UWG News Archive

Latino Initiative at UWG wins Carter Award

November 7, 2003

CARROLLTON, GA - The Latino Initiative of the University of West Georgia, a collaboration with Latinos United of Carroll County (LUCC) that works to enhance the well-being of the county’s fast-growing Latino immigrant population, has been selected by a national panel of judges as winner of the 2003 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Award for Campus-Community Collaboration.

UWG News Photo The $10,000 award, which will be divided equally between UWG and Latinos United, recognizes campus and community groups in Georgia that work together to produce measurable improvements in people’s lives while enhancing learning for higher education participants.

Although University System of Georgia (USG) institutions have previously been finalists for the Carter Partnership Award, the University of West Georgia is the first USG institution to win it. Previous winners have been collaborations based at Mercer University (2002), Emory University (2001) and Wesleyan College (2000).

The award was accepted by Dr. Elena Mustakova-Possardt, the UWG assistant professor of psychology who started the Latino Initiative in 2000, and Gyla González, vice chair of Latinos United of Carroll County, at a banquet on Nov. 5 at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta. Former Atlanta Mayor and United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young presented the event’s keynote address.

In addition to providing numerous social services to the Latino community in Carrollton, the Latino Initiative also serves as a laboratory for psychology students to translate their theoretical learning in humanistic psychology into the practice of working toward the peaceful cross-cultural integration of diverse and complex communities, says Mustakova-Possardt.

“This has been an effort to take education beyond information and knowledge, into the cultivation of love as the only way to really know,” she said. “As we truly recognize our
interdependence in this turbulent century of massive migrations and a deepening gap between wealth and poverty, and as we learn to act on it from our best intellectual and heartfelt understanding, we move closer to the possibility of a peaceful world.”

Dr. Beheruz N. Sethna, UWG president, noted that among those people who know it best, UWG is known for its excellence in teaching, research, and service.

“Many of our faculty colleagues have won national and state honors for their teaching excellence. Many faculty and students with faculty-directed research have won honors at the national and state level for their scholarship and research work,” he noted.

“While UWG also excels in service to the community – for example, last year UWG students, faculty, and staff participated in more than 150 fundraisers for social causes – it is always difficult to attain external recognition for service. The Carter Award is the exception. We are delighted that our work in the service arena has indeed attained statewide, if not wider, recognition for excellence in this Latino Initiative,” Sethna concluded.

The Carter Partnership Award was organized in 2000 by the Georgia State University College of Arts and Sciences and named for the Carters as a tribute to their lifelong efforts to build and strengthen safe, healthy and caring communities throughout the world. Finalists and winners are selected by a national committee of representatives from higher education, business, community and government organizations.

The other two finalists for 2003 were the South Georgia Farm Worker Health Project, a partnership between Emory University and the Decatur County Health Department, and the Partnership for Lifelong Learning, a collaboration of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and the Kids Advocacy Coalition.

The Carter Award program has been adopted as a model for statewide award programs for campus-community collaborations in Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts and Montana.

The Latino Initiative works to facilitate the psycho-social growth and empowerment of Latino residents of Carroll County to help them successfully integrate into the larger community while maintaining validation and support for their own cultural experience and needs. The program opened a Latino Community Center on Columbia Drive and a health clinic in Brookwood Apartments in Carrollton, a predominantly low-income immigrant Latino community with a smaller percentage of low-income African-Americans and whites.

Dr. Thomas J. Hynes, UWG vice president for academic affairs, stated, “The University and the LUCC anticipated emerging issues for health, safety, education, shelter and more, and began early to provide a framework that would hardwire a collaborative approach into future strategies to address these and other emerging issues. Collaboration across a community is relatively uncommon. Collaboration in anticipation of growing needs is quite rare, and we believe, worthy of praise.”

University students and faculty work with Carroll community members to provide free health care through the clinic and such services as a weekly family day, legal consultation, computer training, social service referrals, community meetings and youth initiatives at the Latino Community Center. To date, the health clinic has served more than 6,000 people who have no other access to health care.

In addition, Mustakova-Possardt offers weekly pro-bono counseling services to Latino individuals, couples and families, as well as regular psycho-educational workshops on relevant issues of psycho-social adjustment.

Mustakova-Possardt, who helped to found Latinos United of Carroll County, now serves as a consultant to its governing board as it continues to develop services for the local Latino immigrant population. She serves as the main link between UWG academic programs and students and the needs and realities of the Latino community.

For more information about the Latino Initiative, contact Mustakova-Possardt at
770-836-4599. For information about the Carter Partnership Award for Campus-Community Collaboration, including details on each program applicant, visit www.gsu.edu/carteraward, e-mail Randy Trammell, public relations coordinator for the Georgia State University College of Arts and Sciences, at rtrammell@gsu.edu or call 404-463-9538.

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