Author: oursoutheastern

Southeastern students at the Southeastern Channel won eight Mark of Excellence Awards, including three first-place honors, at the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Region 12 conference recently.

The Mark of Excellence Awards honor the best of collegiate journalism from a calendar year. The Society of Professional Journalists Region 12 includes all universities in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Southeastern Channel students received the most combined television and broadcast videography honors out of all universities in the competition. Other universities competing included the University of Arkansas, Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Tennessee.

Mark of Excellence Awards were judged by SPJ industry professionals who were directed to choose entries they felt were the best in student journalism. If no entry rose to the level of excellence, no award was given.

“The Society of Professional Journalists has long been one of the most respected journalism organizations, so it’s outstanding recognition for our students to have once again been honored above those at much larger universities,” said Rick Settoon, general manager of the Southeastern Channel. “We are so proud of them for applying their talents and hard work to maintain the Southeastern Channel’s high-quality standards for excellence in student journalism and production.”

First-place winners included Taylor Nettle of Lacombe, who won first place in “Broadcast News Videography” for her videography in the “Medline Groundbreaking” story for the Southeastern Channel’s student newscast Northshore News. The package covered groundbreaking ceremonies near the Hammond airport for a new $45 million, 650,000 square foot distribution center for the medical supply giant.

“It feels great to receive an honor like this,” Nettle said. “I enjoyed covering the Medline groundbreaking and made different creative decisions about how I covered the story, so it’s exciting to see that some of the creative decisions I made were recognized.”

As both an anchor and reporter for Northshore News, Nettle not only writes, conducts interviews, narrates, and does on-camera reporting for her stories, she shoots and edits them as well.

Also winning a first-place Mark of Excellence award was Alexis Genovese of Husser in the “Broadcast Feature Videography” category for videography in her Northshore News story, “Southeastern Vertebrate Museum.”

“Winning this award from such a prestigious organization is a great honor,” Genovese said. “It helps me feel confident in my work and assures me I have the skills and the talent to make it in this industry. This is what I’m passionate about, and I could not be more thankful for this recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists.”

Genovese is also both an anchor and reporter for Northshore News. Her winning story spotlights the biology department’s research facility for the study of ecology, evolution, and natural history of vertebrate animals.

In addition to Nettle and Genovese, Jermaine Kelly of Shreveport also placed first, winning in “Broadcast Sports Videography” for camera work in his “Southeastern vs. Northwestern State Football” story for the student sportscast The Big Game.

“It feels great to have my work recognized,” Kelly said. “This award is important to me because it means that I’m doing something right and gives me the motivation to continue what I’m doing.”

Although Kelly has also shot news, he said that shooting live game action like that in his winning football story requires a different strategy. The approach he took was to stay ahead of every play and follow the trend of the game.

Winning second-place or finalist recognition was Jordan Kliebert of Mandeville in “Broadcast News Videography” for videography in his “Causeway Improvements” story for Northshore News. The story covered new guard rail safety enhancements for drivers on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

Other Mark of Excellence finalists included Lauren Hawkins of Ponchatoula in “Television Feature Reporting” and Brian Williams of Baton Rouge in “Broadcast Feature Videography” for their work in the Northshore News story “Litter Gitter” about a device developed by local Don Bates to clean up Tangipahoa Parish waterways. Hawkins is currently a news reporter-anchor for WBRZ-TV Ch. 2 (ABC) in Baton Rouge.

Carson Fryou of Ponchatoula also won second place in “Television Sports Reporting” for his Big Game feature story on Lady Lion basketball player Morgan Carriere.

The June 28, 2021 episode of Northshore News won second-place finalist recognition in the “Best All Around Television Newscast” category. Hawkins produced and co-anchored the show with Trinity Brown of Baton Rouge. Reporters contributing stories to the newscast were Hawkins, Nettle, Kliebert, Anaclaire McKneely of Amite, Kaylor Yates of Baton Rouge, and Joliette Vincent of Luling.

In its 20 years of existence, the Southeastern Channel has won over 500 national, international, and regional awards, including 23 awards from the Emmys.

