Arizona State University has been selected as the recipient of the 2013 Estela and Raúl Mora Award for the most exemplary culminating celebration of "El día de los niños, El día de los libros" – "Children’s Day, Book Day" – also known simply as Día.

The Estela and Raúl Mora Award was established by author and poet Pat Mora and her siblings in honor of their parents to promote culminating celebrations of this yearlong initiative that links all children to books, languages and cultures. The award is presented annually in partnership with REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking.  

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Día traditionally takes place on or near April 30.

The Día celebrations at ASU, organized by the Department of English, began with sounds of trumpets vibrating, guitars strumming and folkloric dancers moving to renditions of traditional mariachi favorites. Throughout the festivities, 500 students, sixth through 12th grade, accompanied by their teachers, had the opportunity to participate in reading- and writing-themed workshops hosted by local authors Tom Leveen, Angela Morrison, Aprilynne Pike, Janette Rallison and Bill Konigsberg.

Adding to the festivities were authors Alberto Rios, Myrlin Hepworth and Gary Soto, who provided students motivating and empowering words. Students received free books, were able to meet and greet the authors, and had the opportunity to have their books signed. 



“What resonated with the committee was the commitment local authors, ASU faculty, staff, students and literacy advocates demonstrated,” said Lupita Vega, Mora Award committee chair. “They worked together to create an event that not only connected this age group to books and diverse authors, but their Día celebration also motivated and empowered adolescents to share their unique stories.”



“We created a Día celebration at ASU because of a shared belief in providing opportunity and access to relevant literacy experiences to children of all languages and cultures,” said doctoral student Tracey T. Flores. “Our aim was to engage students in activities that would capture their unique interests and open their minds to the liberating power of reading and writing.”



This is the first year an educational institution is named as the winner of the Mora Award. REFORMA will present the award during the Midwinter meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) next January in Philadelphia. To learn more about the Mora Award, visit http://dia.ala.org/.



When Souad T. Ali was growing up in Khartoum, Sudan, military dictator General Gaafar Numeiri ruled the country after toppling a democratic government that had lasted for just five years – from 1964 to 1969.

In the late 1970s Numeiri moved toward Islamism, and in 1983 imposed Sharia law throughout the country, using what Ali said was a “distorted version of Islam.” Download Full Image

By using his “misconception of religion, he could impose laws across the board. Family and personal status law was based on such distortions of religion,” Ali said. “There was no justice whatsoever under Nimeiri – as is the case with the current dictatorship of Omar Al Bashir, who imposed far more radical laws against women.” 

The harsher laws, Ali said, “are reflected in many cases against women who do not dress the way prescribed by the government. Sudanese activist Dr. Samar Mirghani is facing retribution because she demonstrated peacefully against the government.”

Ali, now an associate professor of Arabic literature and Middle East/Islamic studies in the School of International Letters and Cultures, head of Classics and Middle Eastern Studies and director of the Arabic Program at ASU, was an undergraduate at the University of Khartoum in the 1980s when Nimeiri began enforcing Sharia law. She was angered because she says, “I always believed religion should be a private matter, and since an early age I always rejected the oppression of women under the pretext of religion.” 

These thoughts formed the basis for what would become first her doctoral dissertation at the University of Utah in 2004, and later an expanded book, “A Religion, Not a State: Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s Islamic Justification of Political Secularism,” that was published in 2009.

Her book is a study of Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s volume, “Islam and the Foundations of Rule: Research on the Caliphate and Government in Islam,” to which professor Ali was introduced in a graduate class, Political Thought in Islam, at the University of Utah. 'Abd Al-Raziq, an Egyptian scholar who died in 1966, delved into a debate that has been going on since the death of the Prophet Muhammed in 632 A.D., according to Ali: Is Islam a religion or a state?

In her book’s introduction, she wrote that “during the prophet’s lifetime, Islam had spread throughout Arabia and established itself as an organized system of communal life in Medina and beyond.” 

“However, because the prophet neither named a successor nor clearly delineated a specific form of government, Muslims have engaged in continuous discussion of, and experimentation with, various forms of governance throughout the last 14 centuries,” she said. “And the discussion of whether Islam is a religion or state has, since the beginning of the 1800s, focused on two forces commonly described as ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity.'” 

