Latino symposium engages students

Undergraduate students in Latino Studies Program classes applied for a chance to showcase what they learned at the first Cesar E. Chavez Undergraduate Research Symposium in Latino Studies. The symposium will take place this Thursday and Friday.

The participants will present on a variety of different issues that affect Latino Americans and Latinos abroad from immigration to education to social justice.

The symposium will feature Roberto Gonzales, an assistant professor at University of Chicago, whose research focus is on undocumented immigrant young adults in the United States. He will present the keynote address titled “Lives in Limbo: Undocumented Adults and the Conflicting Experiences of Belonging and Exclusion.”

The Symposium is named after Cesar E. Chavez who, according to the United Farm Workers website, was the co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta, which became the UFW in 1962. Chavez dedicated his life to social and economic concerns of labor workers, and especially empathized with Latino American workers. He died in 1993.

Aidé Acosta, a visiting assistant professor in the American and Latino Studies Programs, and Mintzi Martinez-Rivera, a Doctorate (Ph.D Candidate) student came up with the idea of having a symposium named after the late civil rights activist.

“We talked to the director of the Latino Cultural Center, Lillian Casillas, and we tried to figure out the place, the date, and it coincided with some of the activities with the date in March, in the celebration of the civil rights leader, Cesar Estrada Chavez,” Acosta said.

Acosta said they initially had a discussion about ways they could engage and include undergraduate students with the Latino Studies Program.

“And we came up with, just talking and passing, that we would both be interested in doing a one day symposium and ... that it would be a great idea to showcase to other people the things that they are producing in their classrooms.” Acosta said.

Acosta said they wanted to engage undergrads in interdisciplinary research and at the same time give students the opportunity to develop the skills to engage in scholarship type of work.

“Every one on the project was paired up with a mentor in Latino Studies, either a professor or a graduate student,” Acosta said. “We also did workshops. We did a workshop that particularly covered presenting skills and also working with the mentor and engage in the workshop to be able to develop these skills.”

John Nievo Phillips, director of the Latino Studies Program, said the symposium includes a dozen students and faculty and graduate students. He said in the last 15 or so years, there has been a lot of literature that has come out recently, relating to the borderlands between U.S. and Mexico and the U.S. and the Caribbean.

“Our hope is it may stimulate some of them to want to go to graduate school,” Phillips said. “Whether they do want to go to graduate school or not, this is a good chance for them to work closely with faculty members or graduate students in a project.”

Phillips said because of the expansion of Latinos in America it pushes for more issues to be studied, like immigration, citizenship and education.

“This is the first time that IU has ever had such an event focusing on Latino research,” Phillips said, ”We hope that its going to be an annual affair.”