Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

NCERA 216 Meeting Wednesday, June 25-26, 2014 In attendance: Rubén Martinez, Onésimo Sandoval, Steve Jeanetta, Lisa Dorner, Corinne Valdivia, Carmen DeRusha, Alejandra Gudiño, Salvador Valadez, Jill Kilanowski, Martha Hubert, Teresa Curtis, Athena Ramos, Marcela Raffaelli, Eleazar Gonzalez, Pilar Horner, Geraldo Martinez, Ricardo Diaz, Debra Bolton, Bertha Mendoza, Domingo Martinez, Hinda Seif, Sonia Morales, Kim Greder June 25, 2014 Call to Order: 9:15am; Adjourned at 11:45am Rubén Martinez welcomed participants and called for introductions. He set the context for the meeting by announcing that NCERA 216 had been renewed for another five years and that the focus of the meeting was to wrap up the work of the first five years and prepare to assume the work for the next five. After a review of the agenda brief reports were provided for the thematic work groups by members who were present. Reports Alejandra Gudiño reported on Families and Education as follows: 1) Webinar on multilingual schools by Lisa Dorner, 2) Set in motion an initiative with bilingual elementary school in a school district in Columbia with a large Latino student population. Working on a two-way immersion program starting in Kindergarten focusing on fluency in both Spanish and English. Carthage University has expressed an interest. The superintendent of the local school system is bilingual and very supportive. The program is under discussion right now, but not officially approved. If approved the program will start in 2015. Alejandra is a mentor with a 4H group, mostly DACA students. She encountered a couple of interesting situations trying to get in-state tuition for students. The campus would not admit openly that DACA students can attend paying resident tuition. If DACA students apply right now, they can receive scholarships, but they ultimately must establish residency. Gudiño reported that two DACA students in 4H matriculated in the Fall. There are over 2,000 DACA students in MO, of which 20% are European. How will the University of Missouri handle the influx of DACA students? There is some reticence on the part of the University on working with DACA students. Her 4H group is one of the few in the country that works with Latinos with college bound interests. Domingo Martinez reported on Building Immigrant Friendly Communities. He stated that his co-chair had completed his PhD and left the state In addition, Domingo has been busy with the Cambio de Colores Conference. Everyone is working to figure out how receiving communities can be more open with a focus on integration rather than assimilation. This is with regard not only to services, schools, and hospitals, but also the community as a whole, the mayor, the council, people, etc. We know that immigrants are responsible for reviving small communities (rural communities). Some key areas of focus are: 1) Looking for engagement of the receiving communities; 2) What are the indicators of integration? The measure is used by some but mostly to persuade politicians for the need for integration, in our case it would place more emphasis on community efforts, jobs, people, and not abstract legislators. Domingo will check on measure of the Integration Policy Center, inspired by European measures. He does not find them sufficient atthe community level. Idea: A general checklist of things we have to measure to identify dimensions of receiving communities and see which ones are missing in every community. The discussion turned to various other topics as follows: Demographics -- Ness will write a monthly piece “Demography is Destiny”, a bilingual newspaper, called “Red Latina”. First one is coming out on July 1st. Focus is on MO and the Midwest. Participants want the link to this blog. People are excited about the column. Ness requests people to bring topics that he can write on. Everyone has suggestions: Family, civic engagement, Voting, Family, DACA, Immigrant, Health Care, Elected Officials, Receiving communities, Education… Interstate Grant Work -- Steve Jeanetta reported on a proposal to develop a matrix that would help farm service providers better understand Latino farmers and their capacities. The proposal included focus groups with farmers and some with agency employees. Those would be followed by a survey of Latino farmers. The aim is to put together a readiness scale where a Latino entrepreneurship farmer is located on the spectrum toward successful business operations in order to tailor ways to help move them forward. Their (farmers and providers) needs are a little different from each other and communications differences are extreme (talking past each other). Corinne states that tools on how to tap into different levels of entrepreneurship levels are needed. Key question is “what are the barriers to being connected to these service providing organizations?” Proposal is with NIFA, will hear in October 2014. Rubén Martinez spoke on current work (USDA grant) at dairy farms and the lack of consistency of human resources and the structures under which immigrants work. The