The basic question is how far ancient traditions should be blended with modern values, if at all.

There is new urgency to the debate, Ali said, with the current resurgence of “Islamic fundamentalism, or the Islamist ideology that advocates the idea that ‘sovereignty belongs to God.’”

These Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden, were encouraged by Sayyid Qubt, who died in 1966, and who believed that “Muslims had the responsibility to struggle against the forces of jahiliyya (ignorance) in the 20th century, in order to reinstate the perfect Islamic community and, more importantly, to restore God to his rightful place as the only sovereign and to ensure that the Sharia, the divine law, was the only law governing the Muslim community,” Ali said. 

Her doctoral studies at the University of Utah gave her “the opportunity to do an in-depth study and research into previous classical juristic theory of the state, reaching the conclusion that the juristic theories of the caliphate were all human innovations, not a religious imperative as the book details. The Prophet was only a messenger. He was not a political leader.”

Though as a university student in Sudan Ali was involved in the civil struggle to depose the Islamist dictator Numeiri, and saw a democratic parliamentary system put in place in Sudan in 1986, her life was drastically changed when the current dictator Al-Bashir staged his own coup in June of 1989, ousting the government of Sadiq al-Mahdi.

Her husband, Abdullahi Gallab, currently an associate professor in the ASU School of Social Transformation and Religious Studies, who had been the director of Culture and Information for the Sudanese Ministry of Culture and Information, was invited to Boston University as a Fulbright Humphrey Fellow in 1989. While the couple and their three children were in Boston, Gallab learned that he had been fired by Al-Bashir’s Islamist regime.

“It was dangerous for us to go back to Sudan, at which point we applied for asylum,” Ali said.  “We have been freedom fighters since, against the oppression of the Sudanese people."

Through his connections in the academic world, Gallab completed his master’s and doctoral degrees at Brigham Young University and later found a faculty position at BYU, and Ali began her master’s studies in English and taught at BYU. She received her doctorate with honors in Middle Eastern Studies (with a focus on Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies) from the University in Utah in 2004.

With Islamic fundamentalists currently striving to reinstate what they perceive as “the perfect Islamic community” in many areas of the world, one would wonder if Ali worries about a backlash to her book.

“For the most part the book has been received quite positively within academic and scholarly circles,” she said. “But I had discussions with a few who oppose the idea and they have been quite enlightened discussions.

“I know, on the other hand, that the idea is utterly rejected by radicals, extremists and fundamentalists. For the young, or un-educated, or those oblivious to certain facts in Islam and the Qur'an, it takes education to introduce them to these facts to guard against subjecting them to radical influence.”

Ali is currently working on an annotated translation of ‘Abd al-Raziq’s book, which has not been translated wholly into English and is thus largely unavailable to the English reader. She has been invited by Oxford University Press to submit the manuscript for publication consideration as part of their series “Religion in Translation” with the American Academy of Religion. 

She also continues to promote cross-cultural understanding and corrects misconceptions between the Western and Arab and Muslim worlds as chair of the newly formed ASU Council for Arabic and Islamic Studies.  

The council will, Ali said, also “promote multiculturalism, diversity and it is also quite related to my advocacy of separating religion and state, given the abuse of religion by some Muslim countries who use such fusion of religion and state to oppress women.”

Written by Judith Smith

ASU ranks first in nation for doctorates awarded to Native Americans in education, law and all disciplines

Arizona State University diversity rankings continue to climb for the number of graduate degrees awarded to underrepresented minorities. The rankings are published in “Diverse: Issues in Higher Education” magazine and are based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Download Full Image

ASU’s rankings reflect the number of minority degrees awarded in various disciplines compared to other universities across the nation. The ranking is an indication of which programs and disciplines attract, retain and graduate the highest number of underrepresented students.

Overall, 27 of ASU’s programs appear in the top 10 and a total of 53 programs are in the top 25. ASU rankings saw substantial increases over 2012.

