CSRC Newsletter - April 2006

Last month, the CSRC and UCLA lost a devoted friend, alumnus, and supporter, Marco Antonio Firebaugh. Marco was an active participant in the CSRC, giving the keynote address at our annual open house in 2002 and 2005 and taking part in our annual staff lunch before Christmas break. But his involvement in the CSRC was much more profound, and also more down-to-earth. Marco was a major force in the state legislature, where he was a tireless advocate for increasing access to higher education for all. He was also a devoted father, as anyone who saw him knew. We fondly recall his 2002 keynote address, when he was joined at the podium by his daughter and son, and we will treasure the time we spent with him working toward a better future. To read memoria by other faculty, see the web page. The CSRC Library has set up a display and an information book chronicling Marco's life and legislative accomplishments.

 

 

The 2006 Latino Education Summit, “Falling Through the Cracks: Critical Transitions in the Latina/o Educational Pipeline,” was a great success. Numerous policy recommendations were presented and discussed before an audience of more than 270 academics, policy makers, and students. The conference was covered by many media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times. An in-depth follow-up report will be posted in the near future. We again offer our thanks to Washington Mutual, The John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, Hilton Hotels Corporation, Union Bank of California, UCLA Graduate Division, and UCLA Student Affairs for making this summit possible. For more information, see two important reports at conference publications, or go to the conference program or conference speakers.

 

For the second year in a row, CSRC has been awarded a grant by the Getty Foundation that will enable the center to offer a summer internship. During the ten-week period from June to August, the intern will provide support to various arts projects at CSRC, working under the supervision of CSRC Director Chon Noriega. The intern will have the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the work done by Chicano artists and to receive hands-on curatorial and publishing experience. To apply or for more information, contact Carlos M. Haro.

 

CSRC Director Chon Noriega is featured in an article on mentorship that appears in the Winter 2006 issue of the UCLA Graduate Quarterly. The article, which includes tips on “how to find a mentor,” focuses on the experiences of two graduate students who have benefited from Noriega's tutelage, Mirasol Riojas and Roberto Oregel. For a link to this issue, click here.

 

Concepción Valadez, a CSRC faculty associate and professor in the UCLA School of Education, has received the prestigious Rosenfield Community Partnership Prize for her work with the community organization Centro Latino de Educación Popular. For the past nine years, Valadez has assisted this group with its mission: enhancing Latino immigrants' quality of life and their children's success in school. She works directly with Centro Latino's programs on basic literacy, vocational English, parent education, student education, and the use of computers for acquiring literacy. For more information, see the award web page.

 

Charlene Villaseñor Black, a CSRC faculty affiliate, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure in the UCLA Department of Art History. José M. Alamillo, a CSRC visiting scholar during 2002-03, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure in the department of comparative ethnic studies at Washington State University. Congratulations to both!

 

This month David Hayes-Bautista, former director of the CSRC and current director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture, published a paper about the founder of a UCLA predecessor institution who was Latino. The paper, "Reginaldo Francisco del Valle: UCLA's Forgotten Forefather," will appear in Southern California Quarterly. When UCLA celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2019, homage should be paid to Reginaldo Francisco del Valle, says Hayes-Bautista. For more information, click here.

 

CSRC will host Magdalena Beltran-del Olmo and Frank Sotomayor, editors of Frank del Olmo: Commentaries on His Times, for a reading and book signing on Thursday, April 27, 2006, 4:00 - 7:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library, 144 Haines Hall. Otto Santa Ana will serve as moderator, and additional guests will make presentations. A reception will follow. Frank del Olmo, an associate editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, was a role model and an inspiration to many Chicana/os. His columns and editorials were often the loudest, clearest, and most articulate voice for the Chicana/o community. He died February 19, 2004. The book is a collection of his columns.