industry is in a transition from family to corporate farms. He is looking to help with the development of HR capacity. Second, he is conducting a study of Latino community needs in Michigan. Steve mentions that one must be careful of older adults and their perception of some issues with place. Corrine mentions even if so, perception drives action. Debra highlights issues of poverty. Corinne reported on a NIFA project funded through this year that involves a household survey of Latinos in MO, including attitudes toward integration. She is looking at reception and acculturation strategies from both sides. There are entrepreneurship questions arising from the study in terms of how different or similar the groups are. Reporting Requests Rubén mentioned the need for participants to submit activity reports from July 1 2013, through September 2014. The reporting form was sent out a week ago. Things to keep in mind include Education, Outreach, Grant Proposals, Research, Publications, and Presentations; send by September 1st. NCERA 216 Renewal Rubén asked participants to please review the proposal summary that was been handed out. The renewed NCERA 216 has new objectives for 2014-2019 relative to Latinos and immigrant communities in the Midwest. The three objectives, in condensed form, are: 1) Build existing and create new networks; 2) Expand research, teaching, outreach, public engagement; 3) Advance capacity of land grant system to meet needs of Latino and immigrant communities. This includes a survey of Extension units and their capacity to address diversity. Carmen asks about using the survey from the south, in the Midwest. NCERA Leadership Succession--Adopted 1. Chair – Onesimo Sandoval 2. Vice Chair – Alejandra Gudiño 3. Secretary/Communication – Ricardo Diaz 4. Webinars Coordinator -- Pilar Horner 5. Topical Group Co-Leaders (2 leaders per group) New Executive Board for 2014-2015 Officers (Listed Above) and Gerardo Martinez Martinezgr@umkc.edu Kim Greder kgreder@iastate.edu Stephen Jeanetta jeanettas@missouri.edu Rubén Martinez ruben.martinez@ssc.msu.edu Domingo Martinez dmartinez@missouri.edu Topical Group Co-Leaders a. Entrepreneurship and Business (Moderate Progress) -- Ricardo Diaz, Geraldo Martinez (co-leaders) and others please feel free to contact. b. Families and Education (Moderate with some good foundation of work being done) -- Lisa, Kim, Alejandra….core work. For example: Juntos and building capacity for youth in education. Cultural competence for youth and families. i. Lisa Dorner and Alejandra Gudiño (co-leaders), Bertha Mendoza, Kim Greder, Jill Kilanowski c. Building Immigrant Friendly Communities (Between Limited and moderate). Steve is working with both groups in the family. i. Steve Jeanetta and Corinne Valdivia (co-leaders) d. Diversity Competent Organizations What are the other components? After the assessment there will be a training component. Small group to identify the tools out there and evaluate. Then add new ones or something. There is a wheel to be constructed. i. Rubén Martinez and Debra Bolton (co-leaders) and Alejandra Gudiño e. Demographics and Change (Done a lot of work, but not called it out for its own attention) This has a lot of components. i. Ness Sandoval and Domingo Martinez (co-leaders) Critical Issues for the topical groups: 1. How to write and disseminate information and research results. Promote academic writing among non-scholars. Define steps to capture the good work of the group. 2. Keep the focus on projects and proposals in order to guide our work. 3. What does diversity include versus inclusion concept? NCERA 216 Meeting,Thursday, June 26, 2014, Called to order at 6:00 pm; adjourned at 8:00 pm Discussion focused on next steps for the initiative. 1. Entrepreneurship and Business (Ricardo Diaz and Gerardo Martinez): description. We need to include the agricultural sector. Identify networks of support. Start to identify people working in the area of organizations support developing the competencies and skills in the formal sector rather than just informal. a. How to disseminate the information. Access to internet limited. b. Cambio Center follow up with dissemination 2. Families and Education (Lisa Dorner, and Kim Greder): Health, education, 4H, parental involvement. How to make a family stronger. How we provide data to get best practices out there. Dealing with providers being culturally competent. Necessary to have interdisciplinary work. Network analysis and family togetherness? 3. Building Immigrant-Friendly Communities (Stephen Jeanetta and Corinne Valdivia): Examine relationship between immigrant communities and the communities where they are moving into to better understand reception. Role of integration, how do we build stronger communities? Look at business, etc. How do we reduce peoples’ Big Goal: Funding for Interstate Projects Seek funding opportunities for interstate research. Big Goal: Structural Focus on Collaborations Create spaces to promote collaborations. Develop the questions that expand our work. Big Goal: Develop Goals and Objectives Create goals within each of the topical groups with action steps to get the goals achieved. Create a bank of questions or use PROMIS. vulnerabilities? What makes some communities friendly and some hostile to immigrants? Find a methodical way to address that question. 