Navigating Con Ganas: How Latina Leaders Transform Leadership Through Values Within the California Community College System

Despite Latine students comprising 48% of California Community College (CCC) enrollment, only 20% of CCC senior leadership is Latine, with the specific percentage of Latinas remaining unknown (Community College League of California, 2024; EdSource, 2024; Gonzalez, 2023). This disparity reflects broader patterns, as Latinas nationwide hold less than 1% of senior administrative roles in higher education institutions (Eiden-Dillow & Best, 2022), underscoring the importance of examining this underrepresented group. This qualitative study examined how Latina leaders navigate and transform leadership spaces within the CCC system through their decision-making processes. Using testimonio methodology grounded in Critical Consciousness, Chicana Feminist Epistemology, and Pedagogies of the Home, this research explored eight Latina administrators’ testimonios of leading con ganas—with determination, effort, and heart (Beltramo, 2021). Data collection included individual testimonios and a communal plática for member checking and collaborative knowledge production. The first research question examined how intersecting sociocultural factors influence Latina leadership navigation, while the second research question explored how Latina leaders transform leadership spaces through strategic decision-making. The study’s primary contribution is the Cultural Values as Transformative Leadership framework, demonstrating how comunidad, honestidad, and respeto function as catalysts for institutional transformation. Key findings reveal that Latina leaders succeed by strategically integrating cultural knowledge into leadership practice, representing nepantla leadership that exists in liminal spaces (Anzaldúa, 1999). This research challenges deficit perspectives about leaders from historically excluded communities and demonstrates how cultural knowledge becomes institutional innovation, providing essential insights for creating more equitable educational environments

A Latin Perspective on the Media: Gender, Law and Ethics, the Environment and Media Education

Edited By: William E. Biematzki, S.J. CSCC, Saint Louis University and Jose Luis Piiiuel Raigada Universidad Complutense de Madri

Communication and Development

In the mid-1970\u27s, a long-time career officer with the United States Agency for International Development evaluated his experience in a book entitled We Don\u27t Know How To Do It. This title summarises well the present-day quandaries in the field of development communication. The drive for world development began after World War II with great optimism. The United States, flushed with a recent crusading victory, looked back proudly at its own :ndustrial and agricultural development and was convinced that this was just a new challenge for \u27American know-how\u27. Europe, too, though rebuilding from war, was conscious ofitself as the apex of Western civilization. Economists now had the tools to eliminate depressions and to ameliorate recessions. Scientists were perfecting miracle wheat and com. Development would be just a rapid transfer of the technology and modem organization of the North Atlantic nations to the \u27backward non-Western world\u27. Techniques of communication and good use of mass media were seen to be at the heart of this \u27technology transfer\u27. The relatively new science ofhow to \u27get effects\u27 with mass media seemed to unlock great power for reaching isolated villages and overcoming the resistance of traditionalism. Thus, communication sciences found themselves at the centre of this new crusade. At the outset, researchers in the industrial nations saw development as largely a matter of economic investment, technology and education. For the new nations emerging in this period, however, the priority was political, economic and cultural independence. It became increasingly clear to many in the developing world that transfer of Western modernity meant a continuation of the same old colonial dependence. For them, development was increasingly defined as self-reliance, non-alignment and the buildingofa New World Economic and Information Order. Meanwhile peasants and immigrants to the new cities saw that development was creating a technological elite who were the midwives of the transfer from the industrial nations. The poor, who remained poor, asked what development might mean for them. This review of the field of development communication is very largely a story of how leaders in developing countries and the poor of those countries have struggled to become the protagonists of development - and to get the communication sciences to recognise this

GBOTuner: Autotuning of OpenMP Parallel Codes with Bayesian Optimization and Code Representation Transfer Learning

Empirical autotuning methods such as Bayesian optimization (BO) are a powerful approach that allows us to optimize tuning parameters of parallel codes as black-boxes. However, BO is an expensive approach because it relies on empirical samples from true evaluations for varying parameter configurations. In this thesis, we present GBOTuner, an autotuning framework for optimizing the performance of OpenMP parallel codes, where OpenMP is a widely used API that enables shared-memory parallelism in C, C++, and Fortran using simple compiler directives. GBOTuner improves sample efficiency of BO by combining code representation learning from a Graph Neural Network (GNN) into a BO autotuning pipeline. Compared to typical BO, GBOTuner uses a hybrid approach that exploits not only a Gaussian Process (GP)-based surrogate model learned from the empirical samples for the given target code but also a GNN-based performance prediction model learned from other codes. We evaluate GBOTuner using 78 OpenMP parallel code kernels obtained from five benchmark suites. GBOTuner significantly and consistently improves the tuning cost and quality over state-of-the-art BO tools across most cases, especially with a small tuning budget, resulting in up to 1.4x/1.3x higher tuned results on an Intel and an AMD platform, respectively