 

A migration studies group at UCLA has organized a speaker series with the first talk by Agustín Escobar-Latapí, of CIESAS-Occidente, on “Poverty and the Management of Mexico - U.S. Migration: Challenges and Options.” It will be held on Thursday, April 27, 2006, 1:00 pm, in the CSRC Conference Room, 279 Haines Hall. The talk is sponsored by the UCLA Department of Sociology Migration Studies Working Group and is cosponsored by the UCLA Latin American Center and the CSRC. Please contact Rubén Hernández-León if you have questions.

 

In April, the CSRC Library will begin processing and preserving the Grace Davis papers. This collection consists of materials accumulated by Grace Montañez Davis, the deputy mayor of Los Angeles during the administration of Mayor Tom Bradley. Most of the collection relates to Davis's professional career and her activities as a public figure. It also contains personal and family-related papers, photos, and professional awards.

The process of digitizing the rich collection of interviews conducted by Latino pop and rock historian Don Snowden has begun. These rare and historic recordings will be available to researchers by June.

The Spanish language book collection of Josefina María Niggli has been transferred to the CSRC Library from the Southern Regional Library Facility. The collection will available to researchers after preservation and restoration. Niggli, born in 1910 in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, was a versatile author whose publications included poetry, short stories, plays, and novels. She was also a staff writer for various Hollywood studios, where she worked on films such as The Mark of Zorro and Sombrero, which was based on her novel Mexican Village (1945). She died in 1983. Her collection of books ranges from trade paperbacks to old leather-bound treasures.

 

The CSRC Library is working on a beta version of a new online archive for web-based research.

 

The CSRC released a new Latino Policy & Issues Brief and a new CSRC Research Report at the 2006 Latino Education Summit. Both argue that the future of the Latina/o community and the future of California will be determined by the efforts made to improve educational conditions for Latina/o students.

The brief, by Tara J. Yosso and Daniel G. Solórzano, describes how Chicana/os suffer the lowest educational attainment of any major racial or ethnic group in the United States and suggests how to repair the serious and persistent leaks in the Chicana/o educational pipeline.

The research report, by Lindsay Pérez Huber, Ofelia Huidor, María C. Malagón, Gloria Sánchez, and Daniel G. Solórzano, describes at length recent research on the critical transitions within each segment of the educational pipeline (K-12, community college, undergraduate, and graduate) and offers recommendations for policies that would increase the number of Latina/os who graduate with advanced degrees.

 

The CSRC assisted the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging with launching their new policy brief series on the impact of social security on the Latino population. The first Latino & Social Security Policy Brief, by Fernando Torres-Gil, is “Latinos and the Future of Social Security: A Time to Act.”

 

The CSRC Press had a table at the National Association of Latino Independent Producers annual conference in Long Beach in early March, where it sold its new DVDs and books. Thanks to Kathryn Galan and Erick Garcia of NALIP for making this possible!

 

Due to a printer's distribution error, delivery of the spring issue of Aztlán to subscribers has been delayed. It should arrive in mid-April.

 

The Institute of American Cultures invites applications for support of research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicana/os for 2006–07. UCLA faculty, staff, graduate students, and IAC postdoctoral fellows are eligible to apply. The application form is available online. The IAC particularly encourages proposals that will make a contribution to the ethnic studies centers. Prior to submission, applicants should discuss their proposal with the assistant director or director of the appropriate center. Deadline: 5:00 p.m., Friday, April 28, 2006. Awards will be announced by the third week in June. To obtain information about IAC research grants and applications, visit the website. For Chicano studies research grants, email Carlos Manuel Haro, or call 310-267-5290.

 

A stipend of $10,000 for the first and second year of graduate school is available to ten full-time Hispanic students (one parent must be fully Hispanic or both parents must be half Hispanic). Applicants must be enrolled during the next academic year in a master's or PhD program and have a minimum GPA of 3.0 at one of the following universities: Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, UT Austin, or University of Virginia. Deadline: Monday, May 15, 2006.