The Southeastern Channel can be seen on Spectrum Cable 199 in Tangipahoa, Livingston, St. Tammany, and St. Helena parishes and on mounthermonTV.com for viewers in Washington Parish. In addition, the live 24-7 broadcast can be seen on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, the Spectrum App, and the channel’s website at thesoutheasternchannel.com, which also offers programs via video on demand. The Southeastern Channel is available on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Top image: Southeastern Channel student news reporter Alexis Genovese of Husser holds a cow skull to exhibit one of thousands of vertebrate specimens on display and made available for research at the Southeastern Louisiana University Biology Department’s Vertebrate Museum. A reporter for the channel’s national award-winning newscast Northshore News, Genovese produced a television news feature story on the museum, which was honored with a first-place Mark of Excellence award for “Broadcast Feature Videography” given by the Society of Professional Journalists. Genovese was one of three students winning first-place honors among the eight total awards won by the channel in the Region 12 SPJ competition.

The Southeastern Presidential Search Committee recently selected five semifinalists to interview for the school’s top post.

“The search committee has fulfilled the first part of its mission by narrowing the field to a group of semifinalists with specific qualifications to lead Southeastern Louisiana University,” Committee Chair and System President Jim Henderson said. “We look forward to meeting the candidates next week and recommending finalists to the UL System Board.”

The semifinalists are:

• Joseph Odenwald, President, Southwestern Michigan College
• Mary Parker, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Associate Provost, University of Florida
• Eric Summers, Vice President for Student Affairs, Southeastern Louisiana University
• Sebastian van Delden, Dean, School of Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering, The College of Charleston
• William Wainwright, Chancellor, Northshore Technical Community College

These semifinalists will visit campus for interviews with various constituent groups April 17-18. This is an opportunity for stakeholders to interact with candidates and provide feedback to the Search Committee.

The Search Committee will interview each of the semifinalists and meet to select finalists April 18 at 5 p.m. Candidates will be available to media following their Search Committee interviews. A full schedule of on-campus interviews can be found here.

All information regarding the search is posted at ulsystem.edu/southeastern-search.

Southeastern recently received its second U.S. patent in its 97-year history.

The patent was awarded to Southeastern in conjunction with Fort Hays State University, located in Hays, Kan., for use of pnictogenium compounds in carbon-carbon bond formation. A pnictogen is any of the chemical elements nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth, belonging to group 5A of the periodic table.

The patent is the collaborative work of Benjamin F. Wicker, formerly of Southeastern, and Bruce A. Atwater, formerly of Fort Hays State University. Also working on the project was Skyler A. Markham, then an undergraduate student with Atwater and now a graduate student at Colorado State University.

The project began as an outgrowth of research into the applications of phosphonium compounds—compounds that incorporate a phosphorous atom that holds a formal positive charge. The initial attempt was to utilize the phosphonium compounds to create “coordination complexes” that incorporate a metal center. Similar coordination complexes are used as catalysts for polymer manufacturing, medical treatments and imaging, and solar cell developments.

This research led to the development of phosphonium compounds known as “bipyridines.”

“You can imagine these compounds as two rings connected by a line, much like frames of eyeglasses, but without the part that goes over the ear. This was an exciting discovery for several reasons,” Wicker said. “First, the reaction involved carbon-carbon bond formation without the metal being directly involved, which is interesting to the academic sector. Second, bipyridines are used in the formation of many industrially relevant coordination complexes, which is interesting to the industrial sector. Third, the reaction takes place at low temperatures, for example, room temperature and lower, which is of great interest to the industrial sector. And finally, the bipyridines can be created asymmetrically, which is of very great interest to academic and industrial sectors.”

The last point is where the invention has the greatest potential, and since this reaction involved organic transformations, Atwater was enlisted for help in developing the technology further.

“As mentioned before, bipyridines are used throughout the chemical industry to create coordination complexes. However, one of their specialties is in generating complexes that are good at absorbing light and transmitting the energy via electron transfer, critical for solar cell applications for renewable energy sources,” Wicker explained. “Different bipyridines allow chemists to ‘tune’ complexes to absorb different wavelengths of light, making them more efficient and cost-effective for solar cells.”

Attempting to modify bipyridines asymmetrically—that is only changing one ring—to effect finer tuning or broader range of wavelengths is currently an expensive and challenging process.

“The lack of readily accessible asymmetric bipyridines means that there are no ‘bifocals’ for bipyridine complexes that are cost-effective for use on an industrial scale. With our invention, we install the pyridine rings onto the phosphonium individually, so the generation of asymmetric bipyridines are essentially as easy as making symmetric ones,” he said. “Combine this with the low temperature of the transformation, and this invention could become a source of asymmetric bipyridines for a whole host of industrial and medical applications.”