In a category called “all disciplines combined,” which summarizes total degrees awarded from all graduate programs at ASU, ASU ranks first in the nation for doctoral degrees and third for professional doctorates and master’s degrees awarded to Native Americans.

Other graduate programs in which ASU ranks high in minority graduates include architecture, business, education, engineering, law, health professions, mathematics, physical sciences, public administration and social services, and the visual and performing arts.

Highlights of the top degree rankings include:

• No. 2 ranking for doctorates awarded to Hispanics in foreign languages and literature, and master’s degrees to Native Americans in engineering.

• No. 3 ranking for master’s degrees in architecture and doctoral degrees in mathematics awarded to Hispanic students.

• No. 5 ranking for Asian American doctorates in education, a 350 percent increase over the previous year.

• No. 6 ranking for doctorates awarded to all minority groups combined in the field of mathematics, as well as the visual and performing arts. ASU also ranked sixth for doctorates in education awarded to Hispanics.

• No. 8 and No. 10 ranking for respective doctoral degrees in physical sciences and master’s for engineering awarded to Asian-American students.

• No. 12 ranking for master’s degrees in legal professions awarded to African Americans, a 500 percent increase over last year.

Highlights of the top 15 rankings for ASU can be found at graduate.asu.edu/grow/diversity/rankings.

Additional rankings from “Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education” magazine published in April 2013 indicate that ASU is one of the leading universities in enrolling and graduating Hispanic students in several key categories:

• No. 11 ranking for graduate schools enrolling Hispanics

• No. 13 ranking for master’s degrees in business management and marketing

• No 14 ranking for master’s and doctorates in teacher education               

• No. 15 ranking for master’s and doctoral STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering and math)     

“We are very proud of the quality of our programs and our students,” says Andrew Webber, vice provost for Graduate Education at ASU. “Rankings such as these affirm that ASU continues to attract diversity in its student body and supports all its students in achieving academic success.”

Diversity services and support for graduate students at ASU include SHADES, a peer-to-peer multicultural mentoring program; Interdisciplinary Research Colloquium (IRC) seminars and ASU PREP in Biomedical Sciences. Other graduate diversity support and mentoring groups can be found at graduate.asu.edu/diversity.

Eight, Arizona PBS, in partnership with the City of Phoenix Latino Institute, will host a daytime community engagement event for teens 14-18 years old on Oct. 19, launching the landmark two-part PBS series, "The Graduates/Los Graduados," which debuts nationally at 7 p.m., Oct. 28, on Eight, Arizona PBS.

The event, which is free to attend, will feature a pre-screening of the series, followed by breakout sessions facilitated by community leaders, each exploring a different aspect of the pressures facing Latino and Latina students in completing their education. Topics addressed will include bullying, street life/gang intervention, teen parenting, undocumented status and homelessness/poverty. At the end of the breakout sessions, one teen from each discussion group will be awarded a stipend to implement the community action plan they developed during the session to address the specific challenge examined by their group. Download Full Image

"The Graduates/Los Graduados," a two-part bilingual documentary premiering on the PBS series "Independent Lens" examines the many roots of the Latino dropout crisis through the eyes of six inspiring young students who are part of an ongoing effort to increase graduation rates for a growing Latino population. These student profiles offer a first-hand perspective on the challenges facing many Latino high school students, including over-crowded schools, crime-ridden neighborhoods, teen pregnancy and pressure to contribute to the family finances.

Part one, premiering Oct. 28, will cover the factors holding back Latino boys and young men and how to reverse these trends. Part two, airing Nov. 4, will focus on how to maximize the potential of young Latinas.

Participation is free, but registration is required at www.azpbs.org/losgraduados.

WHERE: The historic A.E. England Building in Downtown Phoenix (424 N Central Ave., Phoenix, 85004), adjacent to Civic Space Park.

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Oct. 19 

REGISTRATION: azpbs.org/losgraduados

FILM INFORMATION: pbs.org/independentlens/graduates

One of the more controversial aspects of the often acrimonious debate over immigration reform is whether undocumented migrants should be offered a path to citizenship. Arizona State University faculty member Luis F.B. Plascencia has authored a book that offers a perspective from the not-too-distant past, based on the experiences of people who pursued citizenship through a 1986 law signed by Ronald Reagan.

