National News
Inaugural Latino Education Summit to be held in San Bernardino
By HE&IT
Mar 9, 2010, 12:22

Community educators, administrators and leaders in education will convene for the inaugural Latino Education and Advocacy Day summit at Cal State San Bernardino on Monday, March 29. “A Day of Courageous Conversations” will be hosted by CSUSB’s College of Education at the campus’s Santos Manuel Student Union from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The summit is free to participants.

Chairing the LEAD committee is Enrique Murillo Jr., associate professor of language, literacy and culture at CSUSB. Murillo appointed more than 20 colleagues throughout the campus and volunteers from community organizations to assist with the event.

Several keynote speakers will present a variety of topics at the all-day summit, such as Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans; Dolores Huerta, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of United Farm Workers; and civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez.

Mendez, who was the 8-year-old plaintiff in the 1946 desegregation case, Mendez v. Westminster, will open the LEAD summit with her keynote address. The success of this case made California the first state to end segregation in schools, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education, which brought an end to school segregation in the entire country.

Sepulveda directs the White House Initiative in engaging Hispanic students, parents, families, organizations and anyone working within the education system in communities nationwide to improve the academic achievement of Hispanic Americans.

Huerta, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of United Farm Workers, will present a special screening and post-film discussion of the documentary, “Viva La Causa,” at the end of the day’s program. The film focuses on one of the seminal events in the march for human rights – the grape strike and boycott led by Cesar Chavez and Huerta in the 1960s.

Also being launched at the summit will be the “Handbook of Latinos and Education,” which was edited by Murillo and five colleagues. The handbook, published by Routledge and released this month, is a comprehensive review of thorough, innovative and critical scholarship relevant to educational issues that impact Latinos.

“This groundbreaking publication is a mapping of the academic terrain and serves as the realization and legitimization of Latino Education as a field worthy of study and investigation,” said Murillo. “We expect that this handbook will serve as an impetus to raise the consciousness of other publication venues.”

In addition to Murillo as editor-in-chief, the book was also edited by Sofia A. Villenas, Ruth Trinidad Galván, Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Corinne Martínez and Margarita Machado-Casas.

“For our editorial team, this was indeed a labor of love, taking us more than five years to plan and compile, and it involved the collaboration of several hundred scholars,” said Murillo. “One key dimension of this handbook project that sets it apart is that of mentorship. From beginning to end, one of the established goals was to actively mentor the next generation of educational researchers, Latino or otherwise, working with our populations.”

More than 40 participating universities throughout the U.S. will hold town hall viewings of the LEAD summit. The event is being webcast live courtesy of LatinoGraduate.net. Some of the sites are Harvard; Purdue; Columbia; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Texas A&M University; New York University; and the University of Georgia, Athens, among others.

Town hall viewings at locations in Mexico include the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Universidad de Monterrey and Universidad Michoacana.

To date, the event has attracted more than 130 sponsors and partners, including the United States Department of Agriculture, Hispanic Serving Institutions National Program; the Journal of Latinos and Education; American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education; Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities; the California Association for Bilingual Education and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Cal State San Bernardino also will present information about its doctorate in educational leadership program. It prepares educational leaders with the advanced skills and knowledge base needed to build and sustain meaningful relationships with faculty, staff and students and their families. The Ed.D. program also keeps students informed and gives them the broad-based dispositions needed to effect reforms that help improve student achievement.

For more information and to register online for the conference, visit lead.csusb.edu or contact Enrique Murillo Jr. at (909) 537-5632. A list of participating partners and sponsors may be viewed on the Web site at http://lead.csusb.edu/sponsors.htm