Memories of Jaime Escalante, the inspi-

rational math teacher who recently

succumbed to cancer, boosted the resolve of

those attending the 2010 Latino Education

Conference, held April 1, 2010 in Washing-

ton, DC. Like Escalan-

te, who demolished

stereotypes by teaching

calculus to disadvan-

taged teens in East Los

Angeles, participants at

the conference tackled

one of the toughest

problems in the Latino community---its lack

of representation in the science, technology,

engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM).

The conference took place at the elegant

Special Report

Omni Shoreham Ho-

tel, and the over 250

attendees from around

the country represent-

ed academia, corporate

America, the Federal

government, and La-

tino organizations

such as the Society for

Hispanic Professional engineers (SHPE). It

began with Telemundo

reporter Vanessa Hauc,

representing conference

sponsor GE, introduc-

ing Alfredo Estrada, Ed-

itor of LATINO Maga-

zine. Estrada noted that

it was Census Day, and

that if Latinos were to

gain political and economic power commen-

surate with their demographic growth, then

STEM was the key. He called NUESTRO

FUTURO a “call to action to the Latino

community.”

Keynoter Juan Sepulveda

Vanessa Hauc, Telemundo

Dr. Robert Nelsen, UTPA

Over 250 opinion leaders attended NUESTRO FUTURO.

NUESTRO FUTURO

47LATINO MAGAZINE

48 LATINO MAGAZINE

Eskelsen spoke movingly of the late Jaime Escalante and said “the talents of Latino students are being wasted.” She recalled that it was a teacher that encouraged her to pursue a college degree, saying, “We

know what works, and an encouraging word matters.” Leiva agreed, but recalled that, “No one in my high school ever spoke to me about college.” She spoke no English when her family emigrated from Cuba, yet when she saw mathematical equations on the blackboard, she felt right at home.

The other panelists provided a view from the trenches of

The morning’s keynote speaker was Juan Sepulveda, the Direc-tor of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. [See Point Man on Education, p. 20] “We have to do things differently, the old models aren’t working,” he said, noting that by targeting just 5 percent of the schools in each state “that people have given up on” the dropout rate could be turned around. “We are at a serious juncture in our history.”

The first panel was moderated by Lily Eskelsen, Vice Presi-dent of conference sponsor National Education Association (NEA) and herself a 6th grade teacher from Utah. The other panelists were Ricardo Rincon, who teaches at Sunrise El-ementary School in Las Cruces, N.M.; Maria Reyes, Associate Dean at Estrella Mountain Community College; and Miriam Leiva, founder of TODOS: Mathematics for All.

ExxonMobil executives Blanca De La Rosa, Judith Batty, Zoe Barinaga, and Nicolas Medina

Maritza Kelley, ISG and William Moreno, NEA

“We know what

works, and an

encouraging word

matters.”

Lily Eskelsen is Vice President of the NEA. She began her education career as a lunch worker in a school cafeteria and was named Utsh Teacher of the Year in 1989.She is now one of the highest ranking labor leaders and most influential Hispanic educators in the country.

“We are very aware

of the fact that

everything begins

at home.”

Dr. Antonio Flores is the President and CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). The organization represents more than 450 colleges and universities serving two-thirds of the more than 2 million Latino students in the U.S. and 50 institutions worldwide.

Panelist

Panelist

49LATINO MAGAZINE

For a webcast of the 2010 Latino Education Conference go to LatinoMagazine.com.

the challenges they face. Rincon said teachers often fail to make use of valuable learning tools, and this must change. “They don’t feel confident to use the technology that is available to them in the classroom,” he said. Reyes warned teachers must do more to help Latino students overcome cultural and language barriers. Teachers must also abandon prejudices that stereotype Latino students as poor candidates for higher education and STEM careers.

After a brief networking break, where participants contin-ued their discussion of the issues, the second panel focused on making sure there is a steady flow of Latino students studying STEM disciplines and graduating in those fields. Moderator Antonio Flores, the President of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), drew applause when he announced that he has asked members of Congress to name a new $1 billion STEM program after Jaime Escalante. Flores said convincing Latino families of the

value of a STEM-based education for their children is a must: “We are very aware of the fact that everything begins at home.”