“Disenchanting Citizenship: Mexican Migrants and the Boundaries of Belonging” explores an idea that many of us might not have considered – that Mexican immigrants to the United States who reach their goal of citizenship may not experience the full equality and incorporation that is thought to be inherent to U.S. citizenship. Plascencia’s book was published by Rutgers University Press. Download Full Image

“This is the first scholarly book to discuss an issue that has been largely overlooked by policymakers, immigration officials, policy analysts and academics: the possibility that migrants may be disenchanted with U.S. citizenship, which they worked so hard for many years to obtain,” said Plascencia, assistant professor of anthropology in ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, the core college on the West campus. “This, however, should not be interpreted to mean that they have a reduced appreciation or ‘love’ for the United States, the nation they feel privileged to be part of and that has opened up opportunities for themselves and their children.”

In the book, Plascencia notes two types of disenchantment. One is based on incomplete information new citizens were given by local organizations that aided them in the process of acquiring citizenship. The second is a more troubling form, he said.

“It has to do with the fact that citizenship is not only a legal category, it is also a social category, and one that operates alongside processes related to race and class. Some Mexican migrants assumed that after acquiring U.S. citizenship they would be ‘equal’ to Mexican Americans and European American citizens, but this did not materialize,” Plascencia said. “They continued to be thought of as ‘Mexicans,’ a label indicating that they were not thought of as belonging in the United States.”

The basis for “Disenchanting Citizenship” is Plascencia’s volunteer work teaching citizenship classes for two years in Austin, Texas, follow-up interviews with students who had taken the classes and with government officials, community-based organizations and others. In addition, Plascencia attended multiple naturalization ceremonies in El Paso, San Antonio and Phoenix, and volunteered to assist Permanent Residents in completing the N-400 naturalization form in Austin and Phoenix.

The participants in the study are unique among Mexican-descent Permanent Residents. Most participants are individuals who were formerly undocumented migrants, applied for and were granted legalization/amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) signed by President Reagan, were then granted Temporary Resident status, and later applied for Permanent Resident status and granted a green card. After five years, Permanent Residents can petition of U.S. citizenship. Participants therefore have traversed multiple legal categories.

“The experiences of these individuals are extremely relevant today because current proposals for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ base their support or opposition to a ‘path to citizenship’ – in other words, a legalization program – on the aftermath of IRCA,” Plascencia explained.

That current relevance became apparent when a study Plascencia coauthored, “The Making of Americans: Results of the Texas Naturalization Survey,” was cited in the document “Fixing Our Broken Immigration System,” released in August by the Obama administration.

“Disenchanting Citizenship” and Plascencia’s overall body of work also have caught the attention of scholars around the country who focus on immigration and citizenship issues.

“His work is very timely and important in bringing clarity to otherwise cluttered emotional debates that have little to do with the judicial, economic, institutional and structural realities of the region,” said Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Regents’ Professor and director of the School of Transborder Studies on ASU’s Tempe campus. “Luis is among the new cohort of scholars who embrace the actualities of the transborder region as they have historically developed.”

Plascencia says he hopes the book helps cultivate a deeper appreciation of the complex history of citizenship in the United States. “There are undoubtedly great tensions associated with this issue and its history, but also a great generosity in the granting of citizenship to Permanent Residents,” he said. “Between 1907 and 2012, more than 26 million migrants were granted citizenship.”

Plascencia brings a variety of experiences to his scholarly work on issues of migration, citizenship and the Mexico-United States borderlands. He co-directed a national research project that estimated the size and distribution of the U.S. migrant agricultural workforce for the 50 states and Puerto Rico. Congress directed the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to use the estimates generated from this project as the core component, with adjustments based on Bureau of the Census data, to fund migrant legal services. LSC allocates hundreds of millions of dollars annually to address the nation’s “justice gap” and ensure a modicum of legal assistance to low-income U.S. citizens and Permanent Residents.

Among Plascencia’s other research interests are popular culture issues, such as low-riding in the Southwest and the death of the singer Selena, as well as the experiences of Latinos in the U.S. military.