4. Building Diversity-Competent Organizations (Rubén Martinez and Debra Bolton): Southern NCERA created a survey instrument to assess what kind of needs the South had to build capacity to serve the needs of the Latino community. We will review their tool to conduct a survey on Extension units across the Midwest to build cultural competence, and help their training programs to close the gap between what they offer and what Latino and immigrant communities need. Studies emerging on the racial dimensions of Extension (none done on Latinos). 5. Demographics and Change (Onésimo Sandoval): To produce timely information about demographic change and trends in the Midwest and the communities. Producing a monthly bilingual brief for St. Louis, Red Latina. http://redlatinastl.com/ 700 word policy brief. If you have a question for example “The Diversity of Latino Population in St. Louis and Kansas City” breaks out the differing sub-ethnicities. Second one will be “Foreign Born Data” Using data from US Census, they are releasing raw data so we can create our own tables. Can support initiatives for grants or projects. We need data on trends in new destinations states. Use ACS, to respond to some answers we need. “How many people are entrepreneurs?” etc. “The age of the people who have businesses.” Key Things to Keep in Mind as We Move to Implement 2nd Phase of NCERA 216 1. Narrow the scope of topical groups, be more focused 2. Be More Programmatic and focus on projects 3. Create collaborative efforts for stronger results 4. Policy implications and stresses. How policies affect our efforts, how our efforts can influence policy. Webinars Updates and Planning 1. Feedback on the Webinars: a. Keep track of who is signing in, of the type of people listening to these webinars. b. Provide evaluation results when done. c. Use three polling questions. d. Three questions to capture at end. e. Add link to the flyer for the archival webpage. f. Add “For more information contact Pilar Horner or Alejandra Gudiño.” 2. Volunteers for Next Year a. Carmen DeRusha wants to do a webinar on on Leadership and Civic Engagement, A Practioner’s Perspective Webinar. February, 2015 b. Debra Bolton, topic to be delivered, Fall 2014 c. Jill Kilanowski, In the Spring 2015 d. Athena Ramos, Early December Preparation for Next Meeting 1. We have asked the co-chairs to focus the work of the groups and report out at the Oct. mtg. 2. We officially kick off next five years on November 1st. Wednesday, October 29th we will have a half day meeting at the East Lansing Marriott that Ness will lead. 3. Co-Chairs should come prepared to present the scope and next steps of their topical groups (Logic models et al.). Action Items: 1. Ness Sandoval to send out link to his “Demography is Destiny” column. 2. Domingo Martinez will report on integration index apart from the Integration Policy Center. 3. Pilar Horner will send out the link to the movie Hide for the NCERA group. 4. Alejandra Gudiño: Will send the survey monkey on cultural competence to Rubén Martinez. Fax or email is okay. Survey from the director. 5. Rubén Martinez to circulate the South (SERA) instrument to the group. 6. All Members: Group members are asked to send potential ideas to Ness Sandoval for his monthly column called “Demography is Destiny” column. Contact: Onésimo Sandoval jsandov3@slu.edu 7. All Members: Figure out how to gather the data that shows how much capacity Extension services have to serve the needs of Latinos and Immigrants. What are the numbers of Latinos served through our group? (Extension) 8. All Members: All group members to send information by September 1st, or earlier, for the Final Summary Report. Report on Activities from 7/1/2013 through 9/1/2014. 9. All Members: Get registered on NIMSS. National Information Management and Support System. Need to sign on the NCERA 216 specifically. Send Rubén Martinez an email for how to do this if you are still unclear. If you are not at a Land Grant Institution, no problem, just contact Rubén Martinez at Ruben.Martinez@ssc.msu.edu for more info. 10. All Members: All members are encouraged to attend the next NCERA meeting at the fall conference in East Lansing for the 25th Anniversary of the Julian Samora Research Institute. Call for papers is due August 1st. http://www.jsri.msu./events/25years Remaining Next Steps 1. Liaison, Do we have one? Institutional representatives, each institution is supposed to designate one. Each institution can have one designee, and they get funds to attend the meetings. 2. Administrative Advisor: Chuck Hibbard, Very supportive (has Directors of Extension support), especially on getting the Survey done on diversity. 3. Domingo calls for members to be part of the planning committee for the next Cambio de Colores Conference. 8PM Meeting Adjourned. Submitted by Rubén Martinez with the assistance of Pilar Horner