NHI Heritage Families: The Sotos

To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 16-Oct. 15), we’ll be celebrating families throughout the month-long celebration that help make the National Hispanic Institute a vibrant organization of community leaders.

Familia:

The Sotos

Hailing From:

El Paso, Texas

First NHI participation:

Arthur Soto participated in the 2007 National LDZ

And since then:

Both Arthur and his younger sister Rebecca have participated in NHI (Rebecca started with the 2009 National LDZ) and are currently active alumni while going through rigorous PhD programs. (Rebecca’s is in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard, while Arthur’s is in Communications at American University in Washington, D.C.

What they say about NHI:

“As siblings we’ve participated in the LDZ and staffed numerous programs. We share the values of the National Hispanic Institute and practice them on a daily basis. Experimenting with Inquiry based learning at the CWS and CLN has helped us think creatively and critically about the methodological strategies we use in research. The notion of “realities” and “social narratives” from the LDZ echo in the theories we read and discuss. We are reminded that it is not enough to simply critique existing scholarship, but also push forward and create new knowledge – a lesson from our first conversations with Ernesto and other NHI mentors.

Despite our different fields, political communication and biomedical science, we both share a passion for creating and transmitting knowledge. In the classroom we use skills we learned working with students at the LDZ in the Supreme Court and Executive branch. In the lab we use the careful observation skills we sharpened from watching general conventions and proposal crafting.

The values of the NHI community are lifelong values. We use them to guide our work and lives every day.”