Educators gathered at East Los Angeles College on Friday to witness the signing of a memorandum that creates a partnership between ELAC and Universidad de Oriente (UNIVO), a Salvadoran university based in the city of San Miguel.
Pedro Arieta Vega, the rector of UNIVO, was at the event that marked the first time ELAC has collaborated with a school based in another country.
Arieta Vega said he felt welcomed in East L.A. and hoped to extend the same hospitality to visiting faculty and students.
“We’ve felt like family here and we invite you to come to UNIVO, to San Miguel, so we can show you the love you have shown us,” Arieta Vega said.
ELAC President Alberto J. Román expressed his gratitude to those in attendance who had a hand in making this partnership a reality.
“We’ve been working on this for two years for our students. We want them to be enriched culturally by the beautiful country of El Salvador,” Román said.
The program is still in development, but will allow UNIVO students to take ELAC courses online. One goal is to have professors from the college teach classes in El Salvador and bring students with them, said Miguel Dueńas, vice president of student services.
Nichelle Henderson, a board of trustee for the L.A. Community College District, said the collaboration serves as “a catalyst for exploring similar partnerships for our other eight colleges.”
“At a time when the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, it is important we build cultural borders,” Henderson said.
The partnership is the brainchild of ELAC’s Central American Studies degree program.
Eddie Flores, a Chicana(o) Studies professor and soccer coach, said a school analysis revealed that 18% of the student population at ELAC was Central American, primarily Salvadoran. “It’s always been our goal to serve this [population],” Flores said.
Assistant Professor Jocelyn Duarte helped develop the program two years ago alongside other Department of Chicana(o) Studies professors and faculty at Cal State Northridge, the only CSU with a Central American Studies degree program.
As the only college program of its kind in the state, Duarte says its existence is crucial to serving the growing Central American population in L.A. and the country. Salvadorans make up the third largest group of Latinos in the U.S. behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center.
“It’s important to have this [academic] discipline because we need to create the next group of doctors and lawyers who have an understanding of this community,” Duarte said.
Flores said the department’s work led to a meeting with Alejandro Letona, the Consul General of the Salvadoran Consulate in L.A., who helped ELAC staff connect with UNIVO. This led to a trip to the country last year where the two parties discussed the potential partnership.
Letona, who attended the signing on Friday, said he was proud to see the project come to fruition.
“This will help develop the country by bringing these opportunities to the students of San Miguel,” Letona said.
Flores said ELAC faculty will be heading to the city of San Salvador soon to meet with other universities to develop more academic partnerships.
“This partnership to my understanding is the first of its kind in the United States. We’re in uncharted waters,” Flores said.
