jangreenwood@greenwoodsearch.com bettyasher@greenwoodsearch.com For more information about the Fashion Institute of Technology, please visit the Web site at www.fitnyc.edu The Fashion Institute of Technology has a strong commitment to the principles of diversity and is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer.

RIO HONDO COLLEGE Whittier, CA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

is currently seeking a highly motivated professional to join our team:

Tenure-Track Position in Finance

DEAN, BEHAVIORAL & SOCIAL SCIENCES Full-Time, 12 month Educational Administrator To obtain a brochure, District application, and/or additional information, please visit the employment opportunities section of the Rio Hondo College website at:

www.riohondo.edu/hr

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS, Graduate School of Management invites applications for one position in finance at all levels (assistant, associate, full). Applications should be able to demonstrate excellence or potential excellence in research and teaching in financial economics. Candidates should have a Ph.D. degree in finance, economics, or a related field at the time of appointment. The GSM is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers an exciting intellectual environment comprised of top research scholars and outstanding students. The GSM is the nation’s fastest rising business school in the top-50, according to the most recent U.S. News & World Report ranking of MBA programs. UC Davis is ranked no. 9 in the country among public research universities. UC Davis had research expenditures in 2010 of $680 million, placing the University among the top ten public research universities in the nation in research expenditures. Both the GSM and UC Davis are noted for their collaborative research environments. A GSM appointment offers generous financial support for faculty research and opportunities for joint research with scholars in other GSM subfields and in other UC Davis departments such as the Department of Economics in the Division of Social Sciences. Your letter of application should describe your research and teaching interests and include a resume, evidence of research (papers, dissertation) and teaching, and the names and addresses of three references to: Finance Faculty Search Committee Graduate School of Management, University of California, Davis One Shields Ave. Davis, California 95616 Online Application Website: http://apptrkr.com/195847 Email Questions or Concerns to: GSMFacultyRecruit@gsm.ucdavis.edu

EEO

This position has no closing date and, as such, will remain open until filled. UC Davis is an affirmative action/equal employment opportunity employer and is dedicated to recruiting a diverse faculty community. We welcome all qualified applicants to apply, including women, minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans.

Dean – Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management – #15331 GTCC has the following Full-Time Faculty Positions available: Full Time Positions: *Mechatronics Engineering Technology Instructor Requirements: Associates Degree Required *Communications Instructor *Computer Technologies Integration Instructor *Import/Export Compliance Instructor Requirements: Master’s degree with 18 graduate hours in the teaching discipline For a GTCC application & additional information, Visit our website: www.gtcc.edu. Applicants must submit an unofficial transcript with application. EOE

Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, is an inclusive, dynamic, and innovative Ivy League university and New York’s land-grant institution. Its staff, faculty, and students impart an uncommon sense of larger purpose and contribute creative ideas and best practices to further the university’s mission of teaching, research, and outreach. Cornell University invites applications and nominations for the position of Dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. The Dean of the Johnson School is the academic, administrative, and community leader of the School. The next dean will be responsible for building the capacity and capabilities of the Johnson School and moving it forward in terms of reputation, quality of the student experience, distinction, and influence. He/she will be expected to grow the intellectual, financial, and human assets of the School. In addition, the next dean will play a key leadership role in the current initiative to capture distinctive synergies between the various schools and units at Cornell that have business-related programs, including the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management (undergraduate), the School of Hotel Administration, and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The review process will begin upon receipt of materials with preference given to complete applications submitted prior to September 1, 2011. For more information on the position and key selection criteria, please visit: http://www.cornell.edu/provost/searches/johnson. In keeping with Cornell University’s commitment to building a culturally-diverse community, nominations of and applications from women and other underrepresented groups are particularly encouraged. Applications and nominations will be kept strictly confidential. Applications should include a statement of interest and a curriculum vita. Send materials to: Johnson School Dean Search Manager 501B Day Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 or electronically to johnsonschooldeansearch@cornell.edu.

Cornell University is an affirmative action/ equal opportunity employer and educator.

