Pepperdine Celebrates Latino Heritage Month
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Every year from September 15 to October 15, America celebrates Latino Heritage Month as a way to honor Hispanic history and culture within the nation. Pepperdine embraces the month of awareness with a number of events University-wide.
"If we are to be a community in Los Angeles County that truly values and celebrates our distinction of having a large Latin-origin community, we need to begin with education," says Office of Intercultural Affairs (ICA) director Don Lawrence. "We need to truly immerse ourselves into the Latino culture to celebrate and value their traditions and values."
The Diversity Council at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology welcomed guest speaker William Perez, a professor at Claremont Graduate University and emerging leader on research that examines the social and psychological development of immigrant and Latino students. In his lecture, "Exceptional Students, Marginal Lives: Achievement and Civic Engagement Among Undocumented Latino Youths," Perez explored how those who serve undocumented students in an educational or mental heath capacity should respond to or support them.
Other Latino Heritage Month events included film screenings of the PBS documentary, Presumed Guilty, which dives deep into the Mexican judicial system, and the multiple award-winning documentary film,The Garden. In addition, at a special Latino Heritage Month Chapel management consultant and Pepperdine graduate Carlos Conejo ('79) presented an interactive lecture on cultural competencies, leadership, and honoring Latino heritage within the Pepperdine community.