U-Md. Officials Approve Minor in Latino Studies - washingtonpost.com: Undergraduates at the University of Maryland at College Park can now graduate with a minor in U.S. Latino studies after school officials yesterday approved the first such minor at a major university in the Washington region.
Students and faculty members, some of whom have been promoting U.S. Latino studies at Maryland's flagship public university for a decade, said they were delighted by the move but said more needs to be done to meet the needs of historically underserved Latino students.
'This is a great first step in a series of bigger steps that need to happen,' said Angel David Nieves, an assistant professor who has been working for years on creating a full U.S. Latino studies program at the university. 'We need to move on and . . . develop the funding necessary to bring the major and the graduate certificate on line.'
Latino studies focuses on the history, culture, literature and the social fabric of Latino communities in the United States. No college or university in the mid-Atlantic region has a U.S. Latino studies program, in part because of historical obstacles that include a lack of funding and debate about whether such content studies constitute legitimate scholarship.
