Dr. José Castro, HOC chair

The Hispanic Oversight Committee (HOC) is focusing its efforts on the following areas:

• Undergraduate recruitment. The HOC, in coordination with Undergraduate Admissions, arranged for Latin@ faculty and staff to call Hispanic/Latin@ students admitted to Ohio State. The calls were made to encourage students to attend OSU and to let them know about the Latin@ community here. We plan to request meetings with undergraduate admissions and financial aid, to understand how we can best support OSU administration to recruit the best possible Hispanic students to our campus. I will be taking the lead in this activity.

• Graduate recruitment. HOC has been working closely with a committee formed by the Office of Minority Affairs (OMA) and the Graduate School designed to reach under-represented populations. A subcommittee of HOC was created to discuss this issue and met with other faculty willing to work with HOC in support of these efforts. The University-wide Council of Hispanic Organizations (UCHO), with the support of HOC, conducted a conference on graduate education and we plan to use this as the basis for the Hispanic Graduate Visitation Days (click here for details). Lead person: Normando Cabán.

• Latin@ studies. HOC is supporting the establishment of a Center for Latino/a Studies. Lead person: Patricia Enciso.

• Cultural and educational enrichment for faculty and staff. HOC is partnering with OHFS to bring the group Repertorio Español to campus. This group is from New York City and will perform the play Crónica de Una Muerte Anunciada, based on a book written by Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature (click here for details). OMA is a major sponsor of this initiative. Lead persons: Ernesto Escoto, Víctor Mora, and Joel Diaz.

• Evaluation of student services that support Hispanic students. Lead person: Jose Cabral.

HOC is working closely with OMA and UCHO to support student activities. We will like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Mac Stewart for his strong support of HOC and Hispanic issues.