Panelist Dr. Rob-ert Nelsen, president of the University of Texas-Pan American, described the annual HESTEC program at his university, which draws up to 50,000 students and their families. He said His-panic youth desper-

ately need role models and opportunities like Latina Day, where mothers and daughters visit the campus. “The problem is that kids in the [Rio Grande] valley don’t know what it is to be an engineer,” he said. Rafaela Ornelas-Schwan of Great Minds in STEM agreed, saying Latino students need to relate to successful people in those fields. “What we want to do is bring role models to our community…someone who looks like them,” she said.

For Adalio Sanchez, an executive with conference sponsor IBM, encouraging Latino students towards the study of math and science is “a personal mission.” Sanchez said engineering opened doors for him, allowing him “to have what my par-ents didn’t have.” He said there should be more programs like “Teachers in Transition” that sends retired IBM employees to the classroom to teach science and math. “This is what corporate America needs to do,” Sanchez said.

(l-r) Maria Elena Reyes, Maria Reyes and Rita Jaramillo, NEA

(l-r) Vanessa Hauc, Martha Poulter, Alfredo Estrada, Jennifer Beihl, Elizabeth Del Toro and Nick Stable, GE

“The Department

of Energy is the

largest single

research arm

of the Federal

government.”

Joe Garcia was the Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation and served as Director, Office of Economic Impact & Diversity at the Department of Energy. He is currently running for Congress in Florida.

“As a company,

GE is very focused

on positive

outcomes.”

Martha Poulter is the CIO of GE Capital, Americas. She served for three years as the co-leader of the GE Hispanic Forum and is on the board of directors of the Southern Connecticut Child Guidance Center.

Panelist

Panelist

52 LATINO MAGAZINE

José Muñoz, acting director of conference sponsor National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure, said that by 2018, nine out of 10 U.S. jobs will be STEM-based, requiring computer proficiency, at the very least. But inspira-tion is key. As a child watching television, he was amazed to

learn of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. “I knew then what I wanted to be,” Muñoz said.

The luncheon featured high school students from the Cesar Chavez Public Char-ter Schools, the winners of the NUESTRO FUTURO Art Contest. José Antonio Tijerino, president of the His-panic Heritage Foundation, recognized two rising stars: Carolina Peña, a student at

the University of Maryland, and Richard Vidal, who will begin a job at ExxonMobil this year.

The luncheon speaker was introduced by Blanca De La Rosa of ExxonMobil, the founding sponsor of the confer-ence. Tom Luce, CEO of the National Math and Science Initiative(NMSI), urged conference participants to demand much more of Latino students, saying, “If you set the bar at three feet, that’s how high they’ll jump.” He spoke of an urgency to fix the nation’s educational problems to keep America competitive in the global marketplace.“We need action and we need results,” Luce

said. “Do we want to wait until we go off the cliff? The wolf is around the corner.” The third panel centered on how corporate America, non-profits and government agencies can bolster the work of teachers in the classroom. Joe Garcia, now running for Congress but then the Director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the Department of Energy (DOE), said the Federal government is committed to helping science and technology programs at Hispanic- serving institutions. But he conceded Hispanics are underrepresented in the DOE and other federal agencies.

Manny Hernández, president of SHPE, said the Latino community must realize it is much more than its stereo-types. “When I grew up in New York City, Puerto Ricans could look forward to becom-ing mechanics, sheet metal workers,” Hernández said. “But there is much more to us than that.” Carlos Contreras of Intel said his father and three older brothers are also engineers like him. To his family, originally from Nogales, Mexico, “the key [to success] was the teachers.”

Deborah Santiago, Vice President of Policy and Research for Excelencia in Education, discussed her organization’s efforts to collect data on the educational status of the nation’s Latino students and its programs to boost their achievements. “A lot of the work we do is ignorance abatement,” Santiago said.

In the concluding panel, GE executive Martha Poulter said there’s untapped wealth in the Hispanic community. She said the GE Hispanic Forum recruits in top Hispanic-serving col-leges, the University of Texas, University of Miami, University of South California and University of Puerto Rico “so we can mine where the talent really is.”