BY TONYA LOWENTRITT

Southeastern’s Professional Sales Program held its Internal Role-Play Competition this semester on Friday, Feb. 3. Representatives from Northwestern Mutual, United Rentals, Cintas, Fastenal, Sherwin-Williams, Louisiana CAT, Republic Finance, Farm Bureau, Black Diamond, and other companies volunteered their time to assist in judging and playing the buyer roles for the competition. 

The sales team, including Colette Boudreaux, Zachary Delaunais, Isabella Distefano, Reed Godbery, Emily Stark, and Emily Wilson, moved on to compete at the regional competition, the Bayou Sales Challenge, Feb. 16 and 17 at Nicholls State University. Godbery, Stark, and Wilson made it to the semi-finals, and Stark was the competition’s winner. Southeastern placed 2nd overall to Florida State. 

The Professional Sales Program is run by marketing faculty member Dr. April Kemp and Dr. Tim Butler. For more information about the Sales Program, go to southeastern.edu/sales or email prosales@southeastern.edu. 

Above: Pictured front row, from left, are Isabella Distefano, Emily Stark, Emily Wilson, Colette Boudreaux, and April Kemp. On the back row, from left, are Gabe Pevey, Tim Butler, Reed Godbery, and Zachary Delaunais.
 

The Southeastern cheerleading squad won its second national championship, taking home the gold in the Open Coed Game Day competition at UCA/UDA College Nationals at the Walt Disney World Resort.

The win for SLU marks the second time in three years it has taken home the championship in the Open Coed Game Day, having previously earned a national title in 2021’s virtual competition. Southeastern spirit groups have won a total of four national championship golds in the past six years, as the Lionettes dance team won titles in the Division I Hip Hop category in 2018 and 2021.

“This was a special group that put in a lot of work outside of practice and it paid off,” Southeastern Spirit Coordinator Catherine Lawrence said. “We’re extremely proud of both groups for putting their best efforts forward on the mat and the floor when it counted.”

In addition to the gold medal, the cheerleaders also earned a bronze medal in the Division I Small Coed competition.

Southeastern spirit groups left Orlando with three medals to add to the trophy case, as the Lionettes earned a silver with a second-place showing in Division I Game Day. The runner-up performance was the highlight of a successful competition that also saw the SLU dance team finish 5th in Division I Small Coed and 12th in Division I Jazz.

The SLU Contemporary Art Gallery is featuring the 2023 Juried Student Exhibition through April 5. It is juried by visual artist and ceramicist Chris Pate and designer Ofir Mizrahi.

Every year the Contemporary Art Gallery invites two jurors from our artistic community to Southeastern’s campus in order to select from a pool of submissions that reflect exemplary artwork made by our students. This year Pate and Mizrahi will select a variety of artworks ranging from area concentrations such as ceramics, drawing, graphic design, new media and animation, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture.

“The SLU Contemporary is dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists to showcase their works,” said Gallery Director Cristina Molina. “In keeping with our mission, this exhibition provides an excellent opportunity for students to exhibit their artworks in a professional setting and have their artwork reviewed by two arts professionals.”

Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., and admission is free.

For more information about this exhibition, contact gallery director Cristina Molina via email at cmolina@southeastern.edu or by phone at 985-549-5080. To keep up with gallery events, visit southeastern.edu/slucontemporary and follow on Instagram @slu_contemporary.

About the jurors:
Chris Pate was born in Central, Louisiana, and graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2009 with a Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Anthropology, as well as an introduction to the ceramic arts. In 2010, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, and continued his investigations into clay, firing techniques, and kiln design. In 2012, Pate began wood-firing his work, which has since been the main mode of finishing his ceramic art.

After working with many various clay communities and firing dozens of wood fired kilns around the country, he moved back to Louisiana the summer of 2021. Since then, Pate has been working as the Technical Director of Byrdies’ Pottery in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, designed and built a large Anagama style wood-fired kiln with a strong, budding firing community in Husser, Louisiana. He has been working to build community in New Orleans as well as regionally by sharing his knowledge and experience with atmospheric fired ceramics.

Ofir Mizrahi is a graphic designer based in New Orleans.
Ofir graduated from Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art (Tel Aviv, Israel) with a degree in Design and Visual Communications. Ofir has more than 12 years of experience in graphic design, and has worked for a variety of design studios and companies. In 2019, he started Ofir Design, a New Orleans-based design firm that specializes in branding, print, packaging and web design.