“I am particularly interested in how non-citizens in the military readily adopt the responsibilities of U.S. citizens; defending the nation is presumably the responsibility of loyal, patriotic citizens,” he says. “Undocumented migrants who serve in the military can be granted citizenship. So while these individuals are often demonized by state and local officials for their negative impact on society, the U.S. simultaneously grants citizenship to the ‘American soldier’ who willingly kills and dies for the nation, those brave men and women who protect the nation and the freedoms and liberties we civilians enjoy.”

Plascencia teaches New College courses including Principles of Social Anthropology; Mexico-U.S. Borderlands; Citizenship, Nationalism, & Identity; and Introduction to Social/Cultural Anthropology. He says the college’s interdisciplinary focus is an ideal match for his interests.

“Although trained as a social anthropologist, almost all of my research has been interdisciplinary,” he says. “My research draws on legal scholarship, political science, public policy, medical research and sociology.”

Plascencia’s scholarly activity earns high marks from Jeffrey Kassing, director of New College’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. “His work provides an excellent example of research that proves meaningful for academics and policymakers while remaining relevant to the local communities ASU serves and supports,” Kassing says.

In addition to his New College faculty appointment, Plascencia is Southwest Borderlands Initiative Scholar and an affiliated faculty member in the School of Transborder Studies in Tempe and the School of Public Affairs at the Downtown Phoenix campus. He is serving in a two-year term as president of the Association of Latina & Latino Anthropologists (ALLA), a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Plascencia also is a member of the Committee on Minorities in Anthropology (CMIA), a standing committee of the AAA. The CMIA grants a $10,000 dissertation fellowship to a minority graduate student in anthropology.

The School of Social Transformation’s program in women and gender studies has welcomed four scholars-in-residence from Armenia’s Yerevan State University (YSU) this semester. The scholars are sitting in on courses, engaging in discussions with faculty across ASU, and developing syllabi and advancing their research threads that intersect with the field of women and gender studies.

The ASU-YSU partnership is funded by a USAID/HED grant to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies. ASU’s partnership director is Victor Agadjanian, the E.E. Guillot International Distinguished Professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and a member of the graduate faculty for the gender studies doctoral program. Co-directors are Mary Margaret Fonow, professor of women and gender studies and director of the School of Social Transformation, and Steve Batalden, professor of history and director of the Melikian Center.  Download Full Image

Meet the scholars from Yerevan State University:

Tatevik Sargsyan’s research and teaching interests lie in issues of racial, class and gender inequality in public policy. Sargsyan is interested in the ethical management and delivery of public services, as well as the impact of class and gender differences on political activity and policy initiatives. She is pursuing postgraduate studies in YSU’s Faculty of International Relations, Department of Public Administration, where she earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree and has been a lecturer since 2010. 

Sargsyan is using her ASU research exchange experience to learn more about best practices in women’s leadership and gender studies, and to further develop course syllabi for courses on Gender and Ethics Management, as well as Gender and Class in Policymaking. She is participating in Cheshire Calhoun’s philosophy course on feminist philosophical literature and Carol Poore’s course on women, politics and policy.

“Women’s and diverse class groups’ involvement in the political process and public life is growing year by year, but many studies point to the lack of proven institutional structures that will provide equal protection of interests in the policymaking processes for all societal groups,” Sargsyan says. “Despite the fact that there are constitutional and legal guarantees for equal rights for public service for all citizens regardless of race, gender, class and beliefs, informal restrictions still exist. I look forward to sharing and applying knowledge related to women’s role in modern society, public life and the policymaking process.”

Anna Gevorgyan earned a bachelor's and master's in Iranian studies at Yerevan State University and is currently a doctoral student and research fellow in YSU’s Center for Civilization and Cultural Studies. Gevorgyan’s field of specialization is Iranian studies, with particular interest in Islamic feminism and feminism in Iran. 