08/01/2011

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HISPANIC

OUTLOOK

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

P ri min g the Pump. .. STRUCTURED AND CASUAL CONVERSATIONS SUPPORT FACULTY-STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

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

“What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.” – William Glasser, American psychologist aculty engagement with students – intriguing, occupying and holding their attention – promotes school retention, but knowing how to do so is a skill in itself. Many Latino students only relate to teachers hierarchically: teachers provide instruction, students (hopefully) complete assignments, and teachers provide feedback and correction. That “relationship” – and, for some, that academic information – are a blip on the screen, part of a requirement. But an interactive, respectful relationship of conversation and exchange, with teacher and Hispanic students learning from one another, is fundamental to dynamic, meaningful learning. For some teachers, the prospect of conversation might seem daunting or just one more thing to do. Some claim they don’t have time for conversation with students, but those successful in retaining students know it is essential. With Latino students, conversation is not a waste of time. It is not “chit-chat’ or idle talk. It is usually not a diversionary tactic to avoid an assignment or exam, either. Conversation is the surest way to connect with a Latino student and nurture the love of learning. If they recognize that the person behind the academic subject cares, that subject might garner a second look or more serious consideration by the students. How does a faculty member get from “Do as I say” to “Let’s talk about it?” Structure, intent and practice can help build conversation naturally, meaningfully and practically. Whether it is in a preschool classroom, an elementary setting or high school, a teacher committing to talk with (not at) students will hold their attention and help develop their commitment to learning. As minor as it seems, being greeted by name is the tipping point for some students deciding if school is for them. Some early childhood program evaluation tools consider greeting a child by name to be an indicator of quality. Being called by name is a sign of respect and interest, and is the first step in building a mutually respectful relationship. With Latino

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students, proper pronunciation of Spanish names is important, along with avoiding Anglicized nicknames that the student does not typically use. Preschool “circle time” is part of the daily routine when students sit in a circle and listen intently and share with others. Circle time in college might take a seminar-type approach, adjusted for class size. Whether one is 4 or 40 years old, conversation assures that students receive attention, pay attention to others, and increase ownership of learning. And it is another informal tool to assess the student’s knowledge, skills, interests and abilities. Brief, individual, scheduled face-to-face meetings in high school and college allow the teacher to provide the student feedback on class progress and guidance on future work. These meetings are particularly helpful for students, including Latinos, who miss class, fall behind in assignments, perform poorly on tests or are reticent to approach the teacher. These “no surprises” meetings – conducted during class time – can reduce the dropout rate or “I didn’t know” factor at the end of a term when students heading for failure in the class may claim they were unaware of assignments or other requirements. For students on top of their game, personal meetings with a teacher are another opportunity to build the intellectual relationship and explore other opportunities. Latino students enjoy the comfort and individually focused time of these meetings and often ask questions they might hesitate to ask in front of the entire class. Student-teacher conversations occurring in a hallway or during a shared break time can inform teachers about a student’s interests, abilities and life circumstances. Different ways of connecting with the hardto-reach student can be revealed through casual conversation. And it is an opportunity for the Latino student to see the teacher as a multidimensional person, credible beyond the classroom. The next time a Latino student replies with a shrug, grunt or avoidance when you ask how it is going, stop and probe diplomatically. Once they know you want to know about them, they will be more likely to listen to what you have to say about the subject at hand.

