LAII Annual Report Highlights Excellence Across Programs

December 16, 2015

The LAII announces the publication of its 2014-15 Annual Report, which highlights excellence across its programs in the past academic year. Below we share an excerpt from Dr. Susan Tiano's "Letter from the Director."

The LAII's activities during 2014-2015, the focus of this annual report, have further strengthened programming on Latin America and Iberia. A highlight of the academic year was our gala 35th anniversary event, which we organized to celebrate the LAII and provide an enduring record of its history. Many of our initiatives this year furthered the aims of our Title VINRC grant. We supported cutting-edge curriculum development in American Studies, History, and Education, and expanded Latin American Studies offerings at CNM; we supported exciting, community-based study abroad programs to Ecuador and to Brazil; and we augmented opportunities for students to study abroad in Cuba, Guatemala, and Mexico. We collaborated with faculty from the College of Education to organize "The Fight for Social Justice in Tough Times," a symposium for which editors from Rethinking Schools led hands-on workshops, presentations, and panel discussions to stimulate novel approaches to education. We collaborated with the Linguistics and Spanish and Portuguese departments on an interdisciplinary lecture series on languages in the Americas. We held our second annual reception to honor authors of new books on Latin America and Iberia. We implemented a new Latin American Studies concentration in Indigenous Studies, and began to lay the groundwork for the upcoming Academic Program Review of LAS in spring 2017. We enhanced the Latin America Data Base (LADB) by increasing its internet presence through social media and the expanded blog. I welcome you to peruse our annual report to find out how the LAII supported education and research on Latin America and Iberia during 2014-15.