Five students from Wayne State University’s Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies (CBS) have been selected to participate in an all-expense paid four-day conference titled “Espacio USA 2007: Un Espacio para la Comunicación Continental,” which is scheduled May 1-5 at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC.

The conference will be a hemispheric dialogue that seeks to build relations among future leaders of the United States and Latin America. Espacio USA: Vanguardia Latina, a forum for university students within the broader conference, is a space of meeting and reflection designed to construct and to strengthen the links between the future leaders of the United States and Latin America.

The forum will bring together top-notch university students for a four-day intense dialogue consisting of workshops and presentations by U.S. and Latin American leaders, government officials, business leaders, intellectuals and artists to rethink the common challenges of the Americas.

Espacio USA: Vanguardia Latina 2007 is organized by Espacio de Vinculación, a Mexico-based non-profit organization, and is sponsored by Televisa and other major Mexican corporations. Since its founding in 1997, Espacio de Vinculación has united over 150,000 university students across Latin America with hundreds of political, economic and business leaders to develop and debate issues concerning the inter-American agenda.

Professor Jorge L. Chinea, director of the Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies, said the awardees are among the “best and the brightest students” on campus and nationally. “We are very proud of the five students from CBS selected for this high honor and opportunity,” Chinea said. “They have distinguished themselves academically with grade-point-averages ranging from 3.4 to 4.0., and have demonstrated outstanding leadership/volunteering characteristics that will represent the center and the university well.”

The Wayne State University CBS students selected for the conference include: Jorge Gómez, graduate student, secondary education/bilingual education major, Detroit; Bobbilyn Negrón, junior, English literature/art history major, Detroit; Ivonne Soler-García, senior, political science major, Roseville; Oscar Zelaya, graduate student, media arts major, Detroit; and, Xiomara Avila-Walker, graduate student, education major, Detroit.

Founded in 1971 as the Latino en Marcha Leadership Training Program by a coalition of activists, educators and community leaders and renamed the Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies in 1972, CBS has served on Wayne State’s campus as a point of entry or gateway to higher education for students interested in Latino and Latin American studies. During the last 35 years, nearly 1,500 students have entered the university through CBS and its two-year academic program.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 11 schools and colleges to nearly 33,000 students.