The Chican@ & Latin@ Studies Program is delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 Somos Faculty and Student Professional Development Awards: Diego Xavier Román, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and Katya Garza, a Junior CLS Certificate student majoring in Neurobiology and Spanish.
Prof. Román (left) received the award for a project titled “Are Bilingual Books Being Written for Latinx Children? Examining Authors’ Uses of Spanish-English Translanguaging in Children’s Fiction Books.” With the aid of student research assistants, Prof. Román will examine the mixing of Spanish and English in children’s’ literature with an eye to the way publishers and authors tailor books to different groups of readers and how these publications relate to social inequality among students in dual-language immersion programs.
Katya Garza (right), a Junior CLS Certificate student majoring in Neurobiology and Spanish, received her award for an applied public health project titled “Overcoming the 
Barriers to Recruitment of Underrepresented Minorities.” This summer, Katya will conduct community outreach and education work in Madison’s Latinx communities on obesity, diabetes, and digestive kidney diseases, as part of a Federally-funded public health project called “Partner2Lose.” Dr. Corinne Voils, a Professor of Surgery, will supervise her work.
As we congratulate our faculty and student award recipients, the Program would also like to thank donors Andrea-Teresa Arenas and John Wiley for their generous support of the award, and for their vision and dedication to Chican@ & Latin@ Studies at the University.