College of Letters & Science
The Spring 2026 issue of Latinx Studies Journal, the CLS Program’s peer-reviewed journal of student writing and art, is now published. Congratulations to outgoing CLS Project Assistant Carmen Ibarra, who served as coordinating editor for the journal, and to our contributors: Reyli Cerda-Martinez Alexandra Galang Alexa Iraheta Angeline Morgado Ava Tijerina A special word of thanks …
I began working for the Center for Campus History and CLS in the fall of 2024 as an undergraduate research assistant. I was nervous at the beginning because I hadn’t conducted an intense, year-long research project before, but most importantly, I wanted to do a good job and accurately represent the history of CLS the …
The Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program was an opportunity that I had known about since my first semester on campus through my scholarship program, the Center for Academic Excellence. Ever since, the opportunity kept coming up as something I could pursue, almost as if it were haunting me until I committed to it. Unintentionally, …
After 35 years of brilliant teaching, pathbreaking research, and tireless advocacy for the Chicanx/e & Latinx/e Studies Program, Prof. Benjamin Márquez is retiring. During his years in higher education, he has published no less than five books (two of them award-winning). Among the most notable are The Politics of Patronage: Lawyers, Philanthropy, and the Mexican …
Every May, the College of Letters and Science publishes inspiring stories about research and other achievements by its faculty and students in a supplement to the Wisconsin State Journal called “Fueling Discovery.” This year’s issue highlighted the work of CLS Director Theresa Delgadillo and Program faculty member Alfonso Morales. The feature on Prof. Delgadillo included …
CLS Core faculty member Revel Sims’ teaching was featured in a recent article by the College of Letters and Science’s Instructional Design Collaborative on community-based learning in UW-Madison classrooms. Prof. Sims and his students partnered with Madison’s Tenant Resource Center to quantify and map evictions in Dane County, interviewing Spanish-speaking residents of the county about …
CLS Program faculty member Lola Loustaunau published a paper on wildcat strikes in 2020 by Latina apple pickers in Washington state, and she presented the results from the Wisconsin Farmworker Coalition’s community-driven survey project on April 1st. The Washington study examined the ways that the COVID-19 crisis moved the apple workers to strike after a …
CLS affiliate faculty member Denia Garcia has recently published an article in the journal Poverty and Public Policy examining the way social capital influences the decisions poor residents of U.S. cities to seek such public benefits as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). Drawing on data from the Future …
CLS Program Faculty member Christopher Saldaña was honored this semester with a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education. The fellowship supports early career scholars working in critical areas of education research. In addition to a monetary award, the fellowship will offer Prof. Saldaña to participate in professional development retreats with distinguished education …
Dr. Nidia Bañuelos and her colleagues from the School of Education, Kyoungjin Jang-Tucci and Dr. Ross Benbow, have created a quantitative measure of Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) that can be included in student surveys and assessments. Instead of focusing on the problems faced by undergraduates of color, the research seeks to understand what strengths …