Students, faculty and staff from WNMU attended the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators (AHSIE) Best Practices Conference in Chicago, March 9-13, 2025. (Seated L-R: Assistant Director of Title V/Con Ganas Oscar Arteaga Romero, Director Title V/Con Ganas Marivel Medel, Professor of Education Alexandra Neves. Standing L-R: Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Sundar Tamang, Francia L. Ortega Robles, Valeria Adame, Nancy Lechuga Gallegos, Carlos Carranza, Alexa Greer and Brisa Chacón.)SILVER CITY, NM—A team of WNMU students, faculty and staff had the opportunity this spring to attend the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators (AHSIE) Best Practices Conference in Chicago.

The trip was made possible by Con Ganas, a program funded with grant money awarded under the U.S. Department of Education's Title V Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions program, according to Marivel Medel, who directs Con Ganas.

Medel, Assistant Director of Title V/Con Ganas Oscar Arteaga Romero, and Education Professor Alexandra Neves presented at the conference about what WNMU is doing to better serve Hispanic students through the Con Ganas Summer Institute, a professional development initiative funded by the Title V grant.

Also attending was Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Sundar Tamang, who serves as the Title V data scientist. The students attending were Alexa Greer, Brisa Chacón, Carlos Carranza, Francia L. Ortega Robles, Nancy Lechuga Gallegos and Valeria Adame.

Medel said that the conference was a helpful way for students, faculty and staff to learn about the creative and innovative approaches that are used at Hispanic Serving Institutions across the nation. "This event provides practitioners and educators at HSIs with the opportunity to network and share their knowledge while learning how to effectively manage educational initiatives and maximize grant funding," she said.

The students went through a competitive process involving an application and an interview to become eligible to participate.

Chacón, a social work major from Deming who aspires to work in education, said that she learned a lot from the conference that is applicable to her professional path. "Where I live, more than 85% of students are Hispanic and they need the support to achieve their academic goals," she explained. "This is why it was very helpful to attend this conference. I learned so much about programs that help Hispanic students from high school level all the way to higher education."

Lechuga Gallegos, who comes from a family of farm workers, said that the keynote session of the conference was especially powerful for her. "One of the speakers came from a farm worker family," she said, "so I got really sentimental, and I got really inspired."

Adame, who serves as vice president of WNMU Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), said that the conference was so interesting and inspiring that the students would stay up late into the night to talk about what they were learning. "We talked about everything that we were learning and how we could implement it to MEChA," she said.

The students who attended were so inspired that they are now planning on applying to give a presentation at the next conference in 2026. Said Lechuga Gallegos, "We want to show what we do as MEChA here on campus."