By: Ernest Gurulé
Like so many things upend- ed by the COVID pandemic that swept the nation and the world, LAEF is back and ready for its closeup. While the Latin American Educational Foundation never actually went away, the COVID pandemic, which claimed more than 900,000 American lives and counting and more than five million worldwide, forced it to cancel one gala altogether and hold one virtu- ally over the past two years. But on March 26, 2022, it not only returns but returns in grand style.
This year’s honored guest will be Dr. Jill Biden, First Lady and wife of President Joe Biden. Dr. Biden, a lifelong educator and current faculty member at Northern Virginia Community College, is the nation’s first First Lady to hold a full-time job. Her predecessors, with few exceptions, held mostly ceremonial roles, though a handful of them took on specific tasks—many high level—as requested by the President.
Landing a name like Dr. Biden was both a coup for LAEF and also a natural. The mission of the 73-year-old organization is education and in 2022 there is, perhaps, no other person—certainly one with as high a profile—who represents the values of education in the U.S. like Dr. Biden.
“Dr. Biden’s appearance at the LAEF gala will be invalu- able and beyond measure,” said Jim Chavez, LAEF Executive Director. LAEF and Chavez praised Dr. Biden as “the most accomplished woman, a dedicated public servant, the nation’s greatest advocate for a higher education and an educator at her core.”
LAEF has been in existence for 73 years and in that time has awarded nearly $7 million in scholarships to aspiring Latino young men and women pursuing college degrees or vocational certificates. “The growth of LAEF and its importance in the pursuit of higher education among Latinos from the few and tiny seeds planted in 1949 by a small corps of Latino professionals,” said Chavez, still astounds. Former Denver Judge Roger Cisneros, Bernie Valdez, one of the first Latinos to serve on the Denver Public School Board of Education and Lena Archuleta were just three foundational members whose long ago idea sprouted into what LAEF is today. Unlike in 1949, Denver has a cadre of professionals, many of whom serve or have served on the LAEF Board of Directors, including banking executive Pat Cortez, com- munications executive Sol Trujillo and Pauline Rivera, publisher of La Voz Bilingue.
The work of Cisneros, Valdez and Archuleta resonates all the way to the highest levels of government where Chavez modestly said a bit of influence may have been used to get Dr. Biden and her staff’s attention. “LAEF sent an invitation to Dr. Biden this past fall, including information about our programs and services, as well as the impact LAEF makes. With the encouragement from some of LAEF’s great supporters and our Congressional representatives, she accepted our invitation to join us for our gala.”
Scholarship awards are open to Hispanic/Latino stu- dents who are “actively involved in the Hispanic/Latino community” regardless of their immigration status or U.S. citizenship. Recipients must carry a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA in their high school or college. A designated LAEF committee makes the awards based on financial need, leadership potential and service to community. Applications have closed for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Dr. Biden has taught in both high school and college. In 1976, the year she met and began her relationship with now husband, President Biden, she was an English teacher at a Catholic high school in Wilmington, Delaware. Later, she taught at a Delaware psychiatric hospital and at Delaware Technical Community College. The current First Lady has two master’s degrees and a doctorate in educational leadership.
Her timeline at Northern Virginia Community College goes back to 2009 when her husband served as Vice President under former President, Barack Obama. She has remained at the school from then until now, though the pandemic did take her physically away from the classroom and, like millions of other educators, forced her to teach remotely.
More than three decades in the classroom has provided a perspective on education and particularly teaching scores of non-traditional students at the community college level to the First Lady. “There is nothing like helping students find their confidence and begin to use their voices or seeing that spark light up in their eyes the moment a concept falls into place,” Dr. Biden said in an interview with Good Housekeeping Magazine.
Community college students, many fresh out of high school, others returning to school after years of being in the workforce provide her with a new appreciation, she said, for the task teachers are given. “My students work incredibly hard to make it to class,” said Dr. Biden. Many must juggle both work and families just to be there. “They want to learn. They bring diverse perspectives to our studies…It is such an honor to be the person to walk them through their studies, to give them the key that could unlock something life-changing.”
