Students interested in taking Latino Studies courses in the near future will have to wait a bit longer, because the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program has still been unable to find someone to teach them.
LACS is currently working on drawing up a short list of candidates for a permanent tenure-track professor for Latino studies courses, and will soon invite individuals to visit the College, according to Marysa Navarro, chair of the LACS program.
The College created the tenure-track position a year ago in response to student and faculty efforts to make Latino Studies a permanent part of the LACS program -- and the search for someone to fill the position has been underway ever since.
The hurried search did not produce a sufficient pool of candidates immediately, and Brenda Bright, who had been teaching the courses on an interim basis, was compelled to leave the College when her contract expired last spring.
The LACS program began a more extensive search last fall and Associate Dean of the Faculty George Wolford said he authorized the program to hire a temporary professor while the search continued.
While there have been a few candidates interested, Wolford said none of them could be hired for one reason or another.
"We could not find anyone to come and teach the courses for the year," Navarro said. "The dean was very generous and supportive and made resources available, but we did not find any satisfactory candidates."
While students cannot currently take Latino Studies courses within the LACS program, they may find related courses in other departments.
Wolford said Latino topics are covered in a variety of departments and program -- ranging from geography to Portuguese -- but he admitted that the College needs to do a better job advertising those related courses.
"One of the problems for students is finding the relevant courses in the Organization, Regulations and Courses book," Wolford said. "It's difficult to look through all that."
He said the creation of an on-line ORC -- which the College hopes to have up and running by the end of the academic year -- will be a huge advantage for those people who want to take courses related to Latinos.
Since the on-line ORC will have a search command, students will be able to enter key words and thereby locate all classes mentioning Latinos in their course descriptions, he said.
The on-line ORC will not have any space limitations, so departments will be able to include longer course descriptions and syllabi, thus increasing the likelihood that students will locate some of these classes, Wolford said.
Wolford said students interested in Latino studies topics can also currently work with other departments to create courses designed for their interests, and could perhaps use the student-initiated seminar to their advantage.
The LACS program is also taking other steps to make students more aware of its course offerings and to reaffirm the College's commitment to Latino studies.
Navarro said the program is currently applying to change its name to Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies.
The application is pending approval from the appropriate College committees, she said, but should be finalized by Spring term.
Wolford said the Committee of Chairs -- which consists of all the College's department chairs -- would have to vote on such a proposal.
According to Navarro, the change is intended to increase the visibility of Latino courses. "We're going to have an area of study which is going to be Latino studies, and students need to know it is there and it needs to be visible in the catalogue," she said.
