Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón
In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.
But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.
As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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Center for Mexican-American Studies creates home for students
As a first generation student from Laredo, Texas, Ilse Colchado felt out of place when she began her college journey. She felt underrepresented and lost — until she found her home at the Center for Mexican-American Studies.
The Hispanic population makes up 20 percent of UT’s student body, according to UT’s 2017–2018 Statistical Handbook. Colchado, Mexican-American studies and anthropology junior, said her transition was difficult because she came from an environment with a majority Hispanic population to an environment where she was in the minority.
“I didn’t feel represented as a brown student, and so I added Mexican-American studies after my first year,” Colchado said. “That was where I felt like I belonged on campus, especially with having professors of color who integrated their own stories of survival.”…
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50 years after the Walkouts, Los Angeles Latino students are still fighting for educational equity
Before there were Dreamers, thousands of young Latinos marched out of their East Los Angeles classrooms half a century ago for their right to be educated.
“I was never told I was college material or capable of aspiring for something better,” said Bobby Verdugo, one of the leaders of the 1968 Chicano student movement known as “Walkouts or Blowouts.”
“Dreamers are being marginalized today. They are being treated like they don’t belong here, like they are not wanted. That’s how we felt 50 years ago,” Verdugo said.
March 1 marks the 50th anniversary of what has been called the nation’s first major mass protest against racism by Mexican-Americans. More than 15,000 students from Roosevelt, Wilson, Garfield, Lincoln, and Belmont high schools walked out of their classrooms to challenge the inequalities in Los Angeles public schools. Fifty years later, their bold action has reaped educational gains for Latinos, but they haven’t come fast enough, advocates say…
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Graduate student incorporates Spanish romance into self-composed song
Guillermo Ojeda began writing his three-minute romantic guitar solo with just seven notes.
Ojeda, a graduate student in social welfare, submitted his song “Soledad” to “7 Notes Experiment,” a global contest that encourages musicians from across the world to compose a song of any genre from a given set of seven notes. Ojeda is one of 100 finalists who were selected out of thousands of entries from across the world. The contest accepted entries until Dec. 15, and will announce its winner at an unspecified date.
Ojeda heard about the competition from a notification on his Facebook feed in the middle of his fall quarter finals at UCLA. And with just five days to submit his piece, he took on the challenge of composing a new song in under a week…
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Smithsonian Latino Center Accepting Applications for 2018 Young Ambassadors Program
The Smithsonian Latino Center is now accepting applications for the 2018 Young Ambassadors Program June 24 through Aug. 2. The application deadline April 9. The Young Ambassadors Program is a national program for graduating high school seniors that fosters the next generation of Latino leaders in the arts, sciences and humanities through an intensive training and internship program at the Smithsonian. The program receives major and continued support from Ford Motor Company Fund…
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CSUF’s Latino Communications Institute connects students to media careers
When Cal State Fullerton alum Shaira Arias was a student in a school program formerly known as the Latino Communications Initiative (LCI), she met the executive producer of the Spanish-language television network she would someday work for.
“When I saw other students introducing themselves to her at an LCI event, I thought ‘I can do that too,’ because LCI is very encouraging in that way,” Arias said of the program, which aims to build bridges between students and Spanish-bilingual media organizations.
‘We believe in you;’ How one Oregon high school guides Latino students to graduation
Oregon Education
‘We believe in you;’ How one Oregon high school guides Latino students to graduation
Posted January 28, 2018 at 07:13 AM | Updated January 28, 2018 at 02:05 PM
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Rich Pena Vania Torres.JPG
Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Putnam High security guard Rich Peña catches up with former student Vania Torres, now a college student studying to become a nurse. Peña, a Spanish speaking immigrant, is an important part of a schoolwide culture that works hard to say ‘I notice you,’ ‘I’m on your side’ and ‘I know you can do it.’…
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Many state flagship universities leave black and Latino students behind
any of the nation’s best public universities are enrolling disproportionately few African-American and Latino students.
Flagship universities are the jewels in the crown of public higher education systems — they have sought-after faculty, preeminent research facilities, the most resources and often the highest graduation rates, for all races. They also stand as beacons of affordable excellence for the students of their states. But when it comes to equitably serving the state’s residents, whose taxes fund these top-flight universities, many fall far short of their stated missions. Often there are big differences — defined by race — between who’s graduating from a state’s public high schools and who’s getting into its flagship universities…
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To attract more blacks and Hispanics to STEM, universities must address racial issues on campus
ROY, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was not Tiana Young’s first choice for college, even though Young wants to dual major in aeronautical and mechanical engineering, and the private university is one the top schools in the country for science, technology, math and engineering.
The school had one big drawback: Rensselaer’s student body is more than two-thirds white and Asian, according to federal data. For Young, who is black and whose high school in Spring Valley, New York was almost entirely African-American and Hispanic, “the lack of diversity was a very big concern,” says the freshman…
Colleges Scramble to Help Undocumented Students as Hopes for a DACA Deal Fade
On Wednesday afternoon, after House Democrats met with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, the spirit in Washington was one of stalemate. There was little progress toward a bipartisan deal to protect the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents the deportation of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, in exchange for Democrats’ votes to prevent a government shutdown by January 19.