This article appeared online only in the 08/01/11 Issue

TARGETING HIGHER EDUCATION

Electoral Changes: Hispanic Realities

For

by Gustavo A. Mellander all our shortcomings as a nation, one of our enduring touchstones is that we believe in democracy. We believe we can address our problems through the electoral process. We have confidence in our elections (even with our outdated electoral college). We believe every vote counts. Of course, in our quiet moments, we know flaws exist, for we have studied rural politics, big-city machine politics and the overwhelming power of money in virtually every election. As Jesse Unruh, a California political powerhouse, famously said, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” President Lyndon Johnson expressed it more crudely when he said, “Money talks, bull---t walks.” Rich individuals or well-funded interest groups run well-financed campaigns. They don’t always win, but many do. Would President Kennedy have been elected without his father’s enormous wealth? Money need not be ostentatiously splashed around. Actually, it is normally more effective if funding can be cleverly hidden. To do otherwise is usually counterproductive. Money is best “invested” in seemingly nonpartisan interest groups. “Advocacy groups” can pretend they are not political, just interested in the common good. They can be quite influential. Political partisanship and its influence are widespread. And that’s fine. Up to a point. It is discouraging that we cannot find a newspaper, a radio or television station that does not have a decided point of view. All claim to be fair and balanced, although some reporters have been so brazen as to say, “Yes, I am an advocate. I represent a point of view. I am not a parrot.” That’s OK for the editorial portion but not for the news stories, which should be painfully factual. The use of adjectives, adverbs and the continuous shading of a news story is widespread and corrosive. So we know those negative realities exist and subtly influence us. Yet we still believe in democracy, our electoral system and the importance of mobilizing likeminded constituents. There are concerted efforts in every election to organize, to get out the vote, no mean trick during a nonpresidential year. Politics is a highly emotional endeavor. It provides avenues for us to be subconsciously influenced. Momentum is always critical, and the present year’s results will impact the future. But all things considered, not only has the system worked for us, it has served as a beacon of hope and inspiration for scores of nations around the world. It seems we are told at every election that “this election is the most important one in your lifetime.” Two years or four years later, we hear the same dire warning. Just because it is frequently repeated does not mean it’s not important or is inaccurate. I can’t estimate the importance of any particular upcoming election for Hispanics, but I do see a series of very important elections during the next decade or so. They will indeed be monumental. It has been said for thousands of years that “what is past is prologue.” So

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where are we? The 2008 presidential elections and the November 2010 congressional as well as state elections provide us with more than a single clue. Those events are further compounded by the effects of the 2010 census results that redistributed seats in the House of Representatives among the states. Let’s explore those new realities. I am indebted to the Pew Center for its 2010 Congressional Reapportionment and Latinos report. I studied it carefully, as well as feature stories in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. They all presented lucid analyses of the 2010 congressional reapportionment decisions and Latino/Hispanic electoral strength. The research focus was on Hispanics in states that gained or lost congressional seats due to the 2010 reapportionment decisions. There were some surprises, some good news and some bad news. And let me suggest some delayed news yet to be played out. Some Key Highlights Hispanic voters are nearly three times more prevalent in states that gained congressional seats and Electoral College votes because of the 2010 reapportionment decisions than they are in states that lost seats. That’s very significant. It provides a roadmap for the future. If we study the averages as measured by congressional gains and losses, we see that 15.2 percent of the eligible voter population in states that gained seats is Hispanic. That compares favorably with only 5.4 percent of eligible voters in those states that lost seats. What Does This Mean for Hispanics? These reapportionment changes mean that Hispanics will likely play a larger role in national politics in the coming two decades. We see its effects already. Two states that gained seats, Florida and Nevada, had been key swing battlegrounds in recent presidential elections. They voted for the Republican nominee in 2004 and for the Democrat in 2008. In both states, Hispanics have a growing cohort of eligible voters. The surprising re-election of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was fueled, many believe, by his inroads into the Hispanic community.