Peer-Led Sexual and Reproductive HealthEducation Programs at Universities

This applied research explores the accessibility, visibility, and comprehensiveness of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education and services at universities, with a specific focus on contraceptive risk awareness. Recognizing college students as particularly vulnerable to misinformation regarding hormonal contraceptives, unintended pregnancy, and STI exposure, the study examines the role of university-provided SRH resources in mitigating these risks. A mixed-methods content analysis was conducted on the SRH publicly-available web pages of four Northern California universities—Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Santa Clara University, and the University of California, Berkeley, chosen for their diversity in institutional identity. The research assessed each university’s online SRH resources for accessibility, thematic comprehensiveness, and adherence to best practices. The findings reveal notable disparities among institutions, with UC Berkeley offering the most comprehensive resources, including robust peer-led education and extensive service integration. Stanford provided strong clinical care supported by the presence of the university-affiliated hospital, but lacked visible peer education programs. San Francisco State largely relied on community-based resources, while Santa Clara University demonstrated critical gaps in SRH education and offerings in line with religious restrictions and few references to resources in the broader community. Across all institutions, information on hormonal contraceptive risks was inconsistently addressed, often lacking depth or clarity. The research supports peer-led education as a best practice for improving SRH knowledge retention and behavioral outcomes. Recommendations include enhancing the digital visibility of services offered, improving resource depth and accessibility to maintain best practices in SRH education, and integrating SRH counseling in non-clinical campus settings to foster informed decision-making and reduce stigma

The Language of Film and Television

An increasing number of people receive most of their news, entertainment and even religious inspiration through the visual media of film, television or illustrated magazines. We all watch television.James Monaco notes that some cats watch television attentively! But how well do we grasp the specific language of the visual media? In countries such as the U.S., there is evidence that the post-1950 generation that has grown up with television has a pattern of thinking more attuned to the visual than to print media. Yet, some cross-cultural studies suggest that many American children, for all of the long hours of TV they watch, have a relatively shallow perception of visual expression. Primary and secondary education generally focusses almost entirely on understanding print media. Some educators urge greater emphasis on visual literacy to build upon the latent visual mentality of young people today and to cultivate a deeper understanding of film and television expression. One presupposition of many visual literacy programmes now being introduced into schools is that film and television have specific langnages and that we can teach students to understand this language. This issue reviews some of the controversy among researchers regarding the notion of visual langnage and the debates on how to teach visual literacy

Interpersonal Communication

The story is told of a novice interpreter who once translated the English Biblical phrase \u27The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak\u27 into Russian as \u27The vodka is excellent, but the meat is bad\u27! Translation is not simply a problem for professional interpreters. All of us have to translate what other people are saying into words we can understand. More often than not we translate badly and the intended message is misunderstood. Even when talking with our closest friends and immediate family we can find ourselves struggling to reach a common understanding. How often is our speech littered with phrases expressing uncertainty and requesting enlightenment: \u27Could you say that again, please?; \u27I\u27m not sure what you mean\u27; or even the despairing \u27I wish I knew what you were talking about\u27! Over the past two or three decades communication researchers have sought to understand and elucidate the complex set of actions and words which go to make up communication between two people. How do people express their appreciation, show disagreement, reach common understandings, persuade, argue, cajole or deny? How are conversations begun, organized and ended? How does body language affect interpersonal communication? What makes communication successful, and why does it fail? The research covered in this issue of TRENDS focuses on the interactions between two people ( dyadic communication). The review reports on studies of communicative interactions, communicators, communication in relationships, communicative situations and mediated interpersonal communication

Broadcasting Policy and Media Reform

In some nations broadcasting evolves steadily and organically into a system that serves the information and leisure needs of an ever broader range of social groups. The media stimulate a widespread, critical and informed debate on national issues. In other countries broadcasting tends to become the preserve of powerful minority interests, and all information is slanted, often subtly, to serve the power strategies of these interests. Wave after wave of public media reform protest crashes against these privileged minorities, hut the established controls remain virtually intact. What has communication research to say to this problem