UCSB Professor to be Presented With Top Scholar Award by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies

The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies has named UC Santa Barbara's Francisco Lomelí winner of its 2004 Scholar Award. The award recognizes Lomelí's research and writing about Mexican Americans and Mexican-American writers and literature and his contributions to the development of Chicana and Chicano Studies as an academic discipline.

Lomelí -- a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, and chair of the Department of Black Studies -- will receive the award at the NACCS Conference in Albuquerque, N.M. in April.

"I am personally moved and humbled by the fact that such a national body would recognize my work," Lomelí said.

"The award represents a tremendous boost and acknowledgement of my efforts since the 1970s to put Chicana and Chicano studies on the academic map. It also speaks well of the status that UCSB's Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies has achieved."

Lomelí came to UCSB in as an assistant professor in 1978 after earning a Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico.

During his 25 years at UCSB, he has twice served as chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and was director of UC's Education Abroad Study Center in Costa Rica for two years.

His research has critically examined Mexican-American and other Latino literature and writers.

"Dr. Lomelí's contributions to the field of Chicano Studies and particularly to the discipline of Chicano literature have been numerous and multifaceted," said Donaldo Urioste, chair of the School of World Languages and Cultures at California State University, Monterey Bay, in nominating Lomelí for the award. "He is a teacher, a mentor, a devoted scholar, a pioneer, a colleague, and a genuine ambassador for Chicano/a letters in the United States, Mexico and Europe."

Lomelí is the third member of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies faculty to win the NACCS scholar award, joining Luis Leal and Yolanda Broyles Gonzalez.