AFROLATINIDADES INSTITUTE receives $485,000 Pathways Grant by the University of California—Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative

The UCSB AfroLatinidades Institute, which is part of the Global Latinidades Project has received a $485,394 grant to inaugurate the AfroLatinidades Advanced Mentoring and Summer Research Program. This new initiative involves a UCSB partnership with three Historically Black Colleges and Universities—Spelman College, Morehouse College and Texas Southern University—to create a research-intensive program for undergraduate students interested in graduate school. The Program’s HBCU faculty partners are Dr. Leah Creque (Morehouse College), Dr. Alison Ligon (Morehouse College), Anastasia Valecce (Spelman College), and Jesús Esparza (Texas Southern University). The goal of the UC-HBCU Initiative is to create a pathway for Black students to enter graduate programs in any discipline at any of the UC System’s ten campuses. The UCSB AfroLatinidades Advanced Mentoring and Summer Research Program will facilitate this goal with year-long research-intensive activities, which includes two courses in a 6-week summer session at UCSB—AfroLatinx Literature and Art, and AfroLatinidades Theory and Criticism—and research initiatives and collaborations involving multiple students and faculty across UC and HBCU institutions. For more about the AfroLatinidades Institute and its constitutive programs, see Institutes & Initiatives.