JANUARY 15, 2021 — UTSA has been awarded a three-year, $5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the university’s community partnerships in advancing racial justice.
The grant, administered through the Mellon Just Futures Initiative, supports visionary, unconventional, experimental and groundbreaking projects that address the long-existing fault lines of racism, inequality, and injustice within democracy and civil society.
UTSA’s project—Democratizing Racial Justice—will be a transformative, community-based People’s Academies for Racial Justice. Through the People’s Academies, selected community fellows and faculty fellows will collaborate on a public-facing project each year of the grant as determined by that cohort. Grant funding will further support community dialogues with key scholars working in fields related to social justice.
The project will be led by UTSA’s Jackie Cuevas, Alejandra Elenes and Rhonda M. Gonzales.
The project was developed and will be led by Jackie Cuevas, associate professor and assistant chair of the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies and director of the Women’s Studies Institute. Project co-leads are Alejandra Elenes, professor and chair of the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Rhonda M. Gonzales, professor and chair of the Department of History.
“These academies represent a path-making effort to bring together activist-scholars, students and community members to formulate community-centric, ethical collaborations where people of color remember histories, respond to community needs, conduct collective research and imagine thriving futures where racial justice is possible,” said Cuevas.
Project partners include the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures, which will manage and promote an online repository of DRJ archives, including oral histories, public murals or other materials. The nonprofit Esperanza Center, led by director Graciela Sanchez, will serve as the anchor community organization for facilitating the People’s Academies. Northwest Vista College will serve as institutional partner for the companion Educators’ Academies for Ethnic Studies and Sandra Garza, coordinator of the Mexican American Studies Program at Northwest Vista College, will serve as project liaison for participating Alamo Colleges District campuses.
“Higher education plays a key role in simultaneously advancing the social mobility of individuals and promoting stability and prosperity of our communities,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “Hispanic Serving Institutions such as UTSA can play an even larger role in addressing inequality and injustice because of our longstanding commitment to advancing educational attainment for underrepresented groups.”
Overseen by the Mellon Foundation’s Higher Learning Program, the Just Futures Initiative was launched in 2020 to address systemic inequities that disproportionately impact communities of color, as highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The programs seek to improve access to and accelerate demographic transformation in higher education and to support humanities education that builds and centers more complete and accurate narratives for a fuller account of the human experience.
UTSA is one of only 16 universities in the U.S. and the only institution in Texas to be awarded a grant through the Just Futures Initiative.
“The DRJ project was conceived to leverage our department’s and UTSA’s own interdisciplinary strengths in the humanities, ethnic studies and intersectional gender studies, and then build on those strengths through the external partnerships,” said Elenes. “DRJ was developed as an academic-community collaborative—and one that will serve as a model for innovative humanities and ethnic studies education in the region.”
In total, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is awarding more than $72 million to support multidisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative teams producing solutions-based work that contributes to public understanding of the nation’s racist past and can lead to the creation of socially just futures.
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
The UTSA University Career Center invites you to attend the STEM Career Expo from 2 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feburary 1. Meet, connect and recruit UTSA students and alumni.
H-E-B Student Union BallroomThe UTSA University Career Center invites you to attend the All Majors Career Expo from 2 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feburary 8. Meet, connect and recruit UTSA students.
H-E-B Student Union BallroomTo coincide with the annual observance of Black History Month, the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures will unveil new content in the African American Texans exhibit including the "Fabric of a People" quilt and the "You Take It From Here" oral history project.
UTSA Institute of Texan CulturesTexan fiber artist Taylor Barnes will share her experiences: where she was introduced to the personal and oral histories that influenced her artistic practice, as well as the significance of quilting and textile art in Black American history. A Q&A session will follow.
Virtual eventPresented by the African American Quilt Circle of San Antonio, attendees will learn basic sewing and quilting skills. RSVP required.
UTSA Institute of Texan CulturesMembers of the African American Quilt Circle of San Antonio will be at the JPL to discuss their works in the new ITC exhibition "Fabric of a People." Chat about the heritage of African American story quilts or ask questions about quilting.
John Peace Library, GroupSpot BUTSA and 13 of the leading Hispanic Serving Institutions will come together to provide students and alumni an opportunity to network and interview with more than 250 companies from around the country.
Handshake (Virtual Fair Platform)The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
