The Ascender Fall Seminar Reception will be the Tenth Year Celebration of the founding of Catch the Next and is titled: “Empowering the Minds that will Lead the World.” The event, which will be held on Friday, October 25th at 6:00 pm at the Hotel Indigo in San Antonio, has been opened to the public for a benefit fundraiser to support CTN’s John Siceloff Internship and webinar series with Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times reporter, Julia Preston. Funding will also support program operations such as the Ascender Transfer Motivational Conference held in June at the University of Texas in Austin.
The reception will feature Texas 2020 Poet Laureate, Emmy Perez, as the keynote speaker. Perez is a renowned poet, who received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California and her MFA from Columbia University. She has been a faculty member at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley since 2006.
The CTN reception will begin with music by Mr. Juan Tejeda who taught Mexican American Studies at Palo Alto College, where he established and was the lead faculty for the Center for Mexican American Studies. Juan is a CTN alumni faculty from the cohort of 2013. There will be food and an opportunity for networking among participants before the presentation by Dr. Robert Garza, President of Palo Alto College and CTN board member, on the impact of the program at PAC.
Participants will hear from a panel of alumni conducted by Dr. Amaury Nora, CTN Scholar Mentor and board member working with CTN on Research and Evaluation of Teaching Strategies. Dr. Nora is the former Co-Director of the Center for Research and Policy in Education, and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He has served as Editor of The Review of Higher Education and the journal for the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).
Dr. Rogelio Saenz, CTN board member will provide the closing. Dr. Saenz is Dean of the College of Public Policy and holds the Mark G. Yudof Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Ms. Lisa Torres and Diane Lerma from PAC will introduce the speakers.