President John Crain recently announced his intent to retire at the end of this academic year. He became the University’s 14th president in Feb. 2009 after having served as interim president from July 2008. Prior to being named president, Crain served seven years as provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Southeastern and before that as a faculty member in the Department of Accounting, including two years as president of the Faculty Senate and two years as department head.

To find Southeastern’s next leader, the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors Chair Liz Pierre announced the Southeastern Louisiana University Presidential Search Committee. The group is responsible for reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and recommending finalists for the presidency. The finalists will ultimately be interviewed and a president selected by the full UL System Board of Supervisors.

“I look forward to working with my fellow Board members and these community members with deep and varied ties to Southeastern,” Chair Pierre said. “The University is a pillar for the area, and the non-voting committee members’ unique perspectives will inform us throughout the selection process.”

UL System President and CEO Jim Henderson will chair the committee as a non-voting member. The committee includes select System Board members and the Southeastern Faculty Senate president as voting members as well as non-voting community members to serve in an advisory capacity.

“During the past six years we have developed an open and transparent search process that engages the University community and results in the selection of a mission-focused leader not only qualified to lead a university, but well-suited to lead this university,” Dr. Henderson said. “Our goal: to choose the leader whose impact on the University and community will be felt for generations.”

The committee’s first meeting is public and will take place Feb. 15 at 1 p.m. in the Cate Teacher Education Center Lecture Hall, Room 1021-22 on Southeastern’s campus and will be streamed live on the UL System YouTube Channel. During that meeting the committee will vote to accept their charge and the search timeline after hearing from the University’s constituencies. Information regarding the search will be housed on the System’s website at ulsystem.edu/southeastern-search.

The Presidential Search Committee is made up of the following members:

• Dr. Jim Henderson, Search Committee Chair and UL System President, non-voting
• Liz Pierre, UL System Board Chair
• Dr. Jimmy Clarke, UL System Board Vice Chair
• Brad Stevens, UL System Board Parliamentarian
• Ethan Estis, UL System Student Board Member
• Jo Lethermon, UL System Board Member
• Al Perkins, UL System Board Member
• Julie Stokes, UL System Board Member
• Dr. Erin Horzelski, Southeastern Faculty Senate President
• Toby Cortez, Southeastern Foundation President, non-voting
• Louis Nick Joseph, Community Representative, non-voting
• Stephanie Stafford Kropog, Southeastern Alumni Association President, non-voting
• Wallace Lewis, Southeastern Foundation Board Member, non-voting
• Baileigh Picou, Southeastern SGA President, non-voting
• Carla Tate, Community Representative, non-voting
• Allen Waddell, Southeastern Athletic Foundation Chairman, non-voting

Throughout most of Southeastern’s 97-year history, intercollegiate athletics have played a prominent role in campus life. Now, the athletes, coaches, administrators, fans and all others who have an interest in what sports has meant to the University have a thorough accounting of much of that history with the publication of 70 Years: Southeastern Lions Athletic History by Larry Hymel.

Hymel’s book is the first full accounting of Southeastern’s athletic history published. Through prodigious research conducted over about three years, Hymel recounts the wins, losses and so much more that occurred on the playing fields, arenas, courts, tracks and courses where the athletes who chose to wear the green and gold wrote their part of the story that was sports at Southeastern for the first 70 years of the school’s history.

Hymel, who has spent almost all of his adult life on the campus, brought to his task an intimate knowledge of the University’s athletic history.

Not long after graduating from Southeastern, Hymel was hired as the school’s first full-time sports information director, a position he filled for more than 30 years. He later served as director of the University Center and ended his long and distinguished career on the campus as alumni athletic coordinator.

He spent more than 40 years actively engaged on the Southeastern campus.

Through all those years, the athletes, coaches and administrators came and went, but Hymel was always there watching the school’s sports history unspool as the years spun by. Assessing the task he brought on himself, writing a thorough history of the first 70 years of sports at Southeastern, Hymel said, “there had never been a complete history of Southeastern athletics, and for many years one of my goals was to compile an accounting of the athletics history. When I started out on this project, I didn’t necessarily know that it would turn out to be a book. However, the more I researched the history of athletics, the idea of a book began to develop.”