But across the country in Sacramento, at a press conference held by University of California system president Janet Napolitano, the mood was one of urgency. Flanked by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and two other UC system officials, she urged the system’s 4,000 undocumented students to hurry to take advantage of the recent court ruling that reinstated DACA renewals after the Trump administration ended them last fall—a ruling the Trump administration has already asked the Supreme Court to review. The University of California is waging its own court battle to protect DACA: In September, Napolitano—who carried out the initial implementation of DACA as President Barack Obama’s homeland security secretary—filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the administration announced the program’s repeal…
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Report examines Latino student success rates
The author of a new report that analyzes success rates of Latino students stresses that there is no “magic bullet” for colleges and universities to use to improve their own metrics, and what works at one school may not be applicable for all. However, institutions that prioritize equity and make efforts to measure their progress usually yield positive results…
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El Pasoans complete grueling Stanford program
A new entrepreneurial program at Stanford University focused on developing Latino businesses has graduated 12 business owners from El Paso since it was launched two years ago.And on Saturday, Dec. 2, four Latino El Pasoans joined a growing list of business owners who have graduated from the Latino Business Action Network, which is part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in CaliforniaThere are now 12 El Paso CEOs who have graduated from the program and are part of a network of more than 360 Latino executives around the country…
Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago
Even after decades of affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago, according to a New York Times analysis.
The share of black freshmen at elite schools is virtually unchanged since 1980. Black students are just 6 percent of freshmen but 15 percent of college-age Americans, as the chart below shows…
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Challenges Remain for Latino College Presidents October 29, 2017
by Jamal Watson
SAN DIEGO—Dr. Beatriz T. Espinoza had no idea of the challenges that awaited her shortly after she took over as president of Coastal Bend College, a community college located in a rural part of South Texas.
The college was financially strapped and was on the brink of losing its accreditation. There was also a “disconnect” between the college and the majority of Hispanics who reside in the town of 12,000 where the college is situated…
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3 reasons for the declining number of Latino physicians
The U.S. Hispanic population has seen significant growth (link is external) in past 50 years, so how is it that fewer Latinos are becoming physicians?
Earlier this year, Latino Leaders Magazine reported on this decline (link is external): a 2015 study, conducted by the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (link is external) at UCLA, indicates that the number of Latino physicians dropped 22 percent over a 30-year period.
1980: 135 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos
2010: 105 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos…
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Calif. Latinos Surge Into College, But Graduation Rates Lag
The number of Latinos in college in California is surging, but their graduation rates are still far behind other groups, according to a new report.
Researchers at Georgetown University found that 12 percent of Latinos have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 43 percent of whites and 24 percent of African-Americans.
Audrey Dow, senior vice president at the Campaign for College Opportunity, a California nonprofit group, says Latinos are now fully represented at community colleges, but not at four-year schools…
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6 signs learning a second language enhances student success
Having the ability to speak a second language helps recent graduates stand out in the job applicant pool — a reality that K12 and higher education institutions can tap into for improving student ROI. Education Dive points out 6 promising signs that investing in second language programs will have many ancillary benefits…
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Opening New Doors
…“It’s a space for our underrepresented and underserved students to find a community and to find academic support, and to find a sense of belonging at UCSB,” said Phommasa. “Even though our primary focus is on academic support, our whole focus is to make sure the students we serve find a place and find support here, because it is such a large institution that is challenging to navigate.”…
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The Importance of Training Teachers to Better Understand Their Native Students
Native American students make up 1.4 percent of the students in Washington state public schools. And they have the lowest graduation rate of any ethnic group, with just 56.4 percent earning a high school diploma in four years.
“I was that young person, I dropped out of school. I was one of those statistics of Native women dropouts,” says Dawn Hardison-Stevens, who is a member of the Steilacoom Tribal Council…
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Minority support programs lay the groundwork for broader student success
Miguel Angel Acosta Muñoz is immensely frustrated by the idea that there is little recognition that much of what we now see as innovative practices in student affairs were actually incubated in ethnic studies departments on campuses across the country. After working in higher education in both Chicago and New Mexico for 25 years and serving on the board for Albuquerque Public Schools, Acosta Muñoz is these days channeling his efforts towards family-community-school partnership in New Mexico, but feels those still carrying the torch in higher ed are still largely going unrecognized…
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How can higher ed institutions increase access for high-achieving, low-income students?
A new report from the Jack Kent Coolke Foundation found well-off students outnumber their low-income peers at selective colleges 24:1.
“Selective colleges and universities must commit to expanding access for high-achieving, low-income students and opening the doors of our higher education system to students based on true merit rather than family income,” Jennifer Glynn, Ph.D. wrote in the report, “Opening Doors: How Selective Colleges and Universities Are Expanding Access for High-Achieving, Low-Income Students.”…
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