Northwestern’s new Latina and Latino studies program has been “decades in the making,” program assistant Grisel Murillo said.
The program received funding at the beginning of this academic year and is in the final stages of getting its curriculum approved, she said.
“We’ve gotten all the green lights,” Murillo said. “Students should be able to declare a concentration at least by the end of Spring Quarter.”
The current course offerings for the new major and minor program are listed in the department of Latin American and Caribbean studies. Latino studies differs from this discipline in that it focuses on the experience of Latin Americans in the United States, Murillo said.
Mónica Russel y Rodríguez, the program’s interim director, said she has been working to make the program a reality since she came to NU eight years ago.
“Some of it predates me,” she said. “Students have been centrally involved in this the entire way.”
Medill junior Arianna Hermosillo said she did not arrive at NU with the intention of pursuing Latino studies. But, after becoming involved with the Latino student group Alianza, she started working toward making the program a reality and now serves as the group’s Latino studies program chair.
Alianza members distributed fliers listing the other universities with established Latino studies departments, including the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to generate student interest in a similar program at NU.
“It really accelerated from the time that I was a freshman,” Hermosillo said. “Till now, it was never really about getting the program for ourselves.”
But establishing a new program takes time. First, there must be enough faculty members interested in teaching the topic, said Mary Finn, associate dean for undergraduate academic affairs
“When the dean feels confident that enough faculty interest exists, she or he appoints a faculty planning committee to do the research toward a proposal for a new major and/or minor,” Finn said in an e-mail. “(Establishing the program) can take two to three years.”
Angelica Rivera, an adjunct professor on leave from U of I, teaches a class on Latinas and Latinos in Chicago here at NU – a program that will fall under the new program.
The Latino studies program at U of I also came about primarily through the efforts of students when undergraduates at the Urbana-Champaign campus began to voice their desire for a Latino studies program in 1992, she said.
“The Latino student population was increasing, but adequate resources weren’t allocated,” Rivera said.
Graduate students who stayed on campus prevented the cause from dying out by continuing to meet with the provost and other administrators, and by 1996, the Latina/Latino studies program at U of I was up and running, Rivera said. Undergraduates can earn a minor or create their own major with Latino studies as the focus, and the university is working on expanding its offerings for graduate students.
For NU students, the new program is a chance to learn about the growing Latino community, Hermosillo said. When she returns from her Journalism Residency in the spring, she will be able to enroll in the program she has helped to create.
“I’ll feel awesome knowing it was done in my time,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of all the students before me.”
