Building Latinx Space for Enrichment and Research (LASER): Latinx Connect Conference Proposal

10:30am-12pm

Presenter: Amanda Reed

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Topic: Education through the Lifespan

Description

In our session, we will explain our program’s vision, mission, structure, and strategy as we prepare to launch weekly mentoring meetings in three local high schools in Mid-October. We will then prompt discussion about the services we will provide and how we might improve our program to best serve communities at the intersection of Latinx identity. Discussion will be sure to include undocumented Latinxs and improving this population’s access to higher education given the current barriers that they face before, during, and after attending college. We are particularly interested in hearing the perspectives of Latinx individuals.

Facilitators

Meghan Dabkowski.png

Meghan Dabkowski
University of Delaware Assistant Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Linguistics

Meghan Dabkowski is a University of Delaware Assistant Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Linguistics. She is the faculty advisor for LASER at UD, and teaches advanced language and linguistics courses, as well as courses that blend advanced language with community engagement in healthcare and education. Dabkowski is editor-in-chief of the Polyglot, the UD Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures’ annual magazine, and recently published Fonética y fonología españolas, 2da ed. with co-author Hans-Jörg Busch. Dabkowski’s research has focused mainly on sociophonetic variation in Spanish vowel realizations, as well as language ideologies and linguistic discrimination. She is interested in expanding her research horizons into community-based participatory research with Spanish-speaking communities in Delaware.

Lucia Pastor
University of Delaware undergraduate student

Lucia Pastor is an Ecuadorian-American junior nursing student at the University of Delaware with a minor in Spanish for healthcare and the Co-President of LASER. She’s also a Registered Student Organization (RSO) representative for UDance, a 12-hour dance marathon that raises money to financially assist families struggling with pediatric cancer. Her goal as co-president of LASER is to provide guidance and inspiration to aspiring Hispanic/Latinx students who are striving for a higher education. Lucia remembers when she was in high school and the difficulties she endured navigating the college application process, especially being a first generation college student and being a daughter of immigrant parents who didn’t understand the college application process. She wishes an opportunity such as LASER was available to her when she was in high school and cannot wait to see the possibilities of this organization’s impact on the Hispanic/Latinx community.

Frederick Aldama
Founder of LASER at the Ohio State University, the original group

Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor Latinx, is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and Affiliate Faculty in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas, Austin, as well as Adjunct Professor & Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University. He is award-winning author of over 48 books, including the International Latino Book Award and an Eisner for Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. He is editor and coeditor of 9 academic press book series, including editor of Latinographix that publishes Latinx comics. He is the creator of the first documentary on the history of Latinx superheroes and founder and director of UT’s Latinx Pop Lab. Aldama has also authored several children’s books, including The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie (published in English and Spanish) and the forthcoming, Con Papá/With Papá.

Panelists

Amanda Reed
University of Delaware undergraduate student
amandare@udel.edu

Amanda Reed is a junior at the University of Delaware. She is majoring in English and Spanish Studies and minoring in Comparative Literature and Race, Culture, and Equity in Education. During the summer of 2021, she worked through the UD Community Engagement Initiative Summer Scholars Program to build the foundations for LASER at UD. Amanda serves as Co-President of LASER and also works as a writing tutor for the UD Writing Center and Honors College. She plans to enroll in a BA/MA 4+1 program next year at UD to earn her Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and eventually begin a career in high school- or college-level ESL education.

costello.45.jpg

Elena Costello
Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at University of the Sciences

Elena Costello, Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at University of the Sciences, holds a doctorate in Linguistics and in Latin American Cultural Studies from The Ohio State University. Her areas of expertise in research and teaching include heritage language learners as part of Latinx cultural studies; the role of interpreters in health care; and accessibility to health care based on cultures, discourses, and practices of health with a focus on race, equity, and inclusion. Before joining the University of Sciences, Costello managed La Clinica Latina, a free medical clinic for Spanish-speaking people; worked as a pediatric medical interpreter for a Trauma I hospital, and as a conference interpreter for the World Health Organisation; organized Sol Con, the first ever African-American & Latino Comic Expo; and collaborated with the Mexican government as a consultant focused on promoting access to rural health care.

Carlos Gabriel Kelly González
Ph.D. student at the Ohio State University

Carlos Gabriel Kelly González is a first-generation Mexican American and third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of English specializing in Latinx Studies and Video Game Studies. His research seeks to merge the two fields by interrogating the liminal spaces associated with video games, specifically video game consoles, and how Latinx theory, through mestizaje, can open up new modes of analysis and study. In Fall 2019, Carlos will complete his Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Apart from his duties as a student, he has also been the Executive Director of LASER since 2017, and as acting Co-Director he aims to continue growing LASER both within the community and on the OSU campus. His professional goals include publishing more books of poetry, writing a book-length dissertation, establishing his own LASER program at a university, and to ultimately gain a tenure-track position teaching large lecture hall classes to incoming freshmen.