Originally Posted: January 24, 2017
The Latino Center for Leadership Development (Latino CLD) and SMU’s John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies have awarded nine grants to 13 scholars tapped to provide meaningful research geared to promoting a stronger understanding of the Latino community and creating a dialogue about key societal issues.
As the Tower Center–Latino CLD partnership’s first class of grant recipients, each research team will provide final reports that include a white paper with context, analysis and policy recommendations.
Awards were chosen by research grant advisory board members Miguel Solis, Latino CLD president; James Hollifield, SMU Tower Center academic director; and Alicia Reyes-Barriéntez and Aileen Cardona-Arroyo, SMU Tower Center postdoctoral fellows.
“Issuing these grants marks the beginning of a new approach to policy and research related to the Latino community,” Solis says.
“The research will not only find its way into academic journals and classrooms, but also will inform the decisions of emerging policy makers,” he adds. “The Latino CLD is serious about ensuring future leaders are armed with substantive policy ideas rooted in research, so the allocation of these grants will help ensure our vision becomes a reality.”
Grantees include faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students from U.S. schools including SMU, Vanderbilt, UT-Austin and UCLA. Their research projects will focus such topics as education policy, public opinion/surveys, transnational students, African American-Latino coalitions, deportation’s effect on children, border enforcement and human rights, access to legalization as well as non-profit organizations’ services and resources.
The grantees’ first round of research findings will be presented at a public forum April 1 at the Hall of State at Fair Park in Dallas. Additional research will be discussed at a fall forum that also will be free and open to the public.
For more details about the research grants, contact Melissa Alfaro at malfaro@latinocld.com or 619-249-9055. READ MORE