UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, September 29, 1993
Minorities in engineering
Hispanic engineers promote their field
1508864350
By Christoph Fuhrmans
Kansan staff writer
Pedro Echeverria, Quito, Ecuador, junior, wants to dispel a common stereotype of Hispanics.
Hispanics have a stereotype that we go for the low-paying jobs," he said.
Echeverria is president of KU's chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers or SHPE.
"SHPE is trying to reverse that stereotype," he said. SHPE is an organization that strives to encourage Hispanics to become involved in engineering and works for the advancement of Hispanics in engineering, Echeverria said.
Even though SHPE is a national organization with 33 professional chapters and 118 student chapters across the nation, Echeverria said the society did not attract much attention at KU.
"We'd like to get more support from
the other student organizations," he said.
Echeverria said SHPE had been working with the Hispanic-American Leadership Organization to become a more active part in KU's Hispanic community.
This has been difficult because the only source of funding for SHPE has come from public corporation grants, he said.
"We're trying to get funding from Student Sepate," he said.
One way SHPE helps Hispanic engineering students is to pair juniors and seniors in SHPE with underclassmen for tutoring.
SHPE is not only for college students, he said.
"We try to visit high schools so they will be aware there is an organization for them at KU," he said. "Our main task is to have them take a look at
what engineering is. Then comes trying to get them to come to KU."
SHPE was added to the School of Engineering's minority engineering programs in 1989. The National Society of Black Engineers and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society are the other two groups that belong to the minority program.
Florence Boldridge, director of minority engineering programs, said the minority program was established for black engineering students.
"Now the program is three-fourths Hispanic," she said.
Carl Locke, dean of engineering, said SHPE was an important part of the school and the school should reflect the state population. Locke said Kansas had a 10 percent Hispanic population and Hispanics now make up 5 percent of the students in the school of engineering.
"My goal is for us to enroll as many minority students as the percentage in the state," Locke said.
SHPE will elect its board members tomorrow night. Echeverria was elected Thursday along with vice president Gerardo Prado, Fenton, Mo., senior.
Man teaches Hispanic heritage
Bv Carlos Telada
Kansan staff writer
As a doctoral student at the University of California-Los Angeles, Juan Velasco watched last spring's riots in Los Angeles from a cultural perspective.
"It was a very shocking experience," said Velasco, assistant professor of Latin American studies. "The rites in Los Angeles taught me we have to be more aware of what we want to be as a country."
Velasco said he wanted to bring that lesson to the University of Kansas. He he wanted to fulfill a demand by KU students and others around the nation to understand the influx of Hispanic culture in American life.
"The Labyrinths of Self," Velasco's class on the relation of Latin American literature to culture, is full despite neither being listed nor advertised, he said. He said the class fulfilled the curiosity many KU students had
about Latin American culture. "All kinds of students are taking this course, and they show a lot of interest in things like race and nationalism," Velasco said.
Elizabeth Kuzness, head of the Latin American studies department, said Velasco's classes served an important niche at KU.
"You can see how this brings together notions of race
Juan Velasco
Kuznesof also said Velasco, who has doctorate degrees from both UCLA and the University of Spain in Madrid, was in demand from other universities for his area of research.
literature and identity in the same platform," she said.
"People who are into any kind of Chicano studies, there's an incredible market for them," she said. "Anyone with his expertise can get 16 jobs."
Although magical realism is hard to define, Velasco said, it represents a common theme that pervades through Latin American culture.
Velasco said he mostly teaches about such Latin American authors as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Such authors, who mostly write in a style known as magical realism, dominate world literature today, he said.
"It's a point of view," he said. "It's a different way of looking at life, where you find things have a meaning behind the way they work."
Velasco said he wrote literature as well as taught it. A short fiction story based on his experiences in Los Angeles will appear this summer in a magazine in Spain, he said.
Although he likes to write, Velasco said he would continue to teach.
"One of the most fascinating things about teaching is that you have a lot to learn from students," he said.
Velasco said he liked to teach Hispanic students about their own culture as well as American students. Hispanics who do not know their culture are putting themselves in danger, he said.
"We don't know our own culture, and we don't know our own history in the United States," he said. "You don't have any future if you don't have a past."
GENERATIONAL POLITICS:
Do you suspect that the American Dream is over?
Do you find it ironic that so few people stayed after Woodstock to pick up the trash?
Find out what may define a generation that hates to be called a generation, and what the future could hold for you.
Are you already bored with these subjects and wishing you had a beer?
Meet Neil Howe co-author of
13thGEN
Random House Publishing
BOOKSIGNING Thursday, September 30 1:30-3:30 pm at the Mt. Oread Bookshop In the Kansas Union
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JONATHAN KARL CO-FOUNDER THIRD MILLENNIUM WRITER / EDITOR WITH FREEDOM HOUSE DOUGLAS KENNEDY CO-FOUNDER 3RD MILLENIUM ROCKY NICHOLS KANSAS STATE REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE 58th DISTRICT NEIL HOWE AUTHOR OF 13th GEN: ABORT, RETRY, IGNORE, FAIL? DARYL EVANS, PHD. ASSOC. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY MODERATOR
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FORUM / TWO PANEL DISCUSSION
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BOOK SIGNING
MT. OREAD BOOK SHOP IN THE KANSAS UNION NEIL HOWE AUTHOR OF
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