He said he had a reason for limiting his tale to about the first 70 years of athletics at Southeastern. “I realized at one point that, I had to stop somewhere. … After all, the story continues to be told year after year. … It is still being told almost every day on the campus. Intercollegiate athletes became part of the school about 1930, when what would eventually become a university was a small little school that was really just getting established.

“By 1999, Southeastern had grown to become a large university with thousands of students and athletics had grown with it,” he said. “I had to stop somewhere, and 1999 seemed the perfect place to stop.”

The story starts in the fall of 1930 when then Southeastern Louisiana College fielded its first football team. That team beat Amite and Independence High Schools but later lost to other high schools and junior colleges. The long story ends in chapter 9 when Hymel sneaks into 2003 when Southeastern restored football after a long, painful time for many, when the campus was bereft of football starting in January 1986 when then University President J. Larry Crain announced that football would be dropped as an intercollegiate sport at Southeastern.

Hymel offers that the loss of football for so many years, along with shutting down the basketball team for one season, were among some of the low points in the history of sports in Lion land. However, those two chapters in sports history are offset by the many victories recorded by Southeastern athletes and the winning of conference and national championships.

Through his painstaking research, Hymel recounts the results of almost every football, basketball and baseball game. As more sports teams were added through the years, those contests found their way into his accounting of the school’s sports history. Eventually, Southeastern would field men’s teams in track, golf and tennis along with football, basketball and baseball. With the coming of Title IX in the 1970s, Southeastern, as did all other colleges and universities in the nation, hastened to bring intercollegiate athletic programs for women onto their campuses.

Hymel became sports information director in 1966 and from that point on he was, literally, “sitting on the bench” at almost all sporting events. About the years that came before his time on campus, Hymel said that he had to dig through old accounts of athletics to learn about the very early development of sports on the campus.

“What I learned was very important to telling the whole story, and those early, formative years proved to be of great interest,” he said. “Athletic involvement at SLU started slowly in the 1930s; was interrupted to an extent in the early 1940s when World War II drew so many young men away from the campus; and rebounded with some great teams, especially in football, when the veterans returned to the campus after the war.”

Hymel’s book recounts that Southeastern was a leader in encouraging women’s athletics on campus, and the 1976-1977 Lady Lions basketball team, under the leadership of coach Linda Puckett, won a national championship. Women’s softball was started in the early 1980s, and eventually the school added women’s volleyball, beach volleyball, track, tennis and soccer.

Much of the information in the book was gleaned from copies of The Lion’s Roar, the student newspaper for many years; LeSouvenir, the University yearbook; accounts of sporting events that filled the pages of local and regional newspapers over the years; and interviews that Hymel conducted during his years of research. He recounts that he spent many hours on campus at Sims Memorial Library poring over sources related to athletics now on file in the library.

For many local athletes, Southeastern afforded them a chance to continue their athletic careers hatched and then nurtured at area high schools.

A good example of that local touch involves the first Lady Lions softball team. Glenda Gauley, of Denham Springs, was among the first to try out for the school’s first softball team. She recalls in an interview with Hymel that the team did not even have uniforms for the first year, and the girls were only given matching shirts with numbers on them. Over the next two seasons, Gauley was the only pitcher the team had, and she pitched doubleheaders on numerous occasions.

Recalling those years at Hymel’s recent book signing, she said, “I never got tired. … I don’t remember the wins and the losses that much, what I remember is the joy of playing at the collegiate level and the fun I had with my teammates. Those were some great years.” She attended a book signing for the launch of the publication with Cindy Smith and Missy Smith, also from Denham Springs, who were on that first team. Cindy Smith scored the first run ever for the Lady Lions.

The interview with Gauley is just one of numerous such interviews in the book. Hymel interviewed many of the athletes, coaches and administrators who had a part in Southeastern’s sports history, and these interviews add a special feature to the long account of sports in the land of the Lions.

Readers will also find the names of a number of athletes who had distinguished careers during and after their playing days were over. Robin Roberts, now host of Good Morning America, was a star basketball player at Southeastern. Jim Corbett, who will long be remembered as a successful athletic director at LSU, had his start as a student at Southeastern. DD Breaux, the legendary gymnastics coach at LSU, was a gymnast and assistant coach at Southeastern. It also covers the exploits of outstanding athletes such as All American football player Huey Husser and his fellow Southeastern stars Ray Porta and Oscar Lofton.

