From the Director

The 2023-24 academic year was momentous and packed with activities.  In the summer of 2023, we lost Assistant Director Carolina Simon-Pardo to graduate school after less than six months in her position. As her replacement, we gained Mary Raple, who had been the acting librarian (2021-22) for Spanish & Portuguese, Latin American & Caribbean Studies at KU Libraries. Mary did not have much time to settle in because we held two workshops for teachers that summer, all while we were preparing for 6 mega-reports and an international conference.  The reports included the final synopses of U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center (NRC) and FLAS grants for 2018-23 as well as that of the Tinker 2020-23 grant (with one-year extension due to the pandemic).  They also included the annual reports for the NRC and FLAS 2022-26 grants and Tinker 2020-25 grant.  Lots of numbers, and we really appreciate the participation of faculty and students who provided essential information. 

In September, we held a successful international conference, “Indigenous Responses to Climate Change,” with participants from 10 different countries. In the spring, we hosted the symposium, “Promises and Challenges of International Development in the Digital Age,” which was also a resounding success based on responses from the 9 iNGOs in our region that participated. 

Due to the leadership of Melissa Birch in the Institute for International & Global Engagement, we expanded our outreach activities to include more events in Kansas City, particularly with the business community and community colleges. 

Regarding the Center staff, we finally have some stability. Mariya Borisova, Administrative Associate, has now been in her position, shared with CREES, for nearly two and half years, and it shows as she efficiently and expertly manages our office and coordinates communications. We are so fortunate to have her, and she perpetually looks for ways to improve and expand her job skills.  Mary Raple, Assistant Director, Outreach Coordinator, and FLAS Coordinator, has settled in nicely and is learning the long, winding institutional history in the Center and the reasons we do things in the strange ways we do.  She has also made several critical suggestions for improvements. Mary also connected with the Kansas World Languages Association, which has already paid dividends.  It’s nice to have fresh eyes!  Antonio Orozco, Program Coordinator, who Melissa Birch lent to us and other area studies centers as an NRC and FLAS specialist to help manage scholarships and reporting, has been a godsend.  Now we don’t know how we’d survive without him, or how former Assistant Directors/Outreach Coordinators Aron Muci and Carolina Simon-Pardo managed their four job titles without daily nervous breakdowns.  We held multiple job searches for student workers last academic year and were only able to retain or hire two (Sara Miranda Luzio and Manuel Rodríguez-Perez) instead of our usual four workers.

Last academic year, we also welcomed our NRC leverage hire with Journalism & Mass Communications, Margarita Orozco.  We brought Tiffany González (History) into our community but said goodbye to long-time core member of the community and Executive, Undergraduate, and Graduate Committees over the decades, Susan Twombly (Education), who retired in June after a highly successful career. 

Our Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) courses continued to be the jewel in the crown of our Center, averaging about 11 students per class for Kaqchikel Maya, Yucatec Maya, and Quechua and being taught by Emily Tummons and Heaven Snyder.  We know of no other Latin American Center in the nation that comes close to these numbers for any indigenous language, much less for three in the same place.  And, we have Portuguese, Miskitu, Haitian Creole, Guaraní, and Me’phaa courses that we’re also financing. The NRC grant also supported study abroad courses to Costa Rica and Mexico last summer, with the Mexican one led by yours truly to the Huasteca region of eastern Mexico, home to Teenek Maya and Nahuatl-speakers.  This trip was designed in coordination with the Universidad Intercultural de San Luis Potosí, and if anyone – student or faculty – would like to explore research, internships, language learning, or anything else in the Huasteca region, just let me know. 

This academic year (2024-25), we are co-organizing the conference, “The Legacy of Five Centuries of Colonialism in Central America,” in Antigua, Guatemala from June 26-28 with the University of Arizona’s Center for Latin American Studies and the University of Albany’s Institute for Mesoamerican Studies.  We’re also co-sponsoring the annual meeting of the Association of Nahuatl Scholars from April 24-26 here on campus, organized by Dr. John “Fritz” Schwaller (yes, Associate Director/Graduate Coordinator Rob Schwaller’s renowned father).   

Brent Metz