To Victor Maruri, the founder of private equity firm Hispan-ia Capital Partners, it’s inevitable that business will have greater involvement in education. “State and local municipalities are broke,” Maruri said. “Investment in education will come from

Rocky Egusquiza, AARP, with her mother Aida

Panelist Judit Camacho, SACNAS

Panelist Adalio Sanchez, IBM

(l-r) Bill Valdez, Dept. of Energy, Fae Korsmo, NSF, and Robert Nelsen, UTPA

NUESTRO FUTURO Art contest winners

53LATINO MAGAZINE

the private sector.” Mickey Ibarra, a former official in the Clinton White House and founder of the Latino Leaders Network, said “STEM is very much where politics meets policy” because the nation’s

economy depends on STEM. Judit Camacho, Executive Direc-tor of SACNAS,, said more organizations should STEM in the Hispanic community.“If there’s a Peace Corps, there should be a STEM corps,” she said.

The final panelist was Rick Dalton, president of the Vermont-based College for Every Student (CFES) , who said there’s a need to create a “intense culture of college”

in the Latino community.“We need to shift the conversation from ‘if I go to college’ to ‘when I go to col-lege,’” Dalton said.

To end the conference, Estrada thanked the spon-sors whose support made NUESTRO FUTURO pos-sible: ExxonMo-bil, NEA, GE, Department of Energy, NSF, IBM,

and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. He noted that while great work is being done in this area, the purpose of the conference was not to “pat ourselves on the back.” In his clos-ing remarks, he urged participants to keep challenging them-

selves to close the STEM gap:“We all know we have to do much more,” Estrada said.

“Just as we try to build a culture of success among our young people, we must build a culture of STEM. Because engineers are problem solvers. STEM looks at our world and tries to make it better.”

But that was not the last word, since NUESTRO FUTURO will be an annual event and many participants were already looking ahead to 2011. A few conclusions emerged from the

stimulating panels and roundtable discussions.First, although Latinos are underrepresented in STEM dis-

ciplines, the tide is starting to turn. According to José Antonio Tijerino of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, interest in careers in STEM by Latino members of the 2012 graduating class is higher than it’s been in 10 years. Engineering is rapidly becoming the most popular choice for Latino students. It’s also necessary to “rebrand” STEM by making students aware of the various careers it includes, everything from financial ser-vices to law enforce-ment.

Second, it’s im-portant to recognize that certain programs have proved quite effective in encour-aging young Latinos to enter the STEM fields. Among those cited were LOFT, Great Minds in STEM and HES-TEC. Dr. Nelsen

Panelist Manny Hernandez, SHPE

(l-r)Richard Vidal, Jose Antonio Tijerino, and Carolina Pena

(l-r)Panelists Victor Maruri, Hispania Capital, and Mickey Ibarra, Latino Leaders Network

Tom Luce, NMSI, spoke at the luncheon.

For a webcast of the 2010 Latino Education Conference go to LatinoMagazine.com.

54

cited HESTEC as helping raise his school, which has 87 percent Latino enroll-ment, to the 32nd slot in Forbes’ College Rankings.“We are getting it right,” he said. Such programs

deserve encouragement as well as financial support.Third, there must be a renewed commitment to support-

ing teachers. In his remarks, Juan Sepulveda said that “we must do things differently.” Teachers need not just more resources but more training. Lily Eskelsen noted that teachers can be the greatest inspiration a student has, and many of the panelists recalled such a positive influence in their lives. And as Richard Rincon stated, technology also has an important role to play in the classroom.

Fourth, all the participants agreed on the power of part-nerships, whether between the Federal government and cor-

porate America, the profit and nonprofit sectors, or Latino or-ganizations and their mainstream counterparts. The most success-ful programs involves powerful coalitions which leverage their strengths. In particular, corporate America has a vested interest in STEM. “This is not about doing the right thing,” said ExxonMo-bil executive Nicolas Medina. “America needs to graduate 100,000 engineers a year.”

Fifth, we need to foster what many participants described as a “culture of success.” This is not just up to parents, teachers, and mentors but students themselves. Students who have excelled in STEM disciplines should be encouraged to get involved involved in mentoring their peers and serving as role models. Ultimately, it’s up to them, since they have the most to gain or lose. NUESTRO FUTURO belongs to them.

For those who missed the conference, a webcast of all panels and speakers is available at LatinoMagazine.com. We encour-age your input and urge you to tell us what you thought of the 2010 Latino Education Conference and what issues you’d like to see covered at next year’s event. Please contact Alfredo Estrada at AJEstrada@LatinoMagazine.com. ¡Gracias!

Panelists José Muñoz, NSF, and Rafaela Ornelas-Schwan, Great Minds in STEM

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel

For a webcast of the 2010 Latino Education Conference go to LatinoMagazine.com.