Among the highlights in athletic history that Hymel cites were the undefeated football teams in 1946 and 1954; baseball and basketball teams that won conferences and advanced to national tournaments; and outstanding individuals in such sports as tennis, track and golf.

Hymel has won numerous writing awards during his long career. He was awarded the Mac Russo Award presented by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association in 1994, was elected to the Southeastern Athletic Hall of Fame in the same year, and was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame for Distinguished Service to Journalism in 2011.

BY VIC COUVILLION, CONTRIBUTING WRITER FOR THE ADVOCATE

Copies of the book are available at Southeastern’s University Bookstore, along with Bayou Booksellers in downtown Hammond, or through email at lhymel@southeastern.edu.

In addition to Larry Hymel, several alumni and members of the Southeastern Family contributed to bringing this publication to life, including former staff member Vic Couvillion for editing, former staff member Judy Couvillion for general assistance, alum and current staff member Randy Bergeron for photographic assistance, faculty member Dr. Sam Hyde for historical expertise, and Sims Memorial Library staff for microfilm assistance. The book was Published by Southeastern alum Corky Barras at Jefferson Printing and includes a cover designed by Southeastern student Jacie Ferlandy.

Southeastern’s Professional Sales Team won second place out of 80 universities in the World Cup of Sales at the 2022 International Collegiate Sales Competition. Hosted each year in Orlando, Fla., by Florida State University, the ICSC is the largest and most prestigious university sales competition in the world.

Southeastern students who competed on the winning team include Gabriel Pevey and Zakiya Miller of Ponchatoula, Jesse Demars of Walker, Aniya Ally of Prairieville, Reed Godbery of Baton Rouge, Emily Stark of Kenner, Troy Marks of Prairieville, and Jolie Waddell of Mandeville. Southeastern’s Professional Sales Program has been named a top sales program in the country by the Sales Education Foundation.

“We are extremely proud of the sales team’s performance at the International Collegiate Sales Competition,” said Assistant Professor of Marketing and Co-Creator of the Professional Sales Program April Kemp. “Having success in these competitions helps bring recognition to what we are doing at Southeastern to prepare students for successful and fulfilling careers in sales. They also provide a great opportunity for our students to network with their peers and interact with employers from around the country.”

In addition to the second-place finish in the World Cup competition, Southeastern students individually received accolades as well. Out of 160 competitors and after four rounds of competition, Pevey brought home first place, and Miller received fourth place in the sales role play competition.

Sales competitions such as this one, said Kemp, allow students to test their selling skills against their peers through role-playing scenarios, case competitions, and speed selling.

The competition also offered a career fair attended by national companies who were there to hire the students.

For more information about the Professional Sales Program, visit southeastern.edu/sales, or email prosales@southeastern.edu.

Southeastern Management Instructor Aristides Baraya has been appointed to the Latino Commission by the Louisiana Speaker of the House, the Hon. Clay Schexnayder.

The main objective of the commission is to identify obstacles to the effective delivery of Louisiana state government services to Latin Americans, to propose methods to remove those obstacles, and to present proposals to the appropriate government entities.

“Dr. Baraya’s selection for this prestigious nomination is truly an honor for Southeastern,” said Southeastern President John L. Crain. “It recognizes his and Southeastern’s ongoing efforts to enhance the Hispanic community’s social and professional development.”

As Director of the Latin American Business and Development Initiative, Baraya works daily to develop the potential of Hispanic youth through the Hispanic Leadership Program his office has been developing with Hispanic high school youth from various parishes across the Northshore region. The program, he said, goes beyond the traditional instruction of leadership courses by providing Latino youth with the tools and resources to develop educational opportunities and become influential community leaders, giving Hispanic youth real-world learning experiences.

“The Hispanic community has made significant contributions to the development of our great nation and has an essential role to play in today’s US economic and social success,” he said. “Empowering social development and leadership to the Hispanic community will bring enormous opportunities to Louisiana.”

Baraya is a member of the Board of Directors of the Hammond Area Economic and Industrial Development District, a member of the Board of Advisors National Scientific and Academic Council of University for Distance Education, a member of the Southeastern Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council, and the Southeastern faculty advisor of the Association of Latin American Students.

A resident of Hammond, Baraya was named one of Louisiana’s top 100 successful Hispanic citizens by “Vocero News of New Orleans,” and a participant of the U.S. Senate National Hispanic Summit.