After 10 years, the César E. Chávez Center has firmly
established its footing as the primary resource for Chicana/o
studies at UCLA, and its leaders will now take on the task of
becoming a full-blown department.
This month marks a decade of existence for the center, which
began in part due to student activism and a hunger strike staged in
1993 to push for the existing interdepartmental program in
Chicana/o studies.
Center Chairman Reynaldo MacÃas said the “program
hasn’t peaked yet,” and that efforts are in place to
expand the amount of courses and faculty encompassed by the
center.
“The proposal for the graduate program is big work,”
he said.
The center has seen remarkable growth over its brief evolution.
It offers more than twice the number of courses than it originally
did, and boasts three- and five-fold increases in students with
majors and minors in Chicana/o studies.
In addition, the number of students graduating from the center
has increased by five times in the last 10 years, to an estimated
60 at the end of the spring quarter.
“There’s tremendous faculty enthusiasm inside and
outside of the center,” said Scott Waugh, dean of social
sciences in the College of Letters & Science.
In many ways, the surrounding L.A. community has been helpful to
the development of the center. Working in the second-largest
Mexican American population in the world, MacÃas said, has
given the center a real-world background for students’
research.
“L.A. is an engine unto itself; it has tremendous
value,” MacÃas said.
“We use the local areas as a laboratory for teaching and
learning,” MacÃas said. “Students … get exposure
in multi-ethnic diverse areas.”
Waugh reiterated this sentiment, and added that the opportunity
of Los Angeles’ Chicano population also implies a certain
obligation.
“We have a responsibility to the community in Los
Angeles,” Waugh said.
Though the center has been operating since 1993, Chicana/o
studies at UCLA date back 20 years earlier. In 1973 UCLA
established the undergraduate degree in Chicana/o studies and
became one of the first universities in the country to offer a
bachelor’s degree in Chicana/o life and culture.
It was an interdepartmental degree program until 1993, when that
June, students, faculty and community members staged a hunger
strike pushing for a Chicana/o studies department.
The protesters got part of their wish, as UCLA reorganized
Chicana/o studies into the César Chávez Center. But the
center was still limited to handing out only undergraduate
degrees.
“We started with a small foundation ““ we were all
new to the university in 1994-1995,” MacÃas said.
Center heads are in the process of turning in proposals for a
master’s degree and doctorate in Chicana/o studies. The
University of California, Santa Barbara is currently the only UC
campus to offer advanced degrees in this field.
The next step for the center is departmental status
““Â in April 2003, the center submitted a proposal for the
César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies.
“There’s a tremendous burden of program
development,” MacÃas said.