According to the Census Bureau, there were 308 million people in the U.S. in 2010, up 9 percent from 2000. Overall, Hispanics accounted for more than half (51 percent) of that growth. Now the bad news. Since many Latinos are either too young to vote or are not U.S. citizens, not all of their population growth will translate into immediate electoral strength. Among the nation’s 48.4 million Hispanics in 2009 (up to 50.5 million in 2011), a record 20.1 million are eligible to vote. Yet an even greater number are not eligible to vote. A very sizeable 15.5 million Hispanics are U.S. citizens 17 years of age or younger and thus cannot vote. Further, 12.8 million of all ages are not U.S. citizens. That’s to be factored in before pundits get too optimistic about Hispanic power. Even so, the number of the Latinos eligible to vote continues to grow. Since 2000, nearly six million more Hispanics have become eligible to vote. The majority of that growth was attributable to the five million U.S.born Latino youths nationwide who turned 18 during this past decade. That translates into an additional half-million U.S.-born Hispanics coming of age each year. Not insignificant at all. That pattern will persist and grow for decades. Significantly, no matter what happens with immigration patterns in the future, “the aging of the U.S.-born Latino youth bulge ensures that the electoral strength of the nation’s largest minority group will continue to grow in the coming decades.” Fortuitously, much of that growth will take place in states that have gained congressional seats and Electoral College votes. A Closer Look at Reapportionment Gains and Hispanic Population Growth Based on the 2010 Census, eight states – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington – will gain congressional seats and Electoral College votes. Texas will gain four; Florida, two; and all others, one. Ten states will lose seats – Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York and Ohio will lose two; and all others, one. Noted in another fashion, Hispanics represent a greater share of eligible voter and resident populations in states that will gain seats than they do in states that will lose seats. Among eligible voters, in states that will gain seats, 15.2 percent are Hispanic, while in states that will lose seats, just 5.4 percent are Hispanic. Among resident populations, 23.6 percent are Hispanic in states that will gain seats compared with 8.4 percent in states that will lose seats. In Texas, Hispanics are a growing force. They account for one in four (25.5 percent) of the state’s eligible voters and 36.9 percent of the state’s population. In Florida, Hispanics account for one in seven (15 percent) of the state’s eligible voters and 21.5 percent of the state’s population. Further, in Arizona and Nevada, Hispanics represent 19.7 percent and 14.1 percent of eligible voters, respectively. Hispanic Population Growth Interestingly enough, many of the states that gained congressional seats did so partly because of rapid Hispanic population growth. The Texas population increased by nearly four million, or by 21 percent, between 2000 and 2010. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of that growth came from the state’s Hispanic population. It increased by almost 2.5 million.

In Florida, Hispanic population growth accounted for more than half (51 percent) of the state’s population growth in that decade. Even in states with smaller Hispanic populations, Hispanics accounted for a large share of population growth. A surprise for sure has been the Hispanic population surges in states from the Old South. For example, in Georgia, Hispanics accounted for 23.2 percent of the state’s growth; in South Carolina, 19.8 percent. Even in states that lost congressional seats, Hispanics contributed significantly because of their population gains, which helped limit reapportionment losses. Other states reflected a similar phenomenon. In New York, 72 percent of the population growth came from Hispanics. In New Jersey, the state’s population would have declined without Hispanic growth. And in Michigan, Hispanic growth kept the state’s population from declining even more than it did. Hispanic Electoral Strength “Hispanic voting strength is limited by the fact that one-third of all Hispanics are under the age of 18 and by the fact that many Latino adults are not U.S. citizens.” The implications are crystal clear. The stew thickens, for the share of the Hispanic population that is eligible to vote is lower than it is among either Caucasians or Blacks. That is true even though the Hispanic population has grown so rapidly in recent decades. In Texas, for example, even though Hispanic population growth helped to fuel the expansion of the state’s congressional delegation, fewer than half (43.1 percent) of all Hispanics are eligible to vote. Compare that to the fact that nearly eight in 10 (77.3 percent) Caucasian and seven in 10 Blacks (70 percent) are eligible to vote. In Florida, fewer than half (48.3 percent) of the state’s Hispanics are eligible to vote, while eight in 10 (79.8 percent) Whites and 63.5 percent of Blacks are eligible. In Georgia, a state where the vast majority of Hispanic adults are foreign-born and arrived within the last decade or two, the gap is even wider. Only 22.9 percent of the state’s Hispanics are eligible to vote. That compares to 76.2 percent of Whites and 69.6 percent of Blacks. Similar patterns are present in other states. Bottom Line There are a lot more Hispanics than in years past. That trend is not going to abate. But a large percent cannot vote either because they are not citizens or because they are too young. We should build upon what we have. Register existing adults, have them build a strong base. They are the first wave. We should also educate the youngsters to become informed and participating citizens and voters. It’s too early to claim a golden age, but it’s not too early to plan for one.

Dr. Mellander was a university dean for 15 years and a college president for 20.

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