An Ethnic Studies Evolution

“As a student in the Chicana/o studies program at the University of Texas at El Paso, Jesse S. Arrieta decided that her classroom instruction about the culture and history of people of Mexican origin wasnt enough.

“For me, what I was studying and reading never truly resonated until I went into the community,” says Arrieta, 27, who graduated from UTEP in 2002 before earning a masters in American history from the University of California, Irvine. As part of her undergraduate honors thesis, Arrieta interviewed Mexican-American women who had been involved in labor organizing in the 1960s and beyond. She did nearly the same thing after moving on to graduate school in California. There she talked to Mexican-American women who were active in the Bus Riders Union, a group dedicated to promoting public transportation for low-income people in the Los Angeles area. That project would ultimately become her masters thesis. “

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