She is using her semester at ASU to develop syllabi for courses at the intersection of women’s studies and religious studies, and is deepening her knowledge of theory and research methods in women and gender studies to support her comparative research on feminist interpretations of religious texts of Islam and Christianity in contemporary times. In addition to observing women’s studies courses taught by Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis, Heather Switzer and Mirna Lattouf’s course in women and religion, Gevorgyan is having weekly discussions with the director of Arabic Studies, Souad Ali, about women's contribution to feminist interpretation of the Quran, and with Yasmin Saikia in the Center for Religion and Conflict about Islam, peacekeeping and women’s contributions to peacemaking.

“Women’s studies has demonstrated to historians of religion that past studies of religions were concerned almost entirely with men’s religion and from men's perspective,” says Gevorgyan, who looks forward to developing courses that will include both men’s and women’s perspectives. She is also building a theoretical base for her research on the attitudes of Ithnaasharia Shia Islam and the Armenian Apostolic church toward women.

Ani Kojoyan’s interests in women’s studies began with her master’s research at YSU, which studied the role of women in the development of the “witchcraft movement” in the Renaissance period and witchcraft as a beginning of feminism in the early Modern period. A lecturer and doctoral student in YSU’s Department of English Language and Literature, she is doing a dissertation on “The Act of Cursing as Part of Women’s Speech Behavior and as a Means of Self-Fashioning and Self-Disguise for Women.” 

Kojoyan eaned a bachelor's and master's in English from YSU, and a second master’s degree in English literature at the University of Oxford. However, her research interests extend beyond language studies. She is interested in women’s studies in literature from social-historical and cultural-anthropological perspectives, women and the body/transformation and metamorphose analysis, women and social change, women and religion, and women and knowledge.

At ASU she is observing the courses Introduction to Gender Studies; Critical Concepts of Gender; Women in Popular Culture; and Sex, Violence and the Media, and she is enjoying discussions with Professor Karen Leong and lecturer Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis. 

Lilit Shakaryan is a sociology doctoral student and has been a lecturer in Applied Sociology since 2009 in the Department of Sociology at YSU. Shakaryan has taught in the areas of branding, sociology of mass media and public opinion research methodology, and she is preparing the new master’s-level course Social Construction of Gender to be taught at Yerevan State University. 

Shakaryan's dissertation theme and research covers the issue of Information Society development in Armenia, mainly focusing on the peculiarities of communicative space and identity construction. Within the framework of her doctoral thesis, she is also examining the role of women and their participation in ICT development. Shakaryan earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology at Yerevan State University and has conducted and supervised field research for a number of sociological research projects related to issues including health care, education, voting participation, and migration and reproduction. 

Shakaryan is observing the courses Gender and Communication, taught by Daniel Brouwer; Sex, Violence and the Media, taught by Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis; and Social Media, taught by Dawn Gilpin. 

“What if the desperate man whose transformation from Mr. Chips to Tony Montana wasn’t a white suburban dad, but a black man in the inner city?” wrote Arizona State University associate professor Bambi Haggins, on Sept. 29, about TV’s “Breaking Bad” series.

Haggins, a film and media studies specialist in the Department of English, penned a column for the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” feature, which asked six writers to weigh in on the heavy topic of morality on television. Haggins contrasted the portrayal of “methamphetamine kingpin Walter White,” played by Bryan Cranston, with Stringer Bell, a black character on "The Wire," played by Idris Elba.

“One is a college educated white man confronted by his mortality, making the unexpected choice to ‘cook’ his way into securing his family’s future. The other is a black man who grew up amid crime, drugs and poverty, and aspired to use his sole option, ‘the game,’ as a way out,” Haggins wrote in the piece.

“There is a degree of moral ambiguity in our conflicted relationships with these characters that affects and is affected by a multiplicity of culturally coded expectations as much as by notions of good and evil.”

The Department of English is an academic unit in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU.

Editor's Note: This story is part of an ongoing series about student excellence at the university. To read more about some of ASU's outstanding students, click here.

It is rare when high school students know exactly what they want to be in the professional world. But this was the case for Arizona State University Doran Community Scholar Sara Santos, who decided at 16 years old that she was destined to become a labor delivery nurse after watching the birth of her niece. The difficulty for Sara was not determining her goal, but deciding her journey. Download Full Image

Santos grew up in a rough part of west Phoenix after her parents emigrated from Guatemala. She attended Maryvale High School, part of the Phoenix Union High School District. “The area I grew up in doesn’t have a very good reputation,” she says. “I really had to work hard to surpass what people expected out of students from that area. It was difficult to pass that barrier.”

During her senior year of high school, she discovered the Doran Community Scholars Program, a need- and merit-based program for students from the Phoenix Union High School District.

The program was formed in the late 1990s by Maureen and Wayne Doran, who wanted to aid and inspire students with financial constraints from Wayne Doran’s alma mater, Phoenix Union High School District, to attend ASU and then provide them with continual support throughout their academic career.

“It was actually by chance that I applied for the scholarship because my friend was applying for it. I went online and got everything about a week before it was due,” Santos says. “I’m so glad I saw it.”

She is now a 19-year-old sophomore at ASU, majoring in nursing and minoring in family and human development. She says having the scholarship helped her transition from high school to college and satisfied her financial needs. The required events for Doran Scholars also allowed her to quickly become involved as a freshman and develop professionally. 

Santos was a member of the Sun Devil marching band and the Sun Devil basketball band, the current fundraising chair in the multicultural sorority Kappa Delta Chi and volunteers more than 30 hours a semester for numerous community services projects.

One of her favorite community service programs is the Arizona Family Health Partnership. With this program, she visits various Valley high schools during their human growth and development classes and presents about the nutritional importance of folic acid.

Santos has worked with Feed My Starving Children by making food packages for third-world countries. She has also worked with KaBOOM, a non-profit dedicated to helping children, to build a playground for children in an apartment complex and with Habitat for Humanity to build a home for a man in need.

“My main motivation to succeed is my parents,” Santos says. "They both grew up with hardly anything. They each had two outfits per week. They came to the United States to try and improve the lives of their kids. They’ve worked extremely hard and I’ve seen how hard they’ve worked. It’s all because they want to see us succeed. I work hard so all my parents’ work wasn’t in vain.”

Santos hopes to find a job at a hospital in Phoenix after graduation for a year and then apply for graduate or medical school. Thanks to the support of the Doran Community Scholars program, she appears to be well on her way.

Academy-Award winning musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie will headline the Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture and Community at 7 p.m., Oct. 10, at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Sainte-Marie, a Canadian native, describes herself as a “natural musician,” whose love for music and pictures began at the age of three. Over the years she has crossed many genres, including rock, pop, powwow and folk. Heavy industry hitters such as Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Janis Joplin and Chet Atkins have covered her songs. Download Full Image

“I think songs are born themselves and sort of fall into appropriate genres after the fact, depending on the style of the singer. Some of my songs escape the genre bins completely and are absolutely original, like 'God Is Alive' and 'Disinformation.' 'Darling Don't Cry' and 'Starwalker' sure blew a lot of record business minds because those guys had never listened to powwow before,” she said.

Her latest CD, “Running for the Drum,” won a Juno Award (Canadian Grammy) in 2009, and in September of the same year, she was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. Sainte-Marie is also the recipient of two Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Awards – including one for Lifetime Achievement – and six honorary doctorates in art, letters, music and law from various Canadian institutions.

Her band is currently on tour in Canada, but she will be making a special stop in Phoenix for the Ortiz/Labriola lecture. Audience members will be treated to a discussion she has titled “Detoxifying Aboriginal Self-perception and Outward Identity.” This includes musings on music, art, dance, Sesame Street and more.

Fans may also attend a special meet-and-greet with Sainte-Marie earlier in the day at 10:30 a.m., in Hayden Library on the Tempe campus. Both events are free and open to the public.

For more information, please visit the Department of English website.

Indian Country Today reported on Arizona State University's appointment of five American Indian scholars in the fields of law, social transformation, American Indian studies, and social and family dynamics.

According to ASU President Michael Crow, the appointments are examples of how ASU is committed to diversity and the school’s recognition of social responsibility. Download Full Image

“We will encourage scholars from a spectrum of disciplines to offer different perspectives," Crow said. "Teaching and research related to American Indian culture has been underway at Arizona State University for decades, but the American Indian Initiative is proving transformational in the development of the field, and confirms the university’s commitment to programs